Sanctuary Read online

  For my brothers and sisters, and our father

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  I fitted to the latch

  My hand, with trembling care,

  Lest back the awful door should spring,

  And leave me standing there.

  I moved my fingers off

  As cautiously as glass,

  And held my ears, and like a thief

  Fled gasping from the house.

  —EMILY DICKINSON

  THE LAST TIME I SAW SANCTUARY I WAS TWELVE. NOT LONG AFTER THE FIRE and my sister Tess’s death, my aunt took me away from the old mansion and the island and settled me into a boarding school in a remote area of Maine.

  “I can’t see beyond the trees,” I told her as she tried to get into the cab. “I can’t see the ocean.”

  I clung to her like a small child would, despite being the taller of the two of us, burying my face in her hair, thinking it smelled of the sea. She’d untangled from my grasp, her delicate face set and grieving, and waved out the back window as the cab pulled away. At her yearly visits after that, her hair smelled of lilies and sadness, but never the sea. I longed to see the sea again, but longing was intertwined with tragedy like thorny vines. So I’d made myself forget.

  On my aunt’s last visit before her death, as I walked her to the door, at seventeen and no longer the child, she’d been the one to reach for me, with an almost desperate clasp on my hand, whispering fervently: Don’t come back to Sanctuary, Cecilia. Ever. Her nails dug into my skin, and her eyes were frantic. My aunt had seen the wildness in me, the part of me like my mother and my sister, and it frightened her.

  Now I was in a boat in the middle of the open bay, the green-gray of the sea in chaos around us. I’d missed it so much. I wanted to reach for the water, feel its coldness stun my fingertips and its seaweed twist about my wrist. The salt thick in the air made me think of my aunt’s hair, full and flowing and smelling of the sea. So one thing I loved had been given back to me, but only after another had been taken away.

  The island was growing larger, a dark blob in the gray dusk. I tried to remember it now, to bring back the joy of early childhood, running our forested and rocky island with my cousin Ben and my older sister, Tess. We were wild children. No one cautioned us against the perilous high cliffs above the sea or the devilish rip currents while swimming. We were an afterthought, but free to do as we wished, gone from the manor all day, returning only when hunger brought us scrambling to the kitchen.

  Tess had always been the leader, taking us on adventures to find pirates’ lost treasure or the ghosts of Sanctuary’s dead, with me following her, and Ben following me. Ben was the oldest, but slower in mind and body. Tess and I watched over him.

  Tess’s death abandoned me to roaming the island alone, the pain so raw and lonely I didn’t know how to feel it. I’d pretend she was still with me, so I could cope. Walking along the windy cliffs alone, I’d talk to her as if she were still beside me, my child’s imagination holding her fast to me. But after my aunt forced me to the boarding school, I could no longer catch Tess in my mind. She twisted away gleefully, eluding my grasp. Now I was returning to find her again—or at least I thought it was Tess who yanked at the rope wrapped around my heart, pulling me back to Sanctuary. I could already hear her saying, Our home, is it?

  Uncle was at the helm of the boat, Ben beside me. My stomach rolled with the waves. I wasn’t used to the motion anymore. But the sea lapping against the boat seemed to be welcoming me home, even if my uncle wasn’t.

  Uncle looked back at me, but I couldn’t see his face in the low light. I knew he was glaring. At the bus stop, I’d been startled by the vicious look he gave me. My memories only had him hovering off to the side in a vague, tense way. He was at the forefront now. The lines in his face had deepened in the five years I’d been gone, especially the ones around his tight mouth. I wondered if my aunt’s recent death had sliced them deeper.

  Lights were sprinkled along the mainland we’d left behind. The small village of Lady Cliffs was much as I remembered, but I’d noticed a new filling station on the corner. In its window was a poster with a yellow crown above the words KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. When Uncle saw me looking at it, he barked, “English fellow trying to bring the war to us.” But the war in Europe was far away. Only the dangerous pull I felt toward Sanctuary was real. I didn’t know what I would find there, and I was fearful of who I would discover myself to be.

  We pulled into the harbor. I spoke silently to my aunt, almost like a prayer: Watch over me, Aunt Laura. I could feel only her displeasure.

  Ben jumped out of the boat and secured the line while Uncle barked needless orders. I was paralyzed by a sudden bout of fear, sitting in the boat as it rocked on the waves. I thought of the men who took my mother away and feared I would end up like her. My cousin looked at me with a question in his eyes, but didn’t speak. We were quiet people anyway. Uncle made a disgusted smack of his lips as he looked at me and, without a word, turned away.

  Ben grabbed my suitcase with one of his large hands, giving me a final look of concern before he followed Uncle down the pier and up the white gravel footpath that I knew led to Sanctuary.

  Still unable to get out of the boat, I looked again at the Maine shore. My hands trembled to start the motor to return to the mainland and my boarding school in the trees and my dear friend Elizabeth who’d replaced my lost sister.

  It wasn’t Elizabeth’s calming voice I heard; instead Tess’s taunted me as only an older sister could: But, Cecilia, this is what you wanted, isn’t it?

  A terrible feeling stirred deep and true inside of me, that if I stepped out of the boat, I would never get away. Sanctuary wasn’t visible from the harbor, but I knew the house waited for me. I stood, wavering just a little as the boat shifted on the water, and stepped out onto the pier. I was home.

&
nbsp; MY CITY HEELS WERE CLUMSY ON THE PLANKS OF THE PIERS AND THE gravel of the path. I caught a glimpse of Uncle and Ben as they rounded a turn toward the back of the house, and followed, remembering more of my way with each step.

  I looked up at our French Gothic home, which stood aloof and forbidding on a grassy hill in the middle of the island, at its most narrow strip. Its power clutched at my heart. Its magnificent white façade, now lit up by the almost full moon, was worn a little by the sea air, but was still stirring and stark against the black slate roof. Narrow white brick chimneys rose up, breaking the roofline, along with many gables across the front, and the two large towers on either side.

  It was an old manor house of forty rooms, which didn’t include the labyrinth of service activities in the basement. The original owner, the mysterious and wealthy Captain Winship, had spent precious years and money to build it. He’d been set on recreating the Old World in the New, calling his home Sanctuary to be his sanctuary from the England that didn’t appreciate him. The house was finished in 1754.

  The old captain’s spacious, lovely room—the manor’s best—was on the southwest corner, and had been my aunt and uncle’s. My aunt would take her morning coffee on that balcony, hiding from life as the days slipped away. So many had lived in this house, lingered on that balcony, and now they were gone. Sanctuary still stood.

  It’s just a house, I told myself. It doesn’t hold the dead, only the memory of them. It doesn’t turn sane people insane. It doesn’t kill people. It’s just a house—a very large, very old house.

  Something caught my attention in the trees to my right. I remembered the graveyard was there, a place my sister haunted. Suddenly, I was ten again: frightened and looking for her, hearing her laughter, not able to see her behind the branches. I closed my eyes, tasting the memory in the scent of the trees the wind brought to me.

  I was lingering too long. If you did that, the memories caught you by the throat. Turning from my mind’s tricks, I made my way to the back of the house.

  The worn knob seemed smaller and darker. At the bottom of the door were scratches my dog, Jasper, had made. I knew he would remember me, his constant companion. Taking a settling breath, I steeled myself against the sad so I’d be open to the good.

  Strong feelings rushed toward me as I opened the door. They pressed on my heart, so powerful I stepped back, feeling both a pull and a push—like a ripping inside. I clutched my chest and closed my eyes against the onslaught of emotions, so many, so piercing.

  I forced my eyes open, unsteady on my feet. I wanted to run back to the boat. I’m not supposed to be here, I thought. The house doesn’t want me.

  Dizziness overcame me as I took in the familiar things—the same black kettle on the stove, the same gray raincoat hanging on a nail by the door. I felt like a child again, expecting to see Tess come around the corner and grin mischievously.

  I shut the door and backed away. Stumbling to the old stone bench in the herb garden, I breathed in the fragrance of the herbs, trying to slow the beating of my heart. Not yet an hour in Sanctuary’s shadow, and I was imagining things and shaking with fear.

  But something was wrong. Something was wrong in that house.

  No, I thought. No. It’s Sanctuary. It’s my home.

  I had to calm myself. I wouldn’t be accused of being like my mother.

  A wave of homesickness came over me, but not for Sanctuary. I needed to see my friend Elizabeth and the others too. All those years there wanting to be here, and now I was here, and wanted just as strongly to be there.

  What was I doing here? Why had I felt compelled to return?

  One of the girls at school had told me, matter-of-factly, that I didn’t quite belong with them, that there was something different about me. I’d pressed her to tell me what it was. Her eyes narrowed as she thought. “Maybe the sea, something to do with being from an island.” She shook her head, clearly frustrated. “I can’t say exactly. You seem like you’re from someplace else.”

  In her soft British accent, Elizabeth had gently explained it to me.

  “Cecilia,” she’d said, grasping my hand and groping for words, “not only do you look a little exotic with your loose hair and dark eyes and positively luminous skin, you have a habit of staring at people a bit too long and of making remarks that are sometimes disconnected from the conversation.”

  After that, I tried to fit in more. I listened carefully to the others, like when they were trying on the latest college fads their older sisters had sent them: folding their hair into crocheted snoods, dancing around in saddle shoes or shag socks, or modeling a Tyrolean hat covered in pins. I laughed with them, liking them very much, but feeling apart, separate. At Christmas, after waving good-bye to them as they departed with holiday excitement for their real homes, I’d roam the school’s empty halls, feeling like I was disappearing—already a ghost.

  Coming here hadn’t been to escape there. I hoped to find something here that would make me feel whole. I wanted to find the place I belonged.

  Sanctuary loomed, observing, waiting to see if I’d flee.

  But I wasn’t going back on the sea tonight. And I’d yet to see Jasper, and my old bedroom, and my library. I stood up, ready to face the house again.

  THE LARGE HEARTH OF THE IMMENSE KITCHEN WAS EMPTY AND COLD, BUT it was early September and the weather still mild. Ben was at the table, Uncle by the hearth, and a stout woman at the sink: our cook, Anna.

  She glanced at me, smiling, saying, “Hi, Cecilia,” as if I’d just returned from a day-trip to Lady Cliffs and hadn’t been gone for five years. I hadn’t expected a warm embrace—she’d never been demonstrative—but disappointment washed over me. I knew the reason. I’d seen her look back at Uncle as she’d spoken.

  Better than the pinch on the cheek and the “How you’ve grown” comments that Elizabeth complains about with her relatives over the pond, I told myself. And the only blood relation I had here was Ben.

  I sat next to my cousin at the long table. Anna gave me a bowl of hot stew without asking if I was hungry, and then left the kitchen, her small hands moving nervously as she did. The smell of wet dog hair mingled with that of her cooking.

  And then little Jasper came skidding into the kitchen, barking once, twice, then cowering at the sight of Uncle and slinking around to me, his tail wagging. I fluffed his black ears and whispered to him, “You remember me, darling puppy,” although he was no longer a puppy. I played with him for a moment, his happiness at seeing me taking the sting from Anna’s distant welcome.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Uncle watching me, the brim of his cap pushed low, his chin up a little to get a better view of me. He stepped forward, saying harshly, “Out, dog!” Jasper’s little paws scuttled him backward, and he shot from the room.

  I stared after my sweet little dog, stunned, then at my uncle. “But why would you do that?”

  Uncle seemed surprised I’d spoken. “This is my house. I do what I want.”

  I looked at Ben, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. I thought of going after Jasper, but hesitated, thinking he might be difficult to find in this large house I no longer knew. And I didn’t want to see any more of it just yet. It was hard being here.

  Slowly, I pulled off my gloves and unpinned my hat, placing them on the stout oak table. With my bare fingers, I caressed the soft felt and realized my hand was shaking.

  “Are you pregnant?” Uncle asked in his gruff voice.

  “What?” I asked, blushing and confused. I could see Ben beginning to blush as well, the red creeping up his face.

  Something twisted was in Uncle’s eyes. This was the man who had pulled the money to my school—immediately—upon my aunt’s death. Summoning me to her office, the headmistress had gently told me I had to leave, just moments after she’d given me the news my aunt had died.

  “Better for the fellows if they stay away,” he said. “There’s something wrong with the females in your family.”

  I looked away at h
is cruelty, unable to answer, a voice inside me telling me he was right.

  Then he leaned toward me, his eyes snapping. “ ‘Greedily she engorged without restraint, And knew not eating death.’ ” He threw his hand at me. “Women are dunces, man’s downfall!”

  Ben sat silent, staring at a red apple. That apple was too bright for this gray place. It stood out, like it had toppled off a branch in Paradise and dropped straight into this hell.

  I looked down at my hands and then back up at him. “Are they dunces, Uncle,” I said as evenly as I could, “or cunning temptresses? They can’t be both.” These words were familiar to me, as if I’d heard them spoken before.

  His lips twisted in anger, and he spat the words: “Your blood runs mad.”

  I didn’t know what came over me. Maybe it was the built-up grief over my aunt’s death and Uncle’s refusal to let me attend the funeral, or even his caustic allusion to my mother’s insanity. But I said in a quiet voice, “It isn’t blood, Uncle. We’re made of the sea, don’t you know? Stab me and watch the water flow.”

  He was stunned, stepping back. I was shaken too. I felt confused, slightly off-balance, like I was on a pitching ship. I didn’t know why I said those words to him, but I felt an intoxicating rush of power. A small smile flickered across Ben’s face, gone in a flash.

  Uncle pressed his lips tightly together and leaned against the hearth. The color was returning to his face, but his cheek twitched. “If it wasn’t for your aunt, I wouldn’t have let you come back. This is my home. I don’t want you here.”

  “You shouldn’t have stopped paying my tuition, then,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

  “Why should I pay for you to go to that school?” he asked, not looking for an answer. “I know why you came back. It was because of your mother and your sister.”

  “They were my mother and my sister. And my father also is buried here.” I looked down, playing with my hat, not able to look at the manic glint in his eyes any longer. “Sanctuary is my home too.”

  “You don’t fool me, acting like you don’t know,” he said. “I know what you seek here. You won’t find her, do you understand? You won’t.”