“I dreamed of her last night,” I reply. “And it was good to see her again.” I blink back sudden tears. “But it was hard, too.” I pause so my voice will stop wavering. “I don’t want to forget her.”
“I remember how difficult it was for me to lose Juliet when she left Sterling, and that was just because she moved away. You’ve already faced more loss in your young life than most people. And your mother . . .” Mrs. Cliffton does a funny little laugh and uses the handkerchief to dab at her eyes. “She would be so proud to see how well you’ve done. She would just beam with it.”
Mrs. Cliffton offers me the handkerchief, and I swipe at my threatening tears. “Could you tell me about the memory of her?” I ask. “If it’s not too personal?”
“It was something Juliet said the last time I saw her, when I came to Gardner and brought William with me. It made me happy because it was one of those riddles she always used to love. Want to take a guess?”
I nod.
“What grows most in darkness?”
Mother’s riddles. Always her riddles. I think for a moment.
“Secrets?” I venture.
Mrs. Cliffton smiles and shakes her head. “Hope,” she says.
I surprise myself then by laying my head on her shoulder. Though the heat of our skin grows sticky and her hair faintly tickles my neck, we do not speak or move for a long time; not until the sorrow from last night finally falls away, and I feel rest.
Will is waiting to walk me home after Stars practice the next day—?leaning against the wall, just like all the times before. As though our fight never happened.
He’s showered, and his hair is slicked back and he’s changed into the shirt with the cuffed sleeves that always makes his eyes look the bluest.
“Hi,” I say to him.
“Oh!” he says, straightening. “Um. Hi.” A strange look crosses his face.
“Thanks for what you did the other night,” I say, and he is still looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read. We start walking, and after a moment I bring my fingers to wipe my mouth and ask, “Is there . . . something on my face?”
“What?” he says. “Oh. No.” He seems distracted.
“I’m sorry about what I said to you,” I tell him, flushing. “After the race. It was uncalled for, and I didn’t even mean it.”
He has just started to respond when a car passes us on the road and someone with a scarf covering everything but his mouth leans out the window. “Go skip town like your mother did!” he yells. “And this time, take the Curse with you.”
A flash of anger instantly darkens Will’s face, and he picks up a rock and hurls it at the car, but it’s already disappeared in a cloud of dust around the bend.
“Everyone here is such a hypocrite,” he mutters. He tightens his fists at his sides. “Like they wouldn’t have done the exact same thing if they got the chance. They would. All of them.”
“You wouldn’t,” I say quietly.
He looks at me. “I would.”
He gestures toward the road, and we start walking again. “My father would stay, actually. He’s found a way to help people, to have some sort of use.” He clears his throat. “I admire him. I wish I were more like him. But I don’t blame your mother. If I had the chance to run, I would take it.” He glances away. “And I would never want to be anybody’s reason for missing that chance.”
The look on his face makes my heart twitch. “Your father would fight hard to stay with you,” I say, the words suddenly spilling out from where they’ve been stuffed down and hidden for months. I can already feeling the tightness building in my throat. “But my father didn’t even try.” I choke on the words. “In some ways,” I say, picking up my pace, suddenly angry, “going off to war was easier than facing life with us.”
“I’m sorry, Aila,” Will says, reaching out a hand toward me and then pulling it back. We walk in silence for several minutes.
Just as the trees begin to clear again, we pass a massive house with a bright red door. “Who lives there?” I ask, pointing.
He glances at my finger. “Guess,” he says.
“The Pattons?”
He nods.
“Why do they have a red door when no one else does?”
“Imported it. Paid for it to be painted and brought in from another state. Most people here don’t have that kind of money to spend.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “Your front door is gray.”
He raises one back at me. “If my father had a finishing word, it would be solidarity.”
The finishing word. I laugh, but his face suddenly flushes, and with it I remember his Christmas present. We walk the rest of the way in comfortable silence, and I wait until Will has climbed the stairs to his room before I slip into Dr. Cliffton’s library. I close the door and skim through the stacks of books for a collection of foreign language dictionaries. Pull one in particular from the shelf.
I sit down in the corner and open it. My heart starts pounding, my fingers flying faster as I flip through the pages and come upon the entries of L’s.
The word Will carved in the wooden box, the riddle he left for me to discover at Christmas. Lumoava.
It means “enchanting.”
In Finnish.
Heat burns along the bows of my rib cage. My heart takes off in a spray of paper wings that doesn’t slow until I see Will at dinner that night. Then it trips a beat and takes flight anew.
I sit down in the seat next to him, which is a mistake.
He has to ask me three times to pass the green beans before I realize that I can’t hear him anymore.
Chapter Forty-Five
I cannot hear Will Cliffton.
This is bad. My thoughts race. This is bad.
I practically throw the green beans at him as I stammer an apology that I was lost in thought. It’s convincing enough that no one suspects the truth.
I think.
And now I have to hide.
I leave the table and immediately shut myself in my room.
“Do you want to play cards?” Miles calls through the closed door.
“I’m not feeling well!” I answer.
It’s not a complete lie. My head is pounding, and my stomach is turning itself into knots over the newest riddle I have to solve.
How am I supposed to hide from Will in his own house?
I have to keep us from speaking for as long as I can. Even though I desperately need the Stars practice, I’m able to feign illness for two full days before Mrs. Cliffton says she’s calling for the doctor. On the third morning I rise earlier than normal, throw on my school uniform, and stuff my face with toast in the kitchen in front of Mrs. Cliffton and Genevieve. “I’m really feeling so much better,” I say, grabbing for one more slice. “Need to catch up on what I’ve missed. Do you think it would be all right if I borrowed Will’s bicycle?” Then I pedal away from the house as fast as I can.
After school I ask Miles to tell the Clifftons I’ll be staying late. “I want to use the school target,” I lie.
“What’s wrong with the one Will made?” he asks.
“His doesn’t move,” I say with impatience. “Besides, it will help me visualize being here for the tournament.” And then I dart to the back stacks of the library and emerge only when Mrs. Cliffton’s car pulls away with Will inside.