You should have let her die. Emily will never be right.
I’m sure my heart stopped cold inside my chest and paused, waiting, not daring to interrupt what I so desperately wished I couldn’t hear, and dreaded with every unmarked beat. I could hear Emily’s breath grow as big as the room and spill out the door to fill the space between me and my parents. The light swept through the room again, jumping as it moved past the doorway to reach the other bed where my brothers lay, asleep, and then quickly ran out the window. I placed my hands over my ears.
Pa’s voice, rarely sharp, reached my muffled ears with little strain. “Never again, Lil. You will speak of this no more. She’s our daughter. We owe her life. Not a word. Not ever.” He moved toward the door. “And Elizabeth will stay on the island.”
I remember slowly releasing my breath as the screen door banged shut, and hearing Pa’s tread crunch along the path toward the fuel shed. Emily had not stirred, but a lock of her black hair, so like mine, tumbled onto the milky white pillow. The light’s beam took another run through the room, and I studied my sister’s peaceful face; her black-lashed sleeping lids shuttering gray eyes so unlike mine, her gentle mouth that had never once spoken a word, but always appeared to be holding a secret. Mother’s footsteps creaked closer, and I squeezed my eyes shut, feigning sleep. She stood above our bed a long, long time, so long I finally fell asleep and never heard her leave.
I realized then that all those things that I thought of as just being part of who Emily was were those same things that meant she would never settle easily into a world outside the small one we had created on the island. We had always been Elizabeth and Emily. The twins. We were inseparable. We were one. I could not imagine Emily thriving in town, sitting in a classroom. And so I could not imagine it for me. That my mother would choose to separate me from her was unthinkable.
As autumn progressed, it was Emily and I who helped with the chores at the light and in the kitchen, bringing in the garden and filling up the pantry. When the days turned cold and wet, my mother had our lessons waiting, and we sat at the kitchen table under the gentle glow of the kerosene lamp with grammar books and math problems. Emily never learned to read or write or figure out addition and subtraction. She spent her time covering pages with pencil drawings of butterflies and birds instead of working out sums or marking nouns and verbs. Mother said nothing, her lips set in a tight line as she collected the pages and tucked them away in a drawer in Pa’s desk.
Mother knew there would be many cold, dark months ahead of us; when the late autumn days dawned mild and sunny she let us run out of the house, abandoning our schoolwork on the table. I missed Charlie’s conversation now that our trio had shrunk down to the silent Emily and me. But my sister and I shared something different; a language that needed no words and rested on easy familiarity. We relished the silence of the island, the routine of a keeper’s life, and the freedom to fly as free as two gulls.
Pa seemed content to have Emily and me help him out with the chores now that the boys were gone. He would hand us both cleaning rags and show us how to polish the light’s lenses in larger and larger circles so we didn’t leave streaks. I made sure that I always went after Emily so that he wouldn’t see the marks she left behind. Mother had us gather driftwood off the beach and pile it in the woodshed to use as kindling in the stove during winter. Emily came along to help, wandering along the beach, picking up sticks and moving them a few feet before placing them back down again. I tried to get her to fill her arms, having her stretch them out as I lay one bare and bleached limb over the other, making sure I didn’t give her more than she could handle. We set off together, but I always arrived alone, Emily having stopped along the way, distracted by the buzzing of a bee in a late-blooming dandelion or the musical dance of a goldfinch announcing its passage through to warmer winter destinations. I always made sure the pile of kindling in the woodshed was more than we needed.
I never forgot Mother’s words. With each wave that crashed against the base of the cliff near the fog station, I heard the Lake echo: You should have let her die. Emily will never be right.
Once I caught her watching Emily, when she didn’t know I was watching too. Emily was in one of her trances, her face lifted up to the sky and mouth open, forming unintelligible sounds, talking to the wind as it picked up a handful of golden brown poplar leaves and chased them around her billowing skirts. She stood on the headland of the island, her raven-black hair whipped into a tangle, in conversation with the sea. And then, with the wind her partner, she began to dance. Mother simply turned and tossed a basin full of soapy wash water into the bush before heading back inside.
Emily. My other half. My sister. Our lives and hearts and very beings so entwined that each could not exist without the other. She was a spirit, haunted by the Lake, lingering between two worlds, fragile and vulnerable. And so I was surprised to discover that it wasn’t Emily but I who was the ghost.
27
Elizabeth