“You should check Megan’s room,” she replied.
I opened my mouth to protest. Her suspicion was insulting. But if a search put me in the clear-“Oh, what the heck, check it,” I said.
All three of us climbed the stairs. Matt searched my room, taking too long I thought. Grandmother checked his room. I offered to search hers but was met with a look that could shear steel. I sat on the top step stewing, then got up and walked in circles. When I passed in front of the hall’s antique mirror, I saw myself looking angry and on edge.
The two of them returned empty-handed.
“Someone will be punished for this,” Grandmother declared.
She sounded absurdly serious.
“Maybe the ghost took it,” I suggested.
“We don’t have a ghost, Megan. I don’t want to hear that kind of nonsense from you.”
I was feeling defiant. “Someone named Alice, who used to work here, told me she saw it.”
“Alice Scanlon is a liar.”
“She said the ghost’s name is Avril.”
The pupils of Grandmother’s eyes were jet black inside their pale blue rims. Matt shook his head, signaling me to keep quiet.
“On my walk Friday I visited the family cemetery and saw Avril’s stone. She died young.”
“She was the same age as you,” Grandmother replied.
“And just as sassy.”
“How did she die?”
Grandmother looked at me for a long moment, the pupils of her eyes unsteady. “You heartless, rude girl, asking me something like that. You’re not part of the family. Why would I tell you?”
“So when people say things, like she was murdered, I know how to correct them.”
She turned abruptly, strode into her bedroom, and slammed the door behind her. There was a moment of quiet, then I heard her lock the door.
I looked at my cousin, hoping he could give me a reasonable explanation for her extreme behavior.
“Good job,” he said. “Next time you set her off, do it on a day I’m out of the house.”
“She’s already off,” I replied in a hushed voice.
“Yeah, well, if you don’t want her over the edge, you’ll drop the ghost stuff.”
“She overreacts to things,” I argued.
“And you won’t mention Avril again.”
“Why?” I asked, following him downstairs. I caught his arm at the landing. “Tell me why.”
“It upsets Grandmother. Avril was her sister and they were very close.”
“Sixty years ago. She can’t still be mourning her. Matt, is Grandmother losing it? Mentally, I mean.”
He started down the steps again, ignoring the question.
I caught up with him a second time. “Why do you protect her? When she goes after you, why don’t you fight back?”
“There are a lot of things you don’t understand.”
“No kidding. How about explaining them to me?” He was silent.
“Couldn’t you see what she was doing with that stuff about grades and jobs? She’s trying to turn you against me. I don’t know why, since you already don’t like me. But she’s making sure of it. What’s eating her?”
For a moment the mask slipped from his face. I could see the uncertainty in him.
“Matt,” I said, taking a step toward him.
He jerked away from me, picked up his Jeep keys from the hall table, and strolled toward the door.
“What are you thinking?” I called after him. “What?”
He didn’t glance back, didn’t break stride. “You should never have come,” he said, and left.
Grandmother emerged from her room at ten o’clock that morning, no longer obsessed with finding the Bible. She was unhappy because Matt had left the house on his study day, but he knew how to get back on her good side, returning with the Baltimore paper, as well as the Sunday New York Times and Washington Post Her fingers smoothed the newspaper with the same pleasure that some women show when touching silk. Anyone peeking in the library door right then would have thought she was a perfectly normal grandmother.
“Are you calling your mother today?” she asked me.
“I was thinking about e-mailing my parents. Do you have a computer?”
“Matt has one in his room. You may use that.”
“Is that all right with you, Matt?”
Grandmother replied before he did. “I gave him the computer. It is all right with me.”
Still, I waited for my cousin’s response.
“It’s on,” he said, which I took as permission and headed upstairs.
Matt’s room was neater than I thought it would be, with just a few pretzels crunched into the rug and a small pile of clothes thrown onto a chair. Two pictures sat on a shelf above his desk. In one several lacrosse players wearing helmets and holding sticks grinned back at the camera. I thought Matt was the player on the end. The second photo was of a little boy and a big dog. I knew by the eyes that the child was Matt, but the sweetness of his expression surprised me. His arms were wrapped so lovingly around the dog, a golden retriever that looked old and patient, I got a lump in my throat.
I finally sat down, called up my e-mail account, and began to type. I had decided writing would be better than calling because I could choose what to say and what to leave out.
There was no point in upsetting my mother by telling her about Grandmother’s eccentric behavior. And I didn’t want to be overheard when I asked about Aunt Avril and the dollhouse.
I was finishing the letter when I heard voices in the hall.
Matt entered the room with his friend, Alex.
“Almost done?” he asked.
“Just signing off,” I told him.
Alex dropped down in the chair next to the desk. “Hi, Megan. I was hoping you’d be here.”
I smiled. “Hi! Matt didn’t tell me you were coming over.”
Alex stretched his long legs out in front of him. “You must have figured out by now that if you want to know anything, you have to pry it out of Matt.”
My cousin, standing behind Alex’s chair, grimaced slightly.
“We study together every Sunday,” Alex added. “Want to hang out with us?”
“No,” Matt said.
Alex glanced over his shoulder and laughed. “I wasn’t asking you.”
“Even so-” Matt began.
I interrupted: “You must have figured out by now, I’m not one of Matt’s favorite people.”
“Yeah?” Alex replied, his dark blue eyes sparkling.
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Let me know if he tells you first.”
Matt stood silently with his hands on his hips.
“Don’t worry about it,” Alex said. “Sometimes he’s just strange.”
I laughed. Matt shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“Are you a lacrosse player, too?” I asked Alex, pointing to the photograph. “Are you one of those guys in a helmet?”
“I play lacrosse, but that’s not our team.” Alex turned to look at my cousin, waiting for him to explain the photo. “Did you forget how to talk, Matt?”
“That’s my team at Gilman,” Matt said, “the school I went to in Baltimore.”
When he fell silent, Alex continued, “Matt and I got to be friends at lacrosse camp, the one Chase College runs every summer. A bunch of guys on our team go to it, so when Matt finally moved here last year, he fit right in.
