If You Find Me(18)

“Just take us to our rooms, please,” I say, daring her to hear what I’m not saying, too.

On the second floor, the wood shines hard as glass. A long, thin strip of bloodred carpet with tangled vines embroidered along the borders stretches down the length of the hallway. Delaney stops at the first two doors, opposite each other, motioning toward one and then the other.

“These two are yours.”

She leaves us standing there watching her hair swish across her back until she disappears behind the last door at the hallway’s end.

I look at Jenessa, who stares down the way we came. To my surprise, she whistles—I didn’t know she knew how—and Shorty barrels up the stairs and down the hall, his front legs sliding on the slick surface. We smile at each other when he slows down and proceeds via the rug, his bright eyes trained on Nessa.

Tentatively, I reach out and pat his head, noting his fur, soft as velvet. But it isn’t my attention he wants. Nessa plops on the rug, giggling. She scratches up and down his back, sending his front leg paddling.

[page]Shorty shadows us from one room to the other. My room, and we know it’s my room by the things in it, is like nothing I’ve ever seen. There’s a bed—a real bed—and it’s huge. Nessa fingers the stitches of the patchwork quilt, a scarlet background with different-colored patches flecked with wildflowers and little suns. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, and I, too, have to touch it to believe it.

There’s a shelf on the long wall, already crowded with books, and a china figurine resembling the one downstairs perches in the middle of a white doily on the bureau.

On the opposite wall is a sampler behind glass, framed in dark wood: Home is where the heart is.

“Now let’s go see your room.”

I lead her into what seems like another world.

ONLY PRINCESSES ALLOWED! announces the plaque on the wall, and Nessa claps her hands in delight. The place is done up in pink and white, with buttercup yellow walls. She, too, has a wall shelf crowded with books, and her own patchwork quilt of pale pink behind squares of butterflies. Her arms reach up toward a little curio shelf high on the wall, where a china dog stands guard over a china girl, the figures cleverly out of reach of a six-year-old’s less than nimble fingers.

“We’ll take them down later so you can see, but these kind of dolls aren’t toys, Ness. They’re made out of something like glass— remember when I dropped that mason jar and it shattered all over the camper floor?”

Ness nods slowly, transfixed. She isn’t hearing a word I’m saying. “How do you think they knew about the pink? I’ll leave my door open, okay? I’ll be right across the hall if you need me.”

But when I leave to go to my room, she’s right there with me, clambering up on my bed and bouncing up and down in her bare feet.

There’s a door on the short wall. Inside, it smells like cedar, wiggling loose another memory I haven’t accessed in years: the cedar chest Mama kept her keepsakes in before the woods. Her recital photographs, of an angular young girl with what Mama called a “shag” haircut; her snapped violin strings, which she compulsively collected; a scrapbook of newspaper clippings; letters from Gran mixed up with ancient cards from my father.

This closet is empty. I set the hangers swinging, their tinkly skeletons bumping one another from a metal bar that stretches from end to end.

“Nessa, look! A whole little room just for clothes—I reckon it’s bigger than the camper!”

I turn to her. My sister sits propped like a life-size doll against the headboard, snoring softly. Shorty, curled up flush against her body, eyes me.

“It’s okay, boy. I don’t mind.”

His eyes close. It’s been another long day.

Gently, I take a crocheted blanket, the only object in the closet, from the top shelf. Nessa’s feet are dirty again, but it’s honest dirt, as Mama would say. She smells sweaty, but it’s a sweet sweat. I cover her with the blanket, hoping it’s okay to use it. My sister’s never been good at sticking to plans or schedules.

“Shouldn’t she be taking a bath first, before you put her to bed? Her feet are filthy.”

“Only because the woods got into her shoes. She took a shower this morning.”

Delaney stands in the doorway, her hands on her hips. “This isn’t her room.”

“It is if she wants it to be.” We’ve been sharing all our lives. “I don’t mind if she wants to stay here with me.”

“My mother won’t like having Shorty on the bed. That mutt’s lucky he gets to sleep inside the house in the first place.”

Delaney moves aside as my father lumbers through, dropping one of the garbage bag on the floor against the wall.

“I put the others in Jenessa’s room,” he says softly, smiling at the sight of Nessa and Shorty snoring together. “I saw lots of pink, and Pooh books. I guessed that was Jenessa’s bag.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Delaney takes in the garbage bag, her lips pressed into a thin line.

“She’ll be fine until tomorrow. The bath can wait,” my father adds, giving Delaney a hard look. “And I’m sure Melissa won’t mind about Shorty.”

“What’s wrong with her, anyway?” Delaney glances from Nessa to me, her eyes hard.