One of Those Faces (67)

The door opened, and a plump blonde woman gaped at me from the doorway, her eyes wide with horror. She had seen a ghost.

I froze where I stood on the porch.

Her lips quivered, and she bounded toward me with open arms. “Isabella!” With that one word it was as if she had slapped me. I leaned away, but she ensnared me. “My sweet, sweet Issi. I’m so sorry.”

My body remained rigid, my arms tethered to my sides.

She pulled away and grabbed my face. “No one knew if—where you were.” There was something so cavalier about the way she said it. As if I had just stepped out of the room instead of disappeared for the past nine years.

I opened my mouth to respond, but my voice failed.

She ushered me inside. “It doesn’t matter, dear,” she said. She suddenly turned around right before we crossed the threshold, noticing Wilder for the first time. “Who’s this?”

Again, I opened my mouth but couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe.

Why did you bring us back here?

Wilder glanced at me before extending his hand. “I’m a friend of Harper’s.”

Her expression darkened. She frowned at him and blinked. “I’m her Aunt Lydia.” She ignored his hand and pushed me inside.

“Come and have a seat—we’re still trying to figure everything out.” Lydia left me standing outside the front room. “Issi is here!” she called throughout the house and disappeared into the kitchen.

Wilder raised his eyebrows at me. I sidestepped past him and headed down the hallway. When I arrived at the study, I noticed the books strewed all around and objects from my father’s desk broken on the floor. I touched my neck. The wooden bookcase still had a slight bow in the side where he had pushed me into it. Tiny white crescent shapes were still etched into the wood where I had dug my nails in.

I passed the remaining shut doors in the hallway until I arrived at the last one. Wilder’s footsteps echoed close behind me. My old bedroom was completely dark. Wilder appeared behind me and flicked on the light switch. The blinding pink paint on the walls was chipped, some of the white base paint peeping through.

Wilder walked over to the large oak desk in the corner by the window and held up one of the framed pictures and looked back at me.

“That’s not me,” I barked.

He set down the frame and narrowed his eyes. “Isn’t this your room?”

It’s our room. I turned the frame down on the table, but I saw one next to it and froze. Issi smiled from the picture, sitting properly in front of a light-blue backdrop. It must’ve been from picture day at school. “Yes, it was.”

He grabbed the picture before I could put it back on the desk.

The room smelled stale and wet. The bed was still covered with the pink quilt Mom had handmade for Issi. It was too small to reach all the way over the mattress, but we could never entertain the idea of packing it away. My father had thrown out the emerald one she’d hand stitched for me.

I glanced over the bookcase. Many of the books were gone now. I ran my hand over the spines of the remaining ones, my fingers skipping over the gaps. Some strands of dark hair were caught on the splintered wood on the side of the shelf, a memorial to one of my father’s particularly violent days. My heart raced, and I put my nails into the matching scratches in the wood.

I knelt down, the floorboards creaking under my weight. I pulled the leather-bound tome of Anne of Green Gables off the bottom shelf. Brushing the top layer of dust from the cover, I coughed. I flipped to the center of the book and pulled the photo from within before letting the book fall, more dust kicking up from the floor. “This is me.” I handed him the photo over my shoulder.

Wilder took it. “You have a twin?” he asked, glancing back at the photos on the desk.

“Had,” I said. I’m still here. I stood back up and knocked the dust from my jeans.

When we reentered the living room, Lydia was sitting slumped in a chair, a small man with features like my father’s sitting on the couch across from her. He scowled at me, making the resemblance even stronger. A thin dark-haired girl sauntered in from the kitchen. She was wearing my mom’s pearl earrings and necklace.

“You remember Lauren, don’t you?” Lydia said in a syrupy voice, beaming at the girl.

I did. She was my only cousin and the brattiest child I’d ever met. By the looks of it, she’d never changed.

“She started at Northwestern this year,” Lydia continued, eyeing me expectantly. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

My feet were itching to run. The air was too thick to breathe. But I obeyed and sat on the chair.

Wilder stood beside me for a moment before gesturing to the back of the house. “I’m going to step out for a moment.”

I wanted to beg him to stay but remained silent as he walked through the side door. Turning back to them and looking at their faces, I couldn’t believe I had come back.

My uncle was still seething, his dark-brown eyes narrowing as they surveyed me.

Lauren was staring at me down her long, thin Mallen nose.

I wanted to feel anger that she had taken those pearls, but there was nothing. Mom was too distant a scar. There were fresher, more painful wounds.

“You missed the funeral,” Lydia said suddenly with feigned glumness. “We wanted to let you know, but . . .” She glanced at my uncle. “He’s buried at the plot in St. Boniface with the rest of your family.”