Now I know.
It is a world that is emptier, more tired, often dulled. It is gray where there used to be endless color. It is nights without the guiding compass of stars. It is surviving some days solely by the kindness of others. It is fighting, always fighting, to find all the beauty that is still here, even after the worst Disappearance of them all.
The finishing word, I want to tell her, is brokenhearted.
“It’s going to be all right,” I whisper. She drops my hand and reaches for my hair. Tucks it behind my ugly ear. “I love you.”
I love you, I love you, I love you.
I don’t know if it’s the dream or my true memory, but Mother seems to be trying to say something else. She struggles to form the words, but they are slipping away from her.
I grab for her hand again, but it has suddenly turned to the marble of all my other dreams—?so achingly, bitterly cold. I clutch at it and listen to a distant sound that is pure distilled sadness.
I don’t recognize it as my own sobbing until the door opens and Will is suddenly there, his arms wrapping around me, pulling me up and out of the suffocating mist of the dream.
“It’s all right,” he says, his hands gripping my shoulders. “Open your eyes. It’s not real.” I look at him until I can finally grasp what he’s saying. “It’s not real. This is real.”
He waits until my eyes can focus again on the light streaming in from the hallway, on Mother’s picture looking back at me from the bureau, on the muted, constant yellow of my bedroom walls.
When my breathing returns to normal, he lets go of my shoulders.
“Thanks.” I wipe my eyes with the backs of my hands. “I’m okay now.”
“Good,” he says.
Then he lies down on the floor next to my bed without another word and stays there with me until the light of morning comes.
Chapter Forty-Four
The next morning, I eat toast alone in the kitchen and wander through the hallways until I find Mrs. Cliffton in the sunroom. She is surrounded by boxes of nightingale feathers, and a ledger is open in her lap.
“Morning,” I say, stepping into the room. I blink in the sunlight. My sadness from last night still hangs around me like a veil.
“Good morning, dear.” Mrs. Cliffton looks up. “Did you get something for breakfast?”
“Yes,” I say. I pause. Toe the line of the cool tile floor.
Mrs. Cliffton sighs and sets her ledger aside. “Aila, I wanted to apologize again for what I said the other night. I’m afraid it all came out wrong, and I wish I hadn’t said it.” She tilts her head. “It’s true that parts of these months have been harder than usual, but you and Miles have been a bright spot for me—?and I really am so glad you’ve come.”
I clear my throat and push through an unexpected wave of shyness. “I was wondering—” I say. “Did my mother ever know someone named Stefen?”
Mrs. Cliffton turns sharply. “Stefen?”
I’ve caught her off-guard, and there’s a look on her face I’ve seen once before, months ago. When she was beginning to explain about the Disappearances. It is a look of trying to tread carefully.
I steel myself and press on. “Who was he? A friend of hers? Something . . . more?”
“Well, Aila,” she says, shifting, “they grew up together. They were both raised by Eleanor Cummings.”
One more time, it’s as though the air has been knocked from my lungs. I unclench my hands as if they have pulled up roots. Roots tangling into more roots, branching secrets coming up with every tug. How will I ever know when I’ve reached the end of them?
I sigh and sit down on the loveseat. “She never said anything about him,” I say wearily. I close my eyes and whisper, “Why would that be?”
I open them again when Mrs. Cliffton sighs, too. “Stefen was an unhappy person,” she says. “More so the older we became. He was always very sweet to me, but I think he often resented Juliet. They had a troubled relationship, especially at the end.”
“What made him so unhappy?”
“He was dealt a tough hand in life, it’s true,” Mrs. Cliffton says. She pauses. “But we each still have a choice in the matter when it comes to how we respond.” She looks at me. “Of course, bitterness is usually easier. And I think it’s possible to very much understand why people make the choices they do, even though they are the wrong ones.”
