Читать книгу The Lost Sister - Megan Kelley Hall - Страница 9

A blank slate, infinite possibilities, new start, change, renewal, and a brand-new beginning, movement, a fresh, exciting new time.

I t’s funny how one phone call can completely change your life, Maddie thought angrily as she packed her bags for winter break.

She’d made her peace that she was finally done with Hawthorne—the past, the betrayal, the pain—and then one day Maddie got a call that changed everything. Maddie’s mother, Abigail Crane, the strongest woman she’d ever known, was diagnosed with cancer. While helping her mother—a woman whom she couldn’t even recall the last time she hugged—was one of the last things Maddie wanted to do, her school therapist suggested that going back to Hawthorne, helping her mother through her chemo treatments, checking in on her aunt Rebecca in the new facility, and finally coming to terms with what had happened to Cordelia, would help with the nightmares. Maddie might finally begin to move on and let go of the weight of it all.

Maddie thought it strange when people whom you expect to be around forever suddenly are at risk of being taken from you. Like Cordelia, her grandmother, Tess, and now, inevitably, Abigail. Even though Maddie made the decision to leave Hawthorne and its secrets and curses behind without thinking twice, now that Maddie knew she only had a limited amount of time with her mother, it all suddenly seemed unfair.

“Come with me, Maddie,” said Luke Bradford as he grabbed a handful of her neatly folded clothes and promptly removed them from her worn duffel bag. “I’ll give you a raise.”

“I don’t work for you.” Maddie laughed.

“But you could,” he said.

“You know I can’t.”

“Come on, Maddie! It’ll be a blast!” Luke insisted. Maddie looked at Luke, wondering how she was ever going to survive without her constant companion. Ever since they were lucky enough to room across the hall from each other in Eaton Hall, sixth floor, since she transferred, Luke Bradford and Maddie had been inseparable. And since he was one of the most sought after guys on campus, Maddie became the instant “best friend” to girls who wanted the inside track to the sandy-haired athlete who could easily pass as a close relative to Brad Pitt.

Maddie swatted him and started putting her clothes back into the suitcase, allowing her long, straight brown hair to fall over her shoulder, shielding her sad smile.

“I have a place all set for you on the ship,” Luke insisted. “It’s easy money. Basically, we get paid to have a monthlong booze cruise in a beautiful tropical paradise. Isn’t that much better than going to a freezing wasteland like Hawthorne, Massachusetts?”

“Not a wasteland, a winter wonderland,” she retorted.

Luke Bradford’s father—a permanent fixture in the Fortune 500 list year after year—decided that his only son and future heir to his empire needed a good dose of corporate work ethic. Plus, he knew that it would enhance and effectively pad his résumé, allowing him to move one step closer to getting accepted at one of the Ivies. Unfortunately, Luke’s grades weren’t helping to clinch the deal, so a Bradford library might be in order.

“I would love it, really,” Maddie moaned. “I’d rather do anything than go back to Hawthorne.”

“Thanks.” Luke collapsed into a chair by the window, staring outside at the snow-covered quad. “That makes me feel special. Spending Christmas break with your best friend is just barely more appealing than going back to a place you hate. No, really, that makes me feel great.”

It hit Maddie then, how much she was going to miss Luke. She’d taken for granted all of the things that had carried her through the past few months and kept her mind off Hawthorne: his unannounced drop-overs when he’d show up balancing a bag of Chinese takeout in one arm and stacks of horror movies in the other. At times she’d had to remind herself why they never got together. Boyfriends come and go, friends are forever was what Maddie told anyone who asked why they weren’t a couple yet.

Instead, Maddie sat back, watching him go through girl after girl, always returning back to her to relay all the unpleasant details of each relationship, describing how he felt trapped or bored. And then it was just the two of them again, starting with his knock on the door, pizza, and Red Bull, preparing for a night filled with dirty jokes, mindless movies, and uncontrollable laughter.

It was better than any real relationship either of them had ever had, and they were both terrified of tampering with perfection. Deep down Maddie knew the real reason that they hadn’t gotten together. Luke respected that she was one of the last few virgins left on campus. Or at least that’s what he said.

“You know that I love you,” he said earnestly. Just then he rose from the seat, made his way over to her, and dropped down on one knee. “If I asked you to marry me, Madeline Crane, would you reconsider?”

Maddie raised an eyebrow, waiting for the punch line.

“Is that a no?”

Laughing, Maddie pulled all six feet two of him to his feet and he embraced her in a deep, bear hug. He was one of the few people that made her feel small and protected—at five foot ten, Maddie was used to being the giant in the room.

“You know that if you marry me, you’d have to get rid of all your other girlfriends.”

“Oh, damn, I didn’t think of that.”

Maddie pinched his arm hard.

“Ow,” Luke cried, cowering. “I take it back. I’m not into abusive relationships. I watch Oprah —I know how to deal with people like you.”

Again, Maddie took a swipe at him. He laughed, retreating just out of her reach.

It’s strange how life can get better simply by changing your surroundings, Maddie mused. A few months ago, she had been dealing with so much loss and unhappiness. But now all she had to worry about was what classes she should take or what party to attend. She had made a new life, one that she was in control of; not one that was predetermined years ago by families and people she’d never known, but whose blood ran through her veins. People who constantly let her down, like her mother and father. Or those who terrified her, like Kate, her aunt Rebecca, and, now, Cordelia—wherever she was. The other girls were guilty of hurting her that night out on Misery, but Maddie was even more so. She had betrayed her own sister, an act she wasn’t sure was forgivable—under any circumstances.

“Luke, you know that I need to help my mom right now. I’ve already made all the arrangements….” Maddie’s voice trailed off. She honestly didn’t know what Abigail needed anymore. What any of them needed these days. Closure? Support? Forgiveness? Or the ability to forget and move on? All of it seemed a pipe dream.

Maddie had successfully trained herself—her mind, her body—to become numb. After Cordelia disappeared and Rebecca was institutionalized, Maddie’s emotions sort of turned themselves off.

The truth was that Maddie was terrified of going back, afraid of what she’d find, afraid of facing the truth, afraid of the consequences. Maddie left that world far behind when she started at Stanton Prep. How could she possibly return to Mariner’s Way—even if it was only for a short school break—constantly being confronted by old ghosts and shadows of her former life?

Luke nodded his head, becoming uncharacteristically sympathetic. “I know, Maddie, really I do. Just don’t get any ideas about moving back there, transferring to Hawthorne and joining the water polo team or whatever the Christ they do out there,” he needled, his goofy, lopsided grin returning.

Luke was born and raised in New York, and the idea of a small New England town was so foreign to him. But then again, his life—growing up wealthy in New York City—was just as much a mystery to Maddie as her life was to him. Sure, she’d told him stories about growing up in a small-minded, puritanical society. And he knew about Cordelia—the way she was treated and the night she disappeared. He knew bits and pieces of what had happened out on Misery Island. But she could never let him know her own involvement in the horrific events of that night—that she was too afraid to stand up for her own flesh and blood. That she was just as guilty, if not more, for the treatment Cordelia was forced to withstand. She couldn’t imagine what he’d think of her if he knew the truth. “I was actually thinking I might do a little more digging to see what I come up with on Cordelia,” Maddie offered lightly, curious to see his reaction.

“Maddie, come on!” he said, exasperated. “Seriously, you don’t need to bring up that shit again. Whatever happened to your cousin was not your fault. She obviously was happy to leave that town and your family behind. And you should think about doing the same, okay?”

“Luke, come on,” Maddie persisted, remembering how angry Luke used to get at her on the nights they’d stay up late talking and she would tell him about the hazing rituals that took place out on Misery Island.

“ It wasn’t your fault ,” Luke would say over and over.

But he wasn’t there; he didn’t know the whole story. And if he did know, would he still look at her the same way? Or would he look at her with the same amount of disgust that she felt she deserved?

Cordelia continued to haunt her dreams as a shadowy figure, her face shrouded in the thick fog that often rolled onto the island of Misery. In her dreams, Maddie would try to get a clear look at her face, hungry for a clue—any hint as to what had happened to Cordelia after that night.

But nothing ever came.

And in the mornings, Maddie’s dreams of Cordelia and that horrible time in their lives would shuffle backward into the subconscious realm of her cluttered mind, taking a backseat to her daily problems. But still her guilt remained constant, lurking in the corner like a cat ready to pounce on its prey. How could she do that to her own flesh and blood? Her own sister?

Cordelia would never forgive her.

Would she even forgive herself?

Luke’s cell phone suddenly started beeping. He looked down at the flashing lights, his blue eyes squinting at the number that came up on the screen. He shrugged his shoulders, indicating that it wasn’t familiar, and put his finger out, signaling that he would only be a minute.

“Luke Bradford…Hey, doll, I was just thinking about you.”

Luke used names like doll, baby, freckles, honey, sweetness, brown eyes, when he couldn’t remember the girl’s name. For some guys, it could come off sounding cheesy, like they were using a line. But Luke had the sincerity to really pull it off. Even Maddie let herself get sucked in once in a while. Anyway, it must have been a recent conquest because he didn’t immediately blow the girl off.

Maddie felt her heart make what could only be described as a sigh. Despite their better intentions of staying friends and not letting a relationship mess up what they had, Maddie realized that she’d been completely kidding herself.

She’d been desperately in love with Luke since they first met—even before his transformation from a too-skinny, long-legged boy to the Abercrombie & Fitch model look-alike he’d become, and each time a new girl came along, it only made her feel worse. Worse than worse, it made her feel invisible, unloved, and unimportant. Sure, she’d noticed the looks from other guys, the sideways glances, the winks. But the closest thing to a compliment that Maddie had ever gotten from Luke was when he jokingly compared her to a racehorse—long legs, big brown eyes, and a chestnut mane. Not exactly what a girl wanted to hear from the guy she adored.

It was then that Maddie realized that she needed this separation from Luke just as much as she needed to find Cordelia. Maybe putting these nagging questions to rest would allow her to take her mind off Luke and their “just friends” relationship; mend her heart…just a little bit. The trip on his father’s cruise ship sounded like a dream come true, but watching the parade of tanned and beautiful model-wannabes go in and out of his cabin would drive Maddie insane.

She didn’t know which was worse: loving someone who was too old for her and unattainable, or caring for someone who could easily break her heart. Loving Reed Campbell, her former teacher, was safer, because she knew if nothing ever came of it, she could just chalk it up to their age difference. But with Luke, there was nothing keeping them apart—nothing except for his wandering eye.

Maddie listened to him go on and on in his smoky “I’m going to get lucky tonight” voice, and continued packing her suitcase—trying not to let her annoyance with him show as it ate away at her.

Lifting his legs up off her bed to pull her jewelry pouch out, Maddie noticed something drop to the floor. She bent down onto the floor, something that would have prompted a lewd comment from Luke had he not been otherwise engaged, and poked her head under the bed.

An onyx rune stone—one that came from Cordelia and Rebecca’s old store—had tumbled onto the hardwood floor. Maddie grabbed hold of it and turned it to look at the symbol etched onto the other side, but both sides were blank. She hadn’t come across one of these stones since she first got to school. Maybe it was some kind of sign that going back to Hawthorne was a bad idea.

That’s the understatement of the century , Maddie thought wryly.

Closing her eyes, Maddie went through the runic alphabet in her mind. Cordelia and Rebecca could recite the stones and their meanings effortlessly, but Maddie never was able to keep them all straight. Maddie always had to fall back on a little book of rune stone meanings that she came across in a secondhand bookshop.

Tess had once told Maddie that all the women in their family possessed a gift. It was a sort of knowing, a special extrasensory perception. Before that night on Misery Island, Maddie had just started to become more in tune with her abilities, but ever since she left Hawthorne behind, the door to those abilities had slammed shut.

Just then, the name came to Maddie—as if someone had whispered it in her ear.

Wyrd.

The Wyrd stone. That’s right, Maddie thought. Now, what does it mean again ? Blank…blank slate? A new beginning? No, that wasn’t the right definition.

Maddie picked it up and carried it with her as she moved across the room, checking to make sure that all her belongings were packed up. Maddie already shipped most of it yesterday, the big things. But the rest would be traveling with her by train.

Wyrd…Wyrd…Wyrd. Maddie ran it through her head a couple of times.

Standing at the window, Maddie watched as bundled-up students made their way across the icy quad. She dropped her head to the side, closed her eyes, and tried to will the meaning into her head.

“Now, that looks like an invitation if I ever saw one,” Luke said. Before Maddie realized what was happening, his lips were drifting lightly across her neck. He whispered in her ear, “Do you really have to go home, darlin’?”

Maddie laughed, stepping just out of his reach, angry at the rising swell of her heart and annoyed at his teasing. When she turned to face him, however, Maddie noticed his face held no sign of humor. He simply stared into her eyes. So intensely, in fact, that Maddie could swear she felt trembling in the back of her knees.

“Luke…” Maddie let the word hang between them for a few moments, not quite sure what he wanted from her. She wasn’t planning on being one of his “girls,” and he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—give Maddie the type of relationship that she wanted.

“Aw, Maddie. You know I love ya,” he said, dimples deepening as he lightened the awkward moment. “Come here and give me a hug good-bye.”

He pulled her into his arms and squeezed tight, too tight. Maddie could feel him inhale deeply, as if trying to identify her brand of shampoo, and then he sighed heavily. They held on for a few moments, a little longer than normal, when his cell phone went off again.

Damn phone, Maddie thought. Probably some beautiful, airheaded, rich girl without a care in the world. Who am I kidding? I’m the girl with the sick mother, the crazy aunt in a psych ward, the deadbeat dad, the disappearing cousin—right now, I don’t even want to deal with someone like me. Talk about depressing. Only Cordelia could get away with having such a crazy life and still have guys falling at her feet.

“Well, gotta go. You know how I hate to keep the girls waiting,” he joked, and pulled her away from him by her shoulders. Maddie didn’t want to look at him, couldn’t look into his eyes. She didn’t know if she hated him or loved him; if she was going to laugh or cry.

Luke tilted her chin up with his finger. “I’m gonna miss that face.”

Maddie gave him a half smile. “I’ll miss you, too, Luke. I—”

He dragged his finger up to her lips, shaking his head. “Uh-unh. I hate saying good-bye just as much as you do.”

Maddie smiled beneath his finger and he leaned in and kissed her cheek, whispering, “Call me if you need me. For anything. Anytime. Seriously.”

Before he headed out the door, they hugged one last time and he murmured something about staying a good girl during her time in Hawthorne. Maddie heard his phone ring persistently as he made his way down the dorm hallway. She rolled her eyes, sighing audibly as she scanned the room, eyeing the packing that still needed to be done.

She dropped down onto her bed, burying her face in her pillow, and squeezed her eyes shut.

Leaving Maine was going to be difficult, Maddie thought as she rolled over and gazed out the dorm window, but going back to Hawthorne…well, now, that would be murder.

As the train moved through the beautiful New England landscape, Maddie knew that she’d never be able to focus on the books or magazines she’d packed for this trip.

“Would you like something to drink?” A woman’s voice jolted her from her thoughts. She had a rolling tray of canned sodas and bottled water. Maddie reached into her travel bag, digging around for some money to get a Diet Coke, when she felt something cool, round, and smooth at the bottom of the bag.

Maddie pulled out the Wyrd rune stone. She didn’t remember packing it. And she still couldn’t remember the meaning.

“Ahem.” The woman coughed to get her attention. “Whaddya want, hon?”

“Oh, sorry,” Maddie stammered. “I guess I’m all set, thanks.”

The woman made a sighing noise as she lumbered past and Maddie closed her eyes, trying to remember the meaning.

She stared out the window, her vision growing blurry as the trees whizzed by. Oh, never mind, Maddie thought. There were more important things to think about. Like what she was in for when she returned home to Hawthorne. Everything she’d been able to avoid for the past year.

Maddie realized she had been squeezing the rune in her hand so tightly that it left a deep red indentation inside her palm. She traced the red line with her free hand, as if it held a deeper memory. Something that was familiar in the darkness of that night…

The Wyrd stone—the meaning suddenly jumped into her mind—was something that could not be known or controlled. Something that could only be determined by fate.

Ironic, Maddie thought as she looked out the window, contemplating her trip home as the outside world deepened to a purple under the darkening sky.

She shoved the stone into her backpack and got a paper cut on her hand. The delicate inner part of her finger had scraped across an envelope that had been left at her door right before she left for Christmas break. She hadn’t had time to read the corny card that was obviously from Luke, so she stuck it into her bag to read on the train.

The thin line of blood ran quickly across her finger and she shoved it in her mouth as she fished the envelope out of the backpack. She was sure it was going to be a hokey Christmas card or a picturesque postcard of some exotic location with a comment from Luke saying, Look what you’re missing.

But it wasn’t any of those things. She pulled the card out of the envelope and immediately she felt sick. It wasn’t a holiday card or a postcard or a silly letter from Luke. It couldn’t have been from Luke at all.

It was a tarot card. A picture of the Grim Reaper adorned the front of it and underneath it was a single word.

Death.