“Maybe we could go to that pond in Colbert and swim some night,” I said, trying again to yank back the conversation. Pushing my luck, I added, “Just us.”
Those words should have had some effect, but Abigail kept her head down and went on eating. My mother told me she was not even sure the pond was still accessible to the public. “It was owned by some farmer, I believe. Ever since they opened the town pool, I never hear of people going there anymore.”
“You know what?” my father said. “All this talk of late-night swims has given me an idea. How about we go out for ice cream? It’ll help us cool off.”
All my life, we had never been a family that went out for ice cream. Back when we were younger, Rose and I used to get the idea in our heads and take to begging only to hear the same lecture from my father about how absurd it was to shell out money just so some kid could fill our cones. Instead, my mother kept a tub of sherbet in the freezer, or Popsicles when she wanted to give us an extra treat.
That night, my mother pointed out that she had both sherbet and Popsicles in the freezer, so there was no need to make a trip across town to the ice cream shop. Unlike my father as it was, he told her to forget that. “It’ll be good to get out of the house. Before we pass out from the heat or these mosquitoes eat us alive.”
“What about . . .” My mother allowed her voice to trail off, but he understood.
“Abigail,” he said, turning to the girl. “How do you feel about this idea?”
Her plate was empty again. I wondered if she might ask for thirds. Instead, she just stared at it the way she had those photos of Rose and me, as though seeing something there no one else did. “I’ll be okay here by myself.”
That was all I needed to hear. I pushed back my chair and stood to rinse my plate in the sink with the intention of going up to be sure my bedroom door was locked before leaving. Nothing had happened to my horses since Penny had been put in the cage and Rose had been sent away, but I wasn’t taking chances. Then I heard my father say, “You’re misunderstanding me. I’m asking how would you feel about coming with us?”
“Sylvester,” my mother said. “I think perhaps—”
My father held up a hand, keeping his eyes on Abigail, so that my mother fell silent.
“Oh,” she said. “That’s very nice, Mr. Mason. But I don’t want to be in the way.”
“Don’t be silly. We’re happy to see you up and about.”
Maybe my mother did not tell him about that warning from her father, how the girl could seem normal—or almost normal—but that’s when she changed. Or maybe my mother did tell him, and he thought he knew better. Either way, even if no one else was thinking about Albert Lynch’s words, they whirred in my mind like those frantically spinning window fans. On the few occasions I’d been in Abigail’s presence, never once had she looked at me—not directly anyway. It was something I hadn’t realized until, there in our kitchen, she did for the first time. The effect was that of seeing some strange, poisonous flower bloom before my eyes, opening its petals and turning its face toward me. I watched as she lifted her gaze from her empty plate, fixing those wild blue eyes upon me, while speaking to my father in that serene voice. “Sylvie doesn’t want me to go.”
“Nonsense,” my father told her.
“It’s okay,” Abigail said. “If I were Sylvie, I wouldn’t want me to go either. It sounds like a family thing. And I get the feeling it’s important to her.”
That tub of sherbet, those Popsicles—my mother chimed in about both again, but those things had become consolation prizes nobody wanted, least of all me. My mother must have sensed it, because her next offer was to stay home with Abigail while my father and I went and brought back ice cream for everyone. But my father seemed determined we go together. “Sylvie, tell her it’s not true. We didn’t raise the kind of daughter who leaves out a guest in our own home.”
They were all watching me, but it was Abigail’s gaze I felt most. I looked into her wild blue eyes and my mind filled with the memory of the afternoon her father slid open the van door to reveal her lying on the thin mattress inside. I thought of how calm she seemed now, so different from the girl with snarled hair and bruised feet who hid behind my mother, who toppled the very chairs where my parents sat, who shredded our wallpaper. But despite that newfound serenity and my mother’s days and nights of prayer and scripture, I did not feel comfortable having her around.
Even so, I looked back at Abigail while speaking to my father, same as she had done to me. “I’m not sure where Abigail got the idea I don’t want her to come. But I don’t mind. If that’s what she wants.”