“I think your dad wants to put on a good show, that’s all. I’ve had that kind of teacher, at my school. In New Hampshire. I thought it would be weird staying here in Seabury all year, but it’s probably, like, way weirder for you. Granny says it’s a hard time for you guys.”
Stella’s mouth and throat feel dry and scratchy, as though she’s been licking sand.
“I love your eyes, Stella. One’s green and one’s dark brown. Granny Scotia says your aunt Stella’s eyes were the same as yours, and your grandmother’s. Gemstone eyes, that’s what it’s called. It runs in the family, Granny Scotia says. I’m sorry about your mother, Stella.” Cynthia pats Stella’s forearm in an adult way. “It’s weird, but it will be okay.”
Cynthia really means it, Stella thinks, sniffing the air. “What’s the smell?”
“Oh, that’s my perfume. Anaïs Anaïs. Like it?”
Stella does. It smells of enchantment. She’s heard the name Anaïs before, a French poet her mother talked about, who her father called the naughty poet. Stella has never had a friend, let alone a friend who wears French perfume.
They ride at an easy pace down the street, past wooden houses painted bright colours. They ride slowly and Stella is surprised at how good her balance is. She’s a bit wobbly but only a bit. She knows her father will be impressed when he sees her keeping up with Cynthia, just like a normal girl.
They come to a crossroads with a stop sign. The sidewalks are very old, made of cobblestone and slate. At each corner there are faded grey paving stones with worn carvings of the odd bird and curious flowers. They ride onto a boardwalk where the blue river flows into the basin so wide it seems more of a sea, a sea dolloped with whitecaps. A faint breeze. Boats bobbing on the water, a hazy blue beyond.
“It’s what they call a continental climate, snowy and cold in the winter and warm in the summer,” Cynthia explains as they ride side by side. She flicks her hand and, as though she commanded it, a fog comes in on a wet chilled breeze. Seagulls bicker in the mists overhead.
“You’ll get used to the fog. It’s good for your complexion. That’s what my mother says.”
They ride off the boardwalk and onto another quiet street with old homes and leafy trees, each one emerging out of the murk and then disappearing behind them. It seems as though everyone has vanished and they are the only two girls on Earth.
Cynthia smiles and hums a peculiar melody Stella doesn’t recognize, almost chanting, letting Stella set the bike pace. The fog is behind them now. Only a few cars and old trucks pass them on the road. Stella feels they are in a moving postcard, two friends on a dirt road riding bicycles, the North Mountain rising up, covered in deep green trees brushing against a sapphire sky, the river a startling blue ribbon curving through the pastures and meadows, the South Mountain on the other side, a few white clouds throughout the blue, angels looking down. Stella thinks she’s landed in a normal childhood, for the first time.
They turn onto a path that runs on top of the dikes built up around the tidal river. It’s low tide and the banks are a shining red mud. They ride single file, Cynthia in the front. Daisies and goldenrod and fireweed fill the meadow by the dikes. Cattle moo and sheep bleat. The path leaves the dikes and connects to a dirt road lined with trees, leading away from the water. One pickup truck passes them, honking. Cynthia waves. Stella can’t imagine taking a hand off the handlebars. Through the trees, she spies a white mansion. Down a tree-lined lane. And then the colossal house before them. Cynthia rides through two imposing stone columns and an arch with a tarnished brass plaque: Cedar Grove 1813. Ahead Stella sees a circular drive and they ride into it and stop at the front of the house. Cynthia looks at the trees, smiling, as though they are her friends of old. “White cedars,” she says. “My grandmother’s people planted them. The O’Clearys. Clan O’Cleary. Poets and historians in the Old World. The house was in Granny Scotia’s family. She inherited it. She says my grandfather was uncomfortable living here. He wasn’t an O’Cleary, that’s why.”
A solitary wooden swing hangs from an oak at the far side of the house, the rope grey and frayed. The white paint is peeling, and some shingles are missing off the roof. The grass in the front needs to be mowed and the shrubs haven’t been trimmed in what must have been years, giving the front grounds the look of a place where deformed botanicals came to live out their final days.
They ride around back and prop up their bikes against a tree trunk. There is a faint squeaking sound but Cynthia doesn’t seem to notice. She points at a meadow with a broken fence and gate, where livestock once were kept. To the south side, a carriage house also in need of paint and a new roof with a metal weather vane. Fixed black arrows point in the cardinal directions, above a tarnished greeny-brass figure in a swimming position, wobbling and squeaking as the breeze blows from the west.
Cynthia takes Stella out back to the carriage house and up the stairs. She opens the door and leads the way into a stuffy, dusty room. “This is where my mother works.”
There is a record player to the side of the door. The Kick Inside, Kate Bush, an album on the top of the player. A beautiful woman with sweeping brown hair and red socks. Cynthia picks it up,
