The Children(30)

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The bathroom was scary at night, its deer-footed tub all full of shadows. Guinevere sat on its edge. She devoured her mother’s nearness in small, quick bites, taken when she wasn’t looking.

Edith twisted the top off a dark brown bottle, unpeeled a Band-Aid. She was underdressed for the weather: boxer shorts and a white T-shirt. A gold chain showed above her collar, intricate and unfamiliar.

Pretty. The word was in Guinevere’s mouth, fat as a grape. When she reached out boldly to touch the gold, her mother flinched away.

“Don’t.”

Shame made Guinevere’s temples thump. She said the first thing she could think of. “Daddy climbed out the window today.”

“I know. I was watching from upstairs. I thought we’d have to drop a rope to him from the window.” Edith laughed, the sound strangely sad. “There’s no fool like an old fool.”

Guinevere hated when her parents said stuff like this. Wry little phrases designed to go over her head. She curled her toes in their thick socks. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Nah. I’m hotblooded.”

It was true that her exposed skin breathed an incongruous scent of heat, flowers. As if she’d sprayed herself in a summery perfume. Lightly she pressed the Band-Aid into place, tongue set to her teeth as she made sure it stayed. “There you go.”

Guinevere patted the Band-Aid. It felt spongy over her brow. “Why were you awake?”

Her mother picked bits of wrapper off the tile. “I couldn’t sleep, nosy girl.”

There was something stuck to the bottoms of her feet. What was it? Guinevere squinted, thought she saw . . . but, no. That wasn’t possible. Maybe Edith saw her looking, because she settled back with her knees to her chest, concealing her soles.

“Feel better?”

Guinevere shrugged, then nodded.

“Good.” Her mom kept looking at her, and also through her, with a funny twist to her mouth. Like she was remembering something, and it wasn’t very nice. “You know, you’re a pretty tough kid. I would’ve wanted to cry at your age, getting a cut like that. Except, when I did cry, my mother would always—”

She stopped. Shook her head and softly said, “But who wants to think about that?” Standing, she held out a hand. “Come on. Let’s get you back in bed.”

Guinevere tucked her own hands under her legs. Edith didn’t talk about her parents. Never ever. “She would always what?”

Edith puffed her cheeks out, let them pop. “Forget it. I’m all over the place tonight. I’m full of—what’s the opposite of nostalgia? Nostalgia’s evil twin?” She mimicked Guinevere’s blank expression, mouth hanging slack. “Alright, bedtime for ducklings, as certain Welshmen would say. Hey, maybe we’ll be able to leave the house tomorrow. We could go sledding.”

Sledding with Edith. It was neither a promise nor a lie but some third thing. A pretty notion from a parallel world.

Guinevere wasn’t ready for this strange interlude to end. “I’m too scared to fall asleep,” she said. “I thought you were a ghost.”

Edith smiled faintly. “You believe in ghosts?”

“I saw them in Venice.”

Unexpectedly, her mother nodded. “Me, too. But there are no ghosts here.” Not offering comfort. Sharing information.

There was another fairy tale Llewellyn told them. About a bride who waits each night in perfect dark for a husband whose face she’s never seen. When he lies beside her, he always whispers the same refrain: What would you ask me tonight?

Like the girl in the tale, Guinevere sensed she would only be allowed one question. She had so many: about her father’s other children, and Edith’s life before them, and what she did all day when they couldn’t see her. She settled on the most immediate thing.

“If there aren’t any ghosts. What is here?”

Edith’s expression of vague tolerance clarified. Guinevere had her attention now. It felt as alive as a bird between closed hands. Dropping down again, she pressed cool lips to her daughter’s knee. As she did so Guinevere glimpsed the golden charm that hung from the new necklace chain, hidden beneath her shirt: vaguely ovoid, ill-defined. Edith straightened and it was gone.

“That’s a good question. What do you think?”

Guinevere thought about the house. Its carvings and its hiding places and the bad room on the third floor, where Llewellyn knocked at an empty wall. “Daddy said a cunning woman used to live here.”

“You mean a country slut,” Edith replied instantly, then winced. “Sorry, that’s what my dad called her. When he offered me the house. The old hypocrite.”

Slut. Hypocrite. Guinevere saved the words. She’d ask Llewellyn what they meant in the morning.

“Your father’s right, though,” Edith went on. “There was a woman here once, a long time ago. Her house was as big as the great room.” She showed Guinevere its size with her hands: small. “It stood where the great room stood. When they tore it down, they left the fireplace, and built a new house around it. But she died a long time ago.”

Had Edith’s father told her that, too? Guinevere didn’t ask. She said, “I love it here. I don’t want to leave after a year.”

Edith looked at her strangely, and she remembered she shouldn’t have heard that conversation. Her mother didn’t mention it, just leaned in close and whispered.