The Lost Sister. Megan Kelley Hall
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Название: The Lost Sister
Автор: Megan Kelley Hall
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Триллеры
isbn: 9780758244529
isbn:
He watched as she cocked her head to the side and spun around in the water. She looked right over to where he was crouched and he slunk backward, afraid that he’d been caught as a sort of Peeping Tom.
She came right out of the water—letting the heat of the night burn the water droplets off her skin, her long red hair clinging to her wet skin—and instinctively moved over to his hiding spot.
Before he could come up with a plausible excuse, she smiled widely and put her hand on his cheek.
“My own personal bodyguard,” she said brightly. “My valiant knight, I know that you’ve been keeping watch over me. I can feel your eyes on me.”
He stuttered, trying to come up with an explanation. Wanting her to believe that he wasn’t some kind of a stalker. Before he could say anything more, she quieted him with a kiss. At first it was tentative and sweet. And then he reciprocated with a longer kiss, embracing her and not minding that her wet body was soaking his clothes. It was a kiss that he’d remember until his dying day.
He knew her intimately and he knew her secrets. He’d once heard his grandfather say that if two people shared a secret—one that nobody else knew about—it bound them together until the secret was finally revealed. He swore on his life that he’d never reveal it, not when she went missing, and not even when he’d been suspected of being involved in her vanishing. He gave his word—and his heart—to Cordelia.
And now, with no warning, in the bright light of day, he saw her. She’d come back to him. It was only for a moment and could be blamed on the dehydrated and overtired state he was in after doing the landscaping in the Old Town Hall’s courtyard. He knew it was Cordelia because he caught her familiar scent of apples and lavender. He knew it was her from the look in her eyes. It was the same look he saw in her pale, watery blue eyes that she had the last time he saw her. Those eyes were forever etched in his memory. They were wide-set, haunted, shimmering, and most memorably, they were filled with fear.
Kate Endicott didn’t believe in coincidences.
She was not superstitious, and wasn’t really concerned with improving her luck, which was why Kate still wasn’t sure what had compelled to her ask her mother, Kiki, to bring in a feng shui expert to enhance the flow of their house, and ultimately, their lives.
Maybe it was due to the Ravenswood debacle. The fact that Finn had royally screwed over Kiki Endicott’s plans to turn Ravenswood Asylum into the luxury hotel, the Endicott. Well, it wasn’t just him; it was that entire historical society.
Whatever.
They had screwed everything up big time and now millions of dollars were at stake. Investors were getting angry. And Kate saw the look of pity in her friends’ eyes. Nobody pitied Kate Endicott. No one!
Kate and her mother were always on top of new trends. Always the first in line for the new yoga club or Pilates classes that had sprung up around Hawthorne. And when the topic of feng shui cluttered the pages of Kate’s favorite magazines and lifestyle journals, she knew that she would have to improve her family’s chi by renovating their house.
Perhaps she was just restless.
She could feel the change in the tide that was upsetting the smooth sailing of her life. Something had floated into the harbor of her perfect life and was threatening to capsize her carefully guarded vessel. Kate Endicott wouldn’t let that happen; she refused to go down with the sinking ship. That was something that Kiki had taught her long ago, and she wasn’t about to let it happen to them now. Not now, not ever.
Abigail Crane pinned her hair up carefully as she looked at her reflection in the low light of her bedroom. She tried wrap-
ping her mind around what the doctors had told her—chemo was the only course of action to stop the spread of cancer in her body. Toxins placed in her body to seek out and destroy other deadly toxins. It was like sending in a black widow spider to take care of a venomous snake. The goal was for them to destroy each other—her body would end up as the ravaged battlefield.
She had just placed the call to Maddie at Stanton, asking her to come back to Hawthorne for winter break. It wasn’t too much for a mother to ask of her own daughter, but there were plenty of reasons that Maddie would want to refuse. True, most children would want to take care of their sick mothers, but most children hadn’t been betrayed in the same way that Abigail had betrayed Maddie. She realized that not telling Maddie the truth about Cordelia—that they weren’t cousins, but really half sisters—was the wrong thing to do, but she couldn’t take it back now. What else could she do to make it up to her? When Maddie left Hawthorne, she left with her own baggage—guilt about her treatment of Cordelia and over Rebecca’s mental state that had nothing to do with Abigail. She had her own demons to fight.
Abigail had been visiting Rebecca for months—trying to make up for own failings—for causing Cordelia to run away, for not telling Rebecca about their confrontation. If she’d told the truth sooner, perhaps that night at Ravenswood and Rebecca’s attempted suicide could have been avoided. She had her own ghosts to put to rest. But she needed her daughter now; perhaps tough times would help to mend their broken family. She didn’t think her request of Maddie was too much to ask.
But the horrified reaction from Maddie made her think otherwise. Madeline had made it clear that she didn’t want to return to Hawthorne until she had successfully tracked down Cordelia—a means of assuaging her own guilt. But it was too late for that. Abigail’s cancer wouldn’t wait for a flighty teenager who could be anywhere in the country to be tracked down. She had made her amends with Rebecca—or was at least trying to. Now it was Maddie’s turn to come home and put things to rest. No matter how painful or uncomfortable it would be—for all of them.
Chapter 2
THE FOOL
A blank slate, infinite possibilities, new start, change, renewal, and a brand-new beginning, movement, a fresh, exciting new time.
I t’s funny how one phone call can completely change your life, Maddie thought angrily as she packed her bags for winter break.
She’d made her peace that she was finally done with Hawthorne—the past, the betrayal, the pain—and then one day Maddie got a call that changed everything. Maddie’s mother, Abigail Crane, the strongest woman she’d ever known, was diagnosed with cancer. While helping her mother—a woman whom she couldn’t even recall the last time she hugged—was one of the last things Maddie wanted to do, her school therapist suggested that going back to Hawthorne, helping her mother through her chemo treatments, checking in on her aunt Rebecca in the new facility, and finally coming to terms with what had happened to Cordelia, would help with the nightmares. Maddie might finally begin to move on and let go of the weight of it all.
Maddie thought it strange when people whom you expect to be around forever suddenly are at risk of being taken from you. Like Cordelia, her grandmother, Tess, and now, inevitably, Abigail. Even though Maddie made the decision to leave Hawthorne and its secrets and curses behind without thinking twice, now that Maddie knew she only had a limited amount of time with her mother, it all suddenly seemed unfair.
“Come with me, Maddie,” said Luke Bradford as he grabbed a handful of her neatly folded clothes and promptly removed them from her worn duffel bag. “I’ll give you a raise.”
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