Page 90 of The Narrow

Maybe I can bemorewith her.

There’s the old chapel. The weathered gray stones blend in with the darkness. The stained glass windows are caked with grime, grown over with ivy.

I skirt around it. The gap in the fence is up ahead. I’m two steps away when a voice sounds behind me.

“Eden.”

I stiffen. Turn. Behind me, wearing a black wool coat and leather gloves, his breath fogging as the rain hisses around us, is Geoffrey Oster.

“What are you doing here?” I demand.

“You are the one who is sneaking out past curfew and past the fence,” he says. In the darkness, he’s exactly as he was forty years ago. Except for his voice, cracked through with age. The weight of years—and, maybe, the weight of what he did.

Now there’s fresh fear singing through me. Geoffrey Oster killed Maeve to keep her from Grace. What will he do to keep that secret?

“I know what you did,” I say. I mean for it to come out strong and accusatory, but it’s barely a whisper.

“What I did,” Oster repeats, stepping closer.

I flinch back.

He halts. “You mean keeping Maeve and Grace apart.”

“You killed her,” I say. “You knew you couldn’t keep them apart forever, so you killed her.”

He makes a frustrated noise. “Eden, I did not kill Maeve Fairchild.”

“I saw it. She showed me,” I say, my voice wavering. He can’tfool me. However kind and fatherly he tries to be now, I know what he did.

“Veronica told me what’s been going on.” Betrayal lashes through me, anger chased by a yawning grief that almost makes me stagger. She knows what he did. How could she go to him? “I didn’t want to believe it at first. I don’t believe in ghosts. Or I thought I didn’t. That’s what I kept telling myself. When Delphine Fournier got sick, when people saw the Drowning Girl... I told myself there was some rational explanation for all of it. When you asked me about Maeve and Grace, I started to doubt myself. And then Veronica came to me, and I realized what a fool I’d been all these years to deny the connection.”

“You’re saying you didn’t know about the Drowning Girl?” I ask.

“I promise you I didn’t,” Oster says.

“Then why did you kick me out of Abigail House?” I demand.

He cuts a hand through the air in a frustrated gesture. “For exactly the reasons I told you. I was worried about your well-being. It was clear that something was happening to you. I never intended to bar you from seeing Delphine, but I had to intervene. Now, please, come with me. We can sit down and talk about what’s been going on,” he says. He sounds genuine. But then, anyone who’s gotten away with killing a teenage girl has to be a practiced liar.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I say.

It would be so easy to get rid of me. He would say I’d been acting erratic. Missing classes, grades plummeting, not spendingtime with my friends. Zoya or Ruth or Veronica would reluctantly admit to finding the pills. They would try to explain that it didn’t mean what people were making it out to mean, but by then it wouldn’t matter.

It would be simple to tell a story that didn’t leave any ugly unanswered questions behind. The mystery of what happened to me would vanish beneath the water with my body. Not even a ripple to mark it.

“Eden,” Oster says again. He’s an old man, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous. “Come here.”

I spin and dive for the gap in the fence.

The trail is slick. Roots and stones catch at my feet, threatening to send me tumbling. I hear Oster calling behind me, but I’m faster. And more reckless.

The rush of the Narrow calls to me, tumbling and sighing over the black rocks. I skid to a stop well clear of the banks.

“Maeve,” I call. She has to be here. I turn in a tight circle, expecting her to be there in front of me, but I’m alone. Distantly, I hear Oster calling, but I still have time.

Then she’s here. Down along the river, standing on the spur of rock where she stood that night so many years ago. She gazes down at the water, her hands slack by her sides.

“Maeve,” I call. I struggle toward her. She looks up at last, and when she sees me, she straightens. She rushes up the bank and toward me, her steps light and nimble.

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