The Lost Sister (8 page)

“Why are you taking off so fast? We haven’t even finished this wine. You go and open up a hundred-dollar bottle of wine and don’t even stick around to finish it. Now, that’s just rude.” His entire demeanor had changed from when he first arrived on the boat. His breath was ragged and his eyes narrow. He avoided looking her in the eye and was growing restless. She’d pissed him off somehow and he wasn’t going to make it easy for her to leave. She needed to get away from him and from that boat as soon and as seamlessly as she could.

“Trevor, I’m sorry. Reed always said I could help myself to whatever was on the boat. I didn’t know it was so expensive. Can’t you finish it?” Her eyes darted around the deck. The wind changed direction and the voices on the mainland were slipping farther away.

“Can I finish it? Can I
finish
it?” he laughed. Cordelia didn’t realize that he was already very drunk, probably wasted before he even got to the boat. “I’ll finish what I want, when I want.” He gulped down a few last sips and then hurled the bottle into the harbor. “The question is, can you finish it?”

A wave of panic came over Cordelia and she realized that she needed to get away from Trevor, away from the boat, back home as soon as possible. She needed Finn. Silently she cried out to him, as if he could read her mind and would come to her defense.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Trevor. I don’t know what you want me to finish, but Reed—” she stammered.

“Isn’t coming tonight. Sorry to burst your bubble.” He shifted closer to her. “But I can think of a few ways to make it up to you.” Trevor lunged at her, pinning her to the boat. His tongue and mouth were slobbering all over her neck. She could feel the spit dripping down into her hair.

“No, Trevor!” she screamed, and tried to wriggle away. Despite his slight build, he was deceptively strong. She remembered he was the captain of the wrestling team. She was pinned and wasn’t going anywhere.

“Easy, easy, you’re gonna love this, baby,” he hissed in her ear, smiling down at her like she was having the time of her life. “It doesn’t have to be this way. Just relax. Shhhhh.”

He tried quieting her screams by kissing her, thrusting his tongue down her throat.

She felt like she was drowning. She continued to kick and fight and even drew blood when she bit his lip, but he remained undeterred. It wasn’t until she felt the sharp pain inside her that she realized what had happened. As he moved on top of her, the fight in her drained and she stared up into the stars. Her submission made Trevor believe she was enjoying it.

“Yeah, you love it. Yeah, you little slut. Don’t feel sorry for me, you stupid bitch. Don’t you pity me. You’re mine now,” he said sharply in her ear in between thrusts. And Cordelia simply slipped away—away from Trevor, away from the boat, away from Hawthorne, away from the pain. She knew, the way that Tess always told her she’d be able to know such things, that it was the beginning of the end of her time in Hawthorne.

THE DAY CORDELIA DISAPPEARED

A
fter the horrific night on Misery Island, Cordelia knew there was no way she could stay in Hawthorne. When she returned to Mariner’s Way, Abigail made it clear that she was unwelcome. Her life was filled with lies and deceit and pain. This town held nothing for her anymore. Cordelia needed to escape—to disappear.

Once she had made the decision to leave, everything seemed to be a sign to point Cordelia in that direction. At first she stole away into the neighboring town of Marblehead, into the Jeremiah Lee Mansion. Finn had taught her a way into most of the historic places in Hawthorne and the surrounding towns. This knowledge would come in handy while she made plans for her escape.

The town of Hawthorne went into its charade of actually caring about what happened to Cordelia. Her name and face were plastered all over the television, Internet, and newspapers. This made her escape even harder. She realized that her nocturnal instincts would come in handy and that she’d have to lie low during the daytime and travel by night.

She was actually considering going back to Rebecca—going home—when she overheard one of the tour guides at the mansion discussing Rebecca and the beautiful array of flowers that were at the center of the mansion.

The floral arrangements had made Rebecca somewhat of a local celebrity. It was a status symbol to have a floral creation from Rebecca LeClaire—mother of the “missing girl.” No dinner party or cocktail gathering was complete without a centerpiece courtesy of Rebecca’s Closet. It became a conversation item for all of the Hawthorne elite—people who only a few weeks earlier had shunned Rebecca and her unusual daughter. All across the North Shore, people were talking about Rebecca and her magical flowers, as if all of the pain and suffering she experienced made the brilliance of each arrangement so much more enticing.

That evening, Cordelia crept out of her hiding space beneath the massive mahogany staircase and looked at the hauntingly beautiful creation. It looked like a creature springing to life—as if it were a monster that had been lurking beneath the surface of the ocean and had sprung up fully formed—gruesome and exquisite at the same time. Her mother had worked all types of flowers into the centerpiece, but had also included coral, sea spray, and starfish into the base of the flowers. It was beautiful and scary and awe-inspiring. Obviously Cordelia’s disappearance had only improved her mother’s sales.

“Guess you’re not missing me that much, Mom,” Cordelia said angrily to the flowers. “I didn’t realize that my disappearance would be so profitable for you.” She ran her fingers along the flowers, pulling out a bluebird rose—her favorite. It was all one big charade. Her mother had lied to her for her entire life, allowing her to believe that Simon LeClaire was her father. That she was an only child. That she was a California girl. All of it lies. She was just as much a part of Hawthorne as any of the rest of the girls she despised. She had a sister that she barely knew—and up until recently only thought of as a cousin. She had a father—a biological father—alive and well. And now, when she should be tirelessly searching for her only daughter, she chose to spend her time working with flowers? The anger burned inside Cordelia.

“Damn!” she shouted, dropping the flower as she sucked on the bloody spot where the thorn had dug into her thumb. Once the flower was on the floor, Cordelia crushed it angrily with her heel. She started ripping flowers from the arrangement, hurling them across the large foyer. It wasn’t until she heard laughter—the slightest tinkling—coming from upstairs that she stopped her destructive tirade.

Spirits of the night
, she figured. She had heard that many places on Boston’s North Shore were haunted, so it didn’t surprise her to come upon an entity. She’d been aware of them before—back when she was living in California. But nothing on the West Coast hung on to spirits the way that the houses and historical properties of New England did. She felt their presence in every area, every nook and cranny of Hawthorne, Marblehead, and especially Salem. Not the parts that everyone flocked to. Not the witches’ houses or the dungeons or the supposed “haunted houses.” No, the real spirits were in places that nobody expected. The back of a tiny shop, the attic of a local inn, the back porch of a local bar, the aisles of the library, and the basement of a grade school. There was no map of these real ghostly hot spots, no Discovery Channel television special. Because once the “ghost hunters” came out and the spotlight turned onto the spirits, they would just disappear. If they couldn’t rest in peace like they wanted, they at least tried to hide in peace.

Which was what Cordelia was planning to do. She would hide in peace along with the restless spirits. If she was planning on “vanishing” the way that the local media had described it, then she’d use these spirits as her guides. She wasn’t afraid of them. If anything, she felt protected and guided by them. Simon LeClaire was one of them. She felt his presence with her wherever she went. And if he was trying to find a way to contact her, she would open herself up to his messages in any way that she could.

Cordelia followed the tinkling laughter up the stairs, wondering if it was a spirit leading her to a better hiding spot. Now that she’d destroyed the flowers, the tour guides would be scouring the mansion for any sign of forced entry or burglary. She knew that she couldn’t stay there for much longer, but she hadn’t thought out an escape route or exactly where she was going.

The laughter stopped when she got to the top floor of the mansion. The Jeremiah Lee Mansion was built in 1768 and had been a bank, a home, and now it was a historic house used as a museum. It showed what life was like in the 1800s, since it was so well preserved. It also seemed to house many residual spirits.

Cordelia had noticed them when she first came here on a field trip while at Hawthorne. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw women in old-fashioned clothing and children with period costumes peeking around corners and slipping past doorways. It wasn’t until she asked one of the tour guides about the actors in period costume, only to receive a blank, questioning stare, that she realized that there weren’t any people hired to play old New Englanders. They were the real deal.

Cordelia didn’t want to anger any of the spirits that night, so she walked quietly with her head down. The original eighteenth-century mural wallpaper seemed to come alive in the ghostly light. The carved creatures that peeked out from the ornate mahogany fireplace seemed to crane their necks and watch her as she shuffled through the vast, magnificent hallway.

“I just need a place to stay for a night,” she whispered, almost to herself. She knew that they could hear her. She felt eyes all around her. “I need a place where no one will find me. I need to escape from this place. If you help me hide, I will be forever grateful.”

Cordelia spoke slowly and softly as she walked alongside the banister. A creaking noise came from behind her, and a tapping. They were showing her the way.

Cordelia looked up and noticed that part of the wall was uneven. She had just walked by there earlier and nothing was out of the ordinary. Moving back past the grand staircase, she looked down at her mother’s floral centerpiece and noticed that the flowers she had ripped out were put back in place. A chill went down her back, but then she smiled. “Thank you,” she called out. “I have a problem with my temper sometimes.”

Again, laughter came from the shadows. Not like a person standing next to her laughing, but as if it were playing on a radio or a television set that was left on in an abandoned room somewhere below where she was standing. The laughter sounded tinny and flat, but it had a bit of an echo behind it.

Cordelia moved over to the wall and pressed on it. A secret door! She pulled the door open and discovered a tiny room. The dust within the room was so overwhelming that it was obvious that this part of the house had remained a secret throughout the centuries. She hadn’t needed her flashlight while wandering the mansion earlier, because of the bright moonlight filtering through the large glass windows. But now she needed it in this small cloistered spot. Pulling the door closed behind her sent Cordelia into complete darkness.

Once the flashlight was lit, she moved the light around the small room to find a few beds and some old dolls. It was perfect. She lay down on one of the beds that seemed to be filled with straw. She remembered from one of the tour guides that during the American Revolution, they used to hide weapons and gunpowder in the straw of children’s beds. Cordelia felt around and realized that nothing was there.

Good
, she mused,
the last thing I need is to roll over and set off a shotgun
.

This secret room would give her the whole next day to figure out where she was headed, and give her the rest she needed to get there. California was out. Too expensive. She had the money from Reed and Finn, but it wasn’t enough to buy her a plane ticket. Even if she had more money, she knew that her face was plastered all over the news. She’d get spotted right away at Logan Airport.

No, she needed to go someplace rural, someplace where people stayed out of each other’s business, someplace where people went when they didn’t want to be found. It was then that she thought of the person who was the cause of all this unhappiness. The man who started this game and didn’t stick around to finish it. He had disappeared and started a whole new life, letting the rest of his family pick up the broken and jagged pieces of their lives.

Malcolm Crane. The father she’d never met.

Just before she finally drifted off to sleep, allowing her aching muscles and sore, swollen arms and legs to sink into the old-fashioned bed, her mind raced with plans, filling her body with an overwhelming sense of excitement.

She would hunt Daddy Malcolm down in Maine. It would be easy enough to stay out of sight once she got out of Massachusetts. And once she found out exactly where he lived now, it was only a matter of figuring out how to get there. Cordelia didn’t know what she’d do when she found her deadbeat dad, but she knew one thing: he would pay for his mistakes. Cordelia would see to that.

Cordelia slept all day and into the evening. The cold fall night fell all around her. She heard someone whispering her name and she woke up with a start.

Gently easing the door open, Cordelia was pleased that no one had discovered her hiding spot. She knew she could return here if she needed a place to crash. As she made her way down the grand staircase, she turned when she heard a whooshing sound coming from above. She saw a twirl of skirt as it went around the corner. Her guardian spirits had kept watch over her.

“Thank you,” Cordelia whispered into the dark hallway, noticing that her breath suddenly turned to smoke. As the chill went through her, she knew that she would be welcomed back any time she chose to return.

Luckily she had found an oversized flannel jacket and baseball cap in the caretaker’s closet at the Jeremiah Lee. Before she left the mansion, she caught sight of herself in an age-crackled mirror. Her hair had been hacked off in clumps and burnt in sections out on Misery Island. She ran to the podium that held information pamphlets about the historic mansion and rooted around through the various office supplies until she found a pair of scissors. Standing before the mirror in the bathroom, she proceeded to cut the rest of her beautiful red curls—what was left of them—to chin-length. With each cut, she felt any lingering ties to Hawthorne being snapped, falling away from her and setting her free. She quickly brushed the hair into a garbage pail. She was free to start over. The old Cordelia was gone. She would be reborn somewhere else—somewhere far from Hawthorne.

Even though it was cut short, her trademark shock of red hair would still give her identity away, so she tucked it under the baseball cap and headed outside, out of town, out of life as she knew it. The streets were quiet and deserted in the early morning hours. She felt more at ease once she had crossed the town lines into Salem. She wasn’t sure where she was going, but the more distance she put between herself and Hawthorne, the better.

Now that Halloween was over, the ongoing party that took place in Salem had died down dramatically, the Halloween decorations soon to be replaced with Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations.

As she walked through Salem, she could feel the presence of spirits all around her. They were returning after their long escape during the month of October. She knew what it felt like to be hunted and she felt sorry for the spirits that were trying to peacefully coexist with the living during the crazy festivities. Walking through the deserted streets, she could tell she was being watched. It didn’t bother her if the dead were watching her; it was the living that she was trying to avoid.

Suddenly a pair of yellow eyes met her in the darkness. She stepped back in shock, trying to catch her breath. Usually spirits weren’t so bold with her. They made their presence known subtly, taking care not to spook her, so to speak. After a few minutes, she realized that it was an animal watching her. Just a dog, she thought, chiding herself for being so jumpy. It wasn’t until she got closer that she realized it wasn’t a dog at all. The yellow eyes and the massive gray head gave it away. It was a wolf—a wolf lying on a nest of hay in the back of a truck.

Cordelia paced slowly over to the truck to see if it was still warm. It was parked out in front of a tavern that was supposed to close at the same time as the rest of the bars, but occasionally and for a few special customers would stay open.
What would a wolf be doing in the back of a truck?
she thought.