Pretend She's Here(48)

A framed photo of a young woman and a little blond boy hung over the long oak table. The woman’s hair was dark, cut very short. They were holding hands standing in front of the beehives, beaming at the camera. I recognized Casey right away. He looked about six years old, and his hair was curly and much lighter, but he had the same mesmerizing turquoise eyes. I knew that the woman was Casey’s mother, and I could tell by the way they smiled that they loved the person taking the picture, and I knew that was Casey’s father.

Casey opened a door at the kitchen’s far end, and we walked into a small room. It was dark. I couldn’t see. He reached overhead, pulled a cord that turned on a light, and I nearly gasped.

We stood in a room of gold. The walls were lined with shelves, floor to ceiling, and each contained jar after jar of honey. The colors ranged from deep amber to pale lemon, with every shade of yellow in between. A corner of one shelf held a frame still loaded with honeycombs. I stared at the waxy hexagonal cells, knowing that Casey and his mother had extracted the nectar from them. One cell contained the remains of a dead bee, its black-and-yellow body preserved in wax.

“This guy didn’t make it,” I said.

“There’s always loss,” he said.

Did he mean in the world of honey, or in life? Either way, I agreed, and I nodded. The room was small. The jars were sealed, but the air smelled sweet. Was it from the sugar? I was standing so close to Casey, I caught the scent of his soap. He was tall. The top of my head came to his collarbone. I wanted to stand on tiptoes and bury my face in his neck. I tilted my head back to look up at him.

He leaned down slightly, his warm lips brushing my forehead.

“This is my favorite place,” he whispered.

“It’s a magical room,” I said. “I can feel your mother here.”

“So can I, but I didn’t mean the room. I mean standing next to you.”

My heart flipped. He reached for my hand, linked fingers with me. I stood taller, our faces nearly meeting. Distant, from within the house, I heard voices. I froze. Footsteps, and people talking, Mr. Donoghue and a woman. Casey and I stepped apart.

When I saw their faces peek around the door, I wasn’t surprised. It was as if I was expecting it.

“Hello, Casey,” Mrs. Porter said. “Hi, Lizzie.”

“Hello,” Casey said.

“Lizzie, I need you home,” she said. “Sorry to break up the party.”

“Here,” Casey said as I walked out of the room, pressing a jar of the darkest honey into my hand. I glanced at the handwritten label: Wild Thyme.

“Your mother’s writing?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Yes, that’s Sinead’s,” Mr. Donoghue said.

“Oh, I wish I could have known her,” Mrs. Porter said, taking the jar from my hand. “You must miss her so.”

And then we were in our winter jackets, saying good-bye, walking out the back door into the driveway. She waited until we were away from the house lights; then she marched a few steps ahead of me, not saying a word. I felt the anger pouring off her back. When we rounded the bend into the drive, she smashed the jar down onto the ice-covered craggy rock ledge. I watched the precious nectar ooze into a shallow granite gully, then coagulate in the freezing cold.

“I don’t want that in our house,” she said. “She was a bad mother, a horrible mother. That stuff would only remind me of how unfair it is, how terrible people think they can get away with everything, how life is just handed to them.”

“She died,” I said. “Life was taken from her. And I don’t think she was a bad mother. She loved Casey.”

“Not as much as I loved my daughter,” Mrs. Porter said, her voice rising, then breaking. She crouched down as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. Her shoulders heaved with sobs.

“I’m sorry,” I said, kneeling beside her, putting my arm around her shoulder because, in spite of everything, I couldn’t bear to see her agony.

“I just wanted you home,” she said through thick tears. “That’s why I went to get you. I’m sorry about the honey. The strongest feeling just … came over me. I began to think I can’t trust you. That’s such a horrible feeling, Lizzie. You can’t even imagine.”

My whole body tensed because I knew how dangerous her strongest feelings could be. I saw the broken glass from the jar glinting in lamplight filtering through the trees from Casey’s house. The edges were knife-sharp clear blades. The honey looked as if it had frozen solid, just like the blood in my veins.





Hello. It’s me, and I’m fine. You might think I have problems, or whatever, but I don’t. Mom, you’re the one with the problem. I hope you get help. I love you all but I am doing great without you, so don’t worry. Emily.

That was the note Mrs. Porter wrote for me, four days after the two-month-anniversary news stories. I typed it, and I sent it. My whole body was fluttery, like my goose bumps were on the inside, because suddenly I had hope. Unwittingly, Mrs. Porter had handed me a secret clue: I would never say or whatever. The phrase was one of my pet peeves.

When Bea was fourteen and Lizzie and I were thirteen, my mother dropped the three of us off at the mall to go Christmas shopping. The parking lot was so full she couldn’t find a spot. Or maybe she just wanted to keep us in the car a little longer. We kept driving up and down the rows.