The Safekeep(13)

“I watched her, you know,” Eva said. “Just like you wanted me to.”

Isabel put the soap under the sink. She had to make space for it between bottles and packages. Eva said, “She’s just a girl. Harmless.”

Isabel put the green beans in the vegetable drawer.

“Oh, what’s this?” Eva wandered over to the mantelpiece, reaching for the broken piece of Mother’s plate; Isabel had placed it there, at a loss of what else to do with a sliver of a memory. She couldn’t throw it away. She couldn’t place it in the vitrine with the rest of the set. Eva turned the little thing in her hand, inspected it. “What animal is it supposed to be?” she asked, not looking up. “A rabbit?”

“Don’t touch that,” Isabel said. “Put it back.”

Eva turned to her, amused, it seemed, to have got a reaction from Isabel. To have found something. Isabel marched over, took the piece from her hands, put it back where it belonged. Adjusted it, balanced it against the wall. Eva watched her do it, didn’t comment on it. Didn’t move away, either. She smelled like she’d been drinking coffee. She smelled like hand soap. Isabel glanced at her quickly and found her closer than expected. She was so short. She had a way of looking.

It made Isabel’s heart trip into a frightened speed. A moth under a dome of a glass.

Then Eva said, “Louis called earlier.”

Isabel moved away, fussed over her skirt, said, “Did he? Well, is he coming to pick you up already?” Work must be covering his phone bill, if he could call from abroad. She put her back to Eva. She hoped her neck wasn’t as flushed as it felt.

“No. He was just checking in on me. He asked if you were being nice to me. If you were being decent.”

Isabel stilled.

Eva said, “I told him you were lovely.”

Isabel didn’t know whether this was humor. She looked at her, and then away, and then left—with a breath and a huff. Her skirt was rough over the skin of her legs as she strode through the house, up the stairs, into her room. And changing her mind and leaving her room again, stopping, stranded in the hallway. She held herself by her waist.

A breeze passed through one room and into the other. The door to her mother’s room creaked. Fresh sheets, the lace vitrage curtain in the wind, the wide bedframe and the old secretary and Eva’s nightgown, silk folded at the foot of the bed. Two of her skirts over the back of the armchair, all of her perfume bottles in a row, makeup bag spilled over the open secretary desk. A leather-bound notebook with a pen keeping place in the pages.

Isabel went to it. It looked used. A diary, perhaps. A log of—

“That’s mine,” Eva said. She was in the doorway. Isabel had the book in her hands, about to open it. She put it down quickly, said:

“I told you to move your stuff to the guest room.”

“I know,” Eva answered. “I talked to Louis about it. He said I didn’t have to.”

“Louis doesn’t live here.”

“Is it so important, Isabel? It’s—I know it’s your mother’s room, and that you cared for her of course, but I mean it’s been…” She gave an affected gesture: a deep sigh, sympathy. “Gosh. Don’t you get lonely, Isa? All alone in this big house?” She was using that voice again: higher than her own, tighter. An actress in a bad play.

Isabel said, “Isabel. Not Isa. You call me Isabel.”

Eva’s smile was gentle. “Isabel,” she said.

“This is not your room.”

“Of course it’s not.”

“Move your things to the guest room.”

“I’ll sleep here for now, Isabel. It’s only for a little while, isn’t it? I’m only a guest. I’m not—taking anything from you. You know that, right? I’m just passing.” She took a step into the room, another. “Don’t you know that?”

Isabel’s heart climbed, was tapping fast under her ear. Eva stepped toward her, reached, and Isabel thought she wanted to touch her, do something to her, squeeze her at the waist again. Isabel took a stumbling step back, bumped the chair, but Eva only wanted to reach for her diary. Eva said, “Oh—” as the chair teetered. It didn’t fall.

Eva took the book and in a series of quick beats she put the book in the secretary drawer, closed it, turned the lock.

It was the drawer where Mother had once kept her children’s letters.

Back in her own room, Isabel slammed her door shut. She looked around, frantic, her shirt too tight, her skirt cinched too close to the skin. Her breath came in rough drags. Her fingers were going numb. She went to her wardrobe and rummaged and grabbed and stuffed the white undershirt in her mouth, as much of it as would fit, and bit down. Clenched. The strain at the hinge of her jaw, the prickling in her eyes. She sat at the foot of the bed and breathed through her nose.

The shirt, when she pulled it from her mouth, was crumpled, spit-wet. Isabel could see herself from the dresser mirror: face red, mouth like a violence. She looked like she’d been crying.

Neelke had left dinner—an oven dish—in the oven. Isabel ate in the study, alone.

That night she couldn’t sleep. The house creaked. The house always creaked. In the room opposite, Eva was having a nightmare of some sort: huffing, mumbling. It stopped, eventually, and then a silence descended. Footsteps, she thought, but when she went to look the hallway was pitch-black and all the doors were closed. Silence. She went back to bed, dozed in a clammy hold, and startled awake to a sudden knock at the door. She shot upright and wasn’t sure: whether it had come from within a dream, whether it had come from outside. Whether it had been loud or quiet.