“So?”
“So she could have easily taken all this with her. If she was planning to go.”
“Oh.”
Of course, I’d lived close to the bone my whole life, too, and I’d never developed a magpie attachment to shiny objects. To be ready to fly, you had to keep your grip loose and your pockets light. I knew in my bones this was something Marisa would remember, too.
Was it better to believe your mother had been taken? Or that she had left you? That she couldn’t stay, or simply hadn’t?
I should have known the answer by now.
We left that room and headed toward Sicily’s, but at the foot of the stairs, I was faced with the array of the kid’s school pictures again.
My mood downshifted without warning. How had I let Marisa’s location becomemyproblem? She had never cared about mine.
Sicily’s room was tucked into the eaves of the attic and decked out in pink. Pink walls, pink trim, pink sheets. Itsmelledpink. She had her own shiny pink Christmas tree in the corner, hot pink baubles and draped ropes of metallic pink beads. I sank down on a fluffy white rugand leaned my back against the bed. “Nice,” I said, running my fingers across the carpet. “What is this? Unicorn pelt?”
“What’syourproblem?”
There was no way to explain my problem with all this soft living to the daughter who had been cherished, worshipped like the Christ child. And I had got myself into a sitch here: I didn’t know if I could sit through an entire lunch as good-natured Dolly.
“What do you think was making Marisa nervous enough to buy a gun?” I asked.
Sicily shrugged sadly.
Marisa had been so jumpy the night I’d seen her, I’d called her out on it. Why had she come to me in the first place? To tell me that I had a sister? But why now? More likely she would have come to ask for some kind of help with whatever she’d gotten herself into.
The best question was… Why me?
I remembered Marisa tugging at Alex’s sleeve. Probably she hadn’t come to see me in the first place.
But I was the one who made sure she didn’t feel like staying. If something happened to Marisa now, or she never turned up, I would have a lot to answer for.
Sicily was watching me with wide, worried eyes. I turned away.
Across the room sat a stack of vinyl albums and a little mod record player. I crawled over to it and pulled down a handful of records at random. Fleetwood Mac? “These are yours?” I asked.
Sicily didn’t have to answer. She sat on the edge of her bed and picked up the nearest stuffed animal, a handful of an owl who’d seen better days.
“She likes Fleetwood Mac,” I said under my breath. If Marisa had led with that morsel, maybe I would have let her tell me whatever it was she’d come to say.
I slidRumoursfrom its sleeve. The label had an image of a street lined with palm trees and the wordsBurbank Home of Warner Bros. Was this a first pressing, mint condition? Sicily didn’t know the treasuretrove she was sitting on. Most of my records had been bargain-bin finds, cut-outs with the sleeve notched along its edge to show that it had never sold.
Of course, there was nothing some of those fanboys at the music shop loved more than a platter no one else had valued. They loved an orphan.
I dropped the needle and here came that chugga-chugga guitar of “Second Hand News,” like a train coming. Or going.
I could imagine living up here high in the trees, listening to records and enjoying a bright outlook. When the next track started up, groovy and low-key, I said, “It’s a nice room.”
Sicily was pulling at one of the stuffed owl’s wings, over and over. She’d been doing that to her scarf fringe in Alex’s office, too.
“What’s Stone House?” she said.
“What?”
“Earlier, you asked me what Stone House is,” she said.
Doyouremember that? I didn’t.
