More than anything, I wanted to tell Catherine that everything would be fine, but I didn’t know that for sure. Not because I thought she was in danger of being attacked by a spirit, but because if she truly believed that was possible, perhaps her mind had gone.
The thought wasn’t so preposterous.
I never would have guessed our brother would be a convicted murderer, yet he’d confessed to the crimes. Compared to that, Catherine losing her sense of reality didn’t seem impossible. In fact, it seemed likely. After everything our family had been through over the years, it made sense that someone would break under the pressure.
I just thought it would be our mother before it would be Catherine.
“Mrs. Cresswell?”
Nurse Gray’s approaching voice brought me a sense of comfort. I needed time to process what Catherine had revealed and decide how to move forward. But when I saw the disappointed look in my sister’s eyes, I felt like a traitor.
“Over here, Nurse Gray.” Catherine gave me one last look before her shoulders slouched forward.
Nurse Gray mounted the slight incline to where we stood with ease for someone so advanced in years. She gave her full attention to Catherine, barely noticing me at all. “Dinner is ready, Mrs. Cresswell. Mr. Cresswell had a plate delivered to your room.”
“Charles?” Betrayal flashed in her eyes.
Nurse Gray nodded. “He thought you’d be tired from your walk.”
I wanted to argue, but I’d overstepped enough boundaries in my short time in my sister’s home. Anyway, I was no longer sure the measures Nurse Gray and Charles had taken were unwarranted.
If Catherine was delusional, she needed more rest.
“I am tired,” Catherine sighed. “Thank you.”
She walked up to the house next to Nurse Gray, and I trailed behind them. When we got into the house, Nurse Gray led Catherine upstairs without another word, and I watched them go.
Even though I wanted to say a great many things, for one of the first times in my life, I simply couldn’t find the words.
5
As it turned out, dinner wasn’t ready.
Not for the rest of the house, anyway.
Despite her having taken several naps throughout the day already, Charles thought Catherine would like to go to bed early, so he had her dinner prepared ahead of time. Which meant I had an hour of spare time to use up before dinner.
Sitting with Catherine while she ate was an option, but I didn’t want to embarrass her if she didn’t realize her dinner had been prepared special ahead of everyone else’s. Besides, I still didn’t know what to say to her.
Catherine wanted me to believe her so badly, but I simply couldn’t. Hooded figures and chants and vengeful spirits…it all seemed like fiction. Like a frightening story told to children, not something that could really happen.
Charles remained in his study on the first floor with the door closed, showing no sign of interest in mingling with his guest, and the rest of the small household staff seemed otherwise engaged.
So, I explored the house.
In addition to the sitting room, study, dining room, and kitchen, the main floor boasted a library, as well. A quick assessment of the shelves told me that most of the books belonged to Charles. Volume after volume of world maps were not the kind of light reading Catherine usually engaged in. Still, I found a not insignificant section of novels that would be entertaining to me should I find the time to read them.
One copy, creased and folded back from use, caught my eye, and I pulled the book from the shelf. Wuthering Heights.
Catherine had never been one for reading, and I couldn’t imagine Charles reading the doomed love affair of Heathcliff and the fictional Catherine. I peeled back the cover and noticed the delicately scrawled inscription.
To my dearest Catherine
May our home on the moors be the opposite of Wuthering Heights in every way. May it be warm and safe and welcome. May it be filled to the brim with love as I am filled to the brim with love for you.
Yours always,
Charles
I couldn’t say exactly why, but tears sprang to my eyes at the warmth in the writing. At the hopes Charles had for their life in this new house and the juxtaposition of what had passed.
I blinked the emotion away and flipped through the pages.
Immediately, I was caught by the writing in the margins. At the lines scrawled under passages, underlining things deemed to be important.
On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb.
The dismal spiritual atmosphere overcame, and more than neutralized, the glowing physical comforts around me…
The encounter Lockwood had with Catherine’s ghost at the window was so scribbled over that I could barely read the passage anymore. Clearly, whoever read the book last had felt something in kind with the narrator’s experience. I didn’t allow myself to think what my sister must have looked like, stooped over this book, underlining line after line after line.
To think she could have so much in common with such a book brought a fresh wave of emotion, and I closed the book and slid it back on the shelf.
I had to help her. Whatever was going on, I had to do my best to ease her mind and bring back some of the happiness they’d experienced when they’d purchased the place. Clearly, Charles had great hopes for their time spent here and the family they would build, and if neither of them could figure out how to navigate their way out of this tangled wood, I would have to lead the way.
There seemed only one right place to start.
A soft humming still sounded from beneath the door of Hazel’s nursery, but I hadn’t seen any person come or go from the room since I’d arrived.
Strange, considering Charles and Catherine’s newborn child was in there. My niece.
Charles had said his sister was watching over the baby, but he’d
