Edie and Patrick skidded to a stop at the side door to the dormitory as the wind tore a swathe from the black smoke billowing towards them. They froze. In the clearing, they saw Jessie standing, staring ahead, arms by her side. She was motionless, two steps from the exit, flames encroaching, high and loud and crackling. They screamed her name. She didn’t blink. They screamed again. Jessie closed her eyes, and they watched as she let the flames engulf her.
Edie grabbed for Patrick’s arm, clawing at it with desperate hands, her fingers digging into his flesh. They turned to each other, wild-eyed, mouths open, chests heaving. In the fractional moment their eyes met, they made an unspoken pact: they would never mention what they had seen to another soul.
Or maybe it was a shared granting of permission — to lose the memory to a confusion of smoke or shock.
4
Edie parked at the bottom of the steps to the inn. She glanced down at the folder on the passenger seat — research she had gathered on the history of Pilgrim Point. She wanted to be able to talk to the guests about it, or include interesting details on the website or in printed cards she would leave in the bedrooms. When she bumped into Murph the previous summer, she told him her plans, and the following day, when he was meeting Johnny in town, he transferred four boxes of his late father’s research into the boot of Johnny’s car.
Edie opened the folder and saw two pages, titled In a Manor of Silence. In all she had read about Pilgrim Point, the words of Henry Rathbrook were the ones that resonated the most — even when she learned that they were not an extract from the handwritten manuscript of a published book, but were among the scattered remains of patient files discovered in an abandoned asylum.
Edie pulled up the hood of her rain coat, tucked her hair inside, and made the short dash up the steps. She pushed through the front door, and let it close gently behind her. Look where my rich imagination got me, she thought. The hall was exactly how she had pictured it on the day of the viewing. But how it looked and how it felt were on two different frequencies. Did it matter that each beautiful choice she had made could light up the eyes of their guests if the pilot light in their heart had blown as soon as they walked through the door? She would watch their gaze as it moved across the floors and walls, up the stone staircase, along the ornate carvings of the cast iron balustrade, and higher again to the decorative cornices of the ceiling, the elaborate ceiling rose, and the sparkling Murano glass chandelier that hung from it. Then she would graciously accept the praise that always followed, pretending not to notice the small spark of panic in their eyes or the tremor in their smile.
It was as if a signal was being fired off inside them: no, we don’t smile at things like this, not in places like this, because something is not right. Something is wrong.
She would see some beautiful, eager young girl arriving with her young boyfriend who had spent a month’s wages on one weekend, and he would beam as her eyes lit up, but Edie would see the rest. She knew it wasn’t because this girl felt out of place — everyone was made to feel welcome at the inn because everyone was welcome. But sometimes Edie felt that the reason everyone was welcome was not because that was her job, not because the vast extravagance of the refurbishment had plunged them into an alarming amount of debt, not because a family has living expenses, and Dylan has to be put through college, but because she hoped that one day, someone would walk in and they would light up and it would be pure, there would be no strange aftertaste, and the spell would be broken.
Edie shook off her jacket and hung it on the carved oak hallstand. She paused as she heard the sound of a door slamming, and heavy footsteps echoing towards her.
‘Dad won’t let me go to Mally’s tonight!’ said Dylan, stomping half way across the hall. He stood with his hands on his hips, his face red, his chest heaving.
‘Dylan!’ said Edie. ‘Calm down, please.’
Johnny appeared behind Dylan.
‘And why does it even matter,’ said Dylan, glancing back at him, ‘when you’re all going to be here partying anyway?’
‘Partying?’ said Johnny. ‘It’s Helen’s forty-seventh birthday — we’re hardly going to be dancing the night away.’
Dylan looked at him, wide-eyed. ‘Oh my God! That is so mean!’
Johnny stared at him, bewildered.
‘Mom — did you hear that?’ said Dylan. ‘Just because Helen’s in a wheelchair.’
Johnny did a double take. ‘What?’ He looked at Edie, then back at Dylan. ‘Dylan — that had nothing to do with Helen being in a wheelchair. That was about us being so old that we don’t have the energy to dance.’
‘Well, that’s depressing,’ said Dylan.
Edie started to laugh.
‘Well, I’d rather depress you than be accused of making fun of Helen,’ said Johnny.
Helen was Dylan’s godmother, and he was fiercely protective of her.
Helen was diagnosed with MS ten years ago, and had been in a wheelchair for the past three years, and still, when Edie saw her, she could get hit with the unfairness of it. Even though Helen was such a part of their lives. Before the diagnosis, Helen had been fit, strong, the director of nursing in the local hospital, living with her partner, who left her as soon as her symptoms started to really show. She was still in the relapsing-remitting stage, but her condition was slowly deteriorating. She had an older sister in Cork, but they weren’t close, and apart from her friends from the hospital, Johnny Dylan and Edie were the ones who helped her out the most.
‘Jesus, Dylan,’ said Johnny, ‘you have to stop attacking people because of some assumption—’
‘Says the guy roaring at Terry earlier,’ said Dylan.
‘I wasn’t roaring at him,’ said Johnny. ‘We were having a... discussion.’
Dylan made air quotes.
Johnny turned to Edie. ‘All that was going on with Terry is I asked him to board up the chapel windows properly, with decent timber, so they wouldn’t look like an eyesore, and instead he throws up some bullshit with streaks of paint and black God-knows-what all over it. Do you want the lads arriving in and seeing that?’
‘It’ll be dark,’ said Dylan.
‘Not in the morning when they’re getting the tour,’ said Johnny. ‘And what’s with you defending Terry all of a sudden? Last week he was the worst in the world.’
‘Because he thinks I’m the person who smashed the windows!’ said Dylan. ‘Which, I’d like to repeat, I am not. Terry spots someone in jeans and a hoodie running away from the “scene” and it’s automatically me.’
Johnny gestured to Dylan’s jeans and hoodie, and shrugged.
‘Literally, everyone dresses like this,’ said Dylan.
‘But you can see where he’s coming from,’ said Johnny. ‘He calls me to say he’s caught you and Mally in the confession box in the chapel—’
Edie looked at Johnny. ‘Can we stop this—’
‘No,’ said Johnny. ‘He still hasn’t given us an explanation.’
‘Stop making it sound so creepy,’ said Dylan.
‘You were supposed to be in school!’ said Johnny. ‘The one day we’re in Cork trying to get stuff done—’
‘I don’t know why he had to call you,’ said Dylan.
‘Here’s why,’ said Johnny. ‘Health and safety. The chapel’s a building site, basically, you had no hard hats on you—’
‘Hard hats,’ said Dylan. He rolled his eyes. ‘Mally thought the whole thing was—’
‘Why would I care what Mally thinks?’ said Johnny.
Dylan looked at Edie. ‘Seriously, Mom... what is his problem with her?’