“Knows …?”
“When her child isn’t loved enough.” Katherine’s gaze had found her lap and finally settled there. “I didn’t give it to him, and I suppose I regret that now. I told him things I wish I hadn’t. It was his mistake to make. It was his ring, no use for me anymore.” Her hand, blanched and formless as a peeled potato, suddenly reached out and seized my wrist.
And then I saw the ring on her pinkie finger—the only finger it must have fit, probably. The band was as thin as Christmas tinsel, the diamond hardly bigger than the sightless pupil of one of the portrait children. And I guessed at what would happen even in the split second before it did, as Katherine tugged off the ring and then closed my fingers around it.
“Take it back to Bly,” she said quietly. Her eyes were soupy, so feverish, I could hardly stand to look at her. “And bury it at his grave. You’ll do that for me, won’t you?”
“Yes,” I told her, faintly.
“Promise me?”
“Promise.”
“And then you never come back here, never again, not in that fancy car, not any other time in any other car. I could spit in your face for how you look like her.” She was leering, her lips curled back and revealing grayish gums, as if to show me she might make good on her threat right then. “A mother shouldn’t have to see that same girl twice.”
I drew back, nodding; I couldn’t really muster outrage or fear when all I sensed was her maternal grief, unanchored and void, another kind of madness.
“Hi, Kate. May I interrupt for a minute?”
The male voice was so close and unexpected that I jumped to a soldier’s stand, the ring clamped in my fist, my fist in my pocket, my heartbeat the pound of the surf in my ears.
The doctor smiled. “No need for ceremony.” His name tag read FELIX CAREY, MD. He looked young to be a doctor, but he held himself with the confidence of someone used to a lifetime of good grades and prizes.
“You’re late, Felix,” said Katherine, all petulant and sugary girlish again. “Don’t you know it’s terrible to keep a woman waiting?”
A nurse brought over a handful of pills and a glass of water. A yellow oval, a blue capsule and two little white dots. My mouth went dry, wanting them. But Katherine’s fingers grabbed so fast that a white pill fell to the carpet and had to be scrambled for.
“Oh dear,” she murmured, and as she looked down, I saw that her hair was thinned in patches to a pinkish scalp. It made me queasy, like I’d caught a glimpse of her naked. She swallowed all her pills so greedily I had to look away.
“Felix, this is my niece,” said Katherine. I could tell she enjoyed the tiny rebellion of this lie.
“A family visit.” The doctor smiled agreeably. “And you are …?”
“Just Jamie.”
“Hello, Just Jamie.” He smiled. How kind of you, his smile intimated, to spend time with your crazy aunt Katherine. If only he could see how I was shaking. Would he know me for what I really was? In a moment of digital clarity, I saw my whole life unfold as a game of chance. The acrobat or the veterinarian. The mansion or the shack. The committed or the dispossessed. The question was—did it depend on my will or my luck?
“Jamie?” The doctor was passing his hand over my face. “We lost you for a minute.”
“I’m fine.” I smiled. No, I wasn’t lost. There was nothing wrong with me. Dr. Felix Carey could sense that. He assumed I was on the winning team. Team Sane.
“She won’t be coming back,” said Katherine, singsong. “Hard as it is to leave. Once you’re in, they always want you to stay awhile. But you know that already, don’t you?” Her smile, wrung up too high in her face, was grotesque.
“Isa!” I wheeled around—I couldn’t bear to be here another minute. “Isa, let’s go!” Quick with my mumbled goodbyes, my excuses, grabbing for my bag and heading for the comfort of the red EXIT sign, my one hand sunk like a stone to the bottom of my pocket, the fingers of my other hand snapping for Isa, hurry hurry hurry wee wee wee all the way home.
TWENTY-THREE
“I saw,” Isa whispered.
She hadn’t said a thing, not one single thing the entire trip home. We’d skipped the Dairy Queen—she hadn’t wanted it—and we’d hit some traffic delays before the ferry. Now it was half past seven, way late for dinner, and we both were tired.
But now I realized that Isa was more than just tired.
I looked over. Nobody was on Bush Road and so we were cruising it, the wind picking up Isa’s long, dark hair in a snap and billow. I couldn’t see her face. “Saw what?”
“Saw her give you the ring. The ring she wouldn’t give him, that he wanted to give Jess.”
“Isa.” My heart was in a sudden skip-rope. “What do you know about that?”
“Everything.”
I waited. It was a full minute before she continued.
“The day. The day … before. Peter came back to Skylark from visiting his mom. He was looking for Jessie. She’d biked to town to pick up some things. We were all going to Green Hill later. Connie was out back, in her garden. It was only Peter and me in the kitchen. And he was so mad.”
My hands were shaking. I pulled the car off the road. I didn’t trust myself to drive. I maneuvered us to a safe spot in the meadow and braked. The grasses here were long, higher than the car door, and the sky burned with the wild reds of sundown. Shifting in my seat, I looked at Isa, whose face was labored with memory, though she was working as hard as she could to contain herself.
“Go ahead, Isa. I’m listening.”
“I don’t know if I can say it. I never did before. Out loud, I mean.”
My fingers touched her shoulder. “Another time, then. But it might make you feel better, to let it go.”
“He was really angry at his mom,” she blurted, “for saying Jess was spoiled and silly and not worth the family engagement ring.”
“He told you that?”
She nodded. “He was slamming things around. He said it was his ring. His ring for Jessie. And that’s when I told him what I’d seen.”
“What, Isa? What had you seen?”
It couldn’t have been more than five seconds, but time made no sense to me; the moment before her confession was nearly unendurable for us both. “Jessie and Aidan,” she whispered. “I saw them from the lighthouse. She’d taken Aidan up to the third floor. All I meant to do was explain that maybe Jess didn’t want that ring, either. Not yet, anyhow. But then, what he did … after I told him. What he did …”