“The servants will do anything for you. Your friends cover for you. All the boys in this town wait on you.”
“Helen, it’s not my fault that-” I broke off.
“That you’re everyone’s favorite?” she finished for me.
Her face was so pale, her skin so tight, I could see the bones moving beneath it. “Say it, Avril, it’s the truth.”
I looked away.
“You have everything. Did you have to take Thomas, too?”
“I can’t help the way I feel about him,” I said. “He can’t help the way he feels about me.”
“And what about good old Helen?” she asked. “Does it matter at all what I feel?”
Her eyes were bloodshot. I knew she was trying not to cry.
My heart felt cut in two. I ached for her, but I ached for us as well.
“Do you think because I keep my emotions in check that I feel nothing?”
I was desperate to prove myself right. “If two people feel the same way about each other,” I reasoned, “then that must matter more than what one person feels.”
“I can’t believe you’d do this to me!” she cried, her voice quivering with anger. “One day you’re going to pay, Avril.”
She took a step toward me, then another. Something in Helen had shattered, the lock she kept on her fierce passion had been broken. I could see the fury in her eyes, in the curl of her fingers.
“Mark my words,” she said, coming toward me. “You’re going to pay.”
I stepped back quickly and missed my footing. I reached out, but couldn’t stop the fall. My head snapped back and I tumbled downward, the edge of each tread banging against my spine. I heard Helen scream-scream as she did when we were children, “I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it!”
Then everything went black.
“Megan! Are you all right?”
My back hurt and my arm, jammed against the stairway banister, buzzed with pain. Matt knelt next to me, halfway down the flight of steps.
“Just a little bruised,” I answered shakily.
He helped me sit up. “What happened?”
“I’m not sure.” I struggled to put together the jumbled images in my mind. “I must have been sleepwalking. I did it a few nights ago. You didn’t see me fall?”
“I was in the library,” he said. “When I heard the noise, I rushed out and found you here.”
“What time is it?”
He glanced over my shoulder. “About ten after five.”
I turned to look at the clock on the landing and suddenly remembered the thirteen chimes and the scene with Avril, Helen, and Thomas. This time I wasn’t dreaming simply of a place, but an event. Had it actually happened? Was I fantasizing, elaborating on the story that Mrs. Riley had told me, or was I truly remembering?
Until Matt touched my cheek, I hadn’t realized I was crying. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Tell me.” He gently took my face in his hands.
I didn’t know how to begin to explain. “It was so real,” I whispered. “But that’s what crazy people always think, that what they imagine is real.”
He put his arms around me and pulled me close. I buried my face between his neck and shoulder.
“You’re not crazy.” He smoothed my hair. “1 promise you, you’re not.”
“I–I’ve had a lot of weird dreams since I’ve come here.”
“Dreams about what?” he asked softly.
“Places, people. Thomas, Avril, and Helen-Grandmother.
Dreams about the past.”
His arms tightened around me. I could hear his heart beating fast.
“Were you dreaming when you fell?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Tell me about it.”
“In the dream Grandmother was young, no older than us.
And she was furious with her sister. She had walked in on Avril and Thomas.”
I felt him swallow hard.
“They were kissing.”
The motion was slight, but I sensed it, the way he pulled back from me.
“Grandmother threatened Avril,” I added, then the tears streamed down my face again.
“Megan, you should leave.”
“Leave?” That’s not what I wanted to hear from him, not now that I was wrapped in his arms. “Why?”
“I think that if you leave, all of this will stop.”
“All of this meaning what?” I asked.
“You know what.”