I start off with Yardley. We agree to walk toward the tennis courts and the wooded area around them. We pass Tomkin, who is hunting in some bushes off the walkway. “I told Dad to leave me alone,” he tells Yardley proudly. “I don’t need his help to find lemons. I’m eleven years old!”
“Yes, you are, butthead,” says Yardley. She takes the lime from her pocket and throws it at him. “Here you go, though.”
Tomkin catches it. “For real?”
“Shut up,” says Yardley, and we walk on.
“Where did you find the lime?” I ask. “And when? We just left Clairmont.”
“It was in the grass, blending in, right at the foot of the steps,” she says. “No one in this family can see what’s right in front of them.”
We walk in silence for a bit.
“I found a photograph of my mother,” I blurt, finally saying what has been on the tip of my tongue all evening, with no one to say it to. “When she was first married, I guess, with this guy I don’t know.”
“Mm?”
“His faced was scraped off. Like down to white paper. I couldn’t tell who it was.”
Yardley stops walking. “That sounds like a horror movie.”
“No, it was like someone hated the man in the picture, hated him enough to want to scrape his face off.”
“Still a horror movie.”
“But why would Tipper keep the photo?”
Yardley starts walking again. “Where’d you find it?”
“Her jewelry drawer.”
“Oh god,” she said. “Like she’s keeping it, like it’s precious? With the face scraped off?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But it’s an old picture?”
“From before I was born. I think.”
“Hm.” We walk in silence for a moment. “Honestly, Carrie, I’d say leave it alone. Ever since my parents got divorced, there’s no end of stuff I just totally ignore. Legal documents, evidence that my dad has girlfriends, or hookers, even. Angry phone messages from my mother, stuff about money and schedules and—you know what? I just fast-forward. Don’t need to know it, happier without it. Let those stupid grown-ups deal with their emotional garbage and their illegal this and that, shady guys coming over or whatever. You start digging in adults’ lives and things get ugly so fast, you don’t want to eat your breakfast anymore. I figure it’s my job to like, get an education, then become a doctor and help people. Be nice to my friends. Not get pregnant, not drive drunk. I’m gonna just like, be in love with George and enjoy the summer.”
I try to push the image of that photograph down, burying it in the thick cool dirt of my mind, dirt that is heavy with things I do not think about but carry with me nonetheless. “You two are in love?”
“I think so,” she says. “Not totally sure.”
“I think I would know if I loved somebody,” I say. “All the people I love, there’s no question.” My sisters. Even when they’re petty or annoying, I love them and it’s just a fact. I held Bess when she was a baby. Penny and I have been together as long as I can remember.
“I thought I would know, too,” says Yardley. “But with a new person? I’ve only been going out with George five months. I feel like I love him, but I could totally fall out of love if he started acting like a dick.”
“He seems very, very into you.”
“Yeah. But it could be the private island. You have to consider that, right?” says Yardley. “When you come with fun extras, you never know if a person loves you for yourself.”
“Cynical.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think like that all the time,” says Yardley. “It’s just now. In the dark. When he didn’t pick me for his Lemon Hunt partner.”
We arrive at the tennis courts. Yardley flicks the lights on. We squint as we do a quick run across the clay. Two lemons, both mine. Then we plunge the courts into darkness again. Then we depart the walkway and head through the woodsy area behind the courts, up to the perimeter path.
A lemon for Yardley.
At Pevensie we circle, looking in the grass, the slats of the fence, the trellis for the climbing vines, under the steps and under the pillows of the porch swing.
A lemon for me.
When I come down from the Pevensie porch, Yardley is not to be seen.
I circle the house again, and when I come back to the front, she and George are kissing. She is pressing him against the house with her hand up his shirt.