Page 83 of The Narrow

“Eden. Come in,” she says unnecessarily as I enter. She wears a sleeveless red silk blouse and black trousers, diamond earrings, eyeliner applied with engineered precision; I’m frizzy-haired and clad in maroon, but I straighten my spine and refuse to be intimidated. I take the seat across from her. “What do you know, Eden?” she says at once.

“I came here to ask you that,” I say.

She waves a hand. “I think we’re past the point where it’s useful to hide anything from you. I’m just trying to save time by not telling you what you already know.”

“I know about the Drowning Girl. I know that she comes here,” I say.

Madelyn flicks her thumbnail with her middle finger, making a distracting clicking noise that makes my skin crawl. “Yes. She does. She started coming for Delphine as soon as we brought her back to campus. Any rainy night.”

“The water hurts her because of the Narrow,” I say.

She dips her chin in confirmation. “The school is on a well-water system. The groundwater is contaminated with the water from the Narrow. And the rain—I don’t know if it’s because some of it comes from the Narrow or if it’s because it was raining the night that poor girl died, or something else entirely.”

“It was never about distilled water at all, then,” I say.

“Anything from off campus is fine,” Madelyn confirms. “And it seemed to be enough. I really thought we’d done enough to protect her, but then Aubrey...” She presses her fingertips to her lips, looking away. I lean forward.

“Aubrey started to see her.”

“I never would have knowingly put Aubrey in danger,” Madelyn says. “It’s not as if she confided in me that she was seeing a ghost. I had to piece it together later. I wouldn’t have let her stay if I knew.”

“But you let me move right in.”

Madelyn rakes a hand through the air, frustrated. “Aubrey was fine for years. I had no idea it would escalate so quickly with you. As soon as I realized what was happening, I was going to go to Oster and tell him it wasn’t working out. I would pay your tuition, and you would be safe somewhere else. But he’d already made the arrangements.”

“Do you know who she is? The Drowning Girl?” I ask.

“I believe her name is Maeve Fairchild,” Madelyn says. She speaks readily, and her tone is one of relief to finally be able to tell someone.

“Does Oster know?” I ask.

“I don’t know how much Geoffrey has worked out,” Madelyn says. “Or how much he believes. He’s certainly happy enough to take my money, and he wouldn’t want anything about Aubrey’s accident to tarnish the reputation of the school, so he’s smoothed things over. But I think he feels more comfortable existing in a state of deniability.”

“So he can pretend there’s nothing supernatural happening while keeping his biggest donor happy,” I note.

“There are perks to wealth,” she acknowledges.

“Madelyn,” I say. My mouth is dry, my pulse racing. “What exactly is wrong with Del?” I already know. Or at least I think I do. But I need her to say it.

“Delphine told you the story of what happened to her twin,” Madelyn says. She wets her lips. “Delphine never had a twin. But Grace Carpenter did.”

The missing pieces fall into place, confirming what I had already guessed. The reason that Maeve is so inevitably drawn to Abigail House—to Del. She’s looking for Grace. She isn’t only chasing the past when she returns again and again to that house. Grace has been there all along.

“She’s not Delphine, is she? She’s Grace,” I say, barely above a whisper. Somehow, she’s Grace.

The girl I got to know.

The girl I fell for.

The girl I kissed.

I want to scream, or run, or weep. Instead I force myself to sit still and pretend that everything I understand about the world isn’t coming apart at the seams.

Madelyn shakes her head. “She is Delphine. And she is Grace. Like an amalgam of the two, combined into a single personality. Both of them and neither of them. She doesn’t know,” she adds quickly. “Sometimes she thinks Grace’s memories are dreams or daydreams. Sometimes she works them into her memories, finding places where they’ll fit, and I don’t contradict her—it’s important not to contradict her, because if you do...”

“She remembers that she’s dead,” I say, thinking of Maeve rearing back, her wounds reopening. “That’s why the water hurts her. It hurtsGrace.”

“There are things that help. Keeping her here, in this house—it seems to have been a haven for her in life. She only grew settledenough to stop having fits when we brought her here,” Madelyn says. “It’s a delicate balance. Keeping things familiar, but not enough that she truly remembers. Encouraging the parts of her that are Delphine without alienating Grace. That balance is all that is keeping her alive. I don’t always know which parts are which. I don’t think I care anymore. She’s my daughter. Every part of her.”

---