I managed to keep up without fucking up. I wasn’t even breathing hard when we reached the hill that overlooked the memorial.
Aunt Irene and Callan were cleaning off the snow, shaking a bouquet of fake flowers free of moisture.
Molly stood near them.
Her hair blew in the wind, and she hugged her arms to her body.
The look on her face, though. Hollow, angry, despairing. It was like the expression I might have imagined on the face of a parent who had lost their child.
What did it mean for a parent to lose their child? They’d lost someone who lit up their life, who they’d invested countless hours into, who was supposed to carry on their legacy. By passing a piece of ourselves and our teachings on to our children, we achieve a kind of immortality.
But Molly hadn’t lost a child. She’d lost someone she’d invested eighteen years into. The person who had a hand in every bit of joy she’d experienced in life. The one who was supposed to create her legacy. Herself.
She was face to face with her own death, her own mortality, too late to do anything about it.
“It’s not fair,” she said.
I could see Aunt Irene flinch, looking away, as if she’d heard the words. Her hand clenched.
“I’ve had nightmares like this,” Mags said, her voice barely audible.
“We can’t just stand by and let this happen.”
“Whatever’s happening,” Mags said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’d do something if I could but…”
“This is on me,” she said. “I’m the one who gave her too much of my personal power. How was I supposed to know she’d hoard it or whatever it was?”
She looked down at the ghost and the two family members of the girl she’d helped kill.
“Balls,” Mags said.
She started down the slope. I went with her, because it was the only route available.
“Why me?” Molly asked. Her voice carried.
Callan moved one little wreath with a band of paper extending across it, shaking it with a touch too much force. He looked angry.
The ghost was affecting the pair.
“Sorry if I’m interrupting, but-”
“You are interrupting,” Aunt Irene said.
It was a sharp change of tone from her earlier discussion with Callan. If I hadn’t known anything about Molly’s presence, I might have dismissed it as lingering emotion from her ‘discussion’ with Rose. With the context…
Fuck, I could only assume Molly was pissed.
“I come down here regularly,” Mags said.
“Yeah, I know,” Aunt Irene told her. “I’ve seen you. I wondered, you know, why you’d have any interest. I feel pretty damn sure you’re not one of Molly’s friends.”
“I wish I had been.”
“I bet you do,” Aunt Irene said. “But I’d drive by, and I’d look at you standing there, most of the days after school, and I’d be curious. Then I saw you at Hillsglade House, standing in the driveway, and it clicked.”
“Whatever your assumption is, I’m pretty sure it’s wrong.”
“You’re an opportunist. Get close to the heir of the house, win them over, and then when the house is sold, you’re the person who’s helped them out all along, so naturally they offer you something.”
“No- that’s not what I was doing.”
“Are you trying to manipulate me too? Or did Rose think she could use you to mess with me?”
“No!”
“Then what? You categorically deny it all?”
“I deny some of it?”
“Only some?” Callan asked.
“Please,” Mags said. “I just wanted to…”
“To what?” Callan asked, almost snapping, his answer was so quick. “Why did you feel like you had to interrupt us? My mother is clearly upset, and you’re upsetting her more. Clearly you must have had a good reason.”
His gaze was hard, almost glittering with anger.
When Mags didn’t answer, he said, “You had a reason for visiting too. Morbid fascination?”
“No! That’s-”
“Were you in love with her or something?”
“No!”
“You had some motivation for showing up every day. It’s not like my mother and I aren’t going to pay attention to it. Even Christoff asked about the strange girl that was visiting, and he really didn’t need more stuff to worry about in the aftermath of all this. I think we deserve an answer. What’s going on? Was my mom right? Was it greed?”
“N-”
She didn’t get a full word out, because he kept talking, “Are you here because of opportunism?”
“That’s…” Mags floundered for a word. “It’s not like you’re thinking.”
“That’s not a no,” he said. His voice had a note of triumph in it, but there was absolutely zero joy in it. “I think it’s exactly like my mom theorized.”
“It isn’t, honest,” Mags said.
She’d said she’d had nightmares about something like this. She’d had a role in murdering Molly, and on a level, she’d gotten away without a hitch. Only now it was coming back to bite her, almost in the worst way possible.
“Then convince me. Explain,” Callan said, and his voice was loud and sharp enough that it was only a half-step away from him yelling at Mags.
“I can’t,” Mags said. “Listen, I’ll go, and I’ll come back when you’re done.”
“Maybe, if you can’t look us in the eye and explain why you’re so invested in this, you shouldn’t come back,” Aunt Irene said.
“Maybe,” Mags said, quiet, “But I will.”
“Pisses me off,” Callan said, looking away, very aggressively shaking snow from a card that was inside a sealable freezer bag. He wiped the moisture from the outside of the card on his pant leg.
Mags had turned her back, starting to leave.
I heard Molly speak, as Mags put her foot on the slope.
“You ordered the goblins to kill me.”
Callan moved, as if a thought had just happened to come to him. With the angle of the mirror, I could only see a slice of him, but everything in his tone of voice made it very easy to imagine his expression. Incredulity.
“Is it guilt, that brings you back here?”
His voice carried.
The angle of the hand mirror changed slightly. I could imagine Mags clenching her hand around the handle.
Molly was doing her own thing, now.
“That,” Callan said, and he put a special kind of emphasis on the word, “Is even less of a no than your response to the greed thing.”
“It was clutching at opportunity, not greed,” Mags said, her voice so quiet that Callan didn’t have a chance at making out the words.
“If you’re going to say something, say it loud enough for us to hear!” Callan called out. “Start with why the fuck you’re so guilty about my sister dying!”
Mags wasn’t functioning at her best. She wasn’t even functioning by halves.
This wasn’t her. Not the her I knew from here, and not the Maggie that Padriac had been pretending to be.
“Mags,” I said, keeping my voice low.
“They killed me and they took me to pieces!” Molly raised her voice. “They used corkscrews. They used needles!”