Pretend She's Here(30)

“Lizzie, my baby.”

“Lizzie, my little girl.”

“I carried you in this body, you were part of me, I was part of you. Oh, the days before you were born. I tried to imagine what it would be like, this little creature living inside me, who would you be, how would we feel about each other?”

“How could I have known that you would turn me into a different person entirely? I was one Virginia Porter before you, another after you were born. How can I ever go back? I only exist as your mother.”

“Sweetie, you are forever my child, forever my baby girl.”

Her words made me sick. Once, after she left, I tore into the bathroom and barely made it in time to retch into the toilet.





It was Lizzie’s birthday.

We had always celebrated together, because mine was two days later. But Lizzie had died on the day in between, so last year I hadn’t wanted to even think about it. My mother and Bea made me a cake on my day, but I refused to eat it.

I figured it would be the same here. Lizzie’s family would want these days to pass quietly, especially considering I was in eyebrow exile. But I was wrong.

A note was slipped under my door. Happy birthday! This is your special day! Come upstairs for breakfast so we can celebrate!

I’d almost gotten used to the creepiness of having Mrs. Porter come into my room every night. I barely slept, waiting to hear the door latch click. I’d tense up, sensing her move around the room, coming to stand over my bed. I’d feel her looking down at me, studying me. I’d wait for her spider-silk touch. I’d hold my breath for that, pretending to be asleep.

Now I looked in the mirror. My eyebrows still hadn’t grown out much. They were scrawny, with sparse reddish-blond hairs poking through the skin. But it was “my” birthday, and I suppose that outweighed Mrs. Porter’s need to wait until my eyebrows were Lizzie-ready once again.

“Here she is, the birthday girl!” Mrs. Porter said when I emerged from the basement a few minutes later.

“Happy birthday,” Chloe said, sitting at the table and barely looking up from her notebook. She was writing furiously—probably an essay due that day. She was notorious for doing her homework at the last minute.

Mr. Porter seemed as numb as ever. He pointed at my spot at the table, which was piled high with wrapped presents.

“Happy birthday, sweetie,” Mrs. Porter said, throwing her arms around me. “I’m making your favorite chocolate pancakes.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Yummy, yummy,” she said, bustling back to the stove. She served me a plate of pancakes with smiley faces made from M&M’s—just as she’d always made for Lizzie. She drizzled them with fresh maple syrup. But before I could take a bite, she handed me a small, unwrapped purple velvet box.

“It’s a tradition, as you know,” she said. “One present before first bite. Go ahead, open it.”

I did. There inside was a necklace. A finely wrought gold anchor hung from a delicate chain. The sight of it made my hands shake.

“A family heirloom,” Chloe said. “Lucky you.”

“Stop the sarcasm!” Mr. Porter said.

“Let me help you, sweetie,” Mrs. Porter said. Very gently she pushed my long hair off the back of my neck, clicked the tiny clasp. I felt the anchor dangle against my skin, against my collarbone. “How lovely, how beautiful. May it always anchor you in the safe harbor of our family. Do you love it?”

“Yes,” I said, my mouth dry.

“Okay, eat that breakfast before it gets cold!” she said. “And look at these cards—some of your friends wrote to us, remembering your special day.”

I forced myself to take one bite, then another. The pancakes tasted like sawdust. The syrup tasted so sweet I thought I might get sick. I glanced at the cards. One was a sympathy card from Jeff—not written to Lizzie, of course, but to her parents. I still think of her every day, he’d written. And I always will, for the rest of my life.

I believed that was true.

After the pancakes were gone, Chloe pushed her chair back, and I took that as a signal.

“May I be excused, too?” I asked.

“Yes, sweetie. We’ll save the rest of your presents for tonight.”

“Great,” I said.

Chloe headed out to wait for the school bus, and I went downstairs to my room. I stared at myself in the mirror again. I held the gold anchor lightly in my fingers, fought the urge to rip the chain off my neck.

The last time I had seen this necklace was on Lizzie, the day before she died. It had glimmered gold against her ashen skin. She had worn it for as long as I’d known her, a gift from Mame, brought back from one of her romantic travels. Other than the silver ring Jeff had given her, it had been Lizzie’s favorite thing—a reminder of her grandmother, of the fact that the world was so big, that there were other places than right here.

I had figured the Porters had buried her wearing it. She would have wanted that. She had once told me she’d never take it off. It was bad enough she couldn’t wear Jeff’s ring. She had made him take it from her finger and place it on a chain around his neck, right after the ceremony by her hospital bed, the day before she died. She’d known her parents would have freaked out to see a wedding ring.

And now, staring at myself—a girl with black hair and green eyes, wearing the gold anchor that had once belonged to a beloved grandmother, bought in some faraway port—I saw not Emily Lonergan but Lizzie Porter. I looked at that girl standing there and knew she-I-she was becoming someone else.