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Sarah’s back was to the sunset, so the stranger was only a shadow’s length away when he smiled at her and said: “Evening, Amanda!”
His voice was not acidic in tone, but acid-like in the way that it hurt going into her ears. Each syllable fell like a carefully enunciated stone. His eyes were fever-bright and horribly familiar.
A few months ago it would only have been frightening. Now, given what she’d learned, it made the buildings of Harper’s Hill seem to spin and fade around her, as her heart and nerves and every other organ or gland responsible for her body’s continued survival told her to escape.
Life was full of twists. What were the odds that the thing would find Amanda Cummings here, in Harper’s Hill? More than a decade after everything?
Sarah only circled back to her apartment once the shadows were gone and she was sure that the stranger was no longer behind her. She clattered up the stairs with tightened lungs and buzzing feet. The battered suitcase under her bed was already half-full, the result of paranoid, indecisive nights. Now she threw in clothes and other personal effects, plus as many cans of food as she could lift at once. And then—
She stopped, caught in a silent tug of war.
As often happened when activity ceased and the night crept over her, Sarah sat cross-legged on the bare floor, in the corner that could generously be called a kitchen… her body hidden between the wood stove and the workbench… facing the icebox.
As often happened next, she gritted her teeth and pulled the icebox door open, shivering in the rolling cold. Closed, it looked too much as if a corpse would fit inside.
Did her mother get any kind of warning? Did she feel goosebumps rising on her skin before the blow fell? Would she be shouting at her daughter to drop everything this second, and leave?
But Sarah had promised herself that she wouldn’t ever leave without saying goodbye.
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The fireplace blazed. Mrs Kelly always kept her bow-walled cottage so warm that it made Sarah sweat.
“I need to,” Sarah began. “I should,” she began again. “I didn’t want to,” she began a third time, while the odds of her making it through the sentence shrank before her eyes.
“Spit it out, gel,” said Mrs Kelly in her barely-there voice. Her voice was as thin as her hair, which was as translucent as her skin. But if age had reduced her to a whisper, it was the sort of whisper that accompanies a smile. She was old and kind enough to be Sarah’s grandmother, if Sarah allowed herself to think wishfully.
She poured tea into Sarah’s empty mug, adding warmth to warmth, holding the memory of the cruel-eyed stranger at arm’s length for a few gentle moments.
It’s hard, Sarah wanted to say. It’s not fair.
Instead she imagined Mrs Kelly wondering where she’d gone without ever getting answers, screwed that image up into a weapon, and hit herself with it until the words came out.
“I won’t be able to visit for a week or two, maybe longer. I’m leaving today, in fact. Got an offer of work typing for a man in Newburyport,” she added, lying through her teeth, though not about the important part.
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Mrs Kelly exclaimed, her eyes crinkling. “What’ve you kept this under your hat for?”
“Sorry, Mrs Kelly. It happened pretty fast.”
She’d come back soon, Sarah told herself. It’d be okay, the leaving and the lying, so long as she came back as soon as it was safer. For her loved ones, for her. For Mrs Kelly in particular.
Mrs Kelly, who’d gone back to her first husband’s name after losing both her second husband and her son, didn’t deserve any more grief. She had her daughter, she had her grandchildren — but she also had a military portrait on a shelf, and some hair in a locket, and unexplained silences that followed unknown thoughts. That the tragedies hadn’t swallowed her entire world seemed impossible…
…Except when you watched her. Then she made it look easy.
They finished the tea. It was Sarah’s turn to make more. She’d begun to make tea the way Mrs Kelly did: slowly, listening to the water fidget in the kettle, letting the steam from the cup warm her face. It was somehow nice to think about each step as if it was important.
Usually. Today, the slow scream of the kettle echoed the pressure inside Sarah’s chest.
Mrs Kelly had more practice being stoic about losing loved ones, Sarah thought. Maybe that was the difference between them. Plus, as far as Sarah knew, she had never been nearly sacrificed by a cult at the same time, and that probably simplified the healing process.
They had this in common, though: neither one knew the whole story of their own grief. Sarah’s dad was — well. There were several stories she refused to believe, and few facts; only insane accusations, backed up by old newspaper headlines that felt like they were from another world. Meanwhile, Mrs Kelly’s son had dropped off the face of the earth: been honourably discharged from the army, stepped safely off a troopship in Boston, and poof. Gone. Nobody knew where.
No, that wasn’t quite true.
Sarah knew.
Life was full of twists. What were the odds that it would bring her here, to Harper’s Hill? That Mrs Kelly would befriend her, and that her home would be warm, when Sarah had only approached her in the first place because of her name? As soon as Sarah was old enough to be charming, and curious, and desperate for anything that might resemble closure. Back when Mrs Kelly’s second husband was still alive, and she was still called Mrs Dowd.
Sometimes, Sarah became obsessed with the idea of hitting Charlie Dowd in the face. She wasn’t fourteen any more, and could give someone a pretty good black eye. Did he care one bit that his mother was alive? If Sarah learned that her dad lived a few hours down the road, and hadn’t so much as written her a letter, she’d — she didn’t know what she would want to do, but the want felt violent.
And he’d made her part of it, the motherfucker. She was keeping his twelve-year-old secret for him, because what good would it do now? The only lead she could possibly give anyone was her vague memory of the man from the military portrait, a couple years older and with a less-convincing smile.
Sometimes Mrs Kelly’s smile tightened in the same way.
So Sarah had promised herself that she wouldn’t ever leave without saying goodbye.