Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100859 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Brom and I exchange a bewildered look but follow her flapping cloaks out into the hallway. I meet Crane’s eyes as we go, but they’re still unreadable. I can only imagine what he’s thinking right now. Is this really the Abe that he had been talking about? Is it possible he met Brom while in New York or San Francisco and he changed his name slightly? But if it is Brom, then why is Brom acting like he’s never seen Crane before? It’s like Crane barely exists to him.
Of course, it might all be an act. It’s not as if their affair would be allowed publicly anyway, so he could just be pretending he doesn’t recognize Crane. And didn’t Crane say that Brom nearly broke his heart? Perhaps it ended badly enough that Brom feels guilty. I have no idea, but every second that passes, I’m getting more and more curious and more and more confused.
We step out into the hall with Sister Margaret, and she closes the door to the classroom. She looks at him, then at me, her smile coy, her eyes dancing. “How wonderful to see you again, Brom.”
Brom gives her a faint smile, the confusion clear on his face. “Have we met before?”
“You wouldn’t remember,” she says.
“No,” he says, his smile faltering. “I don’t remember anything.”
“Be that as it may,” she says, clapping her hands together, “it’s so nice to finally welcome you to the school. Did you ever imagine you would be here alongside your sweetheart?” She looks to me now as if suddenly she’s glad I’m here too.
“Brom!” my mother’s voice rings out through the hall, and for a moment, I’m gobsmacked at hearing it until I remember that she rode with Crane and me to the school this morning. That seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Mrs. Van Tassel,” he says to her with a polite nod as she comes running down the hall toward him with her arms open.
“Please, it’s Sarah,” she says against him. While she embraces Brom like it’s her long-lost son, my focus is beyond her.
At the three witches coming down the hall in her wake.
Sister Sophie.
Aunt Ana.
Aunt Leona.
The air in my lungs goes cold at the sight of them, especially my aunts. This is the first time I’ve seen them (that I’ve remembered), and they look nothing like the aunts I saw in my youth. Their faces are nearly identical, which is odd since they aren’t supposed to be twins, and much like it had happened when I first met Sister Margaret, I can’t seem to get a focus on them. It doesn’t help that they have the hoods over their heads, casting their bony features in shadow so that they resemble skulls.
The three of them glide down the hallway like a floating triangle with Leona at the front, her palms pressed tightly together as if in prayer, wearing a smile that’s a little too wide for her face.
“Here he is,” Leona says. Her voice is also not like I remembered. It sounds projected, as if coming from above and below me instead of in front of me, and it’s the coarse voice of a smoker, raspy and drawn-out.
The triangle of sisters stops in front of us, all of their attention on Brom.
“We are so glad to see you here,” Leona says to him. “To have you back.”
She glides toward him and places her hands on either side of his cheeks. “Yes, yes, it is you. We have been looking for you for so long.”
“Everyone in Sleepy Hollow was,” Sarah interjects.
That was true. For at least a year, search parties would go out, up to Boston or down to New York City, searching for Brom. The odd thing was that it wasn’t his parents who seemed to care as much but my mother. I figured it was just because it mattered so much to me.
“We nearly gave up,” Sister Sophie says.
You did give up, I want to say. They may have looked for that one year, but for the years after that, no one even mentioned his name, like he didn’t even exist.
As if hearing my thoughts, Leona’s sharp eyes swivel over to me.
“And Katrina,” Leona says. Less of a smile for me, which is fine because it doesn’t suit her. “I suppose we owe you a nice welcome as well. I apologize that Ana and I haven’t come by to check on you. We hear you have been doing quite well in your classes though. I’m sure in no time you can help get Brom caught up.”
Ana just nods at me, her smile tight-lipped and more like the type of greeting I’m used to seeing from the Sisters. She really does look like Leona though. The only difference is their hair color—Ana’s a greying dirty blonde and Leona’s dark and streaked with white—plus Ana’s nose hooks to the right. How didn’t I know they were twins? And with Sister Margaret and Sister Sophie being twins as well, what are the odds that they are in the same coven?