pick up craft supplies. I’ll be gone till noon.”
“No problem,” I assured her.
“I could meet you at twelve,” she offered, “and go with you to Sondra’s grave. We could take flowers. If you like, we could plant some.”
I knew she was trying to make up for what she had said before.
“Thanks, Aunt Jule, thanks a lot, but I need to go by myself.” I walked over and sat on the chair next to hers. “But there is something I want to talk to you about.”
She paused, holding her silver needle above the fabric she was embroidering. “Yes, love?”
“Nora.”
She quickly pushed the needle through. “What about her?”
“I’m really worried about her. I think she needs helppsychiatric help.”
“Do you,” Aunt Jule replied coolly.
“This afternoon Nora—”
“Nick told us about the boathouse,” my godmother interrupted. “It was a childish prank. Certainly you weren’t frightened by such a silly thing?”
“I was bothered by the way she talked about my mother.
She said—”
“Ignore her,” Aunt Jule advised, making a knot and snipping the thread. “Nora is confused and easily frightened, especially when there are changes here at home. Your visit has upset her a little, that’s all. She’ll get past it. In the meantime, don’t take her seriously.”
“But what if she wants to be taken seriously?” I asked.
“What if her behavior is a cry for help?”
Aunt Jule shook her head, dismissing the possibility.
“You’re tired, Lauren, and so am I. This isn’t the time to discuss Nora. Get a good night’s rest and let things settle for a few days.”
“Is Nora the reason you asked me to come here?” I persisted. “Is she what you wanted to talk about?”
“There is much for us to talk about, after you’ve rested up,” Aunt Jule replied firmly.
I knew that once my godmother tabled a discussion, it was useless to say more. I kissed her good night.
When I got upstairs, Nora’s bedroom door was closed.
Before entering my own room, I glanced at the door across the hall, next to Nora’s. The summer my mother came, she had slept in that room. I was glad the door to it was also shut.
In my room I turned on a small lamp and lay back on my bed for a moment, listening to the familiar night sounds. A breeze wafted in through the screen door, pushing back the light curtains. I reached lazily into my shorts pocket to remove my car keys. My fingers felt something else — the chain I’d found in the boathouse.
I had forgotten all about it. I sat up quickly and opened my hand. The necklace was so black that for a moment I didn’t recognize the small tarnished heart. When I did, I couldn’t believe it. I had thought it was gone forever!
The silver necklace was a gift from Aunt Jule when I was born. I had loved it and worn it at the shore every summer, though on a sturdier chain than the original. The summer my mother had come, she had taken it from me after a fight with Aunt Jule. The next day I had sneaked into her room and searched for the necklace everywhere — her jewelry case and purse, her bureau drawers and suitcase. I didn’t find it and feared she had done as she’d threatened — thrown it in the river.
So how had it ended up in the loft? Though the boathouse was in better shape seven years ago, I couldn’t imagine my mother going in, much less hiding something there. But if Aunt Jule, Nora, or Holly had found the necklace, why wasn’t it returned to me? Maybe they meant to, but forgot. A lot of things went undone and forgotten around here. Still, why keep it in the boathouse loft?
I hung the necklace on the wood post of my mirror stand, puzzling over the events of the day. I had come here to tie up my memories like a box of old photos, so I could put them away once and for all. But the memories would not be neatly bound up; questions kept unraveling.
I didn’t know what time it was or where I was, except far beneath the surface of a river. The river bottom was thick with sea grass and I swam in near darkness. Someone called my name, Laur-en, Laur-en, the voice rising and falling over the syllables as my mother’s once had. I followed the voice, swimming through the long weed, feeling it flow over my skin like cold tentacles.
“Lauren! Lauren!” It was my mother. She was panicking.
I swam harder, trying to find her. I needed air, but somehow I continued scouring the bottom. The sea grass wrapped itself around my arms and legs, entangling me.
“Lauren, come quickly!”
I broke free and kept swimming. I could feel her fear as if it were my own. I knew she was sinking into a place where I couldn’t reach her, an endless night.
The banks of the river narrowed. Both sides were walls of tree roots, roots like long, arthritic fingers reaching out to catch me. I fought my way through them. But as her voice grew near, the river walls pressed closer together, threatening to swallow me alive.
“Where are you?” I cried out.
“Here.”
Ahead of me was a deep crack where the two banks joined, a long and jagged fissure.
“Here, Lauren,” she called out from the fissure. “Lauren, dearest, come to Mother.”
But I didn’t want to go where she was. I hesitated, and the crack closed, sealing her in forever.
I woke up sweating. My heart pounded and I gulped air as if I were emerging from deep water.
Laur-en.
I turned my head toward the hall, thinking I heard the same voice. Silence.
I climbed out of bed and tiptoed to the door. When I opened it, the door to my mother’s old room creaked.
Someone had left it ajar.
I crossed the hall and laid my palms against the door, listening a moment, then pushed it open. At the other end of the room a glass door to the porch suddenly closed. I started toward it and the door behind me slammed shut.
I screamed, then muffled it. A draft, I told myself, a draft running through my room and this one blew the doors shut. I wondered if it had been caused by someone making a hasty exit through the porch door.
I strode across the room, opened the doors to the porch, and leaned out. No one was there. Of course, if it had been Nora, she could have easily slipped into her room, the next door down.
Inside, I turned on the floor lamp and glanced around. It looked as I remembered it, with oak furniture similar to my own and a red-and-green quilt on the bed. Spiders had made themselves cozy here and dust coated the bureau top, but the dresser had streaks on its surface, as if someone had been using it recently. One of its drawers wasn’t closed all the way.
I walked over and opened it. Inside were several old newspapers, tabloids that were badly yellowed. I spread them out on the dresser top. I guessed what was in them; still, the pictures of my mother shocked me — those horrible flashbulb photos that could make the prettiest woman look like a witch.
Had she put them here? Not unless she wanted to torture herself, I thought. The only other thing in the drawer was an empty packet of marigold seeds.
I opened the next drawer. My mother’s favorite pair of earrings lay on top of a scarf she had loved. I touched them gently. At the town house in Washington, my mother’s personal things had been put in safe storage or thrown out soon after she died. I still had her jewelry box in my room at school, but it seemed like mine now more than hers. These items were different — barely touched by anyone else. I halfexpected to smell her perfume on them.
In the corner of the drawer were snippets of photographs.
For a moment I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at, then I saw they were pictures from that last
