“Sorry,” she said immediately.
“No, I’m sorry, honey. I always forget,” her mother said, scooping it up and putting it on the table.
“It’s all right, I— Wait. Forget what?”
Her mother was silent, patting at Corinne’s face with the powder puff.
“Stop it,” Corinne said, pushing her hand away. “Forget what?”
Mrs. Wells sighed and sat down at the table. She put away the compact and fiddled with the hairbrush.
“Mother,” Corinne said.
“I’ve known since the first time I saw you after you—you got sick,” said her mother. “Your aunt—my older sister—was the same way. She used to write stories, beautiful stories. I was the only person who ever knew how she could bring the stories to life. We had an old iron tub in the house, and she used to cry until she was sick whenever my mother made her bathe in it.”
“You never told me you had a sister,” Corinne said.
“Her name was Alice. When she was a little older than you are now, she—she hurt herself.” Her mother squeezed the brush in a trembling grip. Her voice was thin and tight like a string. “The doctor couldn’t bring her back.”
Alice the lion tamer. Alice the pirate. Alice the opera singer.
Alice the wordsmith. Alice who couldn’t be saved.
Corinne swallowed hard and knelt down beside her mother, wrapping her mother’s hands in her own. The loss of her grandfather’s pocket watch was more real than it had been before. She felt somehow heavier without the familiar weight in her pocket.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“That was a long time ago,” Mrs. Wells said, smiling though her eyes were damp. “Stand up, Corinne. You’ll wrinkle your dress.”
Corinne obeyed, shaking out the hideously long skirt. For the first time, she considered the significance of her mother’s not calling the police the night before. She’d been lying to her family for years, assuming that her mother was too dense to figure it out. But maybe Mrs. Wells knew more about Corinne’s life than she let on. Corinne thought about her mother’s refurbishment of the house, of all those iron fixtures replaced with brass, under the pretense that Garden & Home Builder had declared it the height of style. Maybe her mother, who stowed the ideals of Down Street so deep in her heart, understood that some secrets should be kept.
“Does Father know?” Corinne asked.
She almost didn’t want the answer. She was remembering all the dinner parties throughout the years where her father had expounded on his views on hemopaths, all the years of unfeeling, offhand comments, each one a burr under her skin that she could never quite be rid of.
Her mother seemed to understand what she wasn’t saying. She reached out and took Corinne’s hand in both of hers. The gold of her wedding rings was cool against Corinne’s wrist.
“I thought maybe you would tell him, when you were ready,” she said. “I hoped that you would tell all of us, in time.”
The words weren’t a reprimand, and they held no disappointment. Instead they were extended like an olive branch, or a promise. Corinne didn’t know what to say. She’d been fighting against her family and her name for so long that she’d forgotten what it felt like to have even one of them on her side.
“Mother, have you seen my—” Phillip appeared in the doorway, cutting himself short when he saw his sister.
“Hello,” Corinne said.
“Where have you been?” he demanded. “Are you okay?”
He came into the room, and Corinne wasn’t sure if he was going to throw something or shake her by the shoulders. Instead he pulled her into a hug. The sensation of being trapped inside her brother’s bearlike grip was not entirely unpleasant. She hadn’t hugged him since she was eleven years old, the day she left for boarding school.
“We looked for you all night. God, Corinne, we thought—” Phillip choked up, which was something else that hadn’t happened in years.
“I’m okay,” she said. “Mostly.”
Phillip held her at arm’s length and examined her with a stitch in his brow. His bow tie was off-kilter, and Corinne straightened it.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I never meant for things to go this far.”
“And is it over?” he asked. “Whatever it is?”
Corinne shook her head. “Not yet.”
Mrs. Wells stood up. With swift, practiced motions, she dusted off Phillip’s lapel and smoothed down Corinne’s hair. She let her touch linger, looking between them. There was an emotion in her eyes that Corinne couldn’t identify or understand, and it made her wonder why she’d ever thought her mother was anything but fathomless.
“Phillip, you’re going to be late to your own wedding,” Mrs. Wells said. “We’ll sort this all out later.”