“No. She was confessing, not analyzing. That’s your friend Chrissie asking.”
It isn’t. It’s me. But the instant passes. Continuing up the stairs, I head for the guest bedroom. I’ve barely unfolded the attic ladder when the warm air tumbles down.
“Whew,” says Margo from close behind. “Stuffy.”
“Yeah. But filled with goodies,” I sing as a lure and head up. The rain is steady on the roof, relegating the ocean to a distant roll. The smell of it blends well with the faint mustiness here. I don’t mind either today. They’re comforting in the sense of shelter.
Going straight to the box labeledMallory’s Photographs,I open the flaps and lift as many prints as I can safely hold, then settle on the edge ofAnne’s School Papers.
“It’s exactly the same,” Margo says from the top of the hatch. Having left her stacked sandals at the base of the ladder, she makes little sound as she crosses the space. “Barely dusty.”
“Lina must clean here.”
“Lina?”
I explain. It would have been a perfect lead-in to asking what Margo remembers about Roberto Aiello, only she is suddenly lost to all that’s here. After running a finger across the span of legal diaries, she skims her palm over the shoulders of Dad’s suits, then, gasping, weaves toward the “things” corner and rummages through board games.
It looks for all the world as if she’s pleased to be here. And there’s another question to ask.Why did you come?To rescue me? I don’t think so. Once, she swore never to return. Maybe, having found that I was here, she came to tell us about Mom. But Mom’s been dead for ten years, and we three have been together at least half a dozen times since, and she hasn’t said a word. I wonder if there’s something else on her mind.
“Is everything okay at home?” I ask.
“Of course.” She shoots me a where-did-that-come-from look. “Why?”
“No reason.” Trying to make a joke, I ask, “Think Mom was hiding anything else?”
“Nah.” She tosses it off with such carelessness that I believe her. Then she squeezes in beside me on my makeshift bench to look at the prints in my lap.
The photos on top are nature shots, black-and-whites that I processed myself, and while she admires them, I’m more interested in the people ones beneath. Mainly in color, they’re not as artistic as a jellyfish or an arcing wave, but they bring back more memories.
Margo is quickly into these, too. We laugh at one where she is white-nosed under zinc oxide, and one where she and Anne blurred jumping the waves, and one of Anne with her hands raised in despair when her sandcastle is wrecked by a rogue wave.
“Memorial Day?” Margo asks, lifting another.
“Must be. That’s the town clambake. There’d have been twice as many people if it’d been Fourth of July or Labor Day.”
“I liked Memorial Day,” she says as if only now realizing it.
“Me, too. The town was still ours then.” Forearms on thighs, I look closely as she holds the print. “There’s Jack and his dad. Do you see Elizabeth?”
“Nope.” She points. “Mom, Dad, the Mahoneys—remember the Mahoneys from down the street? Total geeks.” Her finger moves. “Who am I talking to?” She sucks in a breath. “Omigod. Michael Hartley.”
“Yup. You’ll see him tomorrow. He’s coming to put plants in on the bluff.”
“He was hot. If I’d stayed here, I might’ve been into him.”
“Are you sorry you didn’t—stay here? I mean, if things had been different?”
“No,” she says. “I like my life.”
The next few prints are from the same event. I hand her several and study others.
“Are we looking for something special?” she asks.
“Mom and Elizabeth together,” I offer, though there’s so much else here to potentially see. “Mom and Dad together. Dad and Elizabeth together.”
“Here you go,” she says into the sound of the rain on the roof. “Mom and Elizabeth talking with Paul Schuster. Paul Schuster,” she repeats softly, clearly remembering the man. “Niceguy.”
I’m about to tell her that I talked with him, when she holds out another photo. “What does this one say?”
