The Ghost of Providence

Interlude I

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As she awaited Olivur and her father’s return from the funeral, Halle watched as the sun set low from a rustic, brown leather couch, below a wide, encompassing window, beside a long bookshelf that spanned the left wall of the entry room, where she sat waiting.

It felt like she was always waiting.

Waiting on her brother to become a part of their family. Waiting for her father to understand where they belonged.

It felt like she was always alone.

Her immediate family just didn’t understand. Grandpa said that before we were trapped here, we were kings and queens. They were respected and feared. And when they could finally leave this island, they would be so once again. So why do they act like that? Slumming with Brigs is what father has always done, but at least Olivur should understand.

Halle shook her head. Why would he engage with a cobbler’s son? She couldn’t understand, and she was growing tired of waiting for him to change by himself. It had been too long already.

Maybe I can do something.

“What can we do to help him, you think?”

From the couch, Halle heard the door to the house open along with her brother’s insipid questioning and her mouth upturned. Why must he be like this?

“I’m gonna leave him some money in the morning, so he can focus on school for right now. That should help the boy a bit.”

“Wait.” The two turned in surprise to find Halle stood upright with arms crossed. “You’re giving our money to some random boy just because his life got a little hard?” She narrowed her eyes. “We already pay for him to go to school. Our family set up that scholarship that he uses, Grandpa set it up as an excuse for you to get your little girlfriend in, and now her son uses it, so we give him enough already.” She had a way of enunciating that clipped her points into contemptuous little things.

“I’ll never understand why you care so much for a boy from the Brigs in the first place, especially when you were the one who—“

“Enough!”

Her father rarely yelled at her, and maybe it was why she was so outspoken and vindictive, but he did so now and the hair along Halle’s back stood on end.

“There is no we here. That is my money, and I will do with it what I want,” her father stated with finalty and shooed her brother to his room, which the rat bastard fled to in a scurry. He too rarely saw his father upset, and he was too much of a wimp to be there for it.

Watching Olivur peel into the living quarters for good, her tall father then turned his reproachful eye her way.

It frustrated her. Why was she the only one he was angry at? He always takes that boy’s side.

“Halle, you have no place to tell me what to do, so listen closely to what I have to say about this,” he scolded. “That family has done more for us than you will ever know. I’m sorry, but they are more than what they seem to you. They are more important to me than any monetary value, so I have no problem attending Jacob’s funeral. Just like I have no problem lending Corbyn some money when his father has just died.”

Halle tugged at the ends of her hair, prying the roots away from her scalp in painful sorts. “Why! Why are you acting like this?! You hated that cobbler, I know it! I heard you two arguing the night he died! So why are you defending him now! I don’t get it, you killed him!” She screamed in a hush. As upset as she was, she understood nobody could know what she had just said.

She watched her father’s reaction, and hoped it would change, hoped that he would agree with her and tell her that it had all been an act to throw off suspicion...but all she got was a vacant stare.

“I did not kill Jacob Pane.”

Halle crossed her arms. “He disappeared the same night he came here and you expect me to believe that?”

He said nothing.

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“What was he even here about then?” She had heard the shouting and knew the voices doing so, but the thick walls around her father’s office had made it hard to hear exactly what was said.

“He wanted something from you, I heard that much.”

Once again, her father refused to answer the question. Instead, he continued to stare at her as if she were a stranger to him. And she didn't like it.

“What we talked about was of no concern to you, Halle. What should concern you is the idea that I might actually have killed Jacob. He was my best friend.”

Halle narrowed her blue eyes and stared into her father’s. Why is he lying? She didn’t understand. But if he wanted to play the part of mourning friend, she would have no part of it. Before he could try to cover his plot up further, she flipped her hair back and stormed to the living quarters Olivur had run off to earlier.

I know he killed him, she ground her teeth. So why does he continue to lie to me like this?

***

Hugh Massey loomed below the scaffolding of the door to his family home, distraught as he watched his friends walk to their own, homes also built along the gully wall.

He had been in this exact spot when he opened the door for Corbyn’s father that night so long ago it felt like to him. The night he disappeared...and it was what made him feel as if his innards had been twisted in knots. That he had attended the funeral of a man in his own family and not known whether his father had any part in the man’s disappearance.

It made him feel horridly twisted indeed.

“Hughey! Close the door a’ready!” his father shouted from the living room with a slur.

Hugh closed the door with a sigh. We jus’ got home and the old man’s a’ready on his second bottle.

“It’s finna be a hard night,” he muttered, making his way inward within the house. Emerging from a door that led from the hallway and into various rooms, Hugh entered the living room with a haunted scowl as he watched his father down his second bottle. He’d always been an alcoholic, but it had gotten worse after Uncle Jacob disappeared.

“Glad that ‘ole thin’s over, right? Me too,” he garbled behind a mouthful of liquor. “Like the self-pity from that Plat bastard.” His father rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you just tug yerself a’ready. Rich, beanpole Harrowbirds. The whole lot of ‘em.”

Hugh picked up the first, now empty, bottle from the ground and tossed it in the can before turning his eye unto his father. The man was quick to pick up his son’s mood as he stopped drinking to look back, waiting. Neither said anything as the moment grew tense and unnerving.

What do I say, Hugh wondered to himself.

His father rolled his eyes from the chair of thrown together junk and put his bottle down on the floor. He stood up and looked down at his son. “Do you really think I killed that man?”

Hugh said nothing. He’d said nothing from beginning to end so far. He couldn’t quite find the words to say. What even are the words for a situation like this? How should he even say them if he knew? These were questions that plagued him.

“...Did you?”

He said only two words, but their utterance had set a pall upon the room; it became so heavy with unspoken thoughts and feelings. He felt all sorts as his eyes locked with his father’s in quiet observation - and each set viewed the other in lights they’d never thought they could see. There was no good way of asking what Hugh had, but it had to be done else this beast preyed on them unspokenly.

It didn’t mean he liked doing it. Never had he looked at his father in fear and never had his father looked at him so wounded in heart.

The worst part of dredging up baggage of this scale was that only one of them had feelings that were justified. Either his father had killed Corbyn’s and Hugh had every right to feel afraid, or the man hadn’t. In which case, Hugh had thrown the guilt of murder upon his innocent father and questioned every value the man held.

Either way, he awaited an inevitable discomfort following his father’s answer.

“No,” his father sighed. “He was my sister’s husband, Hughey. I’d never in my right mind do something so vile.” He crossed his arms and sagged into his homemade chair once again, allowing himself to sink far enough into it that Hugh thought he may disappear within the disarray.

“I, I was just asking because I know that he came over that night—”

“Yes. Jacob came over to ask me about something.”

“What about, da’?”

His father didn’t answer for a moment, and before he did he scratched at his head with rough disgruntlement. “I don’t really remember much of it. He asked me if I could help him, I remember. And before you ask, ‘what about, da’, he asked if I could help out with Corbyn, cos he thought the boy had magic.”

“Magic?!” Hugh exploded. “I knew he did! Remember what I told you about that fight I had with him?”

“Yuh, I remember.”

“What did you tell him?”

His father groaned. “I told him, I couldn’t help him.”

Hugh knew his mouth was hung open but gave no thought to closing it. “But...why, da?”

The man rolled his eyes. “Cuz it’s not our problem Hugh! We have enough as it is. We don’t need theirs too!” he shouted, pointing around their home of plywood and rusted nails. “Look at this place! Does it look like we have the time to look after someone else’s kid when I can barely give this to mine?!”

Hugh gulped and placed his hands behind his back. “Then how did he disappear then, da’?”

His father downed the remnants of his second bottle and then started on his third. “I don’t know, Hughey. I swear I don’t remember it.” He waved from his seat without turning to the hallway the son had come from. “Just...go, Hughey. Go to bed.”

Hugh nodded and left, and let out a breath of air he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

Phew.

He’d rather his father feel bad than have known the man had actually killed his uncle. He felt bad for Corbyn, but he felt better now that he had the truth.

Hugh let his hand graze against the wall along the hallway in thought, frowning. “But why can’t he remember?”