“You mean the one he was supposed to get?” Her gaze flicks to Hemi and she shrugs. “I wrapped it up with the potato peelings from dinner and tossed it into the compost can.”
Compost. The thought makes me vaguely queasy. My words—words meant for Hemi—decaying, liquefying, seeping into the dark earth. I slide my eyes to Hemi, vindicated at last, but there’s no joy in the moment, no sense of relief or absolution. Only a fresh sense of loss and a terrible reminder of what was stolen from me. From us.
“And Teddy’s envelope?” I ask dully. “What happened to it?”
“I resealed it, empty, and slipped it back into Dickey’s coat. I assume he got it, though I can’t say for certain. Lord knows what he thought when he opened the thing. And poor Dickey never had a clue.” She’s smiling again, a sharp, vicious little smile. “Happy?”
“Am I happy?” I stare at her, incredulous. It’s as if some part of her, the warm-blooded part, is missing, and I wonder that we can be related at all. “You’ve broken my heart all over again, Corinne. Reminded me how close I came to the life I wanted—and how it felt to lose it. But I’m glad it’s over, glad to be finished with you and this house, glad to hear they’ll pull it down the moment you’re gone. I’m going now. I won’t be back.”
Hemi and I are nearly to the door when she calls my name. I turn, surprised to see her slumped in her chair now, as if all the air has gone out of her. “Go into the closet,” she says flatly. “There’s a box there with some things in it. Take them with you.”
My first reaction is to keep walking, to get as far away from her as possible—as quickly as possible—but something new has crept into her voice, a blend of resignation and defeat. Against my will, I find myself experiencing a pang of sympathy for the sister I know I’ll never see again. Grudgingly, I do as she asks.
In the closet, near the back, I find an old hatbox. I open it right there, feeling my breath catch as I lift the lid. Her things. My mother’s things. The silver-backed hairbrush that used to sit on her dressing table, a pearl-and-diamond broach, a strand of garnet beads, a packet of old letters postmarked from France—and at the bottom, a brown leather album with my mother’s initials embossed in faded gold.
The leather is dry and scarred, the spine completely split, with a pair of large rubber bands employed to secure the pages that have come loose over the years. The sight of it stirs so many memories, beautiful and bittersweet, and for a moment, I’m certain I can hear her, smell her, feel her all around me. Maman.
I’m overjoyed, but angry too. I glare at Corinne. “When I asked you about the album, you said you threw it away. You said you threw everything away. And all this time . . . you’ve been keeping these things from me. When you knew she would have wanted me to have them. Why?”
“You’ve answered your own question,” she replies stonily.
“You did it to spite a dead woman?”
“No. To spite you.”
Her words knock the breath out of me. I was a child when our mother died. Lonely. Lost. And she purposely withheld the very things that might have offered some comfort. “What have I ever done to you, Corinne? Please help me understand this kind of hatred.”
She’s silent a moment, frowning as she studies the backs of her hands, as if they belong to someone else. Finally, she drops them to her lap and looks at me. “You weren’t born when Ernest died. It was just me. She had a bad time of it. She would shut herself up most days, but when she was having a good day, she would call me to her room. She would brush my hair and sing to me. I was her darling girl. Then you came and I became an afterthought. And then when Father sent her away, I was expected to look after you—the sister I couldn’t stand the sight of. I was sixteen, on the verge of having a life of my own. Or so I thought. But I did what was expected of me. I’ve always done what was expected of me. Including marrying George Hillard, who made my skin crawl. But not you. You were too good to marry the man Father chose for you. You wanted the paperboy.”
“Yes,” I say quietly, not daring to look at Hemi. “I did.”
“And that was all that mattered, as far as you were concerned. What you wanted. You needed to learn your place. To do your duty as I was made to. And you would have, with him out of the way. Instead, you slipped the hook when the story broke and left me to clean up the mess—again.” Her eyes flick to Hemi with open disgust. “You brought him to us. Helped him dredge up all that filth and drag Father’s name through the mud. He was ruined. We were all ruined! And you can stand there and ask what you ever did to me? If I could hurt you in even the tiniest way, I was glad to do it.”
She says it all without shame, without batting an eye, and suddenly I understand just how her hatred has warped her. I look down at the contents of the box with fresh eyes. Personal items grudgingly hoarded like trophies from a battlefield. But why keep them at all? And then lie about it?
It strikes me suddenly that Corinne’s withholding of our mother’s things hasn’t been about a grudge against me but about something else entirely, something she refused to admit, even to herself. “You wanted them,” I say softly, understanding at last. “You wanted them for yourself. Because they were hers.”
She turns her face away. “Do you want them or not?”
“Yes. I want them.”
“Take them, then, and get out.”
I scoop the box up into my arms; then, before I can change my mind, I lift out the hairbrush and lay it on Corinne’s pillow, a gift she doesn’t deserve. She doesn’t see me do it, but Hemi does. Our eyes touch briefly as he relieves me of the box. I pick up my purse from the bed and head for the door. I don’t say goodbye. I don’t look back. I’ve gotten what I came for and now want only to be away from Corinne and out of my father’s house.
TWENTY-TWO
MARIAN
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.
—Charles W. Eliot
I feel a dull sort of closure as we climb into Hemi’s car, a sense of loose ends being tied up. The fall of the Mannings is all but complete. But our story—Hemi’s and mine—isn’t over.
We’re silent for much of the drive back. I stare out the window at the passing cars and blurring landscape, trying to process everything that’s happened in the last few weeks. Ethan and Ashlyn discovering the books. Hemi showing up out of the blue with a forty-year-old letter in his pocket. Corinne’s admission that she’d purposely thwarted my hopes for happiness. And soon, the last piece of the puzzle. The one I’ve held back.
That four decades of secrets have unwound themselves in so short a time seems impossible but inevitable, too, in some tiny part of my consciousness. Haven’t I always been braced for this day? When Hemi’s book arrived and I saw what he’d written—How, Belle?—wasn’t I already preparing for this inevitability? I was. Of course I was.
Ashlyn’s words have been festering all day.