“Over there,” said Penny.
Real Penny sat by the old oak tree. She was slouched and pale, her hands resting palms up on the ground, her head tilted to the side like a doll’s. She didn’t belong here anymore, but she stayed because of Momma, who couldn’t let her go. Penny knew this like she knew all the things she shouldn’t know. Things no one had ever told her or helped her to understand.
Momma knelt beside the tree and stared. “How is she?”
“She’s happy,” Penny lied. “She misses you, but she’s happy.”
The first time Momma brought Penny here, Penny was so stiff with fear that she could barely talk. Even when she was another girl, with another name, she’d had strange dreams and seen people who weren’t there. But nothing ever like this place.
“Tell her to let me go,” Real Penny had begged her the first time. “Please tell her I can’t stay here anymore. She won’t let me leave.”
But when Penny told her that, Momma had fallen to the ground weeping, and when she recovered herself, she took a hold of Penny and brought her face in very close, so close that Penny could see the deep lines, the clumps of mascara on her lashes.
“You’re a liar,” she said. Her breath was hot and rancid. “A sick little liar.”
And in the blankness of the old woman’s face, she saw such fear and sadness, that Penny just lied from that day forward. She made up stories about Real Penny, how she loved to garden, and rode horses every day, how she ate all the ice cream and pizza she wanted. How she had friends and was with her grandma. And Penny knew these were the things Momma wanted to hear, even though she didn’t know how she knew them. And as long as she told Momma things that made her smile, Penny knew she’d be okay.
“She went riding today,” said Penny. “A big black horse with white socks.”
It was a picture she’d seen in Real Penny’s room. The picture was so old and yellowed, Penny figured it was safe to assume the horse was dead, too.
“Racer?” said Momma, with a pleased smile.
“That’s right,” said Penny, even though she had no idea.
That’s why they brought you here, Bobo had told her. Because you’re a Dreamer. Poppa can tell a Dreamer from a mile away. There’s a light that comes off, a golden shine. He collects Dreamers, for Momma, for himself.
Real Penny tilted her head back and her eyes were two black holes, empty, bottomless things. “Tell her to let me go.”
Penny closed her eyes, but she could still see two white spots looming like after you’ve looked at light that’s too bright.
“Tell her!” the girl shrieked, and her voice was like the sound of the wind wailing. Her mouth opened into a maw, and inside Penny could see the girl strong and alive, atop a great black stallion. Then Penny saw her kissing a boy with long black hair, watched as they got into his car. Then there was nothing.
“She says she loves you,” New Penny lied. “So much.”
Momma put her head to the ground and cried.
When Momma lets her go, said the voice, you can go home, too.
SEVENTEEN
“Is this the right place?” asked Finley. The house in front of her was isolated at the end of a long wooded drive. With the flowerbeds bare and the house in need of a coat of paint, the whole place had the aura of desertion, though a light burned in the downstairs bay window. A sadness hung around it like a fog, and Finley wrapped her arms around her center unconsciously.
“Yes,” said Jones, who was annoyed with her. He was about to open the car door, but he stopped and held her in that steely blue-gray gaze of his. “I can’t have you making a spectacle of yourself in there.”
Finley forced herself not to look away from him. He was used to making people squirm, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Instead, she lifted her palms.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked. He came to her, after all. You can’t invite this kind of thing into your world and then hope to control it. Didn’t he know that?
“I wanted you to stay back at your grandmother’s.”
“I can’t do that,” said Finley.
She turned her gaze forward at the house, now. She knew she sounded as stubborn and intractable as Eloise could be. “I have to be here.”
“Your grandmother never comes along on interviews.”
“I told you,” she said. “I’m not like my grandmother.”
I’m not like anyone, she wanted to say but didn’t. Not my mother, not my grandmother. I am myself. Whatever that means.
Jones heaved the sigh of a man who was used to giving in to the will of women. A long-suffering release of the syllable “ha.”
“Well,” he said. “Let’s get to it then.”
He hefted himself out of the car and shut the door—slamming it a little harder than was necessary? She sat for a moment, looking at the gloaming and the towering trees, watching Jones as he approached the house.