“Like my forcing you to do what you don’t want to do? Have I ever done that?”
“Not in words.” Accusatory eyes finish the sentence.
I should have hedged and apologized and reassured her. Butnot in wordsrubs me the wrong way, too.Not in wordsis what I most detest about this place.Not in wordsis all that I didn’t understand about why I am who I am. My parents didn’t discuss things. As a parent now, I do. As anadultnow, I do. And Anne’s accusation is wrong.
Perhaps unwisely, but unable to hold it in, I say, “That’s your insecurity speaking.”
She jerks back. “Insecurity? I am not insecure. I know who I am and what I’m doing and who I’m doing it with, which also means I can date who I want.” The last is a clear reference to Billy Houseman. “I’m not a child, so if you think you can treat me like Joy, you can turn right around and drive back to New York tonight. Don’t even bother to unpack. You can get dinner on the road.”
I barely have time to stand before she storms out.
What to do? I don’t belong here. Anne’s outburst validates my having stayed away for so long.
That said, alone in this barren bedroom, I feel a great emptiness. Anne is my little sister. In all those years we lived here together, we never went at each other this way. Granted, what happened twenty years ago fractured us. Granted, my life is light years removed from Anne’s. I’m a different person now. Apparently, she is, too. She resents me. Deeply.
What to do? She is angry. She doesn’t mean what she said—well, maybe she does mean the words, but certainly not the hatred I felt receiving them. And if I take her advice and leave tonight? My father won’t know the difference. He’ll forget I was here. I’ve seen the house, and it’s not falling down, as Jack implied, and he has seen me, too. I came, I saw, I checked off that box.
But is Dad a murderer? Is he a danger to Anne or Jack or some other innocent in town?
What to do?I’m still standing in the guest bedroom, not knowing where my steps should lead, when I hear faint strains of the piano drifting up the stairs, around the turret, and along the hall. Crossingto the door, I lean against the jamb and listen to Joy, who is tentative at first, then more confident. She is playing by heart—no, no prodigy, but she does have an ear for music. I recognize Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” though there is a slight deviation in the usual rhythm. Joy is being Joy, either simply feeling the music or knowing that I need soothing. I listen, breathe deeply and feel calmer.
We’ll stay here, of course. She would be crushed if I dragged her away from something she has just discovered and so badly wants. She has just as much a right to this place as I do, and if Anne doesn’t like it, that’sherproblem.
Actually, it’s my problem. By the time dinner is done, I realize that. I try to make conversation with Dad—ask how his wrist feels, whether he’s read anything good, whether he’ll take me to Sunny Side Up for breakfast tomorrow—but he answers each with a yes or a no. When nothing follows, I try to make conversation with Anne—ask whether she hires more help for the summer, mention that I saw Deanna Smith and Joey DiMinico and a blonde-haired woman, girl actually, who looked so much like Elizabeth MacKay that I got the chills. Dad doesn’t react to the Elizabeth mention, and my sister simply says that her name is Lily and that she works at the shop.
“Lily?” I ask, startled. I realize that this must be the woman Dad stares at. “Short for Elizabeth?” The coincidence would be too much.
“Short for Amelia,” Anne states. “Amelia Ackerman from Boise, Idaho.” Her stare tells me that she knows what I’m thinking and am wrong.
On the plus side, Anne has served the steak presliced for all of us, so that Dad can easily handle it without using his left hand. I have to give her points for foresight.
And they both do talk to Joy, even my father, who asks surprisingly good questions.How long have you studied the piano? Where do you go to school? What’s your favorite subject?They’re sensible questions, the kind any grandparent might ask, to which Anne looks smug. Me? I’m relieved to hear him this way. I don’t want him to have Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t want him to have dementia, period.
Then, abruptly and wordlessly, he stands and leaves the table. We’ve barely finished our steak. Fresh-from-the-oven brownies are cooling on the stove for dessert.
Joy watches him go with a look of alarm, before glancing at me, then at Anne. “Was it something I said?”
“No, hon, he’s just tired,” Anne explains. “He gets like that sometimes.”
“The way he just picked up and left, that was weird,” Joy says.
My sister snickers. “Not with my father. He engages and disengages at will. He was always that way,” she says, shooting me a look that dares me to disagree.
I can’t. Yes, Dad always did what he wanted when he wanted, to hell with social norms. We assumed it was just an authoritative personality doing its own thing. In this instance, though, it could be that the effort to be “normal” has exhausted him, which happens to those with Alzheimer’s, I’ve read.
But right now, that’s neither here nor there. As I load the dishwasher, while beside me, not three feet away, a silent Anne cuts into the brownie pan, I’m thinking that this week could be tough. Between my father and her, I’m invisible.
Okay. So this week isn’t about me. It isn’t even about whether Dad shot Elizabeth. This week is about Joy.
Still, how not to take it personally, given my history here? I don’t need, don’twantto be the center of attention, but I can only ask so many questions about Anne, about Dad, about Bay Bluff, before silence sets in. Back in New York, Joy has plenty to say at my slightest suggestion, has plenty to initiate herself, and when silence settles there, it’s a comfortable one. This one is not. Aren’t they curious about my life? Do they care at all that I’m here?
The brownies are yummy, as I knew they would be. Anne always knew her way around a kitchen, even when we were kids. And the vanilla ice cream she scoops on top, quickly melting on the brownie’s warmth? I have two helpings, I am that desperate to show Annethat I appreciate her efforts. But it isn’t until I tell her Joy and I will finish cleaning up, that she brightens. Tossing the dish towel aside with a flourish, she announces that she’s going out, tells us—me—not to wait up, and breezes out the back door.
Joy stares after her, before turning baffled eyes on me. “Did she even tell Papa she was leaving?”
Of course not. Doing that would have ruined the drama of her exit.Take care of everything here,her flourish said.Everything.
Feeling newly responsible, I go looking for my father. He is asleep in his chair, head back, mouth open. I watch him for a minute, seeing so much older a man than the one in my memories that I feel a great sadness.
