The Fate of Mercy Alban (27 page)

“That’s right.”

“So obviously that didn’t happen.”

My fork hung in the air just over my ever-shrinking plate of breakfast. “Oh, but it did,” I said. “That’s what I’m telling you. I know how this sounds, Matthew, but Jane insists Mercy
did
die. It was a fever or something. She was buried in the family crypt on our property.”

Matthew put his fork on the table and turned both of his palms upward, shrugging his shoulders. “Meaning … what?”

“Jane said Mercy was dead and buried. And then she wasn’t.”

He was silent for a moment before continuing. “Grace, there’s only one human being that I know of who was dead and buried and then he wasn’t. His name was Lazarus, and a guy from Nazareth had a little something to do with his improved situation. I’m assuming the Lord Himself didn’t pay a visit to Alban House way back when.”

A chill ran through me. “From what Jane said this morning, I got the impression that this situation is on the other end of the spectrum from holy.”

Matthew shook his head. “What exactly are you getting at, Grace?”

I took a deep breath and the words poured forth. “The truth is, when Jane learned that it was Mercy, not Fate, upstairs, she seemed … afraid. She insisted the girls get out of the house immediately, and had Mr. Jameson’s helpers move back to the cottage. If Mercy isn’t gone by tonight—and I don’t see how she could be—Jane wants me out of the house, too.”

“So she thinks Mercy is dangerous.”

“Yes. Mercy’s doctor agrees, because she’s been off her medications now for several days. He says she’s psychotic and her hallucinations will likely return. And from what we saw last night, I think both of us know that they have.”

We looked at each other for a moment, both remembering the strange scene on the lakeshore the night before, neither one knowing quite what to say next.

Matthew shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, grimacing. “You realize you just told me that an undead, hallucinating psychotic is living in your house.”

I couldn’t stop a chuckle from escaping my lips. The absurdity of it was too much. “Correction. An undead, hallucinating,
criminally insane
psychotic.”

Matthew took a gulp of his coffee. “I think we can both agree that this undead business is ridiculous. I mean, seriously, Grace. This is real life here, not Coleville’s story. Do you think she was—I don’t know—in a coma or something like it, they pronounced her dead and then she was …”

“Do not say ‘buried alive.’ I saw that Vincent Price movie when I was a kid and I’m still not over it.”

“Well, what other explanation could there be?”

Finally, the first hint of rationality in regard to this whole situation was whispering in my ear. “That really could be it, actually,” I said. “If she did slip into a coma, or something like it, and was placed into the family crypt and then came out of it somehow …”

Matthew grinned and slapped a hand on the table. “You’ve got it! That would do a huge number on anyone’s psyche, let alone a child’s. You just wouldn’t be the same after that.”

“That would really damage a child, you’re right.” I exhaled and then lifted my coffee cup to my lips, feeling saner than I had in several hours. “Not to mention do a number on everyone else who thought she was dead. It would explain a lot. Family lore tells us that Fate disappeared the night of Coleville’s suicide at Alban House. Now we know it was really Mercy.”

“So, then, what happened to Fate?” he asked. “You said her whereabouts were unknown.”

I put my elbows on the table and leaned my head into my hands. “I’m really confused. Fate disappeared that night, but Mercy wound up in the facility in Switzerland. So we still have no idea what happened to Fate.”

“That’s right.” Matthew nodded. “That night was when the twins were somewhere between eighteen and twenty years old, give or take a few years, right?”

“Right. The summer of 1956.”

“That leads me to yet another question: Where was Mercy from the time everyone thought she died until then? From all you know about your family history, there was no Mercy during that time.”

He was right. My family had all but erased her from our lineage. “Maybe she was in an institution here in the States?” I offered, but then another, darker thought floated into my mind. “Or maybe she was at Alban House the whole time.”

Matthew took a big bite of his eggs. “Do you know what this is sounding like to me?”

I held his gaze. “I was thinking the same thing. The manuscript. The girl in white.”

“Exactly. Except that in the story, the girl in white is a ghost. The twin did actually die and was haunting the place. But the lady on your third floor right now is very real.”

The waitress breezed by with the check, which Matthew quickly paid as I was reaching for my purse.

“Jane said she’d tell me the whole story about Mercy once the girls were out of the house and she picked up Mercy’s prescriptions,” I said. “Care to come home with me to hear it?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

An eerie silence hung in the air as we walked from room to room. Jane was still out, likely driven by Carter to the pharmacy. Mercy had apparently gone with them, as Jane had mentioned. The boys were nowhere to be seen. Mr. Jameson wasn’t in the garden. I didn’t see either of the guards I knew would be, or should be, patrolling. The house was still and empty; our footsteps echoed on the wood floor.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been in the house without Jane,” I said to Matthew. “It’s a little weird, to tell you the truth.”

He sank into one of the armchairs and crossed his legs as I paced from window to window.

“I wish she’d get back here,” I said, peering out at the empty driveway. “I’m dying to hear what she has to say.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Matthew began, his eyes bright. “Jane’s not here right now to tell us what went down all those years ago, but we do have another window into the past, don’t we?”

“Oh!” I said, realizing what he was getting at. “I’ve got it in the safe upstairs. Maybe it will shed some light on things.”

A few minutes later, we were settled in my mother’s study, the manuscript in my lap.

“It’s part love story and part ghost story,” I said, flipping ahead a few pages from where we had stopped reading. “In the next chapter he’s talking about the croquet match.” I turned more pages. “And here they’re going sailing. We don’t really need to read the love story part of it now, do we? We can come back and read it later, but I’m more interested in what he’s going to say next about the girl in white, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Matthew agreed. “When all of this is said and done, when Mercy is back in the hospital and we’ve got a boring, completely normal afternoon on our hands without any break-ins or funerals or long-ago mysteries to solve, we can come back to the rest of it.”

I noticed he said “we” and smiled at him. “That sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Just a normal day without a new crisis to deal with.”

“It’s out there, Grace, I promise you.”

“Okay,” I said, turning back to the manuscript, “let me flip through this until I find more of the ghost story.” I kept turning pages. “Here!”

Chapter Six

I flew up the stairs to my room, dripping wet from Flynn’s prank. What a goof! I chuckled to myself. He wasn’t kidding when he told me how cold Lake Superior was—I could still feel the sting, like a thousand icy knife blades, from when I plunged beneath the surface.

Wondering if Arctic waters could possibly be as frigid, I peeled off my sodden clothes and eyed the clock on my bedside table. I’d have just enough time to clean up and get downstairs for dinner. I turned on the shower, grateful for the stream of hot water bringing life back into my shivering limbs, and thought about how the sunlight had danced on Lily’s hair as we sailed.

I chose a crisp striped shirt and khaki slacks from the closet—this seemed to be the uniform of choice for the Brennan men here at Whitehall—and as I stepped into my pants, my eyes fell upon the desk by the window. The drawer was open, just a hair. But I was sure I had closed it completely when I went downstairs earlier. Hadn’t I? Buttoning my pants, I crossed the room to investigate. Everything was still as I had left it—my writing pad and pen, my typewriter. And yet something seemed amiss somehow, as though someone had been in my room and riffled through my papers, and then carefully put them back—but not exactly as they had been.

I picked up my writing pad and then dropped it again quickly, as though it stung me.

There, on the top sheet where I had written my thoughts that morning, was something else.
The girl in white
, I had written. And next to it, in a spidery scrawl:
loves you
.

The girl in white loves you
. Did Flynn write this? Was it another of his pranks? Or was Prudence to blame? I picked up the pad and stood there, staring at the words on the page, and the more I thought of it, the more I knew it couldn’t have been Flynn or Pru, because they had been with me the whole afternoon. And when we returned from our sail, there was no way either of them could have made it up to my room before me.

As I stared at the page, another thought hit me: I had been in the shower for several minutes. Either of them could have crept in and out of the room during that time. But why? I understood their penchant for pranks, but this seemed … I don’t know. Unnecessary? Unfunny? And more than that, anonymous. Flynn loved nothing better than to have the first laugh at one of his victims, like me today, the rube he had tricked into slipping over the side of the boat. Doing something like this just wasn’t his style.

I remembered our conversation of that morning and decided not to mention it to anyone at dinner. I’d pull Flynn aside to talk to him about it or, better yet, simply bring him up here to my room as the night drew to a close. If he did do this, he wouldn’t be able to contain his laughter upon being confronted. And if he didn’t do it …?

I looked around the room and felt, not for the first time, eyes watching me. Just a reaction to finding the note, perhaps? I wasn’t sure. A shudder passed through me as I caught my own face in the mirror and found that I had no wish to see, reflected in the glass, whatever was behind me. But I forced myself to stop and look. Nothing, thankfully, was there.

I put those thoughts out of my head as I hurried down the stairs toward the dining room, where I knew I would find jocularity, laughter, good friends, and—dare I say it?—maybe even love, just the thing to scare away the chill that had encircled me.

Later, after an evening filled with good food, good conversation, and good drinks, I pulled Flynn aside.

“About the matter we talked of this morning?” I started, my voice low. “I’d like to show you something in my room, if I may.”

All the good humor drained from his face, and he gave me a curt nod. “You go up now, making a show about being tired from all the fresh air today,” he whispered to me. “I’ll come up in a few minutes. That way, Pru won’t think we’re up to something and insist on joining us.”

I stole up the stairs and waited. Nearly a half hour later, there was a soft rap at my door.

Without a word, I showed him the writing pad.

“I don’t know what to make of it,” he said after studying the scrawled message. He held my gaze and I saw it in his face—he wasn’t behind this and didn’t know who was.

“You don’t think Prudence could have come into the room while I was taking a shower and written on the pad … do you?” I offered. “Is this the sort of thing she’d do?”

“Absolutely not,” he said, setting the pad back down on the desk and gazing out the window. “And besides, Pru was downstairs with me the whole time. We had a game of backgammon while you were cleaning up.”

“And Lily?”

“She was in the parlor as well, sketching.”

I sat down on the bed, shaking my head. “Well, what is it, then? Surely not one of the maids?”

He turned to face me and leaned against the window frame. “I don’t know. But if you see anything else—if you see
her
, I mean, come to my room and wake me immediately. That is, if you feel comfortable remaining here. I wouldn’t blame you if—”

I cut him off. “I’m fine, Flynn. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for this.”

But as he bid me good night and closed the door behind him, leaving me alone, I wasn’t so sure.

I tossed and turned for hours, my eyes shooting open at every night noise—every rustle of wings, every soft scurry of feet, every breeze whispering through the cedar branches.

When I finally did drift off to sleep, I dreamed I was standing at the window, entranced by the sight of the girl in white dancing around a small fire on the lakeshore. She was so beautiful, so enchanting, that I couldn’t look away. Her singing drifted up to my room and surrounded me, a strange Celtic tune that sounded ancient and magical, as though it had the power to evoke the spirits of the night. I was so enraptured by the sight and sound of her that I didn’t notice I was rising from the floorboards, held aloft by her tune. I reached down to open the window and then flew through it toward the lakeshore, landing gently in front of her. She smiled at me and took my hand, but I couldn’t quite see her face, obscured as it was by the harsh light of the fire. We began to dance, slowly at first, and then faster and faster still, engulfed by strange and beautiful music that seemed to be emanating from the rocks and water and soil around us.