Along the path, there are boxwoods covered in burlap to keep the deer away for the winter. Bushes of hydrangea are cut down to twigs, neatly manicured even when they’re not in bloom. I get the idea that, were I here in summer, the plants would be trimmed into perfect circles, the sort of symmetry that doesn’t exist in nature.
I see a shadow moving on the otherwise dark terrace of one of the other two cottages. For a second, adrenaline skitters across my belly. But then I hold up my phone, and the flashlight turns the shadow into a human being.
I slump, leaning back against the house. My grandmother texted me again this afternoon to ask how it was going, and I didn’t know how to answer. Underneath her casual inquiry was a desperate plea:Are you better yet?As though an eating disorder is a bout of the flu.
The second time my grandmother sent me away for treatment, not long after Georgia died, she said,Imagine if your mother had gotten help when she was your age.As though the problem with Georgia was that she started going to rehab too late.
Georgia left home halfway through her senior year of high school. Naomi didn’t know where her daughter had gone until she was flipping channels one afternoon and saw Georgia’s face on MTV, broadcast from clear across the country. Even then, my grandmother wasn’t sure she’d found her daughter: This woman’s name was different, her formerly light-brown curly hair blond and straight, cut into a shag that framed her face in the least flattering way possible.
I only ran away once. I was five years old and it was an accident. (I didn’t run so much as wander.) A police officer found me in a parking lot near Rodeo Drive, my hands caked with peanut butter, chocolate pudding matted in my hair. They fed me french fries while they waited for my mother to pick me up.You must be starving,they said. (To Mom’s credit, she had the good sense to invite Naomi to live with us after that.)
Sometimes I think Georgia was disappointed that I never left home on my own with nothing but a dream in my back pocket, like she did.
It’s not too late. There’s still time for me to live up to the example she set. I could go into the woods right now like the heroine of a fairy tale, seeking refuge in the wilderness.
Eventually, Dr. Mackenzie would discover I’m missing. She might assume, at first, that I grew fed up with therapy and decided to go home. But then she’d notice my suitcase still stored in the closet, my wallet and ID still tucked into the tote bag beside the bed. She’d call my grandmother, maybe the police. The center would launch a proper search party, sparing no expense, hoping to avoid disaster, praying that my family would be spared another tragedy.
At last, they’d find my body sitting on the beach, as peaceful as if I were watching the tide come out and in and out again, an endless loop. Once again, the center would be blameless, as they couldn’t have stopped me from leaving. In fact, holding a patient against their will would be illegal, as they were quick to mention ten years ago.
The figure on the other terrace holds up a hand.
I can’t quite believe Lord Edward is waving at me, considering he pretended to sleep rather than speak to me in the Range Rover when we arrived. Despite the cold, he’s wearing a T-shirt, and even from here I can see how fit he is: his arms taut with muscles, his collarbones straight beneath his neck as though he never slouched a day in his life. The terraces are edged with a fence made of solid cedar, cutting his body in half at the waist. It looks almost like he’s floating, but his hands grip the metal railing along the top of the fence like it’s the only thing holding him upright. I recall reading that he’d been in a car accident a few months ago.
I look beyond the path into the woods and shiver, the image of my lost, frozen body on the beach floating in my mind’s eye. I wind my scarf around my neck, wiggling my toes in my shearling boots.
In stories, it isn’t safe to meet a man you barely know in the woods in the middle of the night. But I don’t want to go inside where the lingering scent of vomit wafts from the bathroom. When she was here, Georgia surely wasn’t too timid to venture into the woods alone. For all I know, she stalked fearlessly through the darkness every night of her stay. If I do the same, Imight be following her footsteps, seeing what she saw, experiencing what she experienced. Isn’t that why I’m here, at least in part?
Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if my mother had been a little more frightened of the world, a little more careful. But then she never would’ve left home, never would’ve met my father, and I never would’ve existed to wonder anything at all.
I throw down my cigarette and walk toward the stairs.
20Lord Edward
By the time we meet halfway between our cabins, Amelia Blue’s smoking a fresh cigarette. She’s wearing gloves, but they’re fingerless, and the skin around her nails looks purplish, not entirely alive. I recall how cold her hand was when I shook it in the back seat of the Range Rover. I’d felt the urge to blow on her fingers to warm them, as though I were a big brother or a father, exhibiting the sort of caretaking instinct no one ever expected from me—the baby of the family, the problem child.
“Want one?” she offers, and I shake my head. “I know,” she adds, as though I’ve said something she agrees with. “Disgusting habit.”
“Maybe they can help you kick it while you’re here.”
She laughs—loudly at first, and then, as if remembering that we’re surely not supposed to be out here together, more quietly.
“Where should we go, Amelia Blue?” I ask.
“Just Amelia’s okay, Lord Edward.”
“Just Edward’s better than okay.”
Amelia nods, and I know she only said my name to give me the opportunity to ask her to drop theLord.
“It’s supposed to be one name—Amelia Blue, likeMary Anne. I don’t think my mother realized most people aren’t up for that many syllables.”
“You ever think about changing it?” My father’s title, the Duke of Exeter, goes back hundreds of years. The notion of changing one’s name is quite literally foreign to me, another of those American quirks I haven’t internalized, despite living almost entirely in the States since I was sixteen.
Amelia cocks her head, considering. “No one’s ever asked me that,” she answers finally. “Actually, I wouldn’t want to drop the Blue.”
“Why not?”
“I know most people think my mother named me Amelia Blue because she has a thing for color—like, her old band’s name was Shocking Pink, you know?”
