“Honey,” a passing clerk said, “are you okay?”
I looked up at the Can I help you? pin stuck to her enormous bosom but did not make eye contact. Instead, I just nodded before heading out to the parking lot. I couldn’t find the truck at first, and I wandered the rows of vehicles, certain Rose had left without me. When I finally did spot it, there was no sign of her inside. The heat of the passenger door warmed my back as I waited. For a place teeming with cars, it seemed strange that so few people were around. In the distance, a woman strapped a wailing baby in a car seat. Farther away, a man in a green uniform arranged bags in his trunk. Other than that, it was just me out there until I heard keys rattle nearby. I turned to see Rose coming my way, sipping a mammoth soda and devouring an oversized bun out of a carton.
“Where were you?” I asked.
“You wasted so much time, I had no choice but to use the scummy restroom. And then I got hungry.”
She unlocked my door, went around to hers. As we climbed inside, Rose said she would leave it to me to explain the way I dress to Cora if the woman stopped babbling long enough to ask again. My sister started the truck, the monstrous engine vibrating the floor beneath my feet. “Besides, I barely notice what you wear when you walk out of the house anyway. More important: there’s nothing I like less than hovering over a toilet seat in some filthy restroom. So don’t make me do it again.”
On the drive back to our faded Tudor hidden among the thinning cedars and birch groves at the end of Butter Lane, neither of us spoke. Rose kept the windows down and failed to signal when she changed lanes, but the radio remained off. As the last of the sunlight vanished, I stared at the dead leaves on the lawns we passed. One family had carved their jack-o’-lantern too soon and, with three days to go until Halloween, already the face was caving in on itself.
As we turned into our sloping driveway, past the faded NO TRESPASSING! signs, I couldn’t help but glance at the basement window. A light used to remain on down there at all times. Considering the reasons my parents kept it on, I should not have longed for the sight of that yellowy glow seeping beneath the rhododendrons, but I couldn’t help myself. Not that it mattered. The bulb burned out sometime after their deaths, and neither of us had gone down to replace it.
“Isn’t it funny?” I said. “All those times Mom and Dad went away and you fought for us not to have a nanny so we could be alone. Now, here we are. Just the two of us.”
Rose cut the engine. As we listened to the faint tip-tap beneath the hood, she untangled her hair, and I waited for that vibrating sensation to leave my feet.
“Like that time with Dot,” I began.
“Why do you have to talk about that stuff?”
“I just—”
“I don’t want to think about the past anymore, Sylvie. Mom and Dad chose their lives and beliefs and career. And look what happened. I know I should never have made that call. Believe me, I wouldn’t have if I’d had any idea what would come of it. But Albert Lynch would have found a way to get to them anyway. Or if not him, some other freak. So I don’t think it’s good for either of us to go on about what used to be anymore. Once we get through the trial come spring, we have to leave it behind.”
As she spoke, I stayed quiet, watching her undo the snarls in her hair.
“Someday, Sylvie, when you finish school and we move away from this house and live our separate lives, we’re going to forget the one we lived here. I know it seems hard to believe, but one day it’ll be just a bunch of lost memories from a long time ago.”
Shhhh . . .
It had nothing to do with that sound; I heard her just fine. Yet I couldn’t see how we would ever be able to leave any of it behind. But what more was there to say? I reached for my father’s tote full of books, including the diary Boshoff had given me earlier that day. I opened the door and lowered my feet to the ground. That’s when I felt something soft beneath my flip-flops. Part of me knew what it was right away. Still, the sensation made me gasp.
“What now?” Rose asked.