Anne Brown - Lies Beneath

Defeated, all I could do was watch from the trees. I whispered Tennyson through cracked lips. When my skin split in long, thin lines across my cheeks and shoulder blades, I wondered how long it would take to completely mummify, and as my body dried, my mind slipped into hallucinations.

At first I thought the trees were watching me—or at least, one thin, pale birch, which leaned forward with the breeze as if getting ready to speak, or wanting to speak but wondering if it should. A glimmer of reason reminded me that birch trees didn’t talk—even in my nightmares. I pushed myself to allow my mind to clear and my eyes to focus, but in retrospect, I should have left my hallucination alone. It didn’t take long to realize it wasn’t a talking tree. The thin, pale figure was Maris. And she was coming closer.

“Stay away from me,” I croaked through my cracking larynx.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Maris said. “Obviously Tallulah wasn’t going to keep you in the net forever. Where is she?” She scanned the woods. “Why are you out here?”

I narrowed my eyes. She didn’t know? Of course she didn’t. Tallulah hadn’t seen the danger at the top of the cliff. She hadn’t seen Jack Pettit pull the trigger. Tallulah hadn’t had time to alert Maris or even project her own fear or pain. The secret was mine to bear alone. For better or worse.

“You need serious help, Maris.” My voice was like chalk.

She picked at the bark on a tree, and the corners of her mouth twitched into a sad kind of acknowledgment. “I assumed you and Lulah would be riding off into the sunset by now,” she said.

“I won’t be riding off into any sunsets with Tallulah. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

She rolled her lips inward and nodded knowingly. “I guess that’s why I’m here. Isn’t there something you want to ask me?”

“Me?” I coughed.

“Yes, you. We struck a bargain. The deal is complete. I assume you want to collect on my promise.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Our bargain …?”

“Okay. I get it if you want me to say this out loud. Will that make up for the lump on your head?” She almost sounded sorry. “We asked you to seduce the girl. I admit you accomplished the seduction, although ”—she nudged my shoulder with her foot and appraised me—“you’re not much to look at now. But I digress. We asked you to get Hancock out on the water so we could take him down.”

I opened my mouth to say something, although I wasn’t sure what.

She leaned one hand against a tree. “Yes, yes, I know, it ended up being a different Hancock, but it’s not your fault Tallulah changed my mind. As I think Pavati told you, one dead Hancock satisfies the debt as well as any.”

I stared at her, afraid to blink. It was too good to be true. Was Maris really unaware Lily had been rescued? Had my own thoughts been so addled she hadn’t seen any of it? Or—I dared not think it—did she know something I didn’t? Had Lily not survived after all? Surreptitiously I glanced at the dark house, the darker window.

Maris didn’t notice. “Damn it, Calder. You know I don’t have any choice in this. A promise is a promise.” She sighed. “Although I don’t see what good your independence will do you. I’ve never known a loner who survived for long, and if you keep up this landlocked melodrama, you won’t have much time left. Still, it’s not my place to judge.”

She shredded a sheet of birch bark in her fingers, then dropped it like confetti onto the ground. “You made good on your end. I’ll make good on mine. From this point on, you get your wish.” She locked her eyes on mine and said, “We are no longer family.”

With her words, I felt the click in my mind—as easy as flipping a switch—the breaking of the cord that bound me to the family White. I wondered how she did it. There was barely a flinch of her shoulders. But she wasn’t ready to leave me yet.

“She was just a girl, Calder.” Maris looked down at me with a combination of irritation, pity, and incomprehension.

“The truth,” I said.

She chewed on the insides of her mouth and debated her words. “What do you want me to tell you?”

“About me. Hancock. The whole story. I want to know the truth before I die.” I did my best to glare at her, though my eyes creaked in their sockets.

She crouched beside me, her skin still glistening with water droplets. She snaked a wet fingertip down my arm, leaving a trail of temporary relief.

“Why the lies, Maris?”

“Hancock confessed?”

“You could say that.”

“Tom Hancock promised to give the baby back to Mother as soon as he was walking. He broke that promise.”

“How is that Jason Hancock’s fault?”

“He grew up, didn’t he?” she snapped, her eyes flashing. “Years passed, Calder. Decades. He could have come home at any time. He had to feel the pull. He had to know where he belonged.”

“He did.”

Maris looked smug. “Of course he did. You have no idea what it was like to watch Mother die. Slowly. Slipping away from us every day. I was twelve. Pavati, Tallulah, you—you were all too young to understand. I shouldered this. Me. On my own.”

“Mother died in the nets,” I reminded her. “I saw it.”

“She died of a broken heart. It was no accident.”

“But I saw.”

“You saw the memory I planted there for you, Calder. For all of you. She hoped, by making you, she could replace the son she lost.”

“She was wrong,” I said, barely a whisper. Every inadequacy I’d ever felt multiplied in that second. I hadn’t saved Lily. I hadn’t saved Tallulah. I hadn’t been enough to save my mother. I stared up at the night sky, flat and matte without any stars. “But why kill Jason Hancock?” I asked. “He was your brother. Even more than me.”

Maris chuckled.

I used every bit of strength I had to roll over and look at her more closely. “What was my part in this, Maris?”

She drew her fingernail across the palm of my hand, slicing it like a scalpel. The brittle skin split neatly in a hairline of red that thickened and filled every crevice. “Neither the truth nor the lie really matters,” she said. “Brother or not, Hancock is the reason Mother is dead. He needed to pay. I wanted you to feel useful. I hoped helping us execute his murder would draw you closer to us.

“Then, when we discovered you’d fallen for the girl, Tallulah suggested it was a family debt and any member could pay it. The girl’s suicide would torture Hancock more than his own murder ever could. Let him feel the loss of a child—just like Mother did. And it had the bonus of getting the girl out of the way so you and Tallulah could …”

Maris turned and looked at the lake in confusion. The night breeze dried the ends of her hair. When she looked back at me, she clicked her tongue as the blood from my hand seeped into the wet leaves and stained the tips of her toes. “Pavati was harder for Tallulah to convince than I was.… I don’t understand. Where is she? We can’t hear Tallulah anywhere. What did you say to her?”

I closed my eyes. Despite the deceit and treachery, the loss of Tallulah still gnawed at my heart. Until recently, she had been my closest confidante, my dearest friend. The memory of her lifeless body was too raw for me to lie to Maris with any confidence. But I need not have worried. When I opened my eyes again, Maris was gone. No goodbye. No love lost there.