“I’veneverbeen in the old Casteñada home,” she said, looking around and whistling. “It’s gorgeous.” She glanced down at the book in my arms. “Caravaggio?” she said admiringly. “You know, I was working in a hotel in Italy a few months ago and got to see his work in the Uffizi. The Medusa painting is wild. I think I stared at it for an hour.”
I’d known it was a painting, but the idea that someone could stand before it, note the texture of the paint rising off the canvas, bump shoulders with strangers...
Time dimpled, and for a split second, the House turned to glass and the light of a life beyond it showed through its beams.
“Do you like ice cream?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Well, you’veneverhad ice cream until you’ve had gelato heaped into a waffle cone while getting lost in the streets of Florence.” She brought her fingers to her lips and kissed them. “Trust me, angels would fall out of heaven for this gelato.”
“What are you telling this poor child?” asked Mrs. Revandfrom the top of the stairs. She carried a huge box in her hands, which the girl rushed to take from her.
“Regaling her with tales of the forbidden substance... gelato,” she said, winking at me.
Mrs.Revand smiled. I must have done something normal after that—nodded and waved, laughed, or said my goodbyes—but I only remember the moment when the door closed behind them. The sunlight moved over her shorn silver hair, and the wind tugged at the frays of her denim shorts, and I understood that Time was not obedient to her. Here, Indigo held Time captive, frozen, and because of this we revisited our favorite hours. But this woman did not hold Time. She spent it. She wasted minutes in the sun, threw away seconds on winding sidewalks, offered hours to paintings and ice cream and movement, and let herself be changed.
That evening when we sat down to dinner on the covered patio, dusk lay a thick coat of shadow on the grounds, and the periwinkle clouds held still enough to be admired.
“What a lovely evening, girls,” said Tati, sighing into a chair.
Indigo wasn’t hungry. She rarely was after a day spent sketching. Even so, she reached for a slice of peach, dipped it in honey, and held it out to me. I ate it from her fingers and handed her a glass of water. When she drank, I was no longer thirsty and when I ate, she was no longer hungry. This rhythm soothed me, and I might’ve forgotten about the woman altogether if Tati hadn’t then taken a deep swig from her wineglass before swirling it in the air:
“And what shall we do with our summer, my dears? Take a gondola around the Venice canals? Hide away in the Florida Keys?”
I didn’t mean to respond. But the way Tati held her glass and the way she accented her phrasing brought back the elegant manfrom Indigo’s masquerade. My hand tingled, remembering how he had bent over my wrist and spoke of a city where the skyline was jagged with life—
“We could travel,” I said, and my voice rang alien in my ears. “We could go to Paris.”
Indigo looked up from her empty plate. There were smudges of purple and red on her face, splotches of yellow and green on her arms. This latest project had consumed her. She referred to it only as “our gift,” and whenever she sat down beside me looking as if she’d spent the afternoon wrestling a rainbow, my chest ached because I knew she loved me.
“Why would we leave?” asked Indigo, her gaze darting toward the Otherworld.
“I don’t know,” I said. I twisted the starling key around my neck. “I just thought—”
“Ilovethis idea, girls,” said Tati, clapping her hands together. “Indigo, you need to visit the Paris site anyway! Remember Guillaume? He was here for your birthday...”
Tati trailed off and I held my breath, wondering if she’d mention how Indigo and I had revealed ourselves that night. Ever since that one confrontation, Tati had mostly laughed it off, but there were moments when her face grew serious, and she would touch my hand and beg me never to do something like that again.
Tati smiled. “He wouldloveto show you the grounds. They’re my absolute favorite. Oh, and Azure! You can get a passport! It’ll be such fun!”
Indigo caught my hand under the table. I could feel the pulse of her wrist beneath my fingertips. I waited for her to speak, to shoot down the idea entirely. Her eyes were alert and focused. Overhead, the clouds were released and began to glide across the darkening sky.
Tati stood up from the table, glowing with excitement.
“When do you want to go?” she asked. “You know what, let me make some calls first. This is going to be wonderful! I know it!”
Tati practically skipped back into the House, leaving me and Indigo alone outside.
“Why would we leave?” Indigo said to me, our hands still clasped. Her voice was even. A cold breeze touched my neck. “We’re meant to be here. If we leave, the Otherworld might get mad. What if we become Cast-Out Susans?”
Whenever I imagined this fate, I felt a door threatening to close behind me forever. But then I pictured an endless string of frozen summer afternoons, the air brewing so thick and humid I could no longer breathe.
“We’re exiles, Indigo,” I said. “That means we must’ve already done something wrong. Maybe we’re supposed to learn something out here and bring our knowledge back to the other side.”
It had to be true. Or else what would we have to show for the time we were here? I imagined these stories piling up like coins in our hands, bright tithes to the future.
Indigo frowned and sank her teeth into her bottom lip. My mouth felt her ache and I held back a wince.
