I nodded mutely and followed my niece as she strode, purposeful and self-possessed, back through the gate against the throng, giving waves and short nods in response to the greetings coming toward her from students and teachers. She was tall, like Mandy, wiry where I was all softness. She led me to a set of stone steps around the back of the building, in front of a sign that said FIRE EXIT.
She dropped her bag and sat. I leaned awkwardly against the railings.
“I guess you saw me at the funeral,” she said to her hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t come over. Introduce myself. Maybe I should have, but it was already kind of too much, you know? I never met her, but I’m sure you know that. My dad barely even talks about her. I don’t really know why I went. Dad still has no idea that I did.”
I let each scrap of information sink in. I hadn’t seen Ida at the funeral. I’d been imagining her to be a little girl, perhaps unaware of her biological family, having been, I’d assumed, adopted as a baby. I could never have imagined this bright, vibrant girl my own age, tall and slim, popular and beautiful: a more wholesome version of my sister. This girl who was everything I wasn’t. This girl who knew my name.
“She never mentioned you,” I whispered.
Ida closed her eyes, briefly, as if she’d felt a sudden pain.
“Then why are you here?”
I dropped down onto the step beside her. She wasn’t what I’d expected, but I knew things she didn’t. She was poised but nervous. I could tell by the way she twisted her hair around her fingers, brushed dust from her jeans, straightened her bag on the step, touched her hair again.
“I’m here because she sent me.” I looked at my niece as I said it. “Ida. Mandy. Your mother. She isn’t dead.”
The look she gave me was sharp, direct. “I was at her funeral.”
Because there was no way of making any of this less surreal for either of us, I took out Mandy’s letter, and the brief note she’d left on her bed before she disappeared. Ida read the note first. I watched her eyes take in every word.
Going to the end of the world.
I watched her eyes narrow to make out the second tear-smudged sentence, made all the less legible now by repeated foldings and unfoldings.
Give all my love to my daughter.
I watched her eyes fill with tears.
“I found this stuck in my garden gate this morning.” I touched the letter she held in her lap. Ida twitched reflexively, as if afraid I would take it from her. “It’s how I knew to come here.”
Ida said nothing. She started to read.
It was a long letter. A long story. She didn’t rush through it, like I did, hands shaking, breath held. She took her time, drank it all in. She didn’t once look up from the page.
In my pocket, my phone pinged a message. It was Finn.
Where the fuck are you, Deena? Rachel’s now calling Mam because you said you’d be staying here for a few days. I had to bullshit about you being up in my room but not wanting to talk. Mam’s only buying it because of the funeral. Haven’t heard from you all day. Starting to freak out here. Tell me where you are or I’m calling Rachel
Don’t freak out. I’m in Galway. Explanation forthcoming.
Finn’s response was immediate and contained an uncharacteristic number of exclamation points.
WTF ARE YOU DOING IN GALWAY THAT DOESN’T HELP IN THE SLIGHTEST!!!!!!!
A small sound from Ida, not quite a gasp. She turned over the last page of the letter, then turned it back again.
“That’s where it ends?”
I put my phone down, ignoring Finn’s incoming call. “Yeah. With the address of your school.”
Ida took a breath, shook her head. “She sure could tell a story, your sister.” She stacked the pages so their edges aligned perfectly, shushed the lot back in the envelope. “What’s the deal with this curse she talks about at the start?”
I tried to shuffle my thoughts into order. The deal with the curse was still a little blurry to me. “Mandy believes there’s a curse on the Rys family, heralded by three banshees.”
“Banshees,” said Ida, one eyebrow raised. “Like ghosts who scream before somebody dies.”
“That’s right. Only here the scream is part of the warning.” I had to swallow hard before speaking, brushing aside the scream of the woman in the bay, the long gray hairs wrapped around the gate. Nowhere in Mandy’s explanations had she said anything about actually seeing these ghosts. “And it doesn’t necessarily announce a death.”
“So what is it then?”
“Before she left, Mandy told me that there’s a curse on the bad apples of our family tree. That our family will cast off anyone who doesn’t conform, and when these bad apples turn seventeen they fall off the family tree, metaphorically speaking, and the curse comes to them. You’ll know you’re a bad apple—that you’ve been cast off and cursed—when the banshees come for you.”
Ida’s eyebrow was still raised. “What happens when they come for you?”
“She says it’s different for every bad apple. Losses, tragedies, even death maybe. Things that could be chalked down to bad luck, but that are really a curse on bad apples.”
“Do you believe this?” Ida asked. “I kinda can’t tell.”
I let out a sigh. I kinda couldn’t tell either. “I don’t know. Mandy has always believed in all sorts of things that I haven’t. But there are things I can’t explain. And honestly there are things that are starting to scare me.”
Ida nodded at me to go on.
I recounted my vision of the banshee in the bay. How there were silvery gray hairs caught in my window, tangled around the handle of my gate when I found Mandy’s letter. As I spoke, I watched my niece’s face carefully for signs of disbelief or scorn but found neither.
“Eyes play tricks sometimes,” she said.
“I know. I’m not discounting that. That’s probably what’s happening. My sister told me all these things and my imagination ran with them. I’m just telling you what I think I saw. I’m just telling you the things I can’t explain. Like the fact that this letter appeared in our garden gate this morning, almost a week after she disappeared.”
“You know she could have sent this before she died.”
“She didn’t.”
Mandy’s daughter considered me. “Is it crazy that I kinda believe you?”
“Only as crazy as this whole situation.”
Her gaze was unwavering, cool but curious. “I think I saw her after the funeral,” she said.