“He’s gone,” she said, and he was. “Here,” she added, and kicked the lid down. “You finish up.”
“I… I’m done.”
“All right.” She stared at the toilet and shook her head. “Incredible. Do you think we dreamed him up?”
“I hope so,” I muttered.
“Well, don’t forget to flush.” And she turned to leave.
I couldn’t find the cistern or the flusher. “I don’t…”
Cath popped her head back in. “Oopsy! I forgot.” She climbed onto the toilet seat and reached up to the cistern mounted near the ceiling. “It’s an old one. Have to flush by pulling the chain.”
“What chain?”
“This one.” And she grasped a single link in what used to be a full length of chain and pulled down on it. “The only one left,” she added with a smile.
As the water drained from the bowl, I could hear the entire house grumbling with the plumbing. It sounded like the manor was eating my waste.
“Time for bed,” Cath said, pushing me gently on my lower back, not saying a word about how I was soaking wet—or about the smell.
“Here,” she said, holding out the blanket that had been wrapped around her own shoulders. “This is no time to be awake. Straight to bed.”
I nodded vaguely, flinching back when she leaned forward. She kept coming, until she had planted a little kiss on my cheek.
“It’s so wonderful,” she whispered, “to have you here.”
She wiped away the kiss in a caress and then turned toward the parlor.
“Good night,” she called over her shoulder.
I still had her lantern.
I went up to bed and crawled straight in, not caring for a second that I was sleeping in my own pee or that the lantern was still burning. It was dark, I was freezing, there were snakes, and I didn’t feel safe.
But the ghost of her kiss lingered on my cheek, and I closed my eyes with a smile.
In the morning, Aunt Cath came upstairs with toothbrushes, toothpaste, pads (which she handed to me discreetly, and which I took with a burning face), one of her dresses (for me), and one of her shirts (for Nori). Plus a sash from some other garment for a belt.
“Do you want me to cut it?” Cath asked later, when she saw me in the bathroom, looking in the mirror and tugging on my matted hair.
I looked at her through the reflection and nodded. Somehow, I felt like we had gone through something together last night. Something weird, but something, together.
“How short?” she asked.
I indicated a line by the side of my cheek.
“Lovely.” She gave me a warm smile. “You would look lovely like that. Just like Clara Bow.”
“I love her,” I said, without thinking.
Cath smiled. “Me too.” She heaved a sigh and lifted up the majority of the dreadlock my hair had become over the years. “They don’t make actresses like that anymore.”
“I liked her in Wings and It.”
“Two of her best.”
She raised the scissors so I could see them in the reflection. “Ready?”
“Very.”
When she was done, my hair was cut into a very short bob, the way I had always wanted—à la Clara Bow—and Nori’s tangle of curls actually looked like curls, rather than a bird’s nest.
“Come down when you like,” Cath said, putting my dreadlocked hair into her pocket. “I’ll have some breakfast ready.”
I wiped Nori’s face, trying to clear some of the more hard-worn dirt and marker stains, and then turned to look at myself again.
Who is this?
I looked like a girl. I hadn’t looked like much of anything in so long.
Cath had just put three teacups onto the kitchen table, along with warm tea cakes, jam, and butter, when we came in. When she turned to us, her face lit up. “Oh, my dears! Oh, my goodness. You look just like her,” she said to Nori, cupping her smile in her hands. She looked at me. “Presilla…”
“Silla now.”
She nodded. “Silla, of course. You look—”
“Like him. I know.”
“—beautiful. Better than Clara.”
I smiled and looked away. I did look like my father. But he was not a beautiful person. Black hair. Black eyes. Pasty skin. We were not beautiful. That was an impossibility. I felt flawed. But Nori… Nori was perfect. Almost. Her teeth were… bad. And that was his fault, too.
Still… Clara Bow. Inside, I glowed.
Cath noticed my stare leveled at the table. Probably noticed my scowl, too. That was my most recognizable feature, and in my opinion, my best. “Yes, come now—eat something. Have tea. You look starved half to death. And, Silla, tell me everything.”
I sat down at the table and grabbed a tea cake for Nori. “Eat,” I told my sister, and then turned back to Aunt Cath. “Like I said last night: Nothing to tell. He got bad. We had no choice. Mum said this was a safe place.”
Aunt Cath’s gaze changed. Not for long, but I saw it. It was sharper. “Really?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“I’ll have to phone her,” she muttered, her gaze drifting to the side, her fidgeting hand coming back up to squeeze her bottom lip.