Arcadia Falls (46 page)

“I
’m trying to get back home,” I say, rubbing my hands up and down my arms to get some feeling back into them. “What are
you
doing here?”

He takes his coat off and drapes it over my shoulders. I can feel the warmth from his body still clinging to it. “I saw your car crashed in the field—I nearly had a heart attack!—and then I followed your footsteps. I could hardly believe you’d headed into the clove. Why didn’t you go around by the road?”

“I was afraid it would take too long. I have to get to the ridge. I’m afraid that Shelley Drake is going to bring them to the ridge at sunset to celebrate the solstice.”

“I can’t believe that even Shelley Drake would be crazy enough to drag those kids out in this storm.”

“That’s just it—she
is crazy.”
I explain as quickly as I can what I learned from Beatrice Rhodes, showing him the St. Lucy’s medal and the birth certificate, and recount the story I’ve constructed on the drive back. I have to admit it all sounds a little far-fetched. I almost hope he’ll dismiss it, but he doesn’t. He nods once, gravely.

“I’ve always thought that Shelley Drake was a bit
unhinged,”
he says. “We’ve got to get up there. You go first. That way if you slip, I’ll be able to catch you.”

The look in his eyes spurs me on. I start up the trail, going as fast as I can over the slippery rocks. I hear Callum’s footsteps and breathing close behind me. Knowing he’s there to catch me gives me the confidence to go faster. A few yards from the top of the ridge, where the trail splits in two, he grabs my arm and holds me back.

“Wait. If they’re on top of the ridge we don’t want to startle them.” He points to the path that veers off to the left. “This path goes around to a stand of trees a little below the head of the falls. We can get a better look at what’s going on and size up the situation.” The idea of taking a detour—of taking any longer to get to the top—makes my skin itch. What if Shelley’s already there with Sally right now? I try to listen for their voices, but I hear nothing but the rush of water.

“Okay,” I say, “but let’s hurry.”

He goes first now to show me the way, which is a good thing because the woods are utterly transformed. The pines, muffled in snow, stand like white-mantled sentinels guarding the secrets of the forest, the only sounds they make the occasional
shoosh
of snow sliding off their boughs.

Be quiet, don’t tell
, they seem to be saying. I think of Fleur Sheldon wandering through the snow after reading Lily’s journal, realizing that Lily had no idea she was her real mother. I think of Lily finding Vera waiting for her at the top of the clove, believing Vera had read her journal and learned her secrets, then seeing the look of betrayal on her face that sent her over the edge into the clove. I think of her looking up to see the girl she thought was her daughter raising her arm to strike her dead. I think of Ivy’s face when Chloe told her that the woman
she killed was her own mother. All these women undone by their own love.

I wonder when Shelley Drake first heard she was Lily’s granddaughter. Was it from her mother? Did she think it was the claim of a crazy woman who hated the mother who had raised her? Or did she, too, prefer to identify herself with Lily Eberhardt, the beautiful artist, rather than the rich and talentless Gertrude Sheldon?

If I confront her now, will it make Shelley even crazier?

Shoosh
, the trees say as we make our way through the dark woods.
Be quiet, don’t tell
.

As we approach the head of the clove Callum stops and puts his hand out to keep me back. Then he holds up one finger. He’s listening to something, but I hear nothing except the snow sliding off the boughs. Then, faintly, I hear what Callum does. It’s a girl’s voice, thin as the icicles hanging from the pine branches, singing. A wisp of a line floats through the still air:
Let it out and let it in …
It sounds like the pines breathing.

“That’s a Beatles song,” Callum says. “‘Hey Jude.’”

“It’s Jude’s favorite song. He used to sing it to Sally every night at bedtime—” I pause, listening to the quavery voice. “—and that’s Sally singing it.”

I rush forward. Callum tries to hold me back but I dodge under his arm and he slips on the snow trying to grab me. I don’t care about “sizing up the situation,” I just want Sally.

I head straight for the sound of her voice, off the path, crashing through thick underbrush that turns out to be thorny holly, and come flailing out into the clearing about five feet from the edge of the ridge. Chloe and Haruko are standing below the ridge, each holding a lit
Yahrzeit
candle. Sally stands farther up, near the edge of the cliff, holding a candle in a mittened hand, singing the last refrain of “Hey Jude.” Shelley stands beside her.

I call Sally’s name and she turns.

“Mom, you’re back! I was singing Daddy’s song. Dean Drake said it was a good way to say goodbye to him.”

“Yes,” Shelley says, stepping closer to Sally and putting her arm around her shoulder. “This is a good place to say goodbye to all the things we’ve lost.”

I open my mouth to ask her if that’s what she was doing when she met Isabel here, but I stop myself. I don’t want to make Shelley mad or defensive while she’s standing on the edge of a precipice with my daughter. “Yes, it is,” I say instead. “I think I understand how you feel.”

“Do you?” She tilts her head and looks at me quizzically. Then something flares in her eyes. “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you? I wondered how long it would take you.”

I could pretend not to know what she’s talking about, but I have a feeling that wouldn’t work. There’s a hungry look in Shelley’s eyes that I guess—hope—is the desire to talk to someone who knows her secret. If I can show her I understand, perhaps she’ll let Sally go.

“I know what it’s like to lose someone you love,” I say, taking a tentative step forward.

“You mean your
husband
?” Shelley laughs. “That’s not the same thing at all. You didn’t grow up with your mother in an insane asylum. You can’t tell me you know how
that
feels.” Shelley tightens her grip on Sally’s shoulder and I see Sally wince.

“No,” I say holding up my hands, palms out. Out of the corner of my eye I spy Callum at the edge of the woods, hidden in the shadows. He makes a circular motion with his hand: Keep her talking. “I don’t. Tell me about it.”

Shelley smiles. In the glow of the candle Sally holds it’s a ghastly grimace, like that of a crazed jack-o’-lantern. “My mother grew up feeling like a stranger in her own home. She always suspected that she was adopted, and then she read Lily’s journal and she knew that she’d finally found her real mother, only to lose her again. And then after Lily’s death no one would believe my mother because she had no proof.”

“But you told me Lily was
Ivy’s
mother!” Chloe’s voice comes from behind me. I’d almost forgotten that she and Haruko are there. Without looking around—I couldn’t take my eyes off Sally if I tried—I put my
arm out to stop her from coming any closer. My hand brushes the silky nylon of her down parka.

“Yes, so you would tell our revered dean,” Shelley says. “I knew that if Ivy thought she had killed her own mother it would drive her over the edge.” Shelley laughs. “And it did—literally!”

Damn
. Although I wanted Shelley to talk, I don’t want her to say so much she’s got nothing to lose.

“That was
her
decision,” I say, “not yours. Ivy must have been haunted by Lily’s murder all her life. Anyone would have been. But you don’t have to be. Come away from the edge.” I hold out my hand, palm up, as I would offer it to a strange dog. “Both of you.”

Fear springs up in Sally’s eyes. Although I’ve chosen my words carefully so as not to sound like my only concern is her safety, she’s realized for the first time why Shelley is holding her there at the edge of the cliff. The candle in her hands shakes, the melted wax sloshing against the sides of the glass.

“So you and your police officer friend can accuse me of killing Isabel?”

I shrug, desperately trying to make the gesture look casual even though I can feel the muscles in my neck and back spasm with bottled-up tension. “Why would we do that when Chloe and I saw Ivy take her own life?”

“That’s right,” Shelley replies, grinning smugly. “And after all, it was Chloe here who goaded our poor dean into doing it.” Shelley turns her jack-o’-lantern grin on Chloe and I feel her stiffen under her parka.

“But you were the one who told me Lily was Ivy’s mother,” she cries. “You made me accuse her!”

“Oh, Chloe,” Shelley says, clucking her tongue. “Can anyone really make a person do something they don’t want to? Are you going to blame me for the trick you played on Isabel, too? You should have seen her face when that dress came hurtling out of the tree at her! And then when I told her that you were the one who played the trick on her she was furious at you. She was most eager when I offered her a chance to get back at you.”

Shelley switches her gaze from Chloe to me. “I got the idea from Lily’s
journal, from the trick she planned to play on the girls. I helped her rip a piece of her dress and leave it on the roots of the fallen tree, then we went up to the head of the falls to see the view—”

“You killed Isabel!” Chloe surges forward. I grab a handful of her parka to keep her back. Shelley takes a step backward toward the edge, pulling Sally with her.
Why is she doing this?
The question screams inside my head. I’ve tried to give her a way out, but she’s deliberately teasing Chloe into accusing her of Isabel’s murder. Then I understand. On some level, Shelley wants to die—dying as Lily died after avenging her murder.

I risk a glance in Callum’s direction. He’s managed to inch within a few feet of Sally. He’s crouched, poised to spring, but will he be able to save Sally if Shelley tries to drag her over the cliff with her?

I can pray that he will, but I can’t count on it. I have to offer something else to Shelley to give her a reason to live.

“You said no one believed Fleur when she said Lily was her mother because she didn’t have proof. I have that proof.”

The cold gleam in Shelley’s eyes turns warm. She takes a step forward, jostling Sally with her. I take an answering step forward—I can’t help it!—and Shelley stops.

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

I take out the birth certificate that Beatrice gave me. “I could show it to you or—” I turn to Chloe, the strain of letting my eyes off Sally physically painful, and hold the page above her candle. “Or I could burn it. What do you think, Chloe? Shall we burn it? The only record of who was really Lily Eberhardt’s daughter?”

I hold the old document close enough to the candle so that the edges begin to crisp. The pine glade immediately fills with the scent of charred paper. Later, I’ll think it was the scent that galvanized Shelley. She moves forward so quickly that Sally is knocked over. Callum springs toward Sally. Dodging Shelley’s attack, I follow him, letting the paper fall from my hand. It’s only chance that at that moment a wind blows through the glade. It seems to come from the trees, a breath of snow crystals and pine-scented air that snatches the paper and tosses it high in the air.
Shoosh
, the trees whisper.
Be quiet, don’t tell
.

Shelley reaches for the paper but it slips from her grasp, climbs higher, and gusts toward the edge of the cliff. She follows it, like a child trying to catch a balloon, her eyes on it, not the edge of the cliff she’s approaching.

I try to stop her but a hand pulls me back. Shelley goes right past me—arms out, face aglow, as if heading into a mother’s embrace—and over the edge of the cliff.

There’s no scream, no cry of terror, only a sickening thud as her body hits the bottom of the icy ravine and then a final movement of snow sliding off the trees to cover up the sound.
Shoosh
, the trees say.
Be quiet. It’s done
.

S
ally and I spend Christmas morning on a Jet Blue flight to Fort Lauderdale, eating blue corn chips and watching a Will Ferrell movie called
Stranger Than Fiction
that turns out to be ten times better than I’d expected. Sally and I both cry buckets at the end, upsetting the stewardess and the elderly woman sitting next to us. I could tell them we’re crying for much more than Will Ferrell’s fate, but I realize that if I tried to account for all we’ve been through it would be less believable than the fanciful events of the movie.

Even getting these last-minute tickets seems highly improbable, but when I called Max and Sylvia Rosenthal and asked if we could spend
the holidays with them, the e-mail confirmation for the tickets arrived in my inbox twenty minutes later. I hated to think what they cost, so I didn’t think about it.

The atmosphere at Boca West proves conducive to not thinking. The neon-colored impatiens that grow waist high and hibiscus blooms the size of dinner plates make the whole place look like a Disney cartoon. Sally and I spend our days at the pool with Max or shopping in the air-conditioned malls with Sylvia. We eat out every night at a cheerful array of chain restaurants. It’s hard to believe, in this mild climate, that places like Arcadia Falls even exist.