Pretend She's Here(28)

“Everyone’s waiting to meet you,” Casey said. “Let me get my friends.”

He started to walk away, and I was shaking. I couldn’t help myself—as if my hand had a life of its own, as if it knew this was my best chance for help, I reached out toward him. My fingers brushed his.

“What is it?” he asked.

Mrs. Porter clutched my upper arm so hard, I felt her fingernails through my thick jacket.

I twisted, trying to wrench out of her grasp. But she wouldn’t let me. She held on tighter.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Her grip dug into my bicep.

“I’m fine. I’m just … happy to meet you.”

“Yeah, me too. Let me get the others,” he said.

“Another time,” Mrs. Porter said. “We have to get going. See you soon, Casey.”

“Okay,” he said. “Well, see you at school, Lizzie.”

“Yes,” I said.

Walking away, I glanced back at Casey. He hadn’t kept walking. He was looking in my direction with that spooky long gaze that seemed to see beyond what was actually visible.

“Poor boy,” Mrs. Porter said. “Legally blind. His mother was very foolish and didn’t care for him properly.”

“What did she do?” I asked.

“Just another case of a bad mother,” she said. “Like yours. Not like me, that’s for sure. I would kill for my children.”

A chill shuddered down my spine, and I stared into her sparkling emerald eyes.

“Now, you weren’t going to say anything to him, were you?” Mrs. Porter asked.

“No, of course not.”

“Why did you grab for his hand?”

“I didn’t,” I said.

“You little liar, I saw you! And I’ll tell you—he can see, but not well enough to get a license. He’s considered legally blind. He can’t drive you anywhere, if that’s what you’re hoping.”

I shrugged, trying to convince her she was wrong, that I had no idea what she was talking about.

She was wearing the red plaid wool jacket with big square pockets. Her smile went away, replaced by that hollow sorrow I’d seen the night she’d told me about her demons. And then as if it was the last thing she wanted to do, as if it gave her actual pain, she reached into one of the pockets and surreptitiously showed me the bone handle, the glint of silver blade.

Suddenly the red of her jacket was the color of blood, my mother’s. The knife was the one I’d seen on FaceTime, the same as the one in my dreams: long, sharp, and jagged. There, in the midst of Jeb’s Olde Cider Mill, I stood frozen. My mind went stupid and numb again. I didn’t scream, I didn’t run. The picture in my mind made sure of that.

Mrs. Porter and I climbed back into the car. Chloe and Mr. Porter were sipping cups of hot cider. Chloe opened a box of fudge and passed around the creamy walnut-studded squares. I didn’t take one.

When we got back to the house, Mrs. Porter ripped off pieces of wax paper, and while she hovered over us, Chloe and I took turns arranging the meager leaves we’d picked up, shaving crimson, orange, and yellow crayons in swirling patterns, and pressing a second square of paper with a hot iron, creating the waxy stained glass windows Lizzie had always loved.

Later, we peeled apples for a pie. Going through the motions, I sliced the apple skin into long red curls. I pasted them onto the pie, and when it baked, they turned golden brown. I wondered about the phrase legally blind. How, if a person could see, could they be considered any kind of blind?

“This was a good day,” Mrs. Porter said, pulling Chloe and me close in a hug. “I’m so happy we’re all together.”

“Yeah, it’s great,” Chloe said, giving me a look as if it was anything but.

“One thing,” Mrs. Porter said to me, peering at my face.

“What?”

“You really need to shape your eyebrows. Lizzie’s were always perfect. In fact, I’ll do it for you. Let’s get the tweezers.”

“No, I can,” I said quickly.

“Okay,” she said. “Get the arch right. Do it before I see you tomorrow.”

That night we sat in the living room watching TV. The news came on. No mention of me, no clips of my family. I thought: If I’d made a fuss at Jeb’s, begged Casey or someone else for help, Mrs. Porter would have sped away.

She could have gotten to Black Hall in a few hours. If that had happened, this newscast could be very different. There would be a story of Mary Lonergan found murdered in the marsh, her throat slit and the cold, weedy tidewaters rising around her body.

Mrs. Porter hadn’t had to say a word to me. She’d only had to show me the barest glimpse of that knife.

I was becoming like a dog so used to being beaten its owner had only to raise a hand, a rolled-up newspaper, to send it cowering into the corner.

This was mine. This middle seat on the comfortable chintz-covered couch where I sat between Mrs. Porter and Chloe, the TV droning on, Mr. Porter across the room in his lounge chair, eating a second piece of pie.

This was my corner.





It’s terrible when your eyebrows get messed up. It’s not as bad as getting kidnapped, of course, I reminded myself, with a twisted smile.

My approach to makeup and grooming was always less is more. I was more natural than Lizzie. She studied YouTube for the technique, and she had these expensive Tweezerman bling slant tweezers that felt bizarre in my hand. That night, I stood at the bathroom mirror and went at it. I made one mistake, and compounded it by keeping on. I wound up leaving myself with these scrawny little crooked lines of eyebrows.