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“I didn’t know she was doing that.”
“Are you sure?” She was looking at me now; my own eyes stayed on the road, but I could feel hers, fixed on me as if she was trying to decide if I was lying. “She never mentioned it? You never talked about it?”
“Mom, no. I told you. I was as surprised as anyone. I didn’t knowanything. And it’s not like I need it,” I said, talking faster. “I can just give it to you, or—”
“I don’t need you to take care of me. That’s not the point.” Her voice was sharp. “It’s a question of what’s fair.”
Neither of us spoke as the landscape flashed by outside: the bridge crossing to the island, the dark and curvy road lined on both sides with tall trees, the moon winking in and out of view behind the tree line and the clouds.
“I just wish I understood,” she said darkly after a long silence. “What she was thinking. None of it makes sense.”
I made the last turn before the Whispers, and the house loomed ahead of us. I meant to reply, but as my headlights swept across the piazza, I yelped and hit the brakes. I saw two copper eyes shining, then a streak of red fur as the fox ran off into the woods.
“Wow, did you see—” I started to say, but my mother hadn’t seen. She was hurriedly gathering her things together and pulling her car keys out of her bag. I gaped.
“What are you doing?” I asked, but Mom only shrugged her coat on. “Mom?”
She put her hand on the door handle and I threw the car into park, watching incredulously as she got out without a single word of explanation. She turned and looked back at me through the open door, her gaze shifting from my face to my hand on the steering wheel.
“When did you start wearing that ring?” she said abruptly, and then shook her head before I could answer. “Well, no. Not now. But there’s something... something we need to talk about.”
“I’d say there’s more than one thing,” I said, and she blew out a frustrated sigh.
“Yes. But not now. I have to go.”
“We just got back—”
She ignored me. “I’ll be back late tomorrow or maybe early the day after. I’ll let you know. I’m sorry. There’s just something—”
“Mom, wait, please, I need to tell you—”
“—something I have to do. I’m sorry. I really am, I’m sorry, but this can’t wait.” She moved to close the door and then looked back over her shoulder, almost like an afterthought. “Shelly died, you know.”
“I know,” I said. I almost said,I saw,but I bit my tongue, and my mother didn’t say anything else. The door closed, and she crossed the piazza in a few quick steps, not even glancing back as she unlocked her car, climbed in, started the engine. Her headlights flared and swept past.
I thought of putting the car in gear and driving after her, tailgating and honking the horn like a road rage freak until she pulled over. I thought of lying down in the driveway so that she’d have to run me over to get away. I thought about pulling her out of the car and shaking her until she started speaking, until everything she’d spent decades not saying to me was finally out there, out loud, out in the open.
But I didn’t. Because I am my mother’s daughter, after all, and if she had to talk, then so would I. Because I was suddenly afraid of what she might say, when all was said and done. And because in the time it took for me to think of everything I could do, her car had already passed the place where I sat, not doing anything. I hadn’t even unbuckled my seat belt. Instead, I watched in silence as it rolled away, as the taillights disappeared around the final curve of the driveway. Behind me, the house loomed, huge and dark. I looked up at it, all those vacant windows with all those empty rooms beyond, and thought of the way I’d once called it “my house”—and the way Jack Dyer had laughed in my face when I said it. But it was mine now, I realized, whether I wanted it or not. A final gift from the grandmother I’d loved, but maybe never really knew. All those dusky hallways, mine; all the rooms with their dust-shrouded furniture and cracked walls; all the nooks and crannies where the wind whispered through like a human voice. A house with nothing and no one in it but memories, half packed into cardboard boxes. The emptiness belonged to me now.
I shuddered and went inside.
I had never spent a night in the house alone, and the idea of sleeping upstairs, in the bedroom where I’d once jolted awake in the dark to the sound of Mimi whispering “I see you,” was too creepy to contemplate. I spent the night on the couch instead, wrapped up in a blanket, with lights on and the television playing at low volume. My mother sent a text message saying she’d be back late the next night and ignored me when I replied asking where she was and what she was doing. Adam called me on his dinner break, but our conversation was stilted. He was gloomy and distracted; I was preoccupied with staring at the dark doorways that opened onto the living room, imagining what I’d do if a ghost suddenly appeared in one of them. Mimi. Shelly. The grandfather, great-grandfather, great-uncles I’d never met. A stranger with pitted eyes and a stained smile.
He always comes at night,I thought, and shivered.
“Babe?” Adam said. “Are you there?”
“Sorry.” I tore my eyes away from the doorway, the blackness beyond. “What’d you say?”
“I said I guess you didn’t have a chance to tell them. About us.”
“Not after everything that happened.”
“Your aunt really hit you?”
“Yeah. Insane. It didn’t hurt that much, it was just shocking. I’ve never seen her like that.” I paused to touch my cheek, remembering the flash of her hand, the sting as she struck me. “Mimi didn’t happen to say anything to you, did she? About leaving the house to me?”
He was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said. “If she did, I can’t remember. But we didn’t talk much about stuff like that. I was... oh, hang on a m—” There was a commotion in the background and then silence as the phone went mute. A moment later he came back. “I have to go. Love you. Talk to you tomorrow?”
