4
“We should go back.” Catherine wrapped her arms around herself, pulling her coat closed so only the bottom of her white nightgown hung out of the coat. “I look ridiculous.”
“No one can see you.” I spun in a circle, gesturing to the empty moors around us. “It’s just the two of us. Besides, it is nice to finally be alone.”
Catherine sighed and walked ahead of me a bit.
In the house, she’d seemed weak and pale and ill. She still looked pale, but she no longer looked weak. She looked capable to me. Which begged the question, why was she being put to sleep several times a day?
“Who is Nurse Gray?” I asked.
Catherine shrugged and stepped up onto a rock that had broken through the mossy ground, balancing on one foot before stepping back to the damp earth. “She came right after Hazel was born, and she never left.”
“The delivery didn’t go well?”
“They told me I lost a lot of blood. That I was lucky to be alive. I don’t remember any of it. I just remember waking up and seeing Nurse Gray.”
I frowned. “Do you always call her that? What is her full name?”
“She asks me to call her Nurse Gray. Keeping the separation of personal and professional is very important to her. So, I am Mrs. Cresswell, and she is Nurse Gray.”
“But she has been here for weeks?” I asked.
Catherine looked up at the heavy, gray sky, brow wrinkled in thought. “It doesn’t feel like that long, but yes. It has been a few weeks, I think.”
If Nurse Gray had been there since Hazel was born then Catherine should have known exactly how long the woman had been in the house. What mother didn’t know the age of her own child?
A mother who had been drugged three times a day and kept unconscious.
“How is Hazel? Charles said he nearly lost you both during the birth. Is everything all right with her?”
Catherine nodded. “The cord was around her neck, but as soon as they got it free, Hazel was fine. She is progressing well.”
Progressing?
Prior to the birth, Catherine had talked excitedly about being a mother. About what it would be like to hold her child. She wondered whether the child would look more like Charles or herself, whether it would be a boy or a girl. There had been a shine in her voice that was noticeably absent now.
Her words were cold and factual. Distant.
The muddy trail from the back of the house broke into three as it neared a crop of trees, and I walked towards the one on the left.
“Not that way,” Catherine said, grabbing my arm.
She pointed to a large rock positioned on the far-right trail. It had a wide base and the tip had been sharpened into a point. “Charles put that rock there so I wouldn’t forget which path was safest. He walked all of these trails right after…” Her voice trailed off before she picked up the sentence again. “…and that one has the widest path and avoids the crumbling rock falls.”
“After what?”
Catherine raised her brows at me as if she didn’t hear my question, but I knew she had. She was trying to avoid answering it, and I wanted to know why.
“Charles walked these trails after what?” I repeated. “What happened, Catherine? Why did you ask me to come here?”
My sister stared at me, her eyebrows drawn together in concern. Then, she shook her head and turned away, a strand of frizzy blonde hair curling around her cheek.
She wasn’t herself. Nothing about the woman in front of me seemed familiar anymore. It seemed as though, since the last time I’d seen her, someone had reached inside of her chest and snuffed out the light in her heart. The light that used to annoy me to no end, but that I suddenly wished I could find again.
“What is happening, Catherine?” I fisted my hands at my side, trying to keep my fingers from trembling. “You’ve asked me to come here and nothing makes sense. Charles was a mess in the car. Your husband talks about you like you’re dying, you barely see your daughter or seem to care that you don’t see her, and an old woman is ordering you around and putting you to sleep. What does any of this mean? Is it because of your hallucinations? Are you mad?”
Catherine’s head snapped up at that, her blue eyes sparkling with tears. “Do you think I’m mad?”
“This is all so bizarre, I’m starting to think I’m mad!” My voice echoed off the trees, coming back to me in a faded whisper, and I let out a long breath.
Suddenly, Catherine was in front of me, her head low. “I asked you here to help me, but now that you’re here, I’m afraid you’ll look at me the way everyone else does. And if that happens, Alice, I’m not sure what I’ll do. You are my last hope.”
My throat tightened at the desperation in her voice, and I grabbed my sister by the shoulders and pulled her towards me. She sagged against me, limp for a second before she succumbed to the embrace and wrapped her arms around me.
“I’m here to help, Catherine. Tell me how.”
Catherine pulled back and nodded. “It started when I was pregnant. I thought it was nerves because of the baby, but the more it happened, the more I couldn’t deny it.”
“Deny what?” I felt I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear Catherine’s explanation.
“Ghosts.” She blinked. “I could see ghosts, Alice. Well, I can.”
Cold air prickled the back of my neck, lifting the hairs there. “Still?”
Catherine nodded again, her eyes darting from mine to the sky and to the ground. She was nervous.
“Right now?” I looked back over my shoulder.
“No,” she said through a small laugh. “Not right now. I wouldn’t be standing here if I saw a ghost right now.”
“So, that means you’re afraid of them?”
“Wouldn’t you be?” Catherine raised her brows, waiting for an
