Maria Ostrowski

THE BONES OF HOPE

PROLOGUE

Edie

***

November, 1898

They tell me the girl in the mirror isn’t real. No one else can see her—not my father, my brother, or my maid—so she mustn’t be real. They tell me she’s a figment of my imagination, a nightmare; fevered delusion. But she’s been there all along, watching me. I can still see her eyes, storm gray harbingers of all that was to come. Whoever she is—a ghost, an angel of death—she knows my secrets.

In my drafty bedroom, the chattering of my teeth competes with that of the glass shade of the hurricane lamp on my nightstand. The wick burns low, casting dim, amber light against the wood-paneled walls of my bedroom. Once upon a time, my rooms reminded me of a ship’s cabin. Captain’s Quarters, is what Tommy and I used to call my suite. Those were happier times. Now, all I see is a coffin, where my family would bury my legacy.

Outside, the sea wind shrieks like a banshee battering the house and lashing the windows with rain. There’s a banging against the wall as if these heralds of death would enter my room, but the sound is too loud to be coming from outside. It is in the room. It is me. My fevered body quakes, shaking the bed and knocking the headboard against the wall, disturbing my nightstand and the mirror above.

Are you watching from the mirror? Help me now.

With a surge of strength, I grip my bedpost, clenching my teeth and willing every muscle to tense, to still. My sheets are soaked with blood, and the fever rages, but I’m still alive. I listen. Straining so that I can hear my bones, buried in flesh. But it’s the cry of a lost soul that I seek. Then, I hear it—the knife-point cry of an infant. The sound is stifled, but real. My boy lives.

Holding the bedpost like a lifeline, I slip off the mattress onto the floor, and crawl toward the hope chest to save my greatest secret. I won’t let them take it from me. I may die, but I refuse for my legacy to be buried as if I never existed.

Out in the hall, the floorboards creak. Someone is coming. Time is running out. I have to make it to the hope chest. As I edge my way closer, trailing blood on the floor, I invoke the girl in the mirror. Remember me. My name is Edie Fairlight. Remember me.

CHAPTER 1

Maya

***

Present Day

The carpeted stairs muffle my tread as I slog to the kitchen. I wish the floorboards would creak, but not even this house acknowledges my existence. Too new. Maybe I’m the first to haunt its rooms.

In frowzy, slept-in joggers and a gray hoodie, I’m a ghost of my former self—or the self I faked anyway—professional, and fine. Since losing my job, I’ve grown foggy-brained, never fully awake, and every day feels the same—walled in. Am I living or sleepwalking the hours?

Job-loss is called termination. A death sentence. The death of an identity.

In the immediate aftermath, self-help articles offered pithy aphorisms that, months later, droop tritely like bunting after the carnival ends. Adversity builds character! Remember self-care. Get up and get dressed! Explore other avenues.

Writers recommend I view this time as an opportunity for personal growth. Focus on family. And this—

Create a new identity.

I’ve been trying. Desperately.

No, that’s a lie. Wanting to try and actually trying are two different things.

My husband and I haven’t been trying lately.

Through the window over the kitchen sink, the April morning glows greenly. Loneliness pulses. We used to dance around each other, making breakfast, grabbing travel mugs, packing snacks. A flirty, chaotic routine. This morning, I didn’t hear Breckon leave for work. If not for the leftover coffee in the pot, it would feel like he disappeared.

Without bothering to reheat the coffee, I pour what’s left in a mug and sip the cool, bitter sludge. Opening the dishwasher, I start to load last night’s dishes. Up and down, I piece a full load. Lost in my satisfying game of breakable Tetris, I load faster until a glass slips and breaks in the sink. The crash reverberates through my veins and sends my heart racing.

Fingers numbing, I grip the sink and glance down at my arms and chest. No cuts. No blood. Not a big deal. Still, my knees wobble, and as I shuffle to a utility cabinet to get a handheld vacuum, I pause. Something’s watching me.

I turn and gasp. Perched on the window ledge, a hawk observes me with keen, golden eyes. A northern harrier with a snow-white breast and gray wings.

The last time I saw one was years ago on Edgar Island, a haunted place that holds a piece of my soul. A place beset by maelstroms where the past eddies, unresolved in the fog.

Growing up, I spent the summers there with my aunt Lucinda, and the harriers nested in the pasture below Rosecliff, our family’s ancestral home. Seeing the bird triggers memories of the island meadow with the abandoned shepherd’s hut, craggy and gray—Rosecliff’s lonely moon.

“You’re beautiful,” I whisper. “Thank you for visiting me.”

Before taking flight, the harrier curtains the window with his wingspan. The light dims, becoming dusky and intimate. In a blink, the bird flies away, leaving my heart fluttering, not with anxiety, but something else. Hope, maybe?

Because today is different. Something living besides my husband saw me. I exist. Maybe I’ll get dressed. Or at least put on a fresh pair of joggers. Maybe.

#

The nightstand clock reads 10:30 p.m. when Breckon’s electric toothbrush drones from the bathroom. I rouse from nodding off, notebook on my lap. I journaled about today. About the bird. About the island. Adjusting the pillows, I sit taller as he enters the room. I have something to share with him. Something to talk about.

“Hey, you didn’t have to wait up.” He smiles distractedly as he chooses his clothes for tomorrow.

“How was your day?”

“Long. Got that presentation with the CFO tomorrow.” At his dresser, he opens a drawer and pauses. “I’m out of socks.”

Dread curdles in my stomach and sends nervous burps up my throat. With his back to me, he drags a hand down his face and exhales.

“You didn’t happen to wash any today?”

“No, I didn’t realize you were out. I can toss a load in now.” Setting my notebook aside, I flip the bedding off my legs.

“Don’t bother. I’m already up. Wouldn’t want to disturb your downtime.”

“Is that a dig?”

“Maya, it’s almost eleven o’clock. I worked late, went grocery shopping, logged in to work when I got home, and I’m up at five. I’m wiped, and I have no socks.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t even see the laundry.”

“It’s been piling up for days!” He tips an overflowing hamper.

So much has been piling up for days. Blood drains from my face as I sink into the pillow, mortified that I didn’t notice the laundry, and now he doesn’t want my help. I’ve let him down. Let us down.

We can’t go on like this. I can’t go on like this.

He leaves with a full basket. Turning off the lamp, I curl into a ball in the darkness. This is about more than the laundry. I’m not who he met.

When he comes to bed, he’s silent. He doesn’t turn over, and the sheets are a cold sea between us.

#

The summons comes the next day in the form of an email from my aunt, Lucinda Winslow—a name that stirs a bittersweet pang. The bold, black subject line reads: Opportunity for you.

The last time I read those life-changing words, I was an intern at Conexus Engineering, hungry to trade in my temporary name badge for a bona fide, employee one. Wearing lipstick, tailored separates, and a pair of steel toes, and with an ear-tucked pencil pointing out from precisely bobbed hair, I was crisp and ready.

Now, turtled in my gray hoodie, I lean into the screen, not even having bothered with deodorant this morning.

Aunt Lucinda writes: After checking on Rosecliff, Ethan Garrett tells me I’ve left the house vacant too long. It needs a caretaker, but I can’t go back to that. Not yet. Personal reasons. Anyway, for Rosecliff to survive another storm season, I need an engineer to manage renovations and move the house away from the bluff. I thought of you. I understand you’ve stepped back from work, but a change of scenery would be good after all you’ve been through—and the house needs you.

Please, Maya. I regret our relationship became collateral damage in your dad’s quarrel with me. I know he wanted you to stay away, but this island is in your blood.

I’m not trying to atone for falling out with your dad. I’m not asking you to understand.

I’m asking you to remember your love for Rosecliff and help me save it, please. If you’ll consider my offer, I’ll send you a contract to review.

Chagrined and jittery as if over-caffeinated, I shut the laptop as if I could shut down the disquiet the name Ethan Garrett triggers. I haven’t only stayed away from Rosecliff because of the family rift and life’s demands, but because of my secret history with someone I left behind. Someone long gone from the island, too, as far I know.

My dad’s request gave me an out. Is my aunt giving me a way back?

Should I leave my husband and return to Edgar Island? The thought of losing Rosecliff causes heartache. A part of me never left after my last summer there, eighteen years ago, and I feel it beckoning me to return.

Before emotion checks my impulse, I open the laptop to the waiting email and hit smart reply: Yes, please send the contract. Then, I book passage for Saturday morning on the Edgar Island Ferry from New Bedford. I feel a rush, purchasing myself a ticket. I’m doing something. I’m changing my life.

A smile blooms—the first in a long time that is not for someone else’s benefit.

#

After buying the ferry ticket, I pull on running shoes. Sleet clicks against the window. Through the blinds, I peek at the raw, April gloom before unlocking the door and jogging down the drive, past my car, shrouded in a gray cover.

Hurry.

Spurring me along the tree-lined road, the word tingles like snowfall on skin. Where does this urgency come from?

Rosecliff. The house on Edgar Island with a forbidden turret wing and, in the walls, stories that whispered through my daydreams. Yes, Rosecliff is where I’ve sensed the word before. And it was like this. A kindling.

When I was little, my imaginary friend used to say it to me. Hurry. A mischievous sprite, she only played with me at Rosecliff. My God, it’s been years since I thought of her. But…

I remember you. I remember you.

I called her Sis, and through Rosecliff’s gardens, I chased her giggles—or were they mine?—as we hid from her brother, who I only knew as The Boy.

A breathless laugh escapes though a cramp stabs my core. Ignoring the pain, I pick up the pace as if I could run to Rosecliff, the last place I felt whole. As I run, trees rustle their leaves and spray cold tears. Flanking the road, dark hills loom with no release. Not like breakers at sea. I need their crash. I need to go home.

I need to tell my husband.

#

When Breckon gets home, I lift the blinds in the dining room, and the evening gapes, gray, like my eyes. Fighting the itch to yank the blinds back down, I sit at the table with my phone.

Am I really returning to work, and the island? Maybe I imagined the whole thing. I tap the screen. Lucinda’s offer and my ticket appear in my inbox.

“Can you put that down?” Breckon side-eyes the device like an uninvited guest and tongs spaghetti onto his plate. “I just got home.”

I set the phone beside my cutlery, like he does every night, and pass him the sauce.

“How’d your presentation go?”

“Good.” He exhales. “Glad it’s over, and I can regroup. Anyway…” He smiles. “You look nice. Did you do something with your hair?”

“I showered.” Avoiding his gaze, I twirl spaghetti on my fork. He’s trying, Maya. Throw him a bone. “Trimmed my bangs, too. Realized I couldn’t see anything.”

Outside, forsythia branches bend and flare in the wind while from the living room, the pellet stove thunders on. He clears his throat.

“So, what’d you do today? Did you go for a run?”

His bourbon eyes are bright, round, and thickly lashed.

My phone dings with an email from Lucinda. Her lawyer drafted the contract. All I have to do is e-sign.

“Hey.” Breckon places his hand over mine, and hugs my cold fingers. “I want to talk to you.”

My heart aches to be pressed against his. To feel warm again, full with life. I want him. But this love hurts too much, and every time we make more, it leaves me emptied and colder. I slide my hand away.

“Your phone interrupts our meals all the time.”

“That’s different.” His jaw tightens. “It’s work, Maya. Someone’s got to pay the bills.”

Blinking back the bitter sting, I open the email, e-sign the contract, and click submit.

“So is this.” I slide the phone across the table.

#

When I tell Breckon my plan, he doesn’t take it well. But then communication, unlike sex, has never been our strong suit.

“Don’t you think we should’ve discussed this first?” he says, stabbing a meatball from a serving bowl.

“I don’t need your permission.”

“I never said you need permission…”

“That’s the implication: that I’m incapable of making a decision. That I can’t do anything without running it by you, first.”

“Maya, you haven’t left the house in months, and now you announce during dinner that you bought a one-way ticket to some island. How do you expect me to react?”

Staring at my plate, I can feel myself shutting down.

“Maya? Maya.” Pause. “Maya.”

My head feels leaden but I lift it and look at him.

“I’m going. You never used to have a problem when I visited job sites. Besides, you’re always traveling for business. This is no different from you coming home and saying you’re off to London.”

“The difference is I always tell you when I’ll be back.” Breckon storms out of the dining room, but I see his eyes, large and white—anger hiding fear.

With a deep breath, I close my eyes and envision the light and color of Edgar Island: the sand and misty sky, the green dune-grass, and the sea-weathered wood of Rosecliff with her roses the color of wine and pull-taffy pink, spilling over garden walls.

The reverie turns storm-dark. A cloud funnels, and a white ship with shredded sails—one I imagined so long ago—thrashes on rabid waves toward Wolf’s Head Reef. Hurry.

I jump when a door slams. Breckon is banging around in his woodshop. Tools clang and a vacuum whirs. I clear the table, wrapping his dinner for later. Then, still feeling like I’m running into a storm, I go upstairs to the guest room, the room that should’ve been a nursery by now, and open the closet to pull out suitcases.

Then I see the clear, plastic bin, tucked away behind winter coats. There’s no hiding what’s inside—satin-bordered blankets, pink- and-blue-spined baby name books, What to Expect When You’re Expecting. There’s the scrapbook I’d started with two ultrasound pictures inside. The cover with the huge sun and the words “You Are My Sunshine” press against the bin’s thick, cloudy plastic as if my son is trapped and suffocating inside. Hurry.

A tingling travels from my hands up my arms and from my feet to my knees. I cannot feel my arms or legs. There is no air in the closet. Heart ramming against my chest, I stumble out of the closet, climbing over the suitcases. My sight goes white, and a whistling comes from me, huffing like a train in the distance. Fight it. Fight it. Fight it.

“Maya?”

He is running up the stairs. Pounding.

Then I’m in his arms, hearing his deep voice, “Breathe!” I clench every muscle resisting him, fighting him. I love him; I don’t want to need him.

When the panic attack subsides, he’s still beside me. Exhausted, I watch him pick up the suitcases. Hot tears stream down my face. I think, He’ll put them back in the closet. He’ll tell me I’m not ready to go somewhere on my own; that I should call my doctor and up my prescription of Ativan. Or, he’ll say, Flush the meds; we should start trying again.

“Breck…” My chest hurts to say his name.

Down the hall, I hear him in the bedroom—drawers opening and closing.

Staggering toward the sounds, I pause on the threshold of the room where we love, watching him pull out my clothes—jeans, t-shirts, cable-knit sweaters—and pile them on the mahogany bed he built as my wedding present ten years ago. Every anniversary, he has built a piece of the bedroom set: the dresser, armoire, and the nightstands. The work of his hands is everywhere in the room.

I approach, our chemistry drawing me toward him. When he looks at me, his eyes are wet and so am I.

“Will you come back?” he says, hoarsely.

That’s what I want. To come back to myself.

Tears sting my eyes. “I hope so,” I say.