Mr. Pryor. We don’t know each other . . .
His fingers felt thick and clumsy as he pulled the pages closer.
. . . but I think you ought to know what happened that night.
His first thought was how much was this going to cost him?
You don’t know the half of it.
Edward dropped into the chair behind his desk.
I have enclosed pictures my son took that night.
He stuck his hand inside the envelope and pulled them out one by one.
I thought you ought to know. If this were my daughter . . .
He sat with a churning stomach, clutching the pictures. He must have been pale as the wall behind him. Snowbound by Sherwin Williams. What an odd detail to remember. He couldn’t show Donna the pictures, it would break her heart. This is how it began, this mishmash in his mind, the moment he pondered if some thing lived beneath Penny’s skin.
About the cat, he read and willed himself not to flinch.
He jerked when he heard Donna’s voice behind him.
“What’s this?” Donna asked.
“Just catching up on charting,” Edward said and tucked the photos underneath a pile of paperwork.
Donna stood with her teeth tucked over her bottom lip. How long had she been standing there, looking over his shoulder?
Donna took his hand and pulled it toward her chest, where he felt her heart beating.
“You work too much. Let’s go away,” she said with a faraway look in her eyes. “Just for a little while.”
Edward glanced at the files in front of him, the calendar and his OR schedule, the paperwork under which he had tucked the photographs. It struck him how they could both look at the same thing yet draw different conclusions.
They looked out the Tudor window, across the dew-wet lawn, the panes of glass in a crisscross pattern, distorting the view. Everything—the trees, the driveway, the fence, the road—all seemed warped.
Except the expanse of the lawn. That remained in focus. And vast. So vast.
12
DONNA
I turn it over in my head: how to confront Edward. What to say to Penelope, once I see her. A malaise overcomes me like a wave. It sloshes over me like a leg cramp gone too far, unable to stretch the muscle to alleviate the pain. I have to stay busy, do something, until then, and maybe somewhere in my house is a sign of her, a phone number, anything. Somewhere in this place there must be a sign of Penelope other than the framed picture in the parlor.
“Marleen,” I call out. “I’m going to be in the storage room for a while. Sooner or later we’ll have to get this mess cleared out,” I say in a dismissing tone, resisting the urge to raise my voice. I twist the doorknob to the storage room. It turns but the door doesn’t budge.
“Let me unlock it for you.”
I spin around, surprised by her closeness. Marleen reaches into the pocket of her apron and unlocks the door. I want to scold her for scaring me but I don’t. And her appearance, that meek black skirt and blouse and that apron—have I not told her repeatedly not to wear anything so dated? I grab her by the arm and walk her toward the kitchen.
“Don’t mind me, just carry on with what you were doing. I’ll be just fine. Time to go through those boxes anyway. And if you have a moment to spare, if you can give the silverware a good cleaning, that would be great. I’m thinking about having a dinner party. Invite some people. You know, have some fun. It’s been rather dreary here.”
That’s a lie, I don’t know anyone who I’d want to have a dinner party for. Marleen stalls, or maybe I just imagine it, but I continue to nudge her into the kitchen.
I open the first box. My Meissen figurines. Unrolling the packing paper, I catch the tumbling shepherd in my hands. Followed by the winged cupid figurine, a group of hunting dogs, and a girl in a blue dress walking a goose on a leash. One by one, I cradle them in my hands. They used to sit on the mantel at Hawthorne Court, but here at Shadow Garden, Marleen is dead set on keeping them packed away for fear they might break. After I fold the tissue paper around each one, I attempt to close the box lid—I watched Marleen once, the way she tucks the corners under without ever using a piece of tape—but I can’t manage to do it and I give up.
The second box contains painting supplies. I had taken a private art class once from an artist who painted beautiful landscapes, but I’d never gotten around to actually attempting a project, and so the canvases and paints have been sitting untouched, the oil and tempera, and the water colors, the paint dried in the tubes after all those years, the brushes brittle. I should make an attempt now since I have not much else to do. Come to think of it, I could paint Penelope the way I remember her that one summer at the cabin when her hair turned golden from swimming and lounging in the sun. How beautiful she was and how I’d suggested she should go even blonder, how it suited her, especially when unruly freckles appeared on the bridge of her nose. Penelope always dyed her hair two shades too dark, which made her look pale and aged her, but that too was a battle I shouldn’t have fought.
The next box clinks with flatware, the holiday sets, and I won’t trouble myself with pulling a single piece out of the velvet-lined containers. Stuffed below are greeting cards, too many to count, with Penelope’s childlike scribble, oblong hearts and flowers with round petals, clumsy crayon strokes within the lines, others just a chaos of scrawls and colors.
A book catches my eye, on top of three stacked crates. I stroke the worn and cracked sleeve, its pages swollen with water damage. I don’t see how I’d keep a book so old and torn and damaged, unfit for a shelf, the jacket so faded I can hardly make out any words—must be one of those book club selections that seem cheesy but turn out to be an entertaining read over a summer vacation—and I almost toss it aside but then my eyes scan the faded title.
My heart stumbles—it’s a book about a girl and a dollhouse. The dolls move, talk, play instruments, lead a secret life of their own which the humans know nothing about. I scramble to recall the story, remember a girl searching for her missing sister who has vanished and the doll family go about their clandestine mission to find her, at night, when the house goes dark.
The cover, though the story is uplifting, is rather dark; a girl kneels in front of the dollhouse with her back to the onlooker, hand suspended in midair, taken by the fact that the dollhouse is deserted. It’s just a book, yet it’s not that simple; it disappeared years ago in some drawer, stashed away on a shelf or cubby at Hawthorne Court, leaving Penelope upset when she couldn’t find it. For months there were endless questions and a stubborn insistence we turn the house upside down to look in every nook and cranny, but we never located it. How did this book end up here, on top those crates full of linen and silverware and odds and ends, here at Shadow Garden? And why is my heart beating so fast as I’m holding it in my hand?