‘Why do I even try talking to you?’ I asked, speaking more to myself than her.
‘Because you don’t have any friends and no one likes you?’
Without meaning to, she gave me an idea.
‘Thanks for breakfast,’ I said, reaching for a second muffin and wrapping it in a napkin. ‘If Catherine gets back before I do, please tell her I need to talk to her before she leaves again.’
‘Will do, great chat, have a nice day,’ Ashley called as I tossed the baked goods into my bag and sprinted out the front door.
The sun seared the skin on the back of my neck as I pulled up my hair into a topknot, bouncing from foot to foot on the Powells’ front porch. I was about to ring the bell a third time when the door opened and a smart older woman I hadn’t met yet appeared. It had to be Virginia, Lydia’s grandmother. Thewhole time I’d been in Savannah she’d been ill with some minor malady or other, too fragile for introductions, but according to Lydia, that was standard practice. Even a splinter would see Virginia Powell take to her bed for a week.
But that didn’t explain why she stared at me as though she’d seen a ghost.
‘Catherine?’ she breathed, clutching at the triple string of pearls fastened around her throat.
‘No, Mrs Powell,’ I said, glancing behind me to make sure my own grandmother hadn’t followed me here. ‘It’s Emily, Catherine’s granddaughter. Paul’s daughter. I’m so pleased to meet you at last.’
Still more than a little alarmed, she recovered herself and pasted on a smile.
‘No one could argue the fact you’re a Bell,’ she replied as she fully opened the door. ‘Aren’t you just as pretty as a peach? The spitting image of your grandmother when she was a girl.’
‘Thank you, that’s so kind of you to say. Is Lydia home?’
‘I simply cannot get over how much you look like Catherine,’ Virginia went on, stretching out one hand to poke my cheek and make sure I was real. ‘Even your hair … hers was the same when she was your age, not quite all the way red.’
‘Lydia’s home!’
My friend thundered downstairs, ricocheting off the turn in the staircase right before leaping down the last four steps. She yanked a silk sleeping bonnet off her head and dumped it on the bench at the side of the door as her grandmother snatched her hand away from me and staggered back into the foyer.
‘Em, it’s criminally early to come calling,’ Lydia declared, adjusting the straps of her ribbed lavender crop top and matching boy shorts. ‘What’s up?’
‘I need to contact a friend and I need your help.’
She clapped one hand on the newel post and set one foot back on the stairs. ‘You need to use my computer? No problem, let’s go.’
‘Not the computer,’ I replied quickly with a meaningful look. This wasn’t something I could explain in front of her grandmother. ‘I have to go somewhere specific to send the message and I thought you might want to come with? It will be easier if there’s two of us.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ she replied happily. ‘But let me throw on some clothes, I’ll be right back down.’
She raced away, leaving me alone again with her deeply distressed grandmother. Not knowing how else to break the awkward silence, I pulled a smushed up napkin from out of my bag.
‘Muffin?’ I offered.
‘Goodness me,’ Virginia mumbled, taking another step back. I double-checked the sweet treat in my hand to make sure I hadn’t just offered her a baby rattlesnake by accident.
‘OK, I’ll take that, thank you very much,’ Lydia declared as she bounced back down the stairs, still in her crop top, hair pushed back by a pink silk scarf and a pair of torn-up jeans pulled over her shorts. ‘Let’s go, ’bye, Grandmother, I’ll be back later.’
She grabbed me by the arm, almost pulling it out the socket as she dragged me from the house.
‘Is your grandmother OK?’ I asked when we stopped to cross the road into Madison Square.
‘The answer to that question is never yes, but that was a little more weird than usual.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, offering her the least-squished muffin. ‘I didn’t mean to upset her. She seemed so freaked out when she saw me.’
Lydia’s sigh of response was frustrated, bordering on annoyed. ‘It’s not just you. My literal existence seems to scandalize her these days. How are things between you and Catherine?’
‘Fine?’ I said without any certainty. ‘She’s so happy to have me here, but sometimes I think I’m letting her down, like she expects me to be someone I’m not when I’m not even sure I know who I am, so how am I supposed to be the person she wants me to be?’
