Going back to bed sounded like a strangely viable option, but instead, I pulled my coat tight around me and walked outside, hoping the rain would tell me how to fix things.
Chapter 39
Dec
It wasn’t often I went looking for Harriet. It wasn’t often I needed to; she was always there, mixing up herbs in the kitchen, yelling at me for something I’d done or forgotten to do, rolling her eyes and muttering to her computer.
But now, when I actually wanted to speak to her, she was nowhere to be found. I checked the kitchen where everything was neatly put away, no sign of potions or candle wax or any other telltale signs that she’d been there. I knocked on the door to her room and was met with such stony silence that I couldn’t bring myself to push it open. The basement was padlocked, and her bike was still in the yard, so I knew she was somewhere in the labyrinth of the house.
There was only one place I hadn’t looked, had least wanted to look, and that was our parents’ room. I stood at the bottom of the stairs that led to the master suite and inhaled the scent of the cedar that lined the stairs, the walls, and the entire room. As a kid, I’d raced up and down these stairs, pretending they were taking me to the bridge of a starship or they were the way up to a massive pirate ship. Now, I was having trouble bringing myself to put my foot on the first step.
I called up. “Harriet?”
No answer came, but something in the air made me think she was there. I forced myself up the stairs.
The room hadn’t changed much since I’d last seen it. Thick pillows, weapons thrown during family movie nights, littered the four-poster bed. One dresser held Mom’s collection of tiny porcelain bells and the other held Dad’s equally tiny framed quotes. It all looked the same as it always had, but the feel of the room was wrong and empty.
In a corner, Harriet sat facing Mom’s desk, looking at an old photo album. I didn’t need to look over her shoulder to see the pictures because they were burned into my brain. All of us Hampton kids had loved to see the old photos and hear about how our parents had fallen in love so young. I thought about sharing what I’d learned about the Guild’s role in pairing them up but couldn’t think of anything good that would come out of it. This way, I was the only one who had to be pissed off about it. Let Laura and Harriet live in the fantasy world where our parents had a say over their own lives.
From the way Harriet’s shoulders tensed, she knew I was here. I thought I should say something, even something as inane as “what are you doing?” but I knew what she was doing. It just wasn’t something that I’d had the courage to do myself since they’d died.
“Go away, Daniel,” she said after a while. Her usual forcefulness was missing.
Instead of snipping back like I normally would, I walked up and looked over her shoulder.
Here, Mom smiled out from the album. Holding a very young Laura in her arms, she looked impossibly innocent and unscathed. There, Dad, a baseball bat in his hand and a cap on his head, waited for four-year-old me to throw the ball. Next to those, our parents and a very young Harriet stood in front of the town’s wishing well.
“You kind of look like her,” I said, trying to be kind. “Now, I mean.” What I meant was that as Harriet had gotten older, she’d grown into the bone structure that made Mom look almost delicate. Only recently, Harriet had worn those same bones like a badly fitting suit.
Harriet closed the album. Still, she didn’t turn around. We were sailing in uncharted waters. I didn’t remember when we’d last had a real conversation.
“It’s okay to miss them,” I said even though I wasn’t sure I believed it. I mean, I knew it was okay to miss them in theory, but the pain was so great, I couldn’t deal with it in reality.
“What do you want?” she asked, still not turning around. Her voice shook, and I saw why when I noticed the stain of tears on the old wood.
The truth was, I was out of ideas that might help Tristan, and she was my last hope. I said, “I wanted to see if you were okay.” It was a blatant lie and we both knew it. Neither of us could remember the last time that I’d checked on her “just because.”
“I’m…” The word was a defensive bark. But then she turned and I caught a glimpse of the sister I used to know. We’d never been close, not like me and Laura. But we used to be able to hang out without fighting. “I’m tired,” she said after a while.
I opened my mouth, planning to tell her everything that was weighing on my mind, planning to prove to her, finally, that I wasn’t a bad guy, not really. But instead, I knelt down beside the desk and looked up at her. “I’m sorry,” I said, unsure what exactly I was covering in my blanket apology. Our parents dying, I guess. The fact that I didn’t. All of the silence that had come in the years that followed. I knew I hadn’t been an easy person to live with since the accident.
“You should leave, Daniel,” she said, her words sharp.
An angry heat surged inside me. Of course, I’d tried to bridge the distance between us, and she’d thrown it back in my face.
Then she stood. “No,” she said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I mean. You should leave. St. Hilaire. Go and get as far away from here as you can.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. “What?”
She turned and picked up a photo of our parents with all of us children. It had been taken at some community picnic that I didn’t remember.
“Look, a couple of months before the car accident, I don’t know. Something happened with Mom and Dad. Don’t you remember? Dad never wanted to leave the house, and Mom was burning sage all over everything.”
I tried to remember what she was talking about, but it was as hard for me to remember the time right before the accident as it was to remember the time right after. I shook my head.
She threw the photos back on the desk. “I wasn’t here except for the occasional weekend. I only came back for that week because they were being so squirrelly, and I thought they just needed a night out or something. I bought tickets for all of us to go to the opening night of that movie, but Laura had some test, and she asked me to stay and help her study.”
Suddenly everything became slightly clearer. “You can’t blame yourself. I mean, you didn’t know.”
“I keep trying,” she said, almost to herself, “to get it all back. You know, I had a boyfriend in New York.” She laughed at the shock that was obviously showing on my face. “Don’t look so surprised. I had a life, a job. I had friends, an apartment.”
“So why?” I asked without filling in the rest of the question. There were simply too many whys to list.
She looked up. “You. You and Laura. I mean, what was I supposed to do?”