The Children(44)

“She is here. She stayed over last night.”

“No, she didn’t.” Her father frowned at her. “Why would you think that?”

“I heard . . .” Voices in the hall. Anne’s and Edith’s. A strain of music she might have invented, twisting like light in her mind.

Since his illness began her father’s character had a vagueness to it that resembled indifference. A sharpening came over him now and pared the vagueness away. “What did you hear?”

Instinct spoke to her. Lie. “I heard . . . her say she was going to. Stay over. I guess she didn’t.”

Searching her face, he said, “Well. When you see her, send her in. In the meantime, leave me be.” Brandishing his new brush. “I’d like to fail without witnesses.”

Llewellyn turned back to the canvas quickly, as if he might catch it at some mischief. And she saw it wasn’t blank after all: a tentative sketching covered a patch at the bottom left. There was no way to determine what it might become.





Twenty-Five

2000




Anne didn’t come back. Not that day or the next. Llewellyn said nothing about it. But he spent a good portion of his time sitting in the doorway of Art Church, trying to look as though he wasn’t waiting for her. On the third Anne-less morning, as the four of them ranged around the kitchen eating breakfast, Edith leaned against the counter and lightly said, “So where’d your new girlfriend go?”

It was the way she said it. The twisty little half smile, curling her mouth. Llewellyn crossed the kitchen in three strides and took her by the wrists, pinning them back against the countertop.

“Hey,” she said. Then, “Ow, Llew, get off me!”

His body covered hers, bent in an ugly curve. Her fingers flexed, nine digits and an empty place, wrists paling around his grip. Ennis stood, chair falling, and said, “Dad.”

Guinevere just watched. Thinking, Ask her, make her. Shame would come later. Right then all she felt was a vindictive fire.

He said nothing. Only held her there, searching her face. The moment stretched, Edith made an involuntary sound of pain, and still he didn’t speak, didn’t relent. It seemed impossible she wouldn’t crack beneath this surveillance, revealing—what?

The charm beneath her shirt rolled free, clunking heavily onto the counter beside her. A clumsy thing, made of dull gold. Edith’s eyes twitched toward it. Then she darted her head forward and kissed her husband on the mouth.

Llewellyn dropped her like she’d spat. Turning away, he smeared an arm over his lips. When he saw the children staring, he blanched and covered his eyes with his hand.

Edith’s breath came short and sharp. She stuffed her necklace back into her shirt, picked up her coffee cup, and said, “I love you, too, you absolute bastard.”

The silence when she left the room had the finality of a closed coffin lid.



* * *




Guinevere searched the house, ground floor to attic. Then she doubled back to stand outside Edith’s writing room, hand resting on the knob, like she was Bluebeard’s wife. Her mother was safely in the shower, shouting a Minor Threat song. Guinevere eased open the door.

The room was sunny and peaceful and devoid of dead brides. The sole sign of Anne was the painting Edith bought from her, hanging on the wall above her typewriter. Three of the seven windows were open, letting in the sound of moving leaves.

Despite the open windows the air was motionless, warm as a womb. That word, womb, made her stop. She knew it from books, had never once said it out loud. It made her picture a little red house with a low red ceiling.

How was it so stifling in here? Even the leaves rustling beyond the windows had an interior sound, like snakes sliding over a cellar floor. There was a piece of paper in the typewriter, half filled with dense typing. From across the room it looked like a gray block. She took a step closer, and another. The ink thinned into characters.

One step more and she forgot to breathe, another and she made herself remember. The letters on the page shimmered and separated and became her own name. Guinevere.

“Guinevere.”

Her surprise as she turned must’ve been comical. Llewellyn nearly laughed at her. He was standing in the hall outside the doorway.

“You know you’re not allowed in there.”

“I don’t care.”

“You will when your mam hangs you out to dry. Come on.” Then, as an afterthought, “I talked to Anne.”

Instantly she forgot what she saw in the typewriter. “You did? Where is she?”

“Not here. Not likely to be. She seems to have gone off her little project. Being”—he scanned an open palm over his torso—“the rehabilitation of me. I suppose I made a discouraging subject. Rude of her not to say goodbye to you.”

Guinevere barely understood any of it. She seized on the last bit. “Why goodbye? Where’s she going? Is she okay?”

“Why wouldn’t she be?”

He said it politely, but Guinevere wasn’t fooled. Again, she saw Edith bent back over the counter, wrists pinned, the air between them hazy with hate. “I don’t know.”

He watched her a little longer. “Guinevere,” he said.

“What?”

He knocked on the doorframe twice. Over his head, carved words that she knew were there, even if she couldn’t see them.