I’d put the picture on my dresser. It cheered me in a way I couldn’t explain to see those five strangers smiling at me every morning and night. I didn’t pretend they were my family—I no longer even remembered the people’s names—but the photo gave me comfort. We had no family photos of our own, so the picture of another family was a reminder that this life somehow existed, that there were people who lived like this, took pictures like this.
Eventually, my mother noticed the photo. She lost her temper at my theft, screamed at me, then threw the picture away. Her reaction was really quite satisfying. Worth it, even though I had to sacrifice the picture.
Now I opened my dresser drawers and rifled through the old T-shirts, the now-tiny underpants. An early bra, two soft triangles of embarrassed cotton. I’d left these behind because they were too small for me even then, and I couldn’t wear them anymore. In the end, we’d lasted two years in this house after Ben vanished before Mom couldn’t take it anymore and we left in a hurry, like thieves.
I found a crusted mascara, a half-used lipstick I’d probably swiped from Violet. Except for the odd pictures on the wall, this was the room of any sad girl in a bad movie.
From under the bed came a soft sound, a faint thump. The sound of something rolling, then stopping.
My hand stilled in the drawer. I closed my eyes as my breath tightened in my throat. For a second I could smell dampness, mold, and dirty water. A rotten smell that permeated my nose and went all the way up into my skull. I could taste the damp in the back of my throat, taste the cold as the water rushed up, rising and inexorable, ready to pull me into its filthy depths, to pull me under and stop my breath—
From downstairs came the shrill sound of music from the TV, blasting through the house. The opening of the local news. Vail had gotten the TV working. The sound receded as he turned the volume down.
I opened my eyes. There was no water, but the smell—I could swear I smelled it. Taste its foulness in the back of my throat.
I could go downstairs and watch the news with my brother. Or I could stay here and look under the bed.
I wasn’t going to look under the bed.
I wasn’t going downstairs, either. Instead, I walked to the bed, pulled the covers back, and got in, fully clothed. I slid under the cool, musty sheets and lay my head on the pillow. Everyone knew, because it was a law of the universe, that whatever was under the bed couldn’t get me here. It had no power. This was the only place I was safe.
For all my childhood, this had been the only place I was safe.
As a newscaster’s voice rang downstairs in the living room, I pulled the blankets over my head, turned over, and closed my eyes.
7
Violet
Self-sufficiency was in the nature of the Esmie children. Though we grew up in a big house and had money—with the money for us children locked in trust funds—our parents never employed any help. Rooms got dusty until one of us cleaned them. When your pile of dirty clothes became unbearable, you did your laundry yourself in the semi-functional washing machine. Our parents were almost never home for meals, so we each perfected the art of single-serve nourishment—an egg or two, or a bologna sandwich, or slices of toast.
Sometimes, when I got tired of timing my own soft-boiled egg, I ate at the home of my only school friend, Alice McMurtry. Alice was a sweet girl with glasses and pimples on her receding chin. She and I swapped notes in class and snickered about boys. Looking back, it was remarkable that I had a friend—everyone thought I was strange and disagreeable, and I couldn’t argue the point. But Alice either didn’t mind or was so desperate for friendship that she found me sufficient. When I went to Alice’s house, Alice’s mother would always make us something delicious—gooey grilled cheese or bowls ofhomemade soup. I loved eating at Alice’s because I didn’t have to make whatever it was, which made it taste better.
When we were twelve, Alice was found dead on the path running alongside the train tracks, the one we sometimes walked when we wanted to take the long way home from school. I vaguely remembered the days after she died—wondering what had happened to my friend, getting my only answers from the rumors going around the halls. Had someone hurt her? Was she murdered? Had she died in pain? I remembered spending an hour in the library, scanning the local newspapers for news of Alice and finding nothing. Even in Fell, wouldn’t a murdered child be news?
I’d walked by Alice’s house in the next neighborhood, a thirty-minute walk away, determined to talk to her parents, then balking at the last minute. I’d lived in a fog of confusion that added to the loneliness and pain. In an often invisible childhood, it was the most invisible I had ever felt. No one noticed that I was upset and confused. No one told me anything.
I finally lucked into answers when I eavesdropped on two teachers gossiping over cigarettes outside the gym doors. There had been an autopsy—I couldn’t even imagine what this entailed, my friend pulled to pieces—and Alice hadn’t been murdered after all. “Heart defect,” one teacher said. “Poor kid.”
“Just one of those things,” the other teacher said.
“True. But it doesn’t make for much of a story, does it? What a letdown.”
When Alice’s parents put their house up for sale and moved out of town, I wondered if they agreed.
No one cared that I spent my school days in agony, wondering if I’d see Alice standing in a doorway or waiting for me when I glanced out the window. I lay awake at night, wondering if I’d have to see my dead best friend, just like I’d seen all the others I wasn’t supposed to talk about. When I talked about the dead people, everyone thoughtI was mentally ill. The only people who didn’t think I was crazy were Dodie and Vail, but I rarely told them about the things I saw. When we were in the house, someone might be listening.
I walked into the kitchen now to see Vail standing at the counter, his back to me as he stared out the window at the view over the rear of the property. The toaster was on the counter. He’d made his own breakfast, then cleaned the dishes. I felt a pang of familiarity at the sight of it, as deep and moving as pain that took my breath away for a second.
Then I got out the bread and put two slices in the toaster. I fished in the cupboard for the peanut butter we’d bought yesterday to make my own single breakfast. Vail didn’t speak, his only acknowledgment of me in the change of air in the room, his silent awareness.
There was a near-full pot of coffee on the counter, my brother’s only concession to anyone else living in this house. I poured myself a cup and said, “I’m going into town today.”
“Yeah?” Vail was wearing his ancient jeans and a thick navy blue cable-knit sweater with a tee under it. After his years as a diver, wearing next to nothing, it seemed he liked to layer up now, as if he’d been cold all that time.
“There must have been a police report,” I said, not having to explain what police report I might be talking about. “I remember police here. Lots of them.”
Vail nodded, still looking out the window. “Uniforms. Some guy sitting me down on the living room sofa and asking questions. Hanna? Manna?” He pressed his fingertips to the spot between his eyes. “I can’t remember his name. I remember thinking it rhymed withbanana.”
