The Secret Grave Page 15

  So, yeah, I’m lucky to be alive. But that doesn’t mean I’m through with Cady. I have too many unanswered questions, especially now that I know Vivienne’s story. I’m pretty sure hers and Cady’s won’t be tight-fitting jigsaw pieces. I have to find out. Today.

  I peek into Dad’s studio. He’s so engrossed at his drafting table that he doesn’t hear or see me. With a start, I notice that the door to the new balcony is open, and I think of its wall and floor giving way in 1899, plunging Vivienne and Cady into the pool below.

  Mom’s down in the kitchen concocting one of her disgusting green energy drinks, and the blender is roaring. Perfect. The bathroom window slides open smoothly, as if it’s telling me it’s okay. If it didn’t want me to sneak out of the house, it would have stuck like it usually does. I hang my legs outside. It’s only the second floor, but it seems like a long way down to the ground when you have to jump.

  I slither down a drainpipe toward the first floor. Wish I’d thought to put on jeans instead of shorts because I’m scraping half my leg skin off. There goes my summer tan. I’m holding on by white knuckles. A few more inches … a few more and I can leap to the ground. For somebody who’s supposed to be smart, I forgot that there’s no cushy grass below this window. Nope, it’s a hedge of prickly blackberry. Ouch. Ouch!

  Gingerly, I tear my way through the bush and run toward the forest, pulling spiky blackberry thorns out of my legs and tossing them to the wind. The blackberry I’ve popped into my mouth is about three days short of being ripe, and I spit the mash to the ground just as I reach the fallen log at the entrance to the forest. Today no barrier can stop me. I’m an Olympic sprinter jumping over a hurdle, running toward the lake. I grind to a halt where the cabin once stood. The ash is still smoldering like coals in a barbecue pit.

  At the top of my lungs, I holler her name: “CADENCE STANHOPE!” There’s nothing here among the trees to echo my bellow. “Cady! Cadence Stanhope, I know all about you. Vivienne told me everything, every single thing.” Okay, it’s not quite the truth, but she’ll want to defend herself, and besides, I’m desperate as I dash around the lake and barrel toward the cemetery.

  When I get close to it, my throat tightens. I don’t want to see those gravestones. I don’t want to think about those girls, Olivia and Clarinda and Cassandra and the others who all—yes, I’m sure of it now—who all drowned. As I was supposed to do.

  Here I am, suddenly in the midst of the graves. The blazing noonday sun torments me, searing my face and urging me to run back into the sheltering shade of the cottonwoods and pines. Forget the graves, it tells me. Forget Cady. Sweat pools down my back. I squint in the unforgiving sunlight, wishing I’d been smart enough to wear sunglasses, or a baseball cap with a visor. Wishing I were anywhere but here.

  But here is where I need to be. I drop to the grass, my back ramrod straight against the gravestone that reads, Here lies Cadence Stanhope. I expect the granite to be hot, sizzling in the sun all these hours, but it’s not, and I put my fiery cheek against the cold stone for comfort.

  Comfort? In a graveyard? Talk about creepy.

  How long does it take for a body to disintegrate in the earth? Cady’s been in that grave for about a hundred and twenty years. There must be nothing left but a skeleton, a skull with teeth bigger than you ever expect, and maybe a few wisps of cloth, which outlasts flesh. If that’s all that’s left of Cady, how does she materialize into something solid, someone who looks so … alive?

  “I am alive.” The voice comes from behind me and Cady steps around to the front of her gravestone. “I’m alive because you need to see me this way. Do you know how much energy it takes for me to keep this solid form? You mortals are so limited, having to drag around your bits of bone and flesh.”

  “You tried to drown me!” I shout in her smug face.

  “No! I just wanted us to be friends forever. Can you blame me?”

  “Sure I blame you. You played on my sympathy because you knew I was a softie. You used me!”

  “As much as you used me, Hannah,” she says quietly.

  I think about this for a moment. Spending time with Cady did fill the hole that Sara and Luisa left in my life when they went away for the summer. Cady made my days exciting, and knowing her made me do things I never would have dared before. But she did try to kill me. “Friendship is about trust, not about pulling a friend’s head underwater. You don’t get it, do you?”

  “I get it,” she says in the weariest of voices. You’d think she’d been the one who almost drowned. She sits down across from me, her legs scissored under her, her arms hugging herself as if to keep her body inside its walls. “You came because you wanted to, Hannah.”

  “No, you made me do it!”

  She shakes her head. “I couldn’t have, unless, in your heart of hearts, you really wanted to come swimming in Moonlight Lake.”

  “Not true!” Even as I shout it, I know she’s right.

  “Are you going to be mad forever?” Cady asks.

  “Depends. I want to know what happened that night on the balcony.”

  “The balcony. Why do you care about that?” she blurts. “Ask me something that isn’t so boring.”

  I take a deep breath. “Okay, why did you go to live with Vivienne and Anthony?”

  “And their three bratty monsters? That’s what they were, spoiled little beasts in that big, fancy mansion.”

  “Are Scooter and I spoiled beasts because we live in Nightshade? If you could see how much work it needs … Doesn’t matter what you think about us. Tell me why you lived in Nightshade.”

  “If you want to know, you’ll have to come with me into my memory.”

  It sounds a lot like, Come swim in Moonlight Lake at midnight, which makes me jittery. I shouldn’t go. Mom and Dad would be so furious. But if they find out I snuck back into the forest, they’ll be angry anyway, and I’ll deserve whatever they dish out to me. I’ll be grounded with no phone for the rest of my natural life. But it’s worth it, so I tuck my hair behind my ears and go with Cady because, she’s right, I want to.

  She tells me to close my eyes, and when I open them I’m in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1898, on the day after Thanksgiving. The subway’s just been completed. I’m at the Scollay Square station with the huge clock. Roman numerals. It’s twenty after four, nearly dark.

  “I’m eleven years old,” Cady says. “Small for my age. My parents, heartless souls that they are, leave me with a zookeeper, Nanny Bridget, who might as well be a lion tamer for all the tenderness she offers. Do you see her with her huge feet and her face the color of corned beef?”

  “Clearly.”

  “I wave good-bye to my mother and father at the subway station and trudge home with the nanny, who limps on those platypus feet. I’m furious, but I refuse to cry. My parents are on their way to the dock to board the SS Portland. At seven o’clock, Nanny Bridget tells me gleefully, their ship will leave port as it does every night, bound for Portland, Maine. They call her—the ship, not the nanny—the Titanic of New England. She’s a side-wheeler paddle boat, great for river sailing, not the open seas.”

  “But safe,” I assure us both. “Must be, if she sails every night.”

  “Unless there’s a ferocious storm,” Cady says, and all at once we’re on the ship, and I feel the wind whipping at the woolen shawl clasped around my shoulders, over my coat. The wind bruises my cheeks and rips every pin out of my hair. My long coat lodges between my knees and nearly knocks me backward. We’re being tossed from left to right, port to starboard. The SS Portland’s stern tips into the sea. Icy water soaks my coat, my dress, through my petticoats, clear to my underwear. I’m clutching the rail of the boat, watching shooting waves crash onto the wooden planks of the floor and seep through the cracks to the deck below. My stomach sours, threatening to pour its contents into the sea, and I close my eyes, preparing to be tossed overboard.

  “Stop it!” I cry, and as suddenly as she began it, Cady calms the storm and we’re back
in the cemetery.

  “A passing ship hears four short blasts. Do you know what that means? It’s a nautical distress signal.”

  My head’s still reeling, and I’m chilled to the bone. “What happens? What happens?” My stomach is beginning to settle and the icy chill is yielding to the sun—the very sun I’d griped about a few minutes ago for its heartless heat.

  “The SS Portland and 190 people on board, all the crew and all the passengers, are swallowed by the sea. And that’s how I end up at Aunt Vivienne and Uncle Anthony’s house with their hellion children. You see? She was my mother, and she wasn’t. She was my aunt by marriage because she was married to my uncle, but she was also my foster mother.”

  She lets that sink in. I guess sink isn’t the best word, under the circumstances. Anyway, I’m not comfortable breaking the silence for the longest time until finally I ask, “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

  Cady is shocked. “Have I ever lied to you?”

  “All the time! Especially when you called me to Moonlight Lake and promised I’d be safe. You are pure evil, Cadence Stanhope.”

  A look of such heartbreaking grief crosses her face. I’ve gone too far. She rises effortlessly. You could almost say she floats ghost-like away from me.

  “I’m sorry I said that, Cady.”

  “All these girls,” she says, panning her hand around the other six graves. “You think I lured each one to Moonlight Lake and drowned them. You do, admit it.”

  “Yes,” I murmur.

  “Hah!” Her laugh is frightening. It ricochets off all the trees around us and bounces back to her. “Here’s the truth, Hannah. The truth. I invited them to Moonlight Lake at midnight. I would have given anything to have them come deep into the water and spend eternity with me. That’s how desperately lonely I was. Am.”

  I gasp in horror as I’m shaken by the dreadful loneliness, the absolute aloneness, that Cadence Stanhope must feel, and it never goes away. I have friends. I have parents who love me and take care of me. I have sisters and brothers. I have a home, my own room, and teachers and coaches and good food and a brain that works (usually) and all five senses in good operating order. She has nothing. I’m drowning in her sorrow, and I see in her face how embarrassed she is to be sharing it with me.

  And then, in a whispery voice that I have to strain to catch, she says, “I invited them all, and lots of others, to swim with me at midnight. But you … you are the only one who came.”

  I blink away the tears welling up behind my eyelids. “And the other girls, the ones who didn’t come to Moonlight Lake?”

  “Gone, all of them. Well, they must be. So many of your years have passed. I guess their families buried them when their time came to move beyond this world. I have only their empty graves and names to keep me company.”

  “Such as Olivia Bainbridge?” I watch for her reaction, and she seems startled that I’d mention Olivia. “My sister knew her a little. She died in 2009, when she was thirteen. Did you have anything to do with that?”

  “No. Thirteen doesn’t interest me.”

  What a curious response, but I keep prodding her.

  “So why is her grave here? Was she someone special? Maybe the best of all the girls?”

  Cady’s eyes jump around. “I never actually met Olivia.”

  “Then I don’t get it.”

  Now her eyes zero in on me, as if she’s wondering how much she can trust me. “You really want to know?” She sounds irritated, but softens a little. “It was right after Olivia passed. Her mother came to the forest with a heart as heavy as stone. She wandered for hours and accidentally found my little graveyard. I talked to her. I suppose because she was so sad, she didn’t seem freaked out. Lots of people who come here are, you know.”

  I do, but I don’t say anything, because Cady needs to talk.

  “I think she knew that I was from the world beyond, the one Olivia was in. She asked me if I would keep Olivia remembered here among the other girls. How could I say no to a mother who loved her daughter so much?”

  Unlike Cady’s own mother. “Did Olivia … did her spirit come to you?”

  “Once I sensed she was nearby, but she quickly drifted away from me.” Cady twirls her hand in the air to show she means far, far away. “So now you know why I have her grave here. She came the closest to me.”

  Again, her look of grief and loneliness breaks my heart. “Sit down, please,” I say quietly. “Tell me what happened on the balcony.”

  She sits beside me; I slide over so we can share her gravestone, making sure our shoulders don’t touch.

  Her voice is hollow and distant, and that reminds me about the orange yarn in the cabin: tangled time, raveling and unraveling. “Vivienne hates me. She thinks I pushed her over the wall, and that’s why she died.”

  “Did you?” I ask, holding my breath.

  “No.”

  “I’m so glad. I needed to hear you say that, Cady, because here’s a news flash for you. She thinks she pushed you over the wall when she reached out to touch your face.”

  “How do you know what she thinks?”

  Should I tell her? I take the plunge. “She’s at Nightshade. I’ve seen her, or at least she’s made herself known to Scooter and me, even to Gracie.”

  “I had no idea.” Cady sinks into herself the way a cake sags in the middle—all still there, just compressed.

  “Vivienne blames herself. She believes that she reached for you, and you jerked away from her hand and tumbled backward.”

  “That’s not how it happened at all!” Cady cries. “I couldn’t stand people touching me, especially her, with her dull, lifeless eyes trying to see me with her fingers. Out there on that balcony, we were both in the dark, but I could see by moonlight; she couldn’t. I pushed her hand away, harder than I needed to, and she lost her balance. I reached out to grab her to keep her from cascading over the wall. Our hands clasped and … and … I don’t know what happened after that, except we were both flying until we came to rest in a soft bed of warm water.”

  Is that what dying is like? No! I’d fiercely fight for my life, like I did in the lake. “Cady, listen to me. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “It was! It was!”

  “And it wasn’t Vivienne’s fault, either. My dad’s carpenter told me about the slapdash job the builders did when they added on that balcony. The floor gave way, and the wall came crashing down, and you both plummeted into the pool. It wasn’t anybody’s fault but the carpenters’.”

  I take her hand, which she starts to pull away, then lets it rest in mine, as soft as duck down. “All these years, eons,” she begins, “you can’t imagine the huge guilt that’s eaten away at me for sending Vivienne to her death.”

  “But you didn’t!” I repeat.

  “I didn’t? I didn’t!” Cady pulls me to my feet and dances me around wildly. We bump into trees, sending birds flying from tree to tree. She lets go of me and leaps over a tree stump, then chins herself and swings on a limb that’s fragile enough to snap off if I put even a tiny bit of weight on it. We drop back to the soft ground cover.

  “How many times have you heard me say I’m a free spirit, Hannah?”

  “Lots of times, whenever it was convenient.”

  “I lied.”

  “You? I can’t believe it.”

  “Now, after a hundred and twenty of your years, I am free, finally. Thank you!” Her eyes narrow. “It’s going to take some time to get used to this,” she says, brightening again. “But I’ve got lots of time!”

  “So now you and Vivienne have to forgive each other. I don’t know how ghosts work things out,” I say with a sharp laugh, “but I’m beginning to understand how the living do. You’ve got to come to Nightshade and talk to Vivienne. Well, maybe talk isn’t the right word. You know what I mean.”

  “Yes,” she says, the eyes that used to drill into me shining now. They’re the shade Scooter described about my iPad—sparkly silvery-blue, like water in sun
light. Belladonna eyes.

  “You have to forgive each other, Cady, because Vivienne is a lonely, restless soul, just like you. And she’s blind; she needs a guide.”

  “I’ll do my best, but you’ve noticed that my best isn’t always great. The cameo, it was hers, you know, but she didn’t give it to me. I dug around in her jewelry box and found it under a bunch of other stuff the night … well, the night of the balcony. I thought, since she was blind, she’d never notice it missing.”

  I reach into my pocket and pull out the cameo. “Do the right thing, Cady, even if it feels wrong.”

  She reaches for it and holds it in both wavery hands. “I’ll give it back to Vivienne. That’s the first thing I’ll do.”

  “Good start. Now, let’s make a deal. Come to Nightshade. You and Vivienne get straightened out with each other so you can stop telling lies and saying mean things and burning down perfectly rotten cabins and trying to—” At this point my heart skips a few beats—“Stop trying to drown friends. Promise?”

  She nods, and I try with all my heart to believe her. “And Vivienne needs to stop snatching pearls away from me and breaking tea cups and lightbulbs. Did you catch that, Vivienne?” I shout to the treetops.

  There’s no response, but I don’t expect one from her in Cady’s territory.

  “What will you do on your end of the deal, Hannah?”

  Good question. What kind of promises do you make to a living, breathing dead person? I give it serious thought while Cady fidgets and drums her fingers on the grass.

  “My parents are going to be so mad that I slipped out of the house against their orders, and they’ll probably ground me until I’m seventy. But whenever they get over it, I promise I’ll come here to visit you. Absolutely no swimming, though. Wading, maybe. And no making people do things they don’t want to do.”

  “You wanted to swim in Moonlight Lake,” Cady reminds me.

  I refuse to admit that. “Keep in mind it won’t be as easy for me to come here in the winter or on stormy days. I’m not trudging through snow, and I don’t want to be leaning on a tree that’s struck by lightning in the middle of a storm.”