A Lily in the Light(35)
Esme stared at the masks on the shelf, wishing she could hide behind that smooth, pink stone and look at the world with new eyes. Then she wouldn’t feel like she’d caused what had happened because she hadn’t even finished a simple story for her little sister, and now she never would.
“Come on,” Amelia said, standing. “Let me show you upstairs before it gets too late, and then I’ll drive you home.”
Esme wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. It was time to be professional Esme. If she really wanted to live here, she’d have to be.
The stairs to the second floor were dark. It was strange that one person living alone would have a house with two floors. Esme’s family only had one. Picture frames lined the steps. Esme wished it were brighter so she could see, curious about Amelia’s brothers and sisters, her parents, whoever Amelia loved enough to frame. At the top of the stairs, Amelia flipped the light switch on and pointed to the first bedroom.
“This would be yours.” The door creaked open heavily. The room smelled like cedar and emptiness. There was a bed with a wooden frame and a dresser with a lamp and a mirror, all the same honey-colored pine. The windows were covered with long white lace curtains. Esme imagined they’d billow when the window was open. The room was full of space. It wasn’t filled with posters on the wall or Madeline’s stuff. It had only the things a bedroom needed. Living here would be like living in a magazine room. She wanted to slide beneath the checkerboard quilt and know what the green and lavender squares smelled like, if the blanket felt as soft against her face as it looked, and fall asleep to cricket sounds instead of car horns and bus brakes whooshing past the stop sign on the corner. In the morning, she’d wake up to birds. She didn’t know for sure what she’d hear, but she thought she’d burst if she didn’t find out.
“OK,” she said. “I’d like to live here.”
But where do you belong? It was only a little voice, but it chased back the guilt.
Amelia smiled, arms folded over her chest in the doorway, watching Esme the same way Cerise used to watch Lily sleep, like Lily’s sleep was restful for her too.
“It’s a big decision, Esme. I think you should talk about it with your parents.”
It was time to go. Amelia walked downstairs and locked the front door. Candles flickered in the window as the car backed onto the street. Esme didn’t want to leave. She wanted to count the candles in the windows. She didn’t want to go home and was ashamed to admit it. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, heavy with the thought of her parents orbiting each other from one room to the next like lost planets, waiting for Lily. This was the wrong thing to feel, so she closed her eyes and imagined the checkerboard quilt, wishing she could trace the pattern with her fingertips until she fell asleep, listening to the sounds of a new house while shadow cars chased each other soundlessly along the ceiling.
Chapter Nine
Esme waved goodbye as Amelia drove away from her building, wishing she was still in the passenger seat. The neighborhood echoed with cold. Sounds escaped closed windows and washed away with the wind: laughter, bottles being dropped in recycling bins, a baby crying. The windows were a blur of blue television glow. Garbage bags stacked on the curb spilled into the gutter. This place was not magical, not compared to Amelia’s candlelit windows or the whispering forest across the street.
She squeezed her eyes shut as she passed the teddy bears and dead flowers left on the street, the dark trailer. Soon, she wouldn’t live here anymore. She couldn’t quite imagine it. She’d always known this address, this phone number, the hallway smell of lemon and bleach, the way the key caught in the door. There wasn’t any other home. She took the stairs instead of the elevator. The burn in her legs felt good. It slowed her down, gave her more time to think.
Mom? Dad? Are you sure you don’t want me to stay? I can be helpful.
She was, wasn’t she? Hadn’t she put up flyers and carried things to the trailer and made every list she was supposed to make? Hadn’t she always made dinner on her night and done her own laundry on Sundays or helped with Lily or vacuumed or whatever they’d asked her to do? She didn’t always want to do it, but that couldn’t be enough to send someone away.
Wouldn’t she leave another hole in their lives, a paper doll cutout where their Esme used to be? Or was she less somehow, not smart or the first girl like Madeline, proof that they were good parents, or the only boy like Nick, who kept everyone tipsy with nerves? We love you all just the same and just as much, Cerise had promised once, but now it wasn’t true, not if losing one person brought out so many other lies. She hovered in the hallway, guilt smacked, wondering if she’d betrayed her parents somehow or if they’d betrayed her, sending her away for her own good. This was supposed to be her home, the best place for her, her broken-in shoe. Maybe she wouldn’t have to say anything, and they’d bring it up. She’d take a long shower and hide for a little while, then sleep. She held her breath and pushed the door open.
But Detective Ferrera was there. His smell prickled her nose. It wasn’t a smell Esme could identify like she could with her father, matching medicine cabinet bottles to the scent on his skin. Being close to Detective Ferrera triggered something as complicated as a smell: hope, fear, anger, sadness, frustration. Feelings Esme could name and ones she couldn’t mixed into something she blamed on him.