Later that night, as she sat on her screened-in porch with a book in her lap, Roberta’s mind drifted. It had been a long day. As Roberta nodded off to the rhythm of the summer peepers, images filled her dreams. Two little girls in matching blue dresses stood in the middle of an overgrown field, their hair as fair as the bleached summer grass. They held hands, as if waiting for her. Roberta walked toward them. Suddenly, they turned away from her and, in a fit of giggles, disappeared into a small grove of trees. Worried, Roberta followed the sound of their voices. But without warning, the sky darkened. A brisk wind picked up, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of blue skirt among the trees. The giggling had stopped. “Girls?” she called softly. “It’s okay. You can come out now.” There was just the wind. She waited at the edge of the field, a feeling of dread growing. Roberta did not want to enter the forest. “Girls?” she called again. Still there was no answer. Somewhere ahead, a branch snapped. Roberta squinted into the shadows as a small figure emerged from the trees. It was neither of the Lancaster girls. This girl had short dark hair, her bangs cut in a jagged line across her forehead. Roberta recognized those bangs. That hollow gaze. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. There was only a loud crash.
Roberta startled awake. Her book had fallen from her lap and lay open on its spine. She put a shaky hand to her chest. “It’s just a dream,” she said aloud.
But there was no one there to confirm that. And besides, it wasn’t the truth.
TenJulia
“Ihate her,” Julia said. There followed the scratch of pen on paper as Lottie made a note in her little green journal. Who even wrote in journals anymore?
To Julia’s consternation, Lottie did not grimace nor look surprised. That was the thing: she never did. Julia wondered if anything she said would shock the middle-aged therapist. She doubted it. Not one hair of her perfectly coiffed bob was ever askew. Her dress shirts always looked starched. Just looking at her put-togetherness was infuriating.
Finally, Lottie looked up from her journal. “That’s excellent.”
Julia scoffed. “So, hating my aunt is okay with you?”
Lottie took her glasses off. That was another thing: before she said something important, she removed her glasses. As if that were a signal to Julia that she should lean in. Instead, Julia pulled her gaze away and stared out the window.
“Actually, Julia, this is all good. You’re feeling something. And you’re starting to express it. That’s a long way from where we started quite suddenly.”
That was a lie. There was no “we” in any of this. Lottie had not had her parents torn out of her life one perfect summer night like a page from an unfinished book. She didn’t have a little sister who’dpretty much stopped speaking, who had started to look like the little orphan she was: a rag doll who followed Julia everywhere and climbed into her bed at night to cry. Lottie was not at the mercy of the only adult who’d come forward to take care of them, an aunt she barely knew and from whom her father was long estranged. His own sister! Who had arrived at White Pines, taken one brisk look at the property and the house and the two girls, and looked like she wished very much that she’d never been summoned.
The truth was there was so much to hate right now. The powder-blue T-Bird her father loved so much. The sharp corner of High View Lane. The ancient maple tree that grew at the edge of the turn.
But her aunt Candace was alive and breathing, standing by the kitchen stove where her father should have been each morning, sipping tea from a bone china cup her mother liked. Julia’s hatred needed a target. For now, her aunt would do just fine.
“Julia, everything you’re feeling is normal. Let yourself feel it, and don’t worry if it’s not what others might call socially acceptable. Right now isn’t about that. It’s about identifying what you’re going through and forging a way.” Lottie set the journal on her desk, signifying that their time was about up. “I’m proud of you.”
Julia stared into her lap to hide the tears that pressed at the corners of each eye. Why did this woman have to be so nice? She liked Lottie, or at least she might have if they’d met under different circumstances. If she weren’t someone to whom Julia and Pippa were dragged for these last unbearable weeks to talk about the most unbearable thing. Julia didn’t want to talk. Talking about it meant that it was real. That she was learning toacceptwhat had happened. That she would figure out how tomove on. But Julia didn’t want to do either of those things. She wanted her old life back.
Julia knew from the moment Aunt Candace arrived that she would not work out. The limo driver had carried her bags up the front steps and into the house, and Candace had followed. There she stood in the foyer, clutching a small gold purse, staring at the girls as if she’d never seen a child. Julia could find no trace of her father in Candace. Pippa had stood beside Julia, squeezing her big sister’s hand, the thumb of her other hand jammed into her mouth, something that had started the day they learned of their parents’ death. Regressing, Lottie called it.
“It’s terrible what happened,” Candace said finally, stepping toward the girls. “I am very sorry for you both.”
Julia had stared back at this woman who was supposed to be her father’s little sister, who had not opened her arms nor offered a shred of comfort, and known instantly just how awful this arrangement would be.
Eliza, who’d been staying with them from that first horrific day, stood behind both girls and nudged them forward. How Julia wished Eliza could stay.
The first night without her parents, Julia lay awake staring up at the ceiling as images flashed in her mind: the way her father’s eyes crinkled in the corners when he laughed, her mother’s gentle hands in Pippa’s hair as she braided it. It did not seem real that they would never experience those things again; it wasn’t possible.
Her parents were just here. And they still were. Everywhere in this house and on this property, she felt them. That night she lay awake until her eyelids felt like sand, until the ache in her bones grew dull with fatigue and she eventually fell into a fitful sleep. When she awoke a few hours later, Julia blinked at the sunlight streaming in through her curtains. Her first thought was that her stomach was growling. When had she last eaten? She sat up. And then she remembered.
She’d barely made it to the bathroom before she vomited. When she finished, she stood and rinsed her mouth out at the sink. The girl in the mirror was not the girl who’d done her hair for the gala, standing in this very spot only two nights ago. She was not the girl who’d watched her parents twirl on the dance floor, the last time she would ever see them both alive. Nor was she the girl who’d sneaked back across the lawns, the cold dew beneath her bare feet, after meeting Sam in the woods. The very same night he’d leaned in and pressed his lips against hers: her first kiss. Afterward, she’d raced home, stolen up the back stairs, and tumbled into her bed, thinking of the warmth of Sam’s mouth, the tingle of his fingers intertwined with hers. How foolish. How selfish!
It was Eliza who had let herself into the quiet house at White Pines the morning after and broken the news. Poor Eliza, who’d been awakened by a frantic call from their neighbor, Mrs. Walters. The state trooper had gone to the Walters’s house after unsuccessfully attempting to rouse anyone at White Pines. The trooper apologized to the disheveled Walterses and explained that he’d been trying to reach a member of Lancaster family, but no one had answered. Of course they had not. Pippa and Julia had been tucked in their beds, exhausted by the celebrations of the night and blissfully unaware of the unfolding tragedy on their doorstep. Thankfully, Mrs. Walters had known to call Eliza. She was the closest thing the girls had to family.
Since then, Eliza had not left their sides. She’d stayed the first two nights until Candace arrived from London. And even a couple after. Eliza rubbed Pippa’s back for hours. She washed dishes; she heated up the meals that all the neighbors and friends and concerned citizens of Saybrook brought to their door. And when Julia’s and Pippa’s grief left them unable to stomach the rich quiches and casseroles and savory roasts, Eliza stepped into the kitchenand whipped up comfort food that they could eat: macaroni and cheese. Buttered pasta. Chicken noodle soup that Eliza brought up on a tray to their rooms. As if Julia were sick; as if this were something she would ever heal from. Those first few nights, Julia heard Eliza’s voice, ripe with sadness as she spoke with Candace downstairs in the parlor, explaining the girls’ schedules, likes, and dislikes. As if she could teach this strange new relative something about her own nieces that might somehow save them all. In the mornings, Eliza made their beds and laid out fresh clothes. She placed toothbrushes in their hands and ushered them into showers and gently brushed their hair. Throughout the house, she set out puzzles and board games and crayons and paper to distract them. Afternoons, she lured them out of doors to the front lawn and read aloud from picture books on the soft grass under the impossible cheer of the July sun. Mute and numb, the girls followed her through the day like little wards. But Julia knew Eliza could not stay forever.
The morning she packed her bag and hugged them goodbye, Julia’s heart ached with fresh rawness. She couldn’t bear the thought of being left with her aunt. From the moment she laid eyes on Candace’s reedlike appearance, Julia doubted she cooked or ate, and soon enough her suspicions were confirmed. Candace’s dishes were a gray meat and potato stew and some kind of lamb roast that Julia attempted to gum down and Pippa only stared at. Their days together were lonely; once they were dressed, Candace ushered them outside: “All right, then. Go play.” As if they could. She spent most of her time on the phone, with what sounded like lawyers and board members. Julia heard terms like “executor of the estate,” and there were hushed discussions about wills and assets and probate court. Julia didn’t care; times like that, she escaped outside to the barn, where she could think and be alone for a few minutes. Whenever Julia returned from the barn, Candace askedher to wash her hands and change her clothes the moment she stepped over the threshold. “Horse smell,” she’d sniff, wrinkling her nose. “You’d best shower.”
At night, their aunt did not check on them after tucking them in, the way their parents had. And she had little tolerance for being awakened by a child with a bad dream. Very late on the first night the three of them were alone together, Julia’s bedroom door swung open. Shielding her eyes from the spill of hallway light, Julia made out two silhouettes, one large and one small, in the doorway. Her aunt’s voice was not unkind but also not patient.
“Go on, then, you may sleep with your sister.” Since then, Pippa made a habit of coming to Julia in the middle of the night, wordlessly sliding beneath the sheets and curling herself around her big sister. There would be a few hiccups of tears until she settled. Then Julia would flip her damp pillow over, kiss her little sister’s head, and pull her in close. She was all Pippa had now. She would have to be both parents to her.
Julia’s friends were another story. They did not leave her alone, as her aunt did. They filled her phone with texts and calls, images of flowers and kittens and videos of sappy songs and sunsets. Julia turned her phone to Do Not Disturb. Chloe was the only one she could manage to speak to, and Julia asked her to spread the word that she did not, could not, talk to anyone right now. That she appreciated the outpouring of concern but that she needed to be alone.
But then Mrs. Fitzpatrick appeared at the front door with her arms loaded with flowers and pink boxes Julia recognized from Haven’s Bakery. Candace invited them in.
“It’s very nice to meet you,” her aunt said, accepting the giant vase of flowers. But Mrs. F had eyes only for Julia, and the second she saw her, she unloaded the pastry boxes onto the nearest table and rushed her.
