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“Fine.” Anything to get him away from me. “Please, just go.”
He bows, and looks at me from under dark lashes as he presses a kiss onto my hand. My breath escapes in a hiss of relief as he stands to leave. Just as he does, Mr. Barrett turns from Father, and before I can yank myself away, I lock eyes with Mr. Barrett, my hand still hanging in the air from the kiss. For a moment everything stops, and I’m back by the pond, light and giddy from being the object of Mr. Barrett’s attention. But this time it’s a deep sense of shame, as if a part of me, a rotten, bad part, has been peeled back and exposed.
Hesitating, Mr. Barrett gives me a short nod and says something in Mr. Pierce’s ear, and then they’re turning to leave. Although he already left a heaping bouquet of white lilies near the grave, Mr. Barrett’s carrying a handful of flowers. When they reach the gate, he pauses, looks around and then tosses them on the ground.
I’m hot. I’m dizzy. And I’m tired in a way I’ve never known before. I don’t care what Mr. Barrett thinks or what those stupid flowers were for. I just want to be home, even if that home is an empty, haunted place.
I jump at the touch of a hand on my arm. “What did that bastard want?”
“I don’t know,” I tell Catherine, and it’s the truth. I don’t believe for a minute that Cyrus came only out of some delayed sense of chivalry.
She bristles. “Well, he has some nerve showing his face here, and today of all days. I hope you told him to clear off and not come back.”
A lump is rising in my throat, so I give her a wordless nod. I don’t have the heart to tell her what a coward I am.
Mother can barely stand. She looks as if all the life has been drained out of her, and she stares around the burying ground with glassy eyes.
“We should get her back home,” Catherine murmurs to me.
As we’re passing under the iron arches of the gate, something colorful against the dead grass catches my eye. It’s the flowers Mr. Barrett tossed aside as he was leaving. Crouching, I pick up the mangled bouquet.
Poppies and foxgloves.
14
TIME SLOWS DOWNto a nearly stagnant trickle of minutes and hours, and yet one morning I awaken and realize it’s been almost a week since that awful day. I want to throw my body against the uncaring hands of the clock. I’m afraid that with every stroke of the hour that my memories of her will fade, and that I will acclimate to the numbness, as if it was always such and she was nothing more than golden-tinged dream.
I wander the house, uneasy and restless. We’ve barely lived here two months but every room holds some memory of Emeline. There was never any need for her to have a room of her own; we always shared a bed in Boston. But Father built Willow Hall with five bedchambers—including a nursery on the third floor—anticipating that we would each have our own bed with room to spare for overnight guests. Many nights Emeline would come tiptoeing down and slip into my bed, where I would tell her stories until she fell asleep, curled around my arm.
Snip pads behind me as I stumble into the nursery. I never spent much time in here, and I assumed Emeline didn’t either. We were always so busy exploring or sprawled out in the library surrounded by stacks of books. She was such an old soul, I forget sometimes that she was just a child of eight. But as I stand enveloped by the heavy silence of the nursery, it dawns on me that she did still spend time here, that she did leave her mark.
Bottle flies hurl themselves at the windows. Joe has been setting out jars of vinegar to trap them, but they don’t seem to be helping much, and I have to bat a few of the more aggressive flies away. I move slowly, running my hands over all the things that used to be hers. A dollhouse complete with a miniature family has been emptied out, the rooms filled with twig dolls and carpets of moss. I crouch down to open her little leather trunk and Snip throws himself down beside me in a sunbeam, watching me with subdued interest through the lazy dust motes.
I run my finger over the lid, Emeline’s initials spelled out in smooth, silver studs. How many times she must have opened this trunk, putting in some new treasure, taking out the others, all of them special because she chose them, imbued them with her own meanings. I close my eyes and inhale, desperate for some lingering scent of her. What did she smell like? Pressing my eyes until they water, I reach for some sliver of memory, but come up empty.
There’s the gold necklace that Mother gave her on her fifth birthday, but Emeline had taken off the pearl pendant and replaced it with an acorn. Mother used to call Emeline her “little pearl,” a rare surprise, found later in life when Mother had thought herself past the age for such miracles. There are some scraps of paper with her childish scrawl from when I was teaching her how to write her name. An embroidery sampler with a crooked alphabet and numbers up to ten.A little farther down I find the pearl strung on a cotton thread and wrapped around a smooth stone. We used to collect stones like that in the harbor. Running my finger over it brings back the sharp, salty air filled with woodsmoke, the gulls wheeling overhead as we ran down the beach with wet hems and sandy shoes. Emeline was always faster, even though she was so much smaller. Sometimes I would whisper a secret word into the wind, and she would try to catch it down the beach. It was almost as if we could read each other’s thoughts, because she always knew the word, even if she was much too far to hear it. I wince with guilt that I didn’t know she was in trouble the evening of the dance when so many other times I could sense what she was thinking, doing.
I’m just about to close the lid when something stops me. A glimmer in the depth of the trunk catches my eye, peeking out from beneath the embroidery. My breath catches in my throat. It can’t be... With shaking fingers, I reach down and pluck it out.
It’s hair. Soft, mousy brown hair, tied in a red ribbon.
I drop it like a hot coal.
How did my hair get into Emeline’s trunk? I don’t remember ever giving her a lock of my hair. That is, not until I placed one in her coffin.
My head goes light and my mouth dry. Well, I must have given her one. Or perhaps she took it upon herself to cut one while I was sleeping. It would have been daring for her, even if she had been in a naughty mood, but I suppose it’s possible. It has to be possible.
I haven’t heard voices or seen cryptic messages in weeks, but now that Emeline has died, all the stress has come back tenfold and my mind is playing tricks on me. I put the hair back, tucking it under the embroidery and covering both with the beach stone. I can’t let my desperate imagination get the better of me.
Closing the lid, I rock back on my heels. There will never be any more runs by the oceans. There will never be any more stones or acorns or little treasures added to this trunk. I will never be an older sister again. All that I have are my memories, and I won’t let them wither and fade with time.
I sit paralyzed like that until my ears buzz with silence and my legs fill with pins and needles. I’ll never be an older sister again, but I am still a sister.
* * *
Mother settles gingerly into her seat at breakfast the next day. She looks thin and brittle, dark smudges in the hollows under her eyes. She helps herself to an egg with shaking fingers, and when she almost knocks over the teapot reaching for it, I swoop in to pour it for her. Since Emeline’s death she’s receded into herself more and more, until it feels like she’s nothing but a ghost, a living shadow. Most days she claims it’s headaches, though anyone can see it’s her spirits, dampened to the point of being extinguished.
“We ought to invite Mr. Barrett and Mr. Pierce for dinner again sometime,” Catherine says lightly.