The Children on the Hill(12)

Vi nodded quickly, yes, yes, yes. “More than anything.” She’d wanted to be a doctor for as long as she could remember. Not a psychiatrist like Gran, but a surgeon like her own father had been. He’d been one of the best in the whole Northeast. That’s what Gran always said, her face glowing with pride. Gran had been giving Vi special lessons: how to dissect frogs and mice, how to suture. Gran said she had a real gift with a scalpel and steady surgeon’s hands. Before Gran became a psychiatrist, she’d trained as a surgeon, so she knew.

“I’m glad,” Gran said now, taking Vi’s hand and sliding her own down until she was clasping Vi around the wrist, her fingers resting on the inner side, pressing slightly, taking her pulse, feeling her heartbeat. With her other hand, Vi did the same thing to Gran. It was something they’d done as long as Vi could remember.

I feel your pulse, Vi would say.

And I feel yours, Gran would answer. Nice and strong. You’ve got a strong heart, Violet Hildreth.

“You’ve got a strong heart, Violet Hildreth,” Gran said now. She smiled at Vi, making her feel warm and glowing. “And a strong will to go with it. I have no doubt that you’ll be able to help me. And to help Iris.”

“How?”

“Find a way in. Be gentle and kind. Include her. Treat her like a sister.”

“A sister,” Vi repeated, feeling the word move over her tongue. She felt a sense that she’d been waiting all this time and didn’t even know what she’d been waiting for. Until now.

A sister.

“And, Violet,” Gran said in a serious voice as she stood and lifted the empty teacup from Vi’s nightstand. “If Iris does start telling you things, I’ll need to know. You’ll have to give me reports.”

Reports! It all sounded so official. Like something Gran would say to the staff at the Inn.

“Do you think you can do that for me?”

“Of course,” Vi told her. “I can type them up!” Vi had a Smith Corona that Gran had given her for her birthday. She loved the clack of the keys, the clang of the bell when she reached the end of the line, the slight smell of oil and ink.

Gran chuckled. “That’s my girl. Verbal reports will work just fine, Vi. And I’d prefer if Iris didn’t know. When she trusts you, as I know she will, I don’t want to make her question that trust. Do you understand, my love?”

“Yes,” Vi said, nodding, trying to look as serious and grown-up as she knew how.

“One more thing,” Gran said. “I don’t want Iris leaving the house. Not yet. She can go out in the yard, explore the woods with you kids, but nowhere else. Not into town yet. And do not take her over to the Inn.”

“How come?”

“I think it would be too much for her right now. Let’s focus on giving her a safe environment here at home.”

“Okay.”

“And, Vi, it’s a secret that she’s here. No one else can know, for now. Not even Mr. MacDermot.”

Vi frowned. Why keep Iris a secret? But Gran’s face didn’t look like it’d hold answers. Not tonight. So Vi only nodded, said, “Okay.”

A sister.

A secret sister.

When Gran left, Vi turned, looked at her nightstand. At the luminous face of the clock, which slipped from 10:13 to 10:14. The ceramic owl lamp with the glowing eyes, turned off now but still watching her. Beside it was a photo of her parents. Eric had the same one in his room, next to his bed. Gran had another photo in her own bedroom of herself and her husband, both young, standing together, Gran’s belly bulging. Vi loved looking at that picture, knowing her father was in there, waiting to come out, grow up, one day meet a girl named Carolyn, get married, and have Vi and Eric.

Vi gazed at the photo now, lit up orange-red by the digital clock. She looked at her mother, dark-haired and smiling; at her father, handsome as a movie star, his long surgeon’s fingers resting on her mother’s shoulders. She searched their faces, as she did each night, for some trace of recognition, of memory.

She knew the stories by heart, the ones Gran told: how her mother named her Violet because when they first brought her home from the hospital her eyes were such a deep, rich blue, they looked almost purple.

She thought of the accident that had killed them. The accident that she and Eric had somehow survived.

Her father had been driving that night. They were coming down from the mountains, where they spent each summer in a cabin on a lake with water so clear you could see all the way to the bottom, even in the deepest part. You could count the fish beneath you as you swam. Vi had tried and tried to remember that lake, those fish. She’d prayed over and over to the God of Memory, and sometimes she was sure she did remember floating in the water in a little blue life jacket while her mother drifted beside her and shimmering fish swam below.

When she tried to remember the accident, it got all mixed up in her mind. Images of the lake and the fish twisted together with the screeching of tires. The crashing of metal and glass blended with the lapping of waves and her mother’s soft laughter, the feel of the life jacket (or was it the seatbelt?) tight around her, keeping her safe.

When she asked Eric what he remembered about the accident, he always turned from her, tucked himself away like a turtle going into its shell, and said, “Nothing.” He didn’t like to talk about their lives before.