The Safekeep(54)

It was a blindingly bright day. The sun streamed in like a fairy tale. Outside bugs stayed low to the ground, wings caught in gold.

Eva said, “Isabel. Isabel. It’s—I promise, I—”

“You wanted to get to know me. That’s what you told him. You just liked me so much, after that dinner. Could barely stop talking about me, he said. I made an impression, he said. In fact, you were the one who suggested you stay here while he was gone, weren’t you?”

Eva stared at her. Mouth a little open, sleep ruffled. She looked to the diary, to Isabel, to the diary again. She said, “You didn’t…” She said, “You haven’t—”

“You’re a thief. You came here to steal from me.” Isabel sounded calm. She sounded like she had woken up and realized, and had slowly and evenly made her peace with it. It was what she wanted to sound like.

“No,” Eva said, like she was disagreeing with an argument, an argument she was only slowly waking up to. “No,” she said again, firmly.

“No? You’re not?” Isabel put a hand on the open page. “Then where is my property?”

Eva blinked as if struck. “Oh,” she said then. Something seemed to turn hard within her. She said, a new voice now: “It’s gone.”

Isabel swallowed. “Gone.”

“Gone. You won’t get it back.”

“You admit it, then. You’re a thief. You came here to steal from me. That was your intention all along, wasn’t it? That’s why you were so intent on—so sure about—yesterday, and Louis, and, oh!” A single laugh came out of Isabel’s throat, a harsh croak. “Harmless! A harmless girl. Isn’t that right.”

Eva, in the kitchen entryway, held herself up by the door’s frame.

Isabel said, “Well? What have you to say for yourself?” Her voice cracked. “You have nothing to say.”

Eva stared at the diary. She looked—distant, out of it, and Isabel wanted to clap her hands, bring her back. Make her bear witness. She raised her voice, said, “Have you sold it? How much money could that have possibly been—a few spoons, a knife. Pathetic. I’m certain it was worth the trouble.”

Eva said, tar rolled in gravel: “You are blind.”

“I was, yes. I was, when it came to you. No more. No—” She touched the back of her hand to her lips, swallowed it down. She did not look at Eva. She said, “Leave.”

The kitchen was silent.

Isabel said, “Leave this house. Go get your suitcase, leave.”

Eva did not move. Her eyes were hard on the table—on the diary. She was breathing hard. She took a step, then rushed forward, was reaching for the diary and Isabel quickly closed the book.

Eva paused. “Give it back,” she said.

“No.”

Through clenched teeth: “Give it—”

“I will call the police.” Isabel held the book closer to her chest. “If you do not leave. I will call the police.”

Eva’s face was set in a grimace, eyes wet, nostrils flared, jaw tight. When she first came down she still had the look of sleep-warmed skin. Bile rose up Isabel’s stomach, and she turned away from Eva, closed her eyes.

“Leave.”

She heard Eva’s retreat, did not see it. In her absence, she got out of her chair so quickly that it toppled back. She went to the sink and retched. Nothing came out. Her hands shook, her face was clammy with sweat. The activity upstairs was quick and violent. Isabel put the diary in the pocket of her robe and went to the front door, opened it, stood there waiting.

Eva’s suitcase was too big for her to carry down the stairs by herself. It was a furious, clambering way down; embarrassing and clumsy. Eva was flushed from her forehead down her collar. She had put on her red hat again, and from under it her roots were showing badly: several fingers’ length of coarse, dark-dark hair.

Isabel watched her struggle. The last few steps the suitcase slipped from Eva’s grip and fell down the rest of the way. It had been hastily closed—only the strapped buckles, not the zip—and the thing banged open when it hit the ground. Clothes spilled out. Eva turned a deeper shade of red. She hurried to stuff everything back, one knee to the ground.

Isabel took a step, took two. She stood by the clutter. She bent down and picked up one of the things that had rolled away a short distance.

A broken piece of ceramic. Blue flowers along the inch of a rim—the back of a hare’s leg where the plate had—

Eva looked up at her, eyes black, shiny-wet. Isabel could see her heartbeat under her skin, in her neck.

Isabel said, “Out of my house.”

Eva glanced at the shard, looked like she was about to say something, something desperate and begging, and Isabel would not let her. “I swear. I swear I will call the—”

Eva stuffed everything back in the suitcase. She wiped her arm over her eyes as she closed it, again and again, between every movement—wiped at her eyes. She was silent. Isabel took a step back as Eva rose to her feet, marched toward the door.

One foot out, she paused. Turned. Said, “You were never supposed to have it.” She said, “It was never yours.”

Isabel closed the door behind her. Locked it, then went to the kitchen and locked that door as well. She wasn’t breathing right: she was breathing as if there was a rattle in her lungs, an animal in her throat, a terrible sound on every inhale, every exhale. She went to the living room and climbed onto the couch to look out the window. Eva was walking down the gravel path, suitcase in hand. Her pace was quick. She didn’t stop, didn’t put down the heavy weight, not once. She got smaller and smaller. The back of her shirt wasn’t pushed into her trousers right, and a white lip of cloth draped out over the waist.