“But that’s not what you said. You said when you’re back, which means you’re leaving Lewes.”
I stepped close enough to kiss his cheek but didn’t. “You promised.”
“An impossible promise.” He kissed me quickly, then again, just because he could. We stood in an awkward silence for a few moments like imbeciles before finally turning our respective directions. I didn’t look back, but his footsteps faltered once, so he could have. I decided to believe he did.
x x x
The bus dropped me off on a narrow road in the middle of nowhere—at least, that’s what it looked like. On one side of the road, I could barely make out a pond through a chain fence lined with skinny trees. Tall grass flanked the other side, along with a mishmash of wooden fence panels in a variety of colors and patterns. It must have been Piddinghoe, unless the bus driver was a liar. It was definitely the countryside. I remembered the bus driving past a turnoff just before stopping and managed to walk the right way toward it on my first go. The cross street would take me almost the entire way to the address, if Google Maps was to be trusted in such a remote place.
I made my final turn onto a narrow, bendy road that had no placard to name it, and an odd feeling pricked up my neck. Not so much déjà vu as familiarity—not that I’d walked this road before, but rather that I should remember it. The closer I came to the address, the more intense the feeling became, until I found myself picturing how the road might have been different sometime in its past—a space that might have once been filled with a shack, a giant tree that might once have been thinner.
Walking around the final bend of the narrow road was almost surreal. I saw a blue house first, and immediately felt like I’d drifted back into the earliest of my memories, heedless of the fact that this couldn’t possibly be the home of my imagined grandparents. I must have continued to walk forward, because soon I was standing at the top of a gentle hill of bright-green garden plants, poking up from rich, black earth. Flashes of ripe red strawberries and deep purple aubergines peeked out from between leaves, beckoning me to -toddle between the plantings on that tiny path, to skirt the bees flying around bright-orange squash blossoms, and to look for ladybugs in the shady places.
It was real, my memory. Which meant I had been there before.
I could almost see a blurred vision of my mother, her arms crossing her chest as she watched me play, her head turning as a woman with bright blond hair emerged from the house—a woman who punched through the vision and continued on a path right for me.
“This is private property,” she shouted. Still lost in memory, I needed a fraction of a second to realize she was talking to me, even when she followed up her greeting with, “Who are you?”
She had an American accent, which I didn’t expect, and she was older than the blue-haired girl in the photo, older than the blonde in my memory, but still the same person. Her bright blond hair had been replaced with a shiny black that changed her coloring a bit, but it was definitely her. The woman from the photo was standing in real life in front of me, and I could say nothing.
Her eyes went squinty and I thought she might charge up the hill toward me, but she managed only one step before turning back to stare at the blue house, like something tethered her to it. “Who are you? What do you want?”
It was awkward, to carry on a conversation from so far away, but I finally managed to speak up. “I think I was here when I was small.”
“That’s impossible. My family’s owned this farm for generations.”
I nodded and stepped down the hill, slowly, like I was afraid the whole place might disappear if I got too close. Before I’d halved the distance between us, the woman’s expression changed completely, and she ran up toward me, until we were barely a step apart.
“It’s impossible.” Her hand came up like she would touch me, and I flinched. She looked past me toward the road and then out across the fields, for a reason I was pretty sure I could deduce.
“I’m alone.”
“How are you here? How did you get here?”
“You know who I am?”
The woman smiled the same smile from the photo and raised her hands again. I forced myself to stay still as one hand rested on my shoulder and the other smoothed over my hair. “Anyone who knew her would know who you are. I can’t believe . . .”
She grabbed me into a hug, which I tolerated as best I could, and when she finally released me, I managed to step back without being too obvious. “What is your name?”
She laughed. “I’ve never been good at English manners. I’m Alice. Alice Stokes.”
“Alice,” I echoed. “I need to ask you questions.”
Alice’s smile dropped. “Does he know you’re here?”