There, in the resurrected shadows of her house, I have a sudden thought. I reach into my bag and pluck out the vial of Mind’s Eye Mrs. Cliffton gave me. Put the smallest whisper of it on my fingertips and touch it to my eyelids.
Stefen, I think.
A string of memories floods in front of me, short and clear, like water droplets spilling onto my eyelids and casting ripples. In one I’m nine, standing next to a younger version of Mother as she looks at her reflection in the chipped vanity, brushing her cheeks with rouge as she calls out “Stefen” and then corrects herself to call for Miles; another she’s out in the garden, her hair long and tangled, her eyes haggard with sleeplessness as she chases my brother as a toddler. There are only five of these memories altogether: just a series of her calling Miles by the wrong name, and the last one of her at the sink, talking to herself under her breath as she scrubs the dishes and watches a blood-colored cardinal out the window.
I’m no closer to understanding who Stefen is. But I almost don’t care.
Because I can see her.
A deep chill is snatching the feeling from my fingers, but once the images fade back into blackness, I dab one more touch of Mind’s Eye on my eyelids. Frogs and fish, I think, and take myself back to us in the garden. She laughs in the gray morning, the ring glinting on her finger, her skin glowing and as ripe as a peach in its prime. I want to stay and watch her this way, and I try to hold on to it until my tears have washed all the Mind’s Eye away.
I wipe my eyes, and the wind rustles the pages of the book, still open in my lap, to a poem we’ve both marked. Had she kept making these notes long after she left Sterling? Had she stayed up late into the night circling these passages, still haunted by this mystery? Stalked by guilt, and wondering why she alone had been set free?
My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear;
That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming
The owner’s tongue doth publish everywhere.
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing,
And stops his pipe in growth of riper days:
Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burthens every bough,
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue:
Because I would not dull you with my song.
I pull my hands out from where I’ve tucked them into the warmth of my sleeves. My heart lifts in tandem with the cluster of dried leaves at my feet. They swirl and rise, spun into new life by the wind. Because I suddenly see the thing I’d missed before. The most important one of all.
Philomel, I think. Of course.
I run straight to Beas’s house and ring the doorbell. Mrs. Fogg scowls when she sees me but calls, “Beatrice, that Aila Quinn from school is here.”
Beas brings me to her room, which is cluttered with postcards, record sleeves, hair clips, glass cases, and a poster on the wall of a woman in a corset playing a violin. Her bookshelf is full of poetry, and her violin case stands in the corner next to a collection of bows. We sit on her bed, and I throw my frozen toes under the covers.
“Philomel,” I tell Beas, throwing Mother’s book open on my lap. “In a poem Shakespeare wrote about songs restrained and music held back. Don’t you see? Philomel! It’s Latin for nightingale!”
There’s a sudden beating rush in my ears. My theory was always just a hunch, but there is an undercurrent of something more now. A flash of pure revived faith.
She squeaks and pushes her hands together. “I knew it. I knew you were onto something!”
She pulls out two bottles of Coca-Cola she has hidden under her bed. They fizz when we open and clink them.
In her throaty voice she says, “So now you just have to find the rest of them. Ooh!” she claps. “Let me help!”
