Page 38 of House of Hearts
This time, it’s not a photograph she’s tapping on but a rather complicated family tree.
“Ernest Hart only had two daughters, so in a sense, the academy was his way of carrying on his name.” I follow the almond tip of her fingernail from Ernest down to his two daughters. “We all know what happened to Anastasia’s branch…and as for Helen, she ceased to be a Hart the day she married Oleander.”
Beneath her name, there’s a bevy of children and grandchildren, and we follow the path from eldest child to eldest child until we make it to Meredith Lockwell-Kirkland.
“I didn’t know your name was hyphenated.”
Sadie shrugs. “ ‘Sadie Lockwell’ sounds a lot better than ‘Sadie Lockwell-Kirkland,’ don’t you think? Plus, my mom says his name is a waste of space on the birth certificate.”
I blink down at Arthur Kirkland and his alleged waste-of-space name. “Erm, is he your mother’s…?”
“Soulmate?” Sadie scoffs. “Hell no. They tolerate each other, but they’re not in love by any stretch of the imagination. Her soulmate is dead. My dad was actually in the Cards when it happened”—“it” carrying the implied weight of supernatural murder—“and marrying Mom was his consolation prize for not breaking the curse…or his punishment, depending on who you ask.”
We move past her mother’s marital problems to photos of the school’s construction (“Tripp thought it might be like the Winchester Mystery House”) and, finally, the maze itself.
“It was relatively common to build elaborate graves beforepeople died, though it had to have been unsettling to play in your own future cemetery as a child,” Sadie says, pointing at the black-and-white images of standing mausoleums. A whole family of graves waiting to swallow up the dead: Ernest, Adaline, Anastasia, and Helen. “Oleander and the others are buried in a separate plot. I don’t think anyone would have blamed Helen if she decided to be buried alongside him, but she chose to honor her late parents’ wishes. Plus, she also felt guilty, I’m sure.”
I pick at the skin around my thumb. “Speaking of Oleander…I saw his face in the boathouse. Was he a student here? Is that how this all started?”
She nods and digs through her stack of papers before retrieving a student acceptance form for him. “Hart Academy had recently made the shift toward becoming coeducational—one of the first boarding schools nationwide to do so—which meant he was a new student alongside Helen and Anastasia. According to Oleander’s entrance interview, he’d lost someone close to him and needed a change of scenery. Plus, he was amazing at rowing, and Ernest Hart wanted to send their team to State, so he was an instant transfer for junior year.”
I hum at that. “And he immediately decided to start dating the Headmaster’s daughters? Plural?”
“It started with Ana, singular. A lot of guys on campus would’ve gouged out their eyes instead of looking at her. Not that she wasn’t pretty, but she was the baby of the family, and breaking her heart was a surefire way of getting on the Headmaster’s shit list. He met her in the boathouse, and she shoved this first letter in his hand the next time she saw him.”
She passes me a stack of yellowed papers in a protective clear sleeve. I’m delicate with them as I lift the pages closer.
Dearest stranger,
My father says I should not engage the men at this academy, but you make it hard to abide by the rules. I hope you don’t think of me as a flirt for this letter. I promise I’m not so vain that I am only enamored by your appearance (though I must confess you cut a rather striking figure whilst on the rowing team). More than that, I am besotted by your gentle-hearted ways.
What was perhaps a stray moment for you has illuminated my entire week. You were kind enough to help me into one of these marvelous swan boats. Not only that, but you called me beautiful, which I must admit I do not hear often. When many others ran with their tail between their legs at my father’s behest, you did not. What good is a headmaster for a father if he acts more in line with a prison warden? Am I not a soon-to-be marriageable woman?
But you probably aren’t interested in my familial troubles. You must be wondering as to the purpose of this letter. Perhaps it is untraditional for a girl to speak her mind so freely, but I have always been one to follow my heart. I have grown rather fond of you and I would be more than delighted if you would respond to my correspondence with your name. How else might I daydream without one?
Yours if you wish it to be so,
Anastasia Hart
PS: If you so desire, toss your response over the locked gate of the hedge maze. Only I have the key to retrieve it.
It almost feels too intimate for me to read. Nothing is overly sensational—what was she going to do, show him her ankle?—but to have one’s heart laid bare for people to see over a hundred years later? I cringe at the thought of it.
“Did he respond?”
“Yeah, right away, actually. For a while there, the two seemed to hit it off, which I’m guessing made the betrayal sting even worse.”
I take the next sheet, and while it’s significantly shorter than hers, it’s ten times more gag inducing.
Dearest Anastasia,
Perhaps your father was right in some regard. You are enchanting enough to make the male populace at Hart lose their heads. I confess that my own research lay neglected in the wake of your arrival into my life. There is no sweeter subject than you. So, tell me, Ana, when might I study you again?
A scholar of the heart,
O
“That was brutal,” I groan, letting the letter fall back with the rest. “Who knew being an incorrigible flirt runs in the family?”
