Firebird Page 5

  The huge creaking door swung open, and Alexandra peered into the cold dark foyer.

  “Juliet?” she called. “Jules, it’s Aunt Alexandra.”

  She stood on the threshold, her heart thumping with apprehension as fog brushed ghostly fingers against her cheek. The sound of roaring waves rolled across the porch as the towering firs seemed to close in around her.

  She exhaled sharply and forced her feet across the threshold.

  * * * *

  One by one, the lights came on in the ground floor rooms of Cliff House. The watcher saw Alexandra’s shadow move across a curtained window. Then she appeared at the front door and hurried down the steps into the misted night.

  The yellow hood of her jacket fell to her shoulders as she unlocked the trunk of the Jeep, then struggled up the porch steps with her overnight bag and groceries.

  The wind whispered through the black cedars and her head came up, like a doe sensing danger.

  “Juliet?”

  She swung around, facing the black wall of cedars.

  “Is someone there?”

  He stayed very still.

  “Show your face, you damned coward! I’m not afraid of you!”

  The door slammed, the porch light blinked out.

  The navy sleeve of his windbreaker glinted with beads of mist as he lowered the powerful night glasses from his eyes.

  CHAPTER 6

  “The girl of beautiful face...”

  F. G. Lorca

  Standing at the foot of the stairs, Alexandra lifted her duffle bag with a deliberate motion. Her quick search of the first floor had yielded nothing but memories, and the unnaturally loud ticking of the grandfather clock. No groceries in the kitchen, no half-burned candles, no forgotten piece of clothing or blanket. If Juliet was here, she didn’t want to be found.

  “Okay, Eve, let’s find that runaway daughter of yours,” she muttered as she climbed the stairs to the upper floors.

  Room by room, the old house murmured with voices from long-ago summers. On a small round table in her parents’ bedroom, a grouping of dusty silver frames told the story of her childhood. Her mother playing the piano, Eve climbing on the cliffs. The two young sisters, holding hands while gathering shells on the beach. Alexandra stopped for a moment, her finger brushing a decades old photograph. She was looking up at Eve, with her arm protectively around her older sister… And there was her father, jaunty cap in hand, staring out to sea. Always the dreamer. She blinked, suddenly ambushed in the quiet room by the last words he’d spoken to her before he died.

  Eve needs you, Alexandra. You need each other. We’re family.

  I’m sorry, dad.

  Alexandra shook her head, forced herself to keep moving through the house. Her sister was everywhere, like Rebecca in du Maurier’s novel, and fragments of memory surged knife-sharp through her head. Eve arranging roses in the dining room; whirling in a long crimson dress before a floor length mirror; standing posed at the top of the stairs, camera in hand. When she came to Eve’s room, with its dramatic wall of windows facing the cliffs and pounding surf, her stomach tightened. The crystal lamp still cast prisms of light across faded flowered wallpaper, and for just a moment she remembered a slender hand lifting a glass to scarlet lips.

  She closed the door and hurried to the nursery.

  “Juliet?”

  Books, stuffed animals piled on two small beds, her first sketch pad, Eve’s beautiful old doll house in a shadowed corner, like forgotten treasures waiting for a curator. Gazing at their shell collection, still shining on the window ledge, she lifted her sister’s first camera. Looking through the dusty lens of the Leica, she heard her sister’s voice whisper in her head. Stand there, Zandy, in the light. By our shells. Inhaling the scents of her childhood, musty now, she checked the closet and under the beds and then closed the door behind her with a firm click.

  She’d never seen Juliet’s room, which was papered floor to ceiling with music and dance posters and gave the only hint of the room’s most recent occupant. The bed, carefully made, had a simple ivory coverlet. But where were the family photographs, the beloved dolls, the diaries and mementos that told the story of a young girl’s life? This was the impersonal room of a temporary visitor, a boarding school child.

  Sadness and anger welled sharply in Alexandra’s chest. Oh, Jules, what did we do to you? She moved to the wall of windows. Outside, she heard the hollow cry of the wind as it skimmed over the rocks.

  You know where you have to go.

  She forced her legs to move down the dim hallway. Narrow stairs led up to the dark attic under the eaves. At the top was the closed blue door she remembered so vividly. She began to climb.

  Ignoring the frantic thumping of her heart, she twisted the knob and the blue door swung open slowly.

  She held her breath, listening, then stepped into the room.

  You always hid here when there was trouble, Eve.

  Her eyes locked on the dormer window that opened onto the steeply pitched roof, and for a sickening moment she saw Eve, alone on the dark rain-slick shingles. So high...

  Just breathe. Fighting off another wave of dizziness, she turned from the window and walked toward the far corner. There, in a hidden nook shielded by a tall armoire, Juliet Marik lay sleeping, cocooned in her mother’s quilt.

  “Thank you, God,” whispered Alexandra.

  She bent to push aside the empty plastic water bottles, fast food containers and dance magazines that littered the floor around her niece. Then she saw the half-full pack of cigarettes, scissors and hair dye, the iPhone and two cans of light beer.

  Placing a gentle hand on Juliet’s shoulder, she whispered, “Jules, wake up.”

  Eyes flew open. Deep green, so like Eve’s.

  “Mother?” the girl gasped. “Mother?”

  “No, honey, it’s me. Aunt Alexandra.”

  The girl stared at her blindly. Then recognition, swift and devastating. “You!” She grabbed a heavy boot and flung it at her aunt.

  “Whoa! Oh, Jules...”

  “Go away.” Juliet pulled back, and the coverlet fell away from her face.

  Alexandra caught her breath. Juliet was all elbows and legs, tear-filled eyes huge in the too-thin face. The once-waist-length golden hair was shorn, now dirty-brown with streaks of orange and spiked raggedly short.

  “Jules! My God, what are you doing here?”

  “If you want answers, check your iPhone.”

  Alexandra reached out to stroke a shaking shoulder. “Talk to me.”

  “Get your damned effing hands off of me!”

  Alexandra dropped her hands. “Glaringly uncreative,” she murmured. “Surely the nuns have taught you to try more adventurous adjectives.”

  The girl turned away, her back as eloquent as a brick wall.

  “Don’t shut me out, Juliet.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Your mother used to hide up here.”

  “Fine. But why would you care? Just leave me alone, Aunt Zan. Get away from me!” The desolation in Juliet’s voice was heart-breaking. “I’m not going back to St. Terribles.”

  “But the nuns have been so worried about you.”

  “What a load of crap.”

  “They care about you, darling.”

  “I’m not your darling,” the girl lashed out. “And you’re not my mother! You can’t make me go back!”

  “There’s the Juliet I remember,” said Alexandra gently. “Stubborn and too independent for your own good.”

  She looked down at her niece and shook her head. A small amethyst sparked on the side of her nose. One ear was pierced with a half-dozen metal cuffs and studs. A single earring fell from the other ear in a cascade of tiny moons and stars. High on Juliet’s cheek, just beneath her left eye, a blue butterfly tattoo spread its wings. Not a schoolgirl’s collar in sight.

  Huge tears rolled down the girl’s face, and Alexandra dropped to the floor and folded her niece in her arms. “Hush, Jules. No o
ne’s going anywhere tonight.”

  The teenager’s body was stiff and unforgiving. “I called you and left you a message...”

  Alexandra pictured the yellow stack of unread messages on her cluttered desk.

  “I’m sorry,” she said helplessly. “I’ve been tied up with work, I didn’t check my messages - and I thought you’d want to be with your school friends -” The excuses sounded empty in her ears, and she stopped.

  “My friends are a bunch of shallow rich snobs who are into vampires and use ‘like’ in every sentence! As if, like, I care!” mimicked the girl. “And I’ve blown it with Juilliard by now.”

  “You can be back in your dance classes this weekend, if only you’ll let me help -”

  “Dad left for South America! Left me alone. So what if I ran away? No one missed me...” The words dissolved into sobs.

  Alexandra murmured into Juliet’s hair. “That’s not true.”

  “You abandoned me and my mom a long time ago, just like my dad did. Why should I believe you? You don’t care any more than he did.”

  The too-thin shoulders were shaking uncontrollably. Alexandra tightened her grip, stung by the truth of the angry words and wincing as the smell of stale cigarettes and beer enveloped her.

  “Would I be here if I didn’t care? I know I’ve made a mess of things, Jules, but I’m here now. Let me help you.”

  “I don’t want your help!”

  “The pain won’t always be this bad,” she whispered, stroking the girl’s shorn hair.

  Juliet smacked her hand away, her eyes accusing, inconsolable. “No! Nothing will ever be okay again.”

  Once more the child struck out, but Alexandra ducked and wrapped her arms tightly around the resistant body. Juliet felt as thin and brittle as winter branches, and Alexandra searched for the words. But she could find no words for a mother’s suicide...

  “Jules,” she began, “I need for you to trust me.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Maybe because I know how much you’re hurting -”

  “You don’t know!”

  “Yes, I do. I was even younger, only seven, when my mother died...”

  “Your mother didn’t jump off a bridge!”

  “No, she jumped into a liquor bottle,” said Alexandra quietly. “But it killed her, just the same. One day she was playing the piano and singing. The next day the singing and the music stopped.”

  Silence. Then, “Mom never talked about Grandma. Maybe because of the drinking.”

  “Your grandmother was so much more than the drinking, Jules. I’ll tell you about her, if you’d like.”

  “So was my mom! More than the drinking…”

  Oh, God. Alexandra pressed her lips together and held out her hand. “Please, come downstairs with me now. There’s soup and hot water for a shower. In the morning, we’ll talk, I promise.”

  “She promised, too. She promised, Aunt Zan! Only...” Again the sobs wracked the girl, and she sank to the floor. “She left me!”

  I’ll be there, Zan. I promise. But she never was.

  “Oh, Jules. We can’t go on being angry with her because she died.”

  Juliet raised her tear-stained face. “Why did she leave me? Oh, God, what’s wrong with me? What did I do to make her leave me?”

  Alexandra stared at the haunted face. Terrible questions to hear a child ask. Young face, old soul, she thought sadly. What have we all done to you? She set her hands firmly on the girl’s shoulders. “You listen to me. You did nothing wrong, Jules. Your mother loved you more than anyone. So now, we go on.”

  Juliet leaped to her feet, graceful as a ballerina, all arms and legs like a colt. The all-black man’s leather jacket and dancer’s leg-warmers were torn and stained. Dark purple nails and Birkenstock sandals completed the look. Alexandra sat back on her heels and stared at the stranger who was her sister’s child.

  “You don’t understand,” the girl rushed on, “no one does. You, Anthony, you all believe my mother took her life. But she didn’t!”

  “Your mom had a sickness, Jules.”

  “Just listen to me!” Narrow fingers closed convulsively around Alexandra’s wrists.

  “My mother didn’t kill herself. I can prove it.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “And for secrecy, no lady closer...”

  Shakespeare, Henry IV

  My mother didn’t kill herself.

  The words echoed in the cold air of the attic.

  “Juliet,” Alexandra whispered. “You’re wrong. I’m so sorry, but your mother was drinking, she went alone to the river, she... Oh, God.”

  “No, Aunt Zan!” Juliet shook her head from side to side, running her long fingers through the unwashed tangle of hair in a heart-wrenching gesture of denial. “She was better. Really! I was going to spend my sixteenth birthday with her. Next week, you know, in Washington.”

  “I know that’s what she wanted, Juliet. But she -”

  “Stop it!” the teenager shouted. “She wouldn’t have broken her promise to me. Not this time...”

  “It was the alcohol, sweetheart. It was always the alcohol. She couldn’t control it.”

  “She was learning.” The green eyes, so like her mother’s, were pleading and filled with need. “She hadn’t had a drink in months, she told me so. She wasn’t drunk that night!”

  Alexandra gripped the child’s forearms. Looking directly into Juliet’s eyes, she said, “There was alcohol in her blood when – when they found her.” And anti-depressants, other drugs. She swallowed, feeling the sickness well up in her throat.

  “No!”

  “Listen to me, Jules. Maybe your mother didn’t know how to be there for you, but she loved you, I know she loved you! But we both know that suicide isn’t about love. It’s about fathomless loss and hurt, it’s about hopelessness, unbearable pain.” She pulled her niece closer. “And sometimes it’s caused by a chemical imbalance, Juliet. Drugs. Or alcohol.”

  “Stop it! Stop it!” shouted Juliet, fisting her hands against her temples. “It’s about running away from life! My mother wasn’t a coward, Aunt Zan.” Juliet looked at her aunt with contempt. “Mother was wrong about you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She always said that you had a fierce spirit. That you had more courage than any woman she knew!”

  Shock shimmered through her. “She said that about me?”

  “But now you’re turning away from her again. You were never there for Mom when she needed you!”

  Alexandra reeled as if she’d been punched. “Your mother went her own way years ago. She hasn’t needed my help in a very long time.”

  “She called you, Aunt Zan, just before she died. You had your shot and you blew it!”

  Eve’s voice, crying out for help. But she was drunk that night, I’m sure of it. “I didn’t believe she was really in trouble, Jules.”

  “Good luck getting that off your conscience!”

  “If I had known that she really needed help...”

  “Well I’m telling you now,” said Juliet. “For her. I’m asking you to believe in my mother.”

  “Believe what?”

  Juliet swiped at the tears on her cheeks and took a sharp breath. “Mom sent me a letter.”

  “The letter Sister Joseph Maureen gave you?”

  “She told you?”

  “I’m not your enemy, Jules. Tell me about the letter.”

  “She sent it to St. T’s, she must have mailed it that night from Georgetown, just before she...”

  “Where is it?”

  The girl bent to the comforter and searched beneath its folds, then held out several pages of pale pink notepaper.

  Alexandra glanced at the postmark on the envelope. It had been mailed in Georgetown on the night of Eve’s death.

  “May I?”

  The green eyes glittered with pain. “I want you to read it. I want someone to believe me.”

  Alexandra dropped to the floor and unfolded th
e letter, her chest clutching tightly as she saw the familiar looping script.

  Darling Jewel, an eternity since we’ve been together and just the thought of seeing you on your birthday - it absolutely cannot be sixteen years since I gave life to you, my darling, have I really been lying about my age this long??? - knowing I’ll be with you has made these last long nights bearable. I close my eyes and imagine us walking the fields at Foxwood, the joy on your face when you meet the foals and yearlings, you just can’t imagine how beautiful they are, with the morning sun shining on their coats, and of course there’s a special gift waiting for you in Lady Falcon’s stall, it is your sweet sixteen after all! I know we haven’t been together on your birthday in a long time, darling, but this year we’ll be together, I promise...

  Alexandra raised her eyes doubtfully and looked at her niece. Evangeline the Dasher of Hopes, she thought suddenly. So damned poetic - but so many broken promises over the years. And always, always excused or forgiven.

  She looked down at the thin scented paper. Now the words began to tip and scrawl, rushing across the page.

  But - just in case something happens before I see you again... I need you to keep a secret for me, Jewel, just like we used to.

  You remember, don’t you, that special hiding place I showed you when you were five? I hid something there, for Aunt Alexandra, but don’t call her, my darling, you know how she is with phones, just go see her, and give her my message when you’re alone with her. She’ll intellectualize all the reasons in the world to say no, of course, and give you all kinds of grief in her usual heartless-Zan way, but stay with her, the Snow Queen always comes around, head over heart not withstanding, and she’ll know what to do, better than I, I’m afraid - and then she’ll be there for us.

  Always, always remember that I love you, Jewel, more than you can imagine, my dearest. I never, ever meant to hurt you. You are the one good true thing in my life.

  It was signed, simply, Your Mother.

  Alexandra dropped her head, ambushed by the sharp grief that rolled over her. That’s how you thought of me, Eve? The Snow Queen? All ice and no feelings? But… maybe her sister had known her better than she knew herself. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried. Eve had said it, more than once.