She pulled back the edge of the heavy curtains. The footprints were still there in the dew, just outside the glass. And at eye level, as if the child who made the prints had blown hot breath on the glass and written in the fog, were the words:
I WAS HERE
It took Beth a moment to realize that for the words to be readable, the child outside would have had to write them backward. Which she had done, flawlessly.
How she knew the other child was a girl, she couldn’t have said. She just knew.
A pulse began to beat in Beth’s neck. The house around her was dark and silent, her mother still asleep. There was no one around, no one to talk to, probably for hours. Just Beth and her dolls.
She leaned forward and blew on the glass until a patch of fog came up. Then, writing carefully backward herself, she wrote her own message:
COME IN.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
December 1960
BETH
Christmas, for the other kids on the school bus, was exciting. It meant presents and sweets and, most importantly, school break. Today was the last day before the Christmas holiday, and they were on their way home.
Beth sat alone, looking out the window and listening to the boisterous shouts and laughter of the other children. Though she had a thick wool coat and an expensive pair of shoes, a fine wool scarf wound around her neck and matching mittens, she was cold. The damp chill seeped up from her feet and shivered through her body. Her fingertips were numb.
There was no snow outside, but it was still Christmassy. Downtown, the stores were lit up with shopping displays, and the school was decorated with the kids’ drawings. In January, the damp paint-soaked papers would be drooping from the walls, and they’d be sent home with the kids for their parents to put away. Beth would throw hers in the garbage. But today, on the last day of school before Christmas, even the cold chill of the school had felt almost festive.
The dark was setting in, clouds covering what little light the sun gave off before it quickly set. The houses in the neighborhood had their Christmas lights up, the red, green, and blue winking as the bus passed by. Beth sat in silence, watching. None of the other kids spoke to her, which was how she liked it. At the beginning of the school year, two of the older girls had bullied her, calling her “rich girl”—a stupid insult, since there were no poor children at their school. But the older girls were determined to pick on Beth, and eventually there was a fight, and Beth got a bloody nose. The school called her mother, who took over an hour to come and take Beth home. She had smelled like she did after her “day drinks,” as she called them, and she shouted slurred abuse at the teachers, the principal, and the girls in the yard, calling them profane words. No one bullied Beth after that. No one wanted to be her friend, either.
Today there were no Christmas lights on the Greer house, but the windows were lit up, which was a surprise. Often Beth got off the bus to an empty house, which she entered using the key on a chain around her neck. Sometimes one parent or the other was home—rarely both. But it looked like they were both home today, early for them on a Friday afternoon, and even as Beth got off the bus and approached the house, she could tell that something was going on.
The thought didn’t give her any feeling of anticipation. She didn’t expect a party or any holiday cheer. There had been something wrong over the past week. Her grandmother had died, and Beth had heard her parents arguing downstairs late into the night, their voices tight and angry. She’d heard her mother crying, and her father saying, Jesus Christ, Mariana, what a goddamned mess you’ve made. Her mother’s teary, furious answer was: I want to see her. Just once. I want to see her.
Beth didn’t know what that meant. The housekeepers came once a week and the house was as neat as ever, so there was no mess. And her mother could see Beth anytime she wanted.
Looking at the lit-up windows in the lowering dark, she had the feeling she was about to learn what the goddamned mess was.