“Without him, I’m nothing.”
“Without you, he is nothing.”
Undiline shook her head, pulled away, and buried her face in her hands. Lilith watched her with pity but also firm resolve. “I am the head of this family now. My sisters and I will never have more children of our own—I feel that judgment in my soul. If worse comes to worst and Porter can’t be reasoned with, you have a home here, and so does Griffin. We adore him, and we need a child to raise. But I swear to you, if there is any way to mend this breach between you and Porter, I’ll help you. I swear it.”
A soft knock came at the room’s doors. “Mother?” Griffin called. “Don’t you want to come and eat? Kasen is making a butter pudding with oysters in it.”
Undiline stretched out on the room’s broad, canopied bed and flung an arm across her eyes. “Please don’t let him see me this way. Tell him I’m sleeping. I want him to know as little as possible about this upset. And, yes, I know hiding the truth from him is as hopeless as the rest of it. But I love him too much not to try. Our kind can live in secrecy, Lilith, but no’ in despair.”
Lilith stroked her hair, then turned out the room’s light. Standing in the darkness beside Undiline, she whispered, “I do understand.”
The sound of a ship’s horn blasting drew Lilith, Mara, and Undiline to the windows early the next morning. The oaks were bent in the wind; rain fell in silver sheets. In the cove sat the Calm Meridian, a forty-foot sailboat Porter proudly swore he could command in full winds with only Undiline as his mate. The two of them had sailed the tall-masted yacht to South America and back for their honeymoon.
Porter stood on the Calm Meridian’s deck, his black hair plastered to his skull, a yellow slicker slung open carelessly over his khakis and sweater. He swayed as the yacht rocked in the cove’s protected waters. Its sails were furled; the mast probed the rain and mist with barren command.
“Keep Griffin inside,” Undiline cried. He was still asleep in a small bedroom off her suite. She ran from the mansion and down the pathway to the docks. The downpour clamped her white silk robe and nightgown to her tall body. Her coppery hair curled in soaked tendrils down her back. “Porter!” she screamed.
“Stay here,” Lilith said to Mara. “I’ll follow her.”
Mara scowled out the window at the reckless sight Porter Randolph made. “He’s drunk or out of his mind. Be careful.”
Lilith slung a soft cashmere cape around the shoulders of her gold robe. Her hair, the color of rich chocolate then, burst from tortoise-shell combs. As she strode from the mansion’s veranda, the wind and rain took her breath away, and she stared in dismay at Undiline on the dock. Undiline held out both hands to Porter. His handsome face contorted. He shook his head, then placed a fist over his heart.
“No, my darling, no,” Undiline sobbed.
He turned to the yacht’s wheel. The motor made the slightest throbbing in the wind. He guided the sleek sailboat toward the cove’s mouth and the deadly, open Atlantic beyond.
Lilith took Undiline by the shoulders from behind.
Undiline shook. “He thinks he married a demon or such. He does no’ know how to comprehend it. So he’s going out there to die.”
“Sing to him. Sing with all your heart.”
“He does no’ want to hear what he can’t believe!” Undiline pulled away from her and dived into the cove’s churning water. Lilith lunged to a piling and held on as a gust of wind raked her body. She screamed for Undiline to come back, knowing it was useless.
As the Calm Meridian slid into the open water, Lilith saw Undiline reach up from the water and snare a docking line. She climbed aboard and lay on the yacht’s aft deck, then got to her feet and made her way toward Porter. Fog and rain closed around the yacht like a curtain, and Lilith strained hopelessly to see more. They disappeared into the mists.
Pearl and Mara were waiting when Lilith made her way back up the path to the mansion’s veranda. Pearl clung tearfully to Mara’s staunch arm. Both were like windswept butterflies, hair and nightgowns floating in the air. They gazed at her in distress. Lilith waved a hand.
“I’ll go after them alone. If anything happens, you two must care for Griffin.”
“Even you shouldn’t brave this storm,” Mara said.
“Oh, you can’t,” Pearl cried.
“I’ll take the Aqua. It’s strong and fast.” The Aqua was the island’s small cabin cruiser. “Go inside, Mara. Tell Barret to bring me the engine keys.”
But before Mara could go, Judith Beth ran onto the veranda, wringing her hands, her soft blond hair flying. “The Griffin saw his mama and papa from the upstairs window, and he’s gone. He’s gone after them!”
Lilith and her sisters traded quiet looks. This was one child they could save. “We’ll all go find him,” Lilith said.
Lilith’s heart sank when they spotted the Calm Meridian tossing on the deep swells of the open ocean. The mast had snapped and toppled, dragging sails and ropes in the water. The yacht dipped heavily to its starboard side.
Drenched with rain, Undiline was slumped beside the broken boom on the yacht’s foredeck, her arms twined in the rigging. There was no sign of Porter or Griffin. Lilith shielded her eyes in the whipping torrent as she, Mara, and Pearl leaned over the Aqua’s bow.
Barret cut the engine. “I can’t bring us any closer!” he yelled from the cruiser’s small cabin. “Too dangerous!”
Lilith threw off her soaked, clinging cape and nightgown, and sang out grimly. Into the water, my sisters.
Yes, into the water.
Yes.
Mara and Pearl stripped their gowns off. They plunged into the churning ocean after Lilith.
When the three of them reached the Calm Meridian, they grasped the tangled rigging and held on as the yacht lurched and bucked. It will roll over at any moment, Lilith thought. She sang out. Griffin, Griffin, where are you?
She and the others heard a faint, wounded hum in return.
He’s locked below, in the cabin. Dear God, what has happened here? Undiline, can you hear me?
Save my son, came the weakest reply.
Pearl and Mara moaned aloud, and Lilith bowed her head. She’s dying.
“Wait here,” Lilith told Mara and Pearl. Lilith climbed through the ruined rigging and the torn mast. When she looked over the side of the yacht, she saw Porter lying across Undiline’s folded legs, his head in her lap, his eyes open in death. Blood streamed from a gaping wound at the center of his chest.
Lilith clawed her way across the rainswept deck and knelt beside the collapsed Undiline, who was also covered in blood down the front of her body. Oh, my dear, my dear doomed cousin. Lilith cried out at the sight of the equally horrific wound just below Undiline’s ribcage. Lilith took Undiline’s face in her hands and lifted her head.
Undiline opened her dreaming, dying eyes. Lilith, crying, bent her head to Undiline’s and saw everything Undiline had seen.
Mother, why are you and Father leaving me?
Oh, Griffin! How brave you are! We weren’t leaving you. Never. She pulled him from the churning water at the bow of the yacht.
Where’s Father taking us?
Home, of course. Now into the cabin with you, where you’ll be safe.
I want to stay up here with you and Father.
Into the cabin.
She shoved him below and shut the door tightly, then made her way back to the wheel. Porter, my darling, no. Please, no.
Porter Randolph stood on the yawing deck, a heavy-barreled revolver in his hand. I can’t live without you, and I can’t live with what I know about you. I don’t know what you are. Or what our son is. You can’t be real. And I can’t go on if you’re not. He raised the pistol to his heart. She lunged at him, caught his hands, and twisted them away from his target. A tall swell broke over the yacht, flinging them down. The mast snapped. The gun fired.
Undiline felt the bullet tear through her body and fell back, arching, gasping. Porter yelled her name, a
nd suddenly his arms went around her. He knelt on the tilting deck, gathering her to him, trying to staunch the rush of blood from the wound, failing.
How human he saw she was then, dying in such an ordinary way. He begged her forgiveness, he told her he loved her, he raised his face to the wind and rain, he sobbed. And then he grasped the pistol as it slid across the deck near him, put it to his heart again, and pulled the trigger.
Lilith shivered as that sight came to her and held Undiline closer. Undiline sighed her last breath. Save my son, Lilith. And never let him know how this was. Only let him know there was love.
Lilith rocked Undiline in her arms, crying. I swear to you. Only the love.
Mara and Pearl screamed as the ocean suddenly rose up like a hand. The Calm Meridian capsized in a terrible crash of water and ripping wood. Undiline’s body was torn from Lilith’s arms. Lilith plunged as deeply as she could, kicking aside a tangle of rigging, singing out to her sisters.
Here, yes, we’re here, they answered.
She linked hands with them deep beneath the rolling ocean and watched in horror as the yacht sank past them. They trailed it to the bottom. It struck with a sickening collapse, tearing apart at the midsection.
Lilith pointed. There. There he is.
They pried torn planks aside and reached into the ruined cabin. Griffin floated inside, bleeding and badly hurt, yet faintly moving his broken arms. His dark young eyes looked straight at Lilith, and he pleaded with her to save his parents. She and her sisters cradled him in their arms and hushed him.
Remember only the love, Lilith whispered in his mind.
And he began to forget everything else.
C.A. was nearly thirty years old then, rough and ruined and elegant, roaming the waters bitterly, drinking, chasing illusions that could never match the affair he’d had with Mara as a college student. He mourned Porter’s death like a brother and spent days after the storm searching the wreckage for Porter’s and Undiline’s bodies, to no avail. Other Randolphs openly accused Lilith and her sisters of hiding something, something that would have explained the reckless journey that had killed the family’s brightest scion and put his heir, four-year-old Griffin, in a Savannah hospital. Griffin had been found by fishermen on the shores of Bellemeade. He could remember almost nothing about the storm or his parents’ reasons for sailing in it. Nor could he remember having visited Sainte’s Point, or why.
Submerged in grief, Lilith and her sisters revealed nothing, ignored the accusations, and refused to answer the questions.
C.A. roared into the cove at Sainte’s Point alone in a speedboat one cold autumn afternoon and strode up the pathway from the docks. Dark-haired, dressed in rough-weather wool and rubber boots, a beard shadow darkening his harsh expression and haunted dark eyes, he looked dangerous.
“He’s my problem,” Mara said quietly, and went out to meet him alone.
It was the first time they’d spoken face to face in years. He halted before her, and the look they traded seethed with agonized defenses. “Where are Porter’s and Undiline’s bodies?” he demanded.
Mara exhaled slowly. “You accuse us as well? Are you no smarter than your relatives?”
“Don’t play your goddamn games with me. I’m not a kid, anymore.”
“Don’t stand here hating me and my sisters for miseries your cousin brought on mine.” In a rush of anger and pain, she leaned close. “Porter killed her.” C.A.’s shoulders sagged. Mara put a trembling hand to her heart as he bowed his head.
He suspected the truth, and he believed her. C.A.’s eyes gleamed with tears. “She should never have lied to him about what she was.”
“What should she have said about herself, C.A.? What should she have called herself? What was she—what am I and my sisters? Circus freaks? A figment of decent, ordinary human beings’ imaginations? No. We’re a wonder. We’re a marvel. Porter saw her as she really was, and he couldn’t accept her, so he destroyed her.” Mara stepped closer. Tears slid down her face. “There are many ways to exist, C.A. Many ways to love and be loved. Many ways to have your heart broken. Do I horrify you? Do you consider me a monster, a circus freak, too?”
“I consider you a miracle at heart and a monster in your soul.”
“Would you kill me if you could?”
“No.” He looked down at her with a furious love that tore her apart. “I’d kill myself.”
She shivered. When words came, she said softly, “If you ever do that, I shall hate you for eternity.” He reached for her but she pulled away. “Now you understand what happened to Porter and Undiline.” She told him everything, and when she finished, they swayed together for one brief moment of tenderness. She clutched his shoulders and whispered brokenly in his ear. “Do you ever want your family to know how they really died? Do you want some heavy-fingered coroner to pry the bullets out of their bodies? Do you want Griffin to grow up knowing his father shot his mother and then killed himself?”
“No.” C.A.’s voice was a guttural rasp of emotion.
She stepped back from him. He looked as ruined as she. “Then that is a secret you must help us keep.”
“Where are their bodies?”
Mara gazed up at him with quiet resolve. “By the water.”
Lilith, Mara, Pearl, and C.A. stood beside the dais of Italian marble facing BellemeadeBay and the mainland. The faint outline of Randolph Cottage could be seen on the spit of sand where the continent seemed to turn a corner away from the world. The sky was blue, as if a storm had never occurred, but the island’s forest seeped its grief, and the earth around the dais had been churned into sandy mud.
“We wrapped them in lace duvets and gold silk before we buried them,” Pearl said tearfully.
C.A. dropped to one knee and laid a hand on the large dais. The sisters turned their heads as he prayed silently. But when he stood, his face was hard. “Stay away from Griffin.”
“Oh, please, no—” Pearl began.
“That’s not fair,” Mara said, then bit her tongue.
“Stay away from him, or I swear to God I’ll take him to the other side of the world and never bring him back.”
Lilith said as calmly as she could, “Please let us help raise him. You know he’s not like ordinary children. Without us, he’ll forget who he really is. That’s never what I intended.”
“His own mother wanted him to be normal. I’ll make sure he grows up thinking he’s like anyone else.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I said, Stay away from him.”
Lilith searched his face but saw only bitter devotion.
Mara asked hoarsely, “Is this the pound of flesh you have to take? Then punish me, not my sisters.”
“I just want Griffin to forget you all,” C.A. said between gritted teeth. “I want to forget you myself.” He and Mara traded bitter looks. He walked into the forest.
The sisters stood there by Undiline and Porter’s secret grave. The past closed over them, and the future became a dull vision. In the grave, they had also buried their own youth, the memories of children who would never be, their father’s charm, their mother’s smile, Griffin’s magic, Joan Riley’s innocence, and the dead baby daughter they believed she had borne, yet another lost child.
“We saved Griffin, and only Griffin,” Pearl whispered. “How will we ever tell him?”
In that moment, Lilith lost the ability to sing.
“Without a miracle, we won’t,” she said.
26
They say there are tragic water spirits who sing to passing boatmen. Yet as anyone who has heard one of us singing can tell you, there is nothing tragic about the music of the water. It is the singing, not the silence, that matters.
—Lilith
Thirty-five years later, Griffin bowed his head over the gun, which he held on his cupped palms, like an offering, listening to its terrible song. I saw the resignation on his face. He did not doubt the story Lilith had told us. Neither did I. My head ached, and my body was so
re and bruised. I watched Griffin with a quiet mewl of devotion inside me. We were like children, comforting each other in the sharing of grief.
Hurts me.
Hurts me, too.
Lilith laid a hand on his bare shoulder. He looked like a lost wayfarer in drying trousers, the scars on his body blue in the sunlight, his dark eyes haunted. “All these years we didn’t know how to tell you,” she said, “or how you’d react. We feared the truth might destroy you. Without Alice’s influence, I think it would have.”
He nodded and raised those dark eyes to hers, then to C.A.’s face.
“I never wanted you to know how they died,” C.A. admitted hoarsely. “I thought it’d be better if you forgot everything—including how different you were.”
“I see now,” Lilith added, “that our silence did you no good. Alice opened us all to our fate again. Whatever that may be—to love and love passionately and risk the truth is what we must do. What you must do, too.”
Griffin slid an arm around me, and I kissed him. Lilith touched my face, then stroked a fingertip over the white gauze that covered my temple. “You, my dear Alice, are our miracle.”
Everything I might have said to apologize to her and the sisters was locked inside me. Happiness and sorrow, shock and relief, the deepest love for Lilith, Mara, Pearl, and Griffin. I had done the right thing. Something larger than me existed, but I could not name it yet.
“I don’t know . . . ” I attempted, then stopped. “I don’t know,” I could only conclude. I huddled beside Griffin with my feet curled and a soft mauve blanket wrapped around me.
My sisters, along with Riyad, C.A., and Barret, sat around us on the stern deck of the Lorelei, wrapped in other light blankets brought out by anxious Tanglewoods. My sisters were still naked beneath their blankets, and so was Riyad, silver-haired and regal with his blanket discreetly wound around his hips. He stood behind Lilith on the deck and kept the fingers of one hand entwined lightly in the long drying curls at the top of her head. A maroon sunset washed over the ocean and the somber faces around me. I looked from Lilith to Griffin. How do I help him?