She looked up from her knitting. “Yes?”
“I just came back from the Barnetts’ house. Forrest was there. But he wasn’t doing anything bad. He was breaking up with Brenda, actually. You don’t have to worry about her anymore.”
“Oh, really?” Considering how violently she’d responded to previous reports, Regina’s demeanor now seemed weirdly uninterested. Bored, almost.
“He told her she was a terrible person. He said you had every right to hate him.”
Every reason to want me dead.His actual words.
Regina considered this, but only briefly. For a moment she looked out over the green lawn of Wonderland—the perfectly trimmed shrubbery, the boathouse, the dock with the Chris-Craft tied up, the words “Queen of the Lake” painted on the side—and the perfect blue lake beyond.
“I see,” she said with a sigh. “Well, that’s good news.”
I should have been relieved. I’d told Regina the truth, and finally she understood. Only something about her reaction felt all wrong. She’d taken the news in so easily. After the scene I’d witnessed so recently, it surprised me to see Regina set aside her rage so swiftly, and with so little apparent surprise. Maybe she didn’t entirely understand, so I figured I should say more.
“He told Brenda she disgusted him,” I said. “He loves you.”
“Oh, good.” She made a little sound. So quietly I could have missed it. She shook her head. She went back to her knitting.
“You aren’t mad anymore?” I asked her. “At Forrest?”
“You know the great thing about you, Frances?” she said, as I was picking up her teacup, preparing to leave. “You’ve got such a great imagination. You really should be a writer someday.”
I stood there for a moment, holding the teacup. I had this feeling I should say something more, but I didn’t know what.
“Why don’t you run along, dear?” Regina said to me. She’d never called me that before.
After I left, I retrieved my tennis shoes from their spot by the door and laced them up. I grabbed my new racquet and threw it over my shoulder. I hopped back on my bike. I rode over to the club. I had my five hundred consecutive returns to accomplish. For two solid hours, I just slammed balls against the backboard for all I was worth.
73
The Happy One
It was late afternoon, a day or two after the big Forrest-and-Brenda breakup. The family had gone out on the Chris-Craft together. Forrest wanted to scope out the route the boats would take for the regatta that weekend and assess the sound system he’d installed on board: a pair of portable speakers he’d set up along the bow. He was going to blast an endless loop of a song called “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me)” out over the water. I gathered this was the theme song of a ride at Disney World, not that I’d ever been there.
So I was alone in the house again. By this time I figured I was finished with my responsibilities as Regina’s detective, so I was just planning to head upstairs to read a little or maybe write what would probably be the final entry in my journal. But as I made my way down the hall to the stairs to my room, I noticed something surprising. The door to the room at the end of the hall—the forbidden room that had remained locked all summer—was ajar. I could make out a stream of light coming from inside.
Even with no one there to see me, I understood what it meant to enter this room. Hayward had explained it the first night I arrived at Wonderland.
Don’t even think about going in there,he’d told me.
I stood there for a moment, just outside the slightly open door. Then I stepped in.
At first it seemed like no big deal. The room was filled with a lot of boxes, mostly. A bunch of dresses hung from a portable metal clothes rack. These appeared to be clothes from a different fashion era. Very short skirts, long slinky dresses made out of some kind of synthetic material with wild prints and plunging necklines—a kind of dress I couldn’t imagine Regina wearing, even long ago. There was an embroidered coat with real fur trim around the neck and cuffs. It looked like the kind of coat someone had loved and worn a whole lot. The lining was matted and dirty, and when I touched the fabric, I could smell cigarettes. It might have been marijuana, though that wasn’t a smell I knew.
There were so many boxes. Every one had been neatly labeled:Books. Jewelry. Records. Art supplies. Scarves. Dolls. Minerals. There were three whole boxes labeled simplyHats, and another labeledPurple hats. So many of those, they needed their own box.
Along one wall, there was a box of photographs, a few in frames. I pulled one out.
At first I thought it was a picture of Regina, though if so, this was Regina as I’d never seen her: shapelier (maybe even carrying a few extra pounds), with white-blonde hair. The biggest difference was her expression. She looked so happy.
I pulled out another picture. Here was Happy Regina again—her blonde hair flying in all directions—running along a beach and laughing. And another of Happy Regina playing a flute.
And another of Happy Regina—Ecstatic Regina, you might have called her—with a very young version of a man whose face I knew well. Forrest. Happy Regina was looking at the camera but Happy Forrest was looking only at her, with a look that was almost too much to bear, knowing what I did of their lives now.
This is what love looks like, I thought. I had not seen much of it. Ever. Also desire.
I pulled another photograph from the box. This one confused me. There was Happy Regina again—wearing the very same coat I’d noticed hanging on the rack. In the photograph, Madly-in-Love Forrest had his arms around her. (One arm over her shoulder, actually. The other on her breast.)
