A Lily in the Light(37)

It’s sad because you’re here, Anna Pavlova whispered. And things aren’t the same anymore . . . but if you just left . . .

Amelia’s house was waiting; she could make a new life. But she couldn’t make a new sister. That was just impossible.



The house was smoky. Esme opened her eyes and realized she’d been dreaming of smoke, of a fire that had started at the foot of her bed, jumped to the Saved by the Bell poster on the wall, then Madeline’s bed, but there were no flames now, only the faint smell of cigarettes and Madeline’s glassy eyes in the darkness.

“Did you hear something?” Madeline said.

“No.” The clock blinked midnight.

“I heard the front door.” Madeline kicked free from the blanket. “And someone closed our window.”

She threw it open again. Cold, fresh air circled the room. Outside, the air was wet with snow. Thousands of tiny flakes drifted past the streetlight. The quiet part of a symphony. Esme tried to follow the same flake but lost it every time.

The living room shook. Her father. Soon he was a shadowy outline in their doorway, looking from Esme to Madeline. It occurred to Esme slowly that somehow she’d moved from the couch to her bedroom without knowing it.

“Your mother’s not in here?”

“Why would she be?” Madeline crawled beneath her covers again. Andre lingered in the doorway. It made Esme sad to ignore him too.

“We thought we heard the door before. Maybe she went out.”

Her father’s face shifted from worried to determined. He crossed the living room, and Esme followed, watching as he put one arm through each coat sleeve and stepped into his boots. His pajama pants looked funny beneath his coat. The door slammed shut behind him.

The house was quiet. The clock ticked on the wall. But the quiet didn’t last long. Through the window, Esme saw Cerise in her bathrobe and slippers, hair wet with snow, collecting teddy bears and flowers, Bibles and balloons, candles, some lit and others out cold, and shoving them into a black trash bag with a hole at the bottom.

Cerise threw a candle into the trash. The bag dragged behind her in the streetlight.

“Stop it!” Her father was trying to keep his voice low, but it came out loud. Lights clicked on in other apartments. Cerise dropped a candle in a glass jar, and it shattered in the snow. Andre reached for a pink teddy bear with a white stomach and put it with things Cerise hadn’t touched yet. She kicked it. It landed on its side. Cerise stopped trying to stuff things into the bag and threw them instead. They landed on the street, on parked cars, setting off a car alarm and flashing lights. In a few hours, the plows would come and push broken things into a pile of snow. No one would know they were for Lily.

The last of the candles made shadows on the snow. Andre sat with his head on his knees. His back was shaking. Her father was crying. She’d never seen him cry, not ever. The sounds he made were horrible, a broken machine. Esme hated her father like this. Part of her was disgusted that he couldn’t be the person he had been before he was her dad, the one who walked into boxing rings without being afraid. Cerise carried what was left of the bag to the trash can on the corner.

Her parents were dollhouse small on the street below. She watched them break separately, and for the first time in her life, Esme imagined her parents apart. She’d seen people who used to be married but weren’t anymore sitting alone in church, hanging back to kneel on church pews during Communion because they’d broken a sacrament. It was an old rule, and not everyone followed it, but her mother would. The thought of her mother folded onto a kneeler while that slow line wandered to the altar without her made Esme unspeakably sad. How many times could God punish a person?

And her father—what would he be without her mother? He didn’t eat or sleep or wake up without Cerise prompting. Andre, it’s time for dinner. Andre, you should get some rest. Andre, the toilet’s leaking, or We’re out of milk, or You have work in an hour. When’s the last time you spoke to your son? Her mother’s voice must be a running script in her father’s head, an echoing conscience that left little room for his own thoughts. Without Cerise, her father reminded her of a bath toy left in the tub, floating aimlessly while the water got cold around him.

“She isn’t coming back,” Madeline whispered, sliding in quietly beside Esme, eyes wide. “She isn’t coming back.”

Esme pressed her eyes shut. Goose bumps prickled her skin. “That’s not true.”

They were both shivering. Her parents disappeared from the window. The street was empty.

“Why did I say what I said?” Madeline sobbed. “Why did I say those things?”

The bag on the living room wall billowed, but Madeline’s eyes darted to everything as it’d been that night before she slammed the bathroom door and washed her hair and shaved her legs while Lily disappeared. Esme said nothing.

Madeline picked up one of Lily’s books and stared at the cover, where three pigs sat on a bus bench. “I should’ve read to her more. She always asked, and I always said no.”

Madeline’s eyes glazed, face red, nose running, a baby version of her teenage self. It made Esme sick. Stop it. Everyone just stop.

She led Madeline to their room and closed the door. “Lie down,” she whispered, wrapping a blanket around her sister.

Madeline shivered beneath her blanket. “I’m sorry,” Madeline sobbed.