All the Dangerous Things(71)

Like her own grandson would make her break out in hives.

She had been thinking about Margaret, I’m sure. About how she should have been there—or, more likely, about how it should have been her baby we were all in town to see. I’m sure she had been imagining her singing to that doll, hushing to her sleep. Bouncing her on her knee in the kitchen.

Margaret would have been such a good mother. A better mother than me.

“No, not really,” I say at last. It dawns on me now: I wonder if they’ve suspected it all along. Mason’s disappearance. I wonder if they heard the news, saw my face on the television screen, and thought to themselves: It happened again.

I wonder if they pictured me at night, holding him in the dark the same way I must have held Margaret’s hand. If they’ve been protecting me now the same way they protected me then: through silence, secrets. Lies.

“Well, keep us posted,” my father says, like we’re talking about a job interview. We’ve never really gotten the hang of how to interact with one another since Margaret left us. Without her around to pad our interactions, they’ve felt jagged and awkward, like old friends bumping into each other at the grocery store. Exchanging pleasantries while biting our tongues, tasting blood, racking our brains for excuses to leave.

“I passed the cemetery on my way here,” I say, looking for an opening. “Have you been to visit recently?”

I catch a glimpse of a shudder roll through my mother’s body, like she was hit with a sudden blast of cold. My father cocks his head, like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

“I might stop by later,” I continue. “I haven’t been, you know, since—”

“We go every Sunday,” my dad interrupts. “After church.”

“That’s good.”

Silence again. My mother is scratching at the fabric of her armchair, her nails digging into the expensive threads. I catch my dad stealing a glance at the grandfather clock, probably wondering how a minute could possibly move so slowly.

“You know we don’t talk about it much,” I say, unable to peel my eyes from the carpet. This is where we used to lie: Margaret and I, stomachs on the oriental, flipping through issues of The Grit and sounding out the words together. Revealing stories of another world, another life, imagining ourselves ripped from our own and implanted into the pages. “That night, what happened. We’ve never actually talked about it—”

“What’s there to talk about? It was a terrible accident.”

I look at my mother—still silent, still scratching—and back to my dad. That air of authority has crept back into his voice just a little bit. Just enough for him to signal that this conversation is off-limits.

“It was.” I continue pushing forward. “But I think it might help me if we could just talk about it. Mom asked how I was doing—”

“Okay,” he says, leaning forward, resting his chin on his palm, like he’s a psychiatrist, studying me. “What would you like to talk about, Isabelle?”

“I have … memories, I guess, of that night. Some things that have been bothering me. Things that don’t make sense.”

My parents shoot each other a look.

“Like, when I woke up that morning … there was water on the carpet.” I force myself to continue, hawking up the words like vomit stuck in my throat. “I was wearing a different nightgown from what I fell asleep in. There was mud—”

“Isabelle, what is this about?” my dad asks, his voice suddenly softer. “Why are you dragging all this back up?”

“Because I need to know what happened!” I shout, louder than I intend to. My voice seems to echo off the walls, the grand piano, a pitchy whining vibrating off the strings. “I need to know—”

“Your sister had an accident, sweetie. It was nobody’s fault.”

I remember the way he had coached me that morning, reciting those same words over and over again. The way my mother had looked at me, head tilted to the side, her eyes cloudy with a waxy shine like she thought I was a ghost.

“But I feel like I was there. I remember—”

“Don’t do this,” he says, the exact same words Ben had said to me this morning now echoing up my father’s throat. “Isabelle, don’t do this to yourself.”





CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN




I forgot how the sun sets here. Slowly, at first, the turquoise gradually morphing into a slathering of peaches and yellows and tangerines bleeding together like watercolors—and then, quick as a blink, it’s like someone lit a match and set fire to the sky, the blaze traveling across the canvas as if it were drenched in kerosene and left to burn. I’m on the dock now, watching as the sun dips below the horizon. With dusk reflecting off the water, it almost feels like I’m sitting in it, right in the middle: a room on fire with flames above and below me, swallowing me whole.

“Stay for dinner,” Dad had said, changing the subject as quick as a whip crack. I didn’t want to, but at the same time, I did, so I glanced at my mother, looking for a hint of permission in her gaze.

She gave me a twitch of a smile, a small nod, and so I agreed.

The kitchen looked different, our old cobalt backsplash replaced with subway tile, simple and white. Some of it had to be renovated after that summer fire, of course, but the rest, I knew, was an attempt to erase the memories, the past. There were tiny pots of herbs set against the windowsill: basil and rosemary and parsley and sage, giving the air a woody smell, like freshly mown grass. I watched as Mom clipped at the leaves with little silver scissors, collecting a heap in her palm. I don’t remember her cooking much, but she seemed to know what she was doing.