Mal was not going home now. She needed to talk to Seraphina again and ask her what she knew about her mother. But how was she going to find her? If Mal asked Grace or Jillian how to track Seraphina down, they would think Mal too was off her medication. If she called her own mother, interrupted her retreat in Big Sur, she would be able to figure out things much faster. But then she would have to admit she’d lied. And the real problem was not Mal lying — it was what her mother had omitted from her childhood. Mal was beginning to realize her stories and memories had been carefully curated — details and people and places selected as though her mother was picking apples, only the safe ones for her daughter.
Big Girls Don’t Cry.
Then
Stella sits at the breakfast table eating soggy cereal, thinking about what the neurologist called circadian rhythms and how hers seem all out of whack from the car accident and probably the change in geography. Her father is at work for the morning in his new office at the university so he can get oriented with the campus.
Stella jumps when Cynthia calls out, coming in from the back porch, the screen door slamming behind her. As Cynthia strides into the kitchen, the black book on the bookcase between the table and the counter falls to the floor. Stella looks at it and then at Cynthia who smiles, her eyes bright red and watery in the way eyes get from lack of sleep.
“I’m just finishing breakfast. Don’t people knock around here?”
“No one knocks in Seabury. Haven’t you learned that by now?”
What Stella has learned by now is that Cynthia will keep appearing and reappearing, no matter what Stella does. They are bound by secrets, and something else Stella only senses. It doesn’t matter if they have fun. It doesn’t matter if Stella even likes Cynthia. She’ll never get rid of this beautiful, gregarious, kind girl with the impervious face, this girl who brings out a swell of shame in Stella, followed by a gush of seething jealousy, chased by the highest wave, one of icy remorse. She wants a best friend but she has compromised this friendship. Cynthia lied to protect her, the stolen paper never spoken of between them, the act of framing Cynthia only drawing her closer.
Cynthia picks up the black book from the floor. She looks at it and opens her mouth, about to speak. But she doesn’t, and sets the book on the counter. Cynthia begins tidying up the kitchen. “Granny’s hoping you can come over today. She wants to show you some of the plants in her garden.”
Stella takes her plate and glass over to the sink and Cynthia washes them. “Is this the book Granny was talking about? It’s got that weird title but the pages are blank.” Stella holds the book out.
Cynthia dries her hands and takes the book, flipping through the pages, not surprised. “My grandmother will know. Yes, I think it’s the missing book the Offing Society used. We can ask her, okay?” Cynthia stuffs the black book in her backpack as the girls head outside.
They spend the afternoon helping Granny in the garden. She sits in a chair and tells them what to do. They are digging out a garden for her in the shape of a maze. It’s hard work, digging, but she wants to move some plants into it. She’s very serious, and speaks in hushed tones. She’s acting strange and Cynthia is acting strange by pretending that everything is normal. Stella wears sunglasses and a hat so the light won’t bother her eyes, but she gets tired and sits beside Granny Scotia both of them watching Cynthia dig. She never seems to tire. Stella is overcome with loneliness, wishing she had her mother to fly home to in Ohio, or her own grandmother, or that she could live with Granny Scotia and Cynthia, and not have to pretend anymore with her father that they are a family. Stella keeps wanting to cry. Her father was always irritated by her mother’s tears. Her mother’s tears frightened him. Big girls don’t cry, he would yell. What would have happened if her mother hadn’t died, if they hadn’t gotten in the car that evening?
Not much progress has been made on the maze. They head inside, out of the heat. Stella feels Cynthia is humouring Granny Scotia now, that she knows this is foolish, to put in a garden in September. If Stella knows that, and she’s an American from Ohio, surely they must know it. They drink iced lavender lemonade and eat ginger cookies in the shade of the verandah. Cynthia disappears inside and comes out with the black book, which she hands to Granny. Granny Scotia sets her glass down. She looks at it, closes her eyes and strokes it. She then opens her eyes and the book. Stella thinks maybe now the pages will be covered in words, that it was her concussed head that couldn’t see them, that Cynthia had just played along, as she seems happy to do, only pretending the pages are blank, and that now Granny will read her a story and everything will be okay. But Granny Scotia just runs her hands over the thick yellow paper. “I wish I could read this. I wish I could see the words and read it. Girls, the weather is changing. Things are not as they were. I feel
