“She’s making progress.”
“Still not talking?”
She winced. “Not yet.”
He frowned. It lasted only a second, maybe less; she thought perhaps she’d imagined it until he said, “Don’t be frustrated. You’re helping her.”
She was surprised by how much those simple words meant to her. “How is it you always know what I need to hear?”
He smiled. “It’s my superpower.”
Beside them a bell tinkled and Peanut came out of the diner.
“Dr. Cerrasin. How are you?” Peanut said, looking from one of them to the other. She seemed certain that she’d missed something important.
“Fine. Fine. You?”
“Good,” Peanut said.
Max stared at Julia. She felt a little shiver move through her; it was probably from the cold. “Well,” she said, trying to follow it up with anything that made sense. But all she could do was stare at him.
“I should go,” he finally said.
Later, when Peanut and Julia were in the car, driving home, Peanut said, “That Dr. Cerrasin is certainly a fine-looking man.”
“Is he?” Julia said, staring out the window. “I didn’t notice.”
Peanut burst out laughing.
SIXTEEN
Ellie was in the living room, reading through the missing children reports—again—when Julia got home. She knew how the press conference had gone by the disappointed look on her sister’s face. It was one of those moments when Ellie wished she weren’t so observant. She saw all the new lines on Julia’s face, the pallor of her skin, and the pounds she’d lost. The woman was practically a scarecrow.
Ellie felt a tinge of guilt. It was her fault that Julia was disappearing. If she had done her job better, the whole burden of identification wouldn’t have fallen on Julia’s thin shoulders. Amazingly, though, Julia had never once blamed her.
Of course, they hardly spent any time together these days. Since the press conferences began, Julia had worked like a machine. Every hour of every day, she kept herself in that bedroom upstairs.
“No one showed,” Julia said, tossing her briefcase on the sofa. There was the merest tremble in her voice; it could be exhaustion or defeat. She sat down in Mom’s favorite rocker, but didn’t relax. She sat stiffly; Ellie was reminded of a sliver of pale ash that had been filed too thin. There wasn’t enough left to bend without snapping in half.
A silence followed, broken only by the crackling of the fire in the fireplace.
Ellie glanced up the stairs, thinking of Alice. “What do we do now?”
Julia looked down at her hands, balled up in her lap. Her sudden fragility was sad to see. “I’m making remarkable progress, but …”
Ellie waited. The sentence remained a fragment, swallowed by the stillness in the room. “But what?”
Julia finally looked up at her. “Maybe … I’m not good enough.”
Ellie saw how vulnerable her sister was right now and knew she needed to say just the right thing; it was a talent she’d rarely possessed. “Dad used to tell me all the time how brilliant you were, how you were going to light up the world with your brightness. We all saw it. Of course you’re good enough.”
Julia made a funny sound, almost a snort. “Dad? You must be joking. All he ever thought about was himself.”
Ellie was so stunned by that observation that it took her a moment to marshal a response. “Dad? He had huge dreams for us. Well, me, he gave up on by the second failed marriage, but you—you were his pride and joy.”
“Are we talking about Big Tom Cates, who used up all the air in the room and squashed his wife’s personality?”
Ellie laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of that. “Are you kidding? He adored Mom. He couldn’t breathe without her.”
“And she couldn’t breathe beside him. She left him once, for two days. Did you know that? When I was fourteen.”
Ellie frowned. “That time she went to Grandma Dotty’s? She came right back.” Ellie made an impatient gesture with her hand. “The point is, they both believed in you, and it would break their hearts to see you questioning yourself. What would you do right now if you were your old self and that girl upstairs needed your help?”
Julia shrugged. “I’d go up and try something radical. See if a little shaking up would help.”
“So, do it.”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“Then you try something else. It’s not like she’ll kill herself if you’re wrong.” Ellie realized a second too late what she’d said. When she looked at Julia, saw her sister’s pale face and watery eyes, it all finally fell into place. “That’s it, isn’t it? This is about what happened in Silverwood. I should have figured it out.”
“Some things … scar you.”
Ellie couldn’t imagine how heavy that weight was, how her sister could bear it. But there was still only one thing to say. “You’ve got to keep trying.”