“You should have told her before.”
“I saw no point in saying anything until she came,” Aunt Jule replied coolly, then smiled at me. “Garden room or river room?”
“Garden.”
Holly picked up the tray. “Don’t forget to turn out the light, Mom.”
“Forget? How can 1, with you always reminding me?”
“I don’t know, but somehow you do.”
As we left the kitchen I peeked at Holly, wondering what I was supposed to be told about Nora. She had not been the most normal of kids.
We passed through the hall again and entered the garden room. Aunt Jule’s house was built in the early 1900s on the foundation of a much older one that had burned down.
Intended as a summer home, it was designed for airiness.
The dining room and kitchen lay on one side of the stairs and, together with the steps and hall, occupied a third of the space downstairs. On the other side of the hall were two long rectangular rooms, each with two sets of double porch doors, those in one room facing the garden, those in the other facing the river. Two wide doorways connected these rooms, allowing the breeze to blow through the house.
At Aunt Jule’s you never felt far from the Sycamore River.
Each time I took a breath I noticed the mustiness that shore homes seem to have in their bones. And I knew I still wasn’t ready to face the dock where my mother had struck her head, or the water below it, where she had drowned.
We had just settled down in the garden room with its two lumpy sofas and assortment of stuffed chairs when Nora entered from the porch. I was startled at what I saw.
“Nora, dear, Lauren has arrived,” Aunt Jule said.
Nora stood silently and stared at me. Her thin, black hair was pulled straight back in an old plastic headband and hung in short, oily pieces. Her dark eyes were troubled. The slight frown she wore as a child had deepened into a single, vertical crease between her eyebrows, a line of anger or worry that couldn’t be erased.
“Please say hello, Nora,” Aunt Jule coaxed softly.
Nora acted as if she hadn’t heard. She crossed the room to a table on which sat a vase of roses. She began to rearrange the flowers, her mouth set in a grim line.
“Hi, Nora. It’s good to see you,” I said.
She pricked her finger on a thorn and pulled her hand away quickly.
“It’s good to see you again,” I told her.
This time she met my eyes. Locking her gaze on mine, she reached for the rose stem and pricked her finger deliberately, repeatedly.
Her strange behavior did not seem to faze anyone else.
Holly leaned forward in her chair, blocking my view of Nora.
“So, did my mother think to tell you I’m graduating?”
“Uh, yes,” I replied, turning my attention to her. “It’s this coming Thursday, right? She said this was Senior Week for you. Are kids getting all weepy about saying goodbye?”
Holly grimaced. “Not me. I’m editor in chief of our yearbook. And the prom’s tomorrow, my swim party Tuesday night. I’m too busy to get sentimental.”
“I can help you get ready for the party,” I offered.
“Cleaning, fixing food, whatever. It’ll be fun.”
“I wish you hadn’t come,” Nora said.
I sat back in my seat, surprised, and turned to look at her.
She said nothing more, continuing to arrange the flowers with intense concentration.
“Ignore her,” said Holly.
“She’ll get used to you,” Aunt Jule added.
Used to me? I grew up with Nora.
“We had some hot days in May,” Holly went on, “so the water’s plenty warm for an evening swim party.”
“Don’t go near the water,” warned Nora.
“The whole class is coming,” Holly went on, as if her sister hadn’t spoken.
I heard Nora leave the room.
“I’m borrowing amplifiers from Frank — and torches and strings of light,” Holly added.
“I told you not to,” Aunt Jule remarked.
“And I ignored you,” Holly said, then turned to me. “You remember Frank, from next door?”
I nodded. “Yes, I saw his neph—” I broke off at the sound of a crash in the next room. Aunt Jule and Holly glanced at each other, then the three of us rushed into the river room.
Nora was standing five feet from an end table, gazing down at a broken ceramic lamp. She seemed fascinated by it. I heard Aunt Jule take a deep breath and let it out again.
“Nora!” Holly exclaimed. “That was a good lamp.”
“I didn’t do it,” Nora replied quickly.
“You should watch where you’re going,” Holly persisted.
“But I didn’t do it.” Nora glanced around the room.
“Someone else did.”
I bent down to pick up the pieces of the shattered base.
The lamp’s cord had been pulled from the wall socket and was tied in a knot. When I saw it, the skin on my neck prickled. I thought about the things my mother had found knotted in her room just before she died.
A coincidence, I told myself, then untied the cord.
When I looked up, Nora was watching me, her dark eyes gleaming as if she had just solved a puzzled. “You did it,” she said.
“Of course I didn’t.”
“Then she did.”
“She?” I asked. “Who?”
“Now that you’re here, there’s no stopping her,” Nora whispered.
“I don’t understand.”
Holly dismissed our puzzling conversation with a wave of her hand. “Leave that, Lauren,” she said. “Nora broke it and Nora will clean it up. Come on, let’s take your things upstairs. I’ll help you unpack.”
I glanced uncertainly at Aunt Jule, but she smiled as if everything were fine. “That would be lovely of you, Holly. I’ll handle things down here.”
Holly and I picked up my baggage in the hall and climbed the steps, which rose to the garden side of the house, then turned in the direction of the river side. Arriving in the upper hall, I felt as if I were ten again, breathing in the sweet cedar scent of the closets and the smell of the river.
A door to the upper porch was straight ahead. Aunt Jule’s room was to the right, her bedroom facing the water, her private sitting room facing the garden. The hall to the left of the stairs led to four bedrooms.
“You’re in the same room as always. Is that okay?” Holly asked.
“Sure,” I replied, not so sure.
We passed Holly’s room to the right, facing the water, and Nora’s, which was directly across from her sister’s, looking out on the garden. The next door to the right was mine.
I entered the bedroom and turned away from the doorlength view of the river, focusing on the furniture. The oak chest, dresser, and plain oak bed with a blue-and-white quilt looked just as I had left them. The varnished wood floor had the same braid rug coiled in a circle. A small fireplace, which had been walled up as long as I could remember, still had a collection of old paperbacks on its narrow shelf. We set my suitcases on the bed.
“Thanks, Holly. Thanks for making me welcome, fixing the tea and all.”
“Are you kidding? I’m glad you’re here,” she replied, sitting on a straight-back chair, then quickly standing up
