“I think Richard was under Shakespeare’s spell as much as the rest of us.”
Colborne accepts this without protest. “You know, it’s strange,” he says. “Every now and then I have to remind myself that I never actually knew him.”
“You would have loved or hated him.”
“What makes you say that?”
“That’s how he was.”
“What about you? Did you love him or hate him?”
“Usually both at once.”
“Is this what you mean about feeling everything twice?”
“Ah,” I say. “You see, you do understand me.”
The quiet that follows is comfortable, at least for me. I forget why we’re there for a moment and watch as a leaf breaks loose from a tree and comes twirling down on the breeze to land on the water. Rings ripple out toward the edges of the lake but disappear before they ever get there. I can almost see the seven of us running along the bank through the trees, tearing our clothes off, racing to the water, ready to fall in all together. Third year, the year of the comedy. Light and delightful and distant. Days we can’t have back.
“Well,” Colborne says, when he’s waited long enough for me to speak. “What’s next?”
“Christmas.” I turn away, toward the forest. The Castle is close now, the Tower soaring up out of the trees, its long shadow falling over the ramshackle boathouse. “That’s when everything went wrong.”
“How did it start?” he asks.
“It had already started.”
“Then what changed?”
“We were separated,” I say. “James went to California, Meredith to New York, Alexander to Philadelphia, Wren to London, Filippa … who knows where. I went back to Ohio. Being trapped together in the Castle with our guilt and Richard’s ghost, it was terrible in a way. But being divided from each other, flung to every corner of the world to face it on our own—that was worse.”
“So what happened?” he asks.
“We cracked up,” I say, but the phrase feels wrong. It was not so simple, or so clean, as a piece of fractured glass. “But we didn’t really shatter until we were all back together again.”
SCENE 1
Christmas in Ohio was disastrous.
I survived the four preceding days by maintaining a state of mild intoxication and conversing only when required. Christmas Eve passed uneventfully, but Christmas dinner (the thrilling sequel to Thanksgiving dinner a month before) ended in an uproar when Caroline left the table for a suspiciously long time and my father caught her in the bathroom, flushing most of her food down the toilet. Three hours later she and my parents were shouting at one another in the dining room. I had fled the scene and was already packing my suitcase, which gaped open in the middle of my unmade bed. I balled up half a dozen scarves and about as many socks and flung them in.
“Oliver!” Leah blocked the doorway, sobbing at me, as she’d been doing for the last ten minutes. “You can’t leave now!”
“I have to.” I swept an armful of books off my desk and dumped them on top of the scarves. “I can’t take this. I need to get out of here.”
My father’s voice thundered from the floor below, and Leah whimpered.
“You should get out, too.” I nudged her out of the way and grabbed my coat off the hook on the back of the door. “Go to a friend’s house or something.”
“Oliver!” she wailed, and I turned away, unable to look at her when her face was screwed up like an infant’s, slick and shining with tears.
I threw a pile of clothes—dirty or clean, I had no idea and it didn’t matter—into the suitcase and slammed it closed. The zipper skated easily around the edge because I’d only packed half of what I’d come home with. Downstairs, my mother and Caroline were both screaming at the same time.
I pulled my coat on and yanked the suitcase off the bed, nearly crushing my sister’s foot. “C’mon, Leah,” I said. “You’ve gotta let me go.”
“You’re just going to leave me?”
I clenched my teeth against a surge of guilt coming up like bile from the pit of my stomach. “I’m sorry,” I said, then pushed past her through the door.
“Oliver!” she yelled, hanging over the banister as I rushed down the stairs. “Where are you going?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know.
I dragged my suitcase down a driveway dusted with powdered-sugar snow and waited on the curb for the cab I’d called before packing my bag, wondering what on earth to do next. Dellecher’s campus was closed for Christmas. I couldn’t afford a hotel room in Broadwater or a plane ticket to California. Philadelphia wasn’t far, but I was residually angry with Alexander and didn’t want to see him. Filippa would have been my best option, but I had no idea where she was or how to get in touch. I had the cab drop me at the bus station, where I called Meredith from a pay phone, explained what had happened, and asked if her Thanksgiving offer still stood.
There was no bus Christmas night, so I had six hours to sit outside the station, shivering and second-guessing my decision. By morning I was so cold I didn’t care how bad an idea it was and immediately bought a ticket to Port Authority. I slept almost the whole way, with my face crushed against the grimy window. When we arrived, I called again, and she gave me an address on the Upper East Side.