The Book of Cold Cases(55)

“Yes.”

“Why are you here by yourself?” Lillian put the book back and picked up a teddy bear, turning it over, pressing her fingers into its neck as if she thought something might be inside. “Don’t you have any friends?”

Beth blinked. She watched Lillian’s pale, elegant hands pressing into her teddy bear’s fur. She couldn’t even be offended at the intrusion; she felt, as Lillian obviously did, like Lillian had a right to be here. “No, I don’t have any friends.”

“Why not?”

“I got beat up at school by bigger girls, and my mother came.”

She didn’t explain the rest of the story, and it seemed that she didn’t need to. Lillian nodded as if she knew what the rest of the story was already. “That’s because you didn’t take care of it yourself,” she said.

“How?” Beth asked.

“You make them afraid of you.” Lillian squeezed the teddy bear’s neck briefly, then put it down. “Then they won’t pick on you anymore. It’s easy. I’ll show you how.”

“No one is afraid of me,” Beth said.

“They will be.” Lillian picked up Beth’s most precious ornament, a jewelry box with a ballerina on the top. “I’m going to help you,” she said matter-of-factly, looking closely at the ballerina. “You’re very lucky.”

Beth swallowed. She had the sudden feeling that Lillian was going to throw the jewelry box to the floor, smash it just because she could. She could almost picture it, the shards of pretty china, the broken ballerina skidding in pieces beneath the bed. She thought it might have something to do with the lesson of making people afraid. But still she didn’t stand up and grab the box away.

“Where did you come from?” Beth asked.

“Nowhere,” Lillian said, still holding the box. “I live with some people who don’t care about me. I don’t live in a nice house like this.” She didn’t sound happy about it.

“Why are you here?”

Lillian looked at her. Her eyes, Beth noticed, were gray-green, her lashes dark. “I wanted to come here,” she said. “I’ve been here before.”

And suddenly Beth remembered. The footprints in the dew, the words on the window: I WAS HERE. She hadn’t seen the girl who’d made those words, but suddenly she was sure. “That was you?” she asked, her voice a whisper.

Lillian frowned, for the first time looking a little uncertain. “I knew about this house,” she said. “I wanted to come here. And one night, I thought about it as I went to sleep, and . . . I think I dreamed it.”

Beth was excited now. “Yes,” she said. “I saw you. Your footprints.”

“My feet were so cold,” Lillian said. “I couldn’t find a way in. I couldn’t see in the windows. I had to give up and go back to the trees. And then I saw you.” She looked at Beth. “Sometimes I imagine things that aren’t real. But you saw me that night, and I saw you. You told me to come in.” She smiled. “And here I am. Now we can be sisters.”

Beth’s heart was pumping hard in her chest. This was wonderful and terrible at the same time. It was going to be a nightmare, and it was also going to be the best thing that ever happened to her. She knew that already. Her life was starting.

“Who are you?” she asked the strange girl.

“I’m Lillian,” the girl replied. “That’s your name, too, isn’t it?”

“It’s my middle name,” Beth said. She was Elizabeth Lillian Greer.

“Like you were named after me,” Lillian said. “I think that’s nice, but no one ever calls me Lillian. Everyone calls me Lily.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


December 1960





BETH


That first year, when Lily came to stay, there was no real Christmas. Beth’s parents usually made an attempt at the holidays, with a lot of spiked eggnog, a few expensive presents for Beth, and a meal cooked on the twenty-fourth by the housekeeping staff and eaten the next day. It wasn’t fun, but it was something.

But that year, the tree sat in its shadowy corner, pungent and undecorated. No presents ever appeared. The girls played in Beth’s room while Beth’s parents had some kind of awful fight downstairs, carried out in angry, snarled tones. Sometime in the middle of the night two days before Christmas, her father left the house, the door slamming behind him. Lying in her bed, squeezed next to Lily, Beth listened to his car start up and drive away.

In the silent dark, Lily spoke. “We don’t need him,” she said. “Go to sleep.”

The next morning, Beth’s mother found them in the kitchen. Her hair was done, and she had makeup on, though her eyes were red. She was wearing a red sweater and a plaid skirt that fell below the knee, as if she thought she might go to a Christmas party. “I’m going shopping,” she said, her voice dull. She put on her coat, picked up her purse, and left the house.

She was gone for three days.

No one had told the housekeeping staff to cook a Christmas meal, so there wasn’t one. The girls were left alone in the house as the wet snow fell outside and melted on the cold grass. The first day, they raided the kitchen, eating cookies and drinking chocolate milk. They watched TV until late and went to bed after midnight. Beth jumped at every sound, expecting one or both of her parents back any minute to shout at them for being bad, but they never came.