“Are you OK back there?” Luna asks, feeling awkward. Silence.
“How about we get some ice cream? Yeah?”
A glance at Clover’s reflection in the rearview mirror shows her face turned to the window, glancing back as though she’s trying to find her way back to the hospital. Her jaw is tight and her eyes are hard.
Luna always knew it would take time to build the relationship she had with her sisters, if she ever found them. Actually, this had only been a passing thought—what she believed was somehow they’d click right back into place, as sisters did, and the sudden shift in gears throws her. She draws upon her professional training. Clover’s a traumatized child, after all. Her trauma has frozen her in time. She has to speak to her just as she’d speak to any of the kids she works with.
“Clover, I know this is difficult. It’s very hard for you, being with a stranger like this.”
She speaks slowly and gently, watching Clover’s reaction. Nothing. She must be patient.
“I know you’re scared. But I can promise you, you’re safe now. From this moment on, you’re safe. We’re together again.”
Clover’s face reveals nothing, no hint of having heard or considered anything. Luna bites her lip. So much harder when the traumatized child is a blood relative. Entirely different applying her training to this situation, with so much skin in the game. It’s only been ten minutes and already she feels completely out of her depth.
She watches the profile of Clover’s face, the curve of her jaw, her small ears at a slight tilt from her head. Yes, there is something different about her. There’s the glaring fact that she’s about twenty years younger than she should be. But also something else.
Something that’s harder to place.
IV
The Airbnb is a small cottage in Drumnadrochit, a village on the shores of Loch Ness. As they pull up outside heavy rain starts to swallow up the horizon, smudging the outline of hills to obscurity.
The two-story cottage is cramped and glum, the walls busy with dusty mounted plates. There’s a well-used sofa, a frayed rug, an ancient woodburner, and a TV. It’ll do. “We’re just staying here for a while, until the storm passes,” Luna tells Clover as they look over the room. Silence follows. It strikes her that she’s forgotten how to entertain a child. Despite wanting one for as long as she can remember, she has never babysat. She was only two when Clover was born. None of her friends have had children yet. She works with children, but usually they’re in their teens. The presence of this little girl—my sister, she reminds herself—is daunting.
“Shall I put the TV on?” she says.
Clover seems nervous, backing into the corner of the room. Luna throws her a wide smile, which only serves to make her stiffen like a frightened animal. She hugs Gianni protectively to her chest. The silence in the cottage is heavy, and Luna mentally kicks herself for not finding a park or play area to visit before returning to such an enclosed and foreign space as this. She moves to the small kitchen and finds two glasses, which she fills with water. When she turns to give one to Clover, the room is already empty. The sound of feet upstairs tells Luna that Clover’s exploring the space.
Give her time, Luna thinks. This is completely strange for both of us.
A moment later, she hears Clover’s voice. “Not like that, Gianni. Like this.”
She sighs with relief. Playing is a good sign. It’s an excellent sign. She finds fresh eggs and homemade bread in the welcome package, which she cooks and eats with a pot of tea at the old dining table with barley-twist legs.
With Clover occupied, Luna turns to Google for information about aging disorders. She learns about Werner syndrome, which causes accelerated aging. She reads about chromosomes, amino acid proteins, DNA stability and exonuclease domains, hard-to-pronounce phrases that mean nothing to her but seem to mean everything to those children whose bodies hurtle into old age.