“I bet ol’ Fern loved you,” Honey says.
Lillian grins a little. “Yeah, she wasn’t too happy about it. She made it a point to tell Lenny in front of me that the next time they were going to go to her house—so they could be alone.”
“Ha!” Honey laughs. “Good for her.”
Lillian starts dealing the cards again slowly, placing each one on the carpet until two neat piles form. “But then in his third year,” she says, “when he came home for Thanksgiving he was … different.” I lower the book some more.
“What do you mean, different?” Honey asks.
“He just wasn’t the same Leonard I knew. It was like he had turned inward, away from all of us. Away from me, anyway. And definitely from Ma. He spent the whole time just locked in his room. He didn’t even come down for Thanksgiving dinner, even when Ma cried.”
I listen intently, my eyes fixed on a weird curlicue shape in the yellow wallpaper.
“And then in the spring, a year before he was supposed to graduate, he started talking about this man that he had met named Emmanuel. You would have thought it was Jesus himself the way he talked about his prayer and healing services, the meetings he held at this little house of his off campus. Ma and I asked him questions about it and tried to seem interested, but it was kind of strange.”
“How so?” Honey asks.
“Well, we’d just never seen him like that before. Ma actually used the word ‘mesmerized.’ And that’s what he was. He was just completely obsessed with everything about Emmanuel.”
“Yeah,” Honey says. “That sounds about right.” I press my lips together hard. Why can’t she just be quiet?
“He disappeared pretty soon after that,” Lillian says. “It took us a year to find out that he had moved to the East Coast and was living with the Believers at Mount Blessing.”
Honey makes a hmm sound between her lips. I can tell she wants to ask more, probably something about how much my Dad has changed over the years, but she is guarding her words in front of Benny and me. “Do you miss him?” she asks eventually.
Lillian looks up in surprise at the question. “I do,” she says, placing a card down flat on the floor. There is a pause. “Gin,” she says. “I win.”
A few hours later, after Honey has disappeared into the shower and Benny has fallen asleep, I get under the covers and start my evening prayers, counting my consecration beads as I go. Lillian is in the corner with her back to me, undressing hurriedly. I close my eyes, trying to concentrate on the prayers and the beads. When I open them again Lillian is kneeling next to me on the floor, dressed in old sweats and a long blue T-shirt.
“What are you doing?” she whispers. “Saying night prayers?”
I am so startled by her presence that I just nod.
“Okay. I don’t mean to interrupt, but I just wanted to ask you a question.” My fingers are frozen around one of the beads, my eyes fixed on the arch of her red eyebrow. I’m not telling her anything about Dad, no matter how much she begs me. “Who has Honey been living with all these years?”
I narrow my eyebrows. “What?”
“I mean … ” She stammers, trying to find the words. “She lived in the nursery with you for a long time, right?”
I nod slowly. “Until we were seven.”
“Right, until you were seven. And then you went to live with your parents, right? In the house they lived in?” I nod again. Her forehead creases. “Ma told me that Honey went to live with a guy named Winky. Do you know anything about him?”
“Not really,” I answer. “He’s kind of … slow. They live in the Milk House.”
“Do you know anything else about him?” Lillian presses. “Is he a good guy?”
I stare blankly at her for a moment. Why is she asking me this? And why would Nana Pete be talking to Lillian about Honey?
The running water from the shower shuts off suddenly. I sit up. “Why are you asking about—” But Lillian stands up, cutting me off with a shake of her head.
“Never mind,” she says, walking back over to her side of the room. Her voice sounds garbled, like a small bird trapped inside her throat. “Good night, Agnes.” I watch as she slides under the covers next to Nana Pete and pulls the blankets over her head.
“Good night,” I whisper, not loud enough for her to hear.
HONEY