A Lesson in Vengeance(26)

“You’re not missing much.”

That was a lie, although I’m not sure why I told it. I’d loved my grandmother’s house. I loved the way the sea crashed in against the rocky shore. I loved the dunes held together by repetitive wind patterns and tall grass. I loved the way the dock felt under my bare toes, the smell of salt, and the crabs we caught in little wire cages.

I’d also loved the sound the steam made as it escaped the crabs’ shells when we boiled them alive.

Are they screaming? I’d asked my grandmother, simultaneously horrified and fascinated, and she’d covered the pot with a lid to stop me watching.

“Where in Georgia?” I ask. The conversation has fallen into a silence that doesn’t feel entirely natural. Or maybe it’s that I want Ellis to keep talking about herself, about mundane things—hometowns and summer holidays—normal topics normal people discuss.

“Savannah. Does your grandmother still live in that house?”

“She died a few years ago. The house belongs to my aunt now.”

“Too bad.” Ellis pours the marbles back into their bowl. “You must miss her.”

I dip my hand into a basket of lace shawls that smells like dust. Ellis examines a sculpture of a soldier astride a rearing stallion, the horse’s mane tangling in the wind.

My grandmother died three years ago now. Sometimes it’s hard to remember the topography of her face or the sound of her voice. I wonder if we all fade from memory so quickly after we pass. I wonder if one day I’ll forget what Alex sounded like, too.

“Isn’t this much better than class?” Ellis asks when I don’t answer. “Why sit in a stiff metal chair staring at dozens of laminates”—she trails her fingers along the line of the horse’s flank—“when you can touch?”

I stare at the movement of her hand, a work of art in itself somehow: elegant knuckles and almond-shaped nails, a smudge of ink on her thumb.

She catches me looking. I draw one of the shawls out of the basket; I drape it over my shoulders, a mourner in white.

This time, I smile. “It’s better.”

Ellis laughs and steals a wide-brimmed hat from a nearby mannequin, perching it atop her head. It makes her look like a character from an Agatha Christie novel; she has become a hard-boiled detective in herringbone with a nose for blood.

“I think you’re missing something,” I say, and pass her an ebony walking stick, half bowing like a Victorian valet for her mistress.

“Perfect.” She raps the foot of the cane against the floor, playing her own part with aplomb. “Carry on, madam.”

I hook my arm through hers, and we meander through the maze of artifacts, maneuvering around scratched furniture and piles of old license plates. Ellis digs up a pair of pince-nez, and I find myself in ivory lambskin gloves.

I spot a cast-iron kettle that looks ancient, like it might date back to the eighteenth century, and I wonder if it really does—if one of the Dalloway Five might have used it, if something of their ousia, their essence, would cling to any object they’d touched.

“Don’t you ever wish you could go back?” Ellis murmurs, gaze turned up toward the chandeliers; their light glitters off the lenses of her glasses. My gaze snaps away from the kettle, back to her. “To some other time,” she says, “when things were a little wilder. When the rules were a little less clear.”

It’s the opposite of the usual line. A simpler time. A time when a lady was a lady.

“Maybe. I hadn’t really thought about it.” I rub the edge of a tablecloth between my thumb and forefinger but feel only the friction of my age-softened gloves. “I suppose it depends on where I was, too. I wouldn’t want to get burned at the stake as a witch.”

“Oh, but can you blame them? You are a witch. I don’t doubt you would have poisoned the village crops, salted their fields, and led their daughters into temptation.”

My breath freezes in my lungs. But Ellis isn’t even looking at me—she has a painted figurine in hand and seems very interested in the whittle-work.

For a second all I can do is stand there, sucking in air and clenching my fists; the leather creaks as it stretches over my knuckles.

And then, at last, I manage to push the words past my throat:

“Just their daughters?”

Ellis glances back. She’s taken off the pince-nez; the frames dangle from one idle hand. “It takes one to know one.”

It isn’t an accusation. It isn’t anything. It’s…a statement. Of fact.

I take off the gloves.

Ellis is still watching. She watches me fold the gloves and place them on the table, watches me pretend to look at the tablecloth embroidery.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she says.

A dry laugh rasps out of me. “I know that.”

“Are you ashamed?”

“Of course not.” The words are sharper than intended. I grit my teeth and try again. “No. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to tell everyone.”

Ellis holds up both hands, palms out: a surrender. “Fair enough. Forget I said anything.”

Only now that the seal has broken, it’s impossible to go back. And maybe I don’t want to forget what she said.

Ellis heads into the next room, and I trail behind her like a second shadow. She hasn’t told anyone, either. If she had, I’d have heard about it. It would be in the interviews, the profile pieces.