Silence again. My mother is scratching at the fabric of her armchair, her nails digging into the expensive threads. I catch my dad stealing a glance at the grandfather clock, probably wondering how a minute could possibly move so slowly.
“You know we don’t talk about it much,” I say, unable to peel my eyes from the carpet. This is where we used to lie: Margaret and I, stomachs on the oriental, flipping through issues of The Grit and sounding out the words together. Revealing stories of another world, another life, imagining ourselves ripped from our own and implanted into the pages. “That night, what happened. We’ve never actually talked about it—”
“What’s there to talk about? It was a terrible accident.”
I look at my mother—still silent, still scratching—and back to my dad. That air of authority has crept back into his voice just a little bit. Just enough for him to signal that this conversation is off-limits.
“It was.” I continue pushing forward. “But I think it might help me if we could just talk about it. Mom asked how I was doing—”
“Okay,” he says, leaning forward, resting his chin on his palm, like he’s a psychiatrist, studying me. “What would you like to talk about, Isabelle?”
“I have … memories, I guess, of that night. Some things that have been bothering me. Things that don’t make sense.”
My parents shoot each other a look.
“Like, when I woke up that morning … there was water on the carpet.” I force myself to continue, hawking up the words like vomit stuck in my throat. “I was wearing a different nightgown from what I fell asleep in. There was mud—”
“Isabelle, what is this about?” my dad asks, his voice suddenly softer. “Why are you dragging all this back up?”
“Because I need to know what happened!” I shout, louder than I intend to. My voice seems to echo off the walls, the grand piano, a pitchy whining vibrating off the strings. “I need to know—”
“Your sister had an accident, sweetie. It was nobody’s fault.”
I remember the way he had coached me that morning, reciting those same words over and over again. The way my mother had looked at me, head tilted to the side, her eyes cloudy with a waxy shine like she thought I was a ghost.
“But I feel like I was there. I remember—”
“Don’t do this,” he says, the exact same words Ben had said to me this morning now echoing up my father’s throat. “Isabelle, don’t do this to yourself.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
I forgot how the sun sets here. Slowly, at first, the turquoise gradually morphing into a slathering of peaches and yellows and tangerines bleeding together like watercolors—and then, quick as a blink, it’s like someone lit a match and set fire to the sky, the blaze traveling across the canvas as if it were drenched in kerosene and left to burn. I’m on the dock now, watching as the sun dips below the horizon. With dusk reflecting off the water, it almost feels like I’m sitting in it, right in the middle: a room on fire with flames above and below me, swallowing me whole.
“Stay for dinner,” Dad had said, changing the subject as quick as a whip crack. I didn’t want to, but at the same time, I did, so I glanced at my mother, looking for a hint of permission in her gaze.
She gave me a twitch of a smile, a small nod, and so I agreed.
The kitchen looked different, our old cobalt backsplash replaced with subway tile, simple and white. Some of it had to be renovated after that summer fire, of course, but the rest, I knew, was an attempt to erase the memories, the past. There were tiny pots of herbs set against the windowsill: basil and rosemary and parsley and sage, giving the air a woody smell, like freshly mown grass. I watched as Mom clipped at the leaves with little silver scissors, collecting a heap in her palm. I don’t remember her cooking much, but she seemed to know what she was doing.
I had been chopping lettuce for dinner, a cleaver in my grip and my eyes somewhere distant, when Mom placed a hand on my shoulder, startling me back to the present.
“You know I love you,” she said, her voice shaking. It seemed like an attempt at reconciliation; a moment of forgiveness I never felt I deserved. “You know that, right?”
I stand up from the dock now, brushing the pollen from my jeans. Despite their attempts at redecorating, at erasing the memories of Margaret, I can still see her everywhere here: In the kitchen table where she used to sit, singing to her doll in that high-pitched voice. In the copper skillets hanging above the stove, the same ones I used to make her omelets in, sliding the eggs onto a plate and placing it in front of her. Watching her eat. In the backyard where we use to sit with those statues, sweet tea in hand, and here on the dock, especially, water lapping against the pilings like a soft, ceaseless nudge.