“Well, it isn’t.”
“So how are we going to stay there?”
“Emma.” Before, he’d sounded tired. Now, irritation was creeping in. “Just let Mimi know you’ll be leaving by the end of the week.”
“But—”
“Let her know,” he repeated, as in the background, an announcement began. “That’s our group. I’ll call as soon as we’re back in your time zone. Okay?”
“Okay,” I replied. “Fly safe.”
We hung up, and I flopped back against my pillow, looking at the ceiling above me. After sulking a bit, I went downstairs for toast and the obits, and when I saw Mimi, I told her nothing. My dad was in the air, over an ocean. I still had some time, and there were rooms to clean.
Now, I pulled out my spray bottle, pumping the handle until the small glass table I was standing over was covered with bleach solution. As I started to wipe it clean, Trinity said, “Who are you today, Saylor?”
I looked down at my bottle, where a name was written in pink Sharpie, surrounded by plump hearts. “Vicki,” I said.
“Oh, right,” she replied. “Big on pink, not so much onworking. I think she lasted one season.”
“And a half,” Bailey said, banging against something in the bathroom. Thump. Thump. “She took off with that trucker, remember?”
Trinity thought for a second. “God, you’re right!”
“Of course I am,” Bailey said. “I remember everything. All details, every story. You know that.”
“Is this good?” Gordon, now at the edge of the mirror, her face red with exertion, asked.
“Missed a spot,” Trinity told her, pointing to the left side.
As Gordon started rubbing again, I asked, “Is that true, Bailey? Do you really remember everything?”
Another thump. Then, “Yeah. It’s like a gift. Or a curse.”
“It’s seriously creepy sometimes,” Trinity added. “She remembers the stuff she wasn’t even here for, because she’s heard Mom tellherstories.”
“Do you remember hearing about when I was here?” I asked Bailey as she threw a pile of towels out the bathroom door. “When we were four?”
“Yeah,” she said. Her voice carried out as she added, “Your mom and dad were going on a trip and they left you with Mimi.”
“Second honeymoon,” I said, adding the pillowcases to my own pile. “That’s what he said.”
“They didn’t seem like newlyweds,” Bailey said. I could hear her own spray bottle. “Pretty tense, as I recall hearing. Your mom hadn’t been here since Chris Price died, so there was that, too.”
“She never came back, all those years?”
“Nope.” More spritzing. “Mom said Mimi went to visit her, with Joe, when you were born and a couple of other times. But she was weird about this place. It was like there were—”
“Ghosts,” I finished for her.
“Yeah.” She came out, gathering the towels in her arms and crossing the room to add them to the pile of linens. “She just wasn’t herself, according to my mom. And then when Steph came over, she kind of lost it.”
“Steph?” I asked.
“Roo’s mom,” Bailey said. “It was the first time Waverly had seen her since the funeral. And she’d never met Roo.”
“That, I remember,” Trinity said, turning a page. “Waverly started crying, just standing there watching you and Roo together.”
I plumped the pillow I was holding, then replaced it. “I wish I could remember.”
