Dry suitcases . . .
I look out at Miles’s head, bobbing copper in the sun, and with a prick of unease I fold the secret list into my pocket.
“I thought we could take a trip into town tomorrow,” Mrs. Cliffton says to Miles and me over dinner that night. “Get you the things you’ll need for school?”
I accept a basket of rolls from Dr. Cliffton and clear my throat. “School, right,” I say. “When will we start?”
“I’ve arranged for you both to begin the day after tomorrow.”
Mm. Sooner than I was expecting.
“I picked up the list of books you’ll need, Aila,” Will says. He spears a steamed carrot with his fork. “Most of them are the same as last year, so you can have mine.”
“Thanks,” I say. His dark hair is unkempt, and the ends are starting to curl. He pushes it off his forehead with a rough hand and smiles at me. I glimpse his crooked eyetooth and smile back.
After dinner, I linger behind to help clear the table.
“How are you doing, Aila?” Mrs. Cliffton asks when Genevieve has taken a tray of dirty dishes into the kitchen and we are alone. “Is there anything you need?”
I hesitate, fingering the ring hidden behind my dress, wanting to ask her to make sense of the strange things I’ve seen. But what, exactly, can I say?
“I didn’t see a mirror upstairs?” I start tentatively. “Maybe I could pick one up when we’re in town tomorrow?”
She blinks at me a few times. “Of course. And, dear, there’s something I wanted to talk with you—”
“We’re playing gin rummy tonight,” Miles announces, waltzing into the room, oblivious that he’s interrupting. “We took a vote—?Dr. Cliffton, Will, and me. Aila, are you going to play this time?”
“Not tonight,” I say sharply. “What were you saying, Mrs. Cliffton?”
I turn back to her, but with Miles still standing there, it’s clear the moment has passed.
“Let’s talk more tomorrow,” she says. “We’ll get an early start. Sleep well, Aila.”
I climb the stairs, my annoyance at Miles mounting with each step. I close the door to my room, fall into the downy pillows of my bed, and unfold the list I started earlier.
“No mirrors?” I add. I pick up my father’s old dart and roll it between my fingers.
The dart’s pointed edge is bent and dull. For years I used it to carve lines in my bedroom floor, which I then hid under the corner of my rug. The lines recorded things like girlhood fights at school—?many with Cass over things now forgotten—?and one long, jagged line on account of Dixon Fairweather, the boy I had liked since fourth grade. But most were there because of Miles: Miles being annoying or wretched and somehow still ending up as Mother’s favorite. Miles stealing things and breaking things and bringing us embarrassment rather than sympathy when Mother first took ill.
When I hear him cheering over gin rummy downstairs, his voice raised in victory, I stiffen.
Bully for you, I echo him cruelly. You remembered how to be part of a family. Even if it’s not your own.
Everything here is the opposite of what I was expecting: somehow I am the one who is distant and sulking, he the one adjusting without a hitch. I push my thumb into the dulled point of the dart and wish for my room, for the feel of the carved lines under my fingertips, the tree rings marking the seasons of my life.
Thankfully, the Clifftons have chosen to listen to the radio tonight instead of Billie Holiday. I open my mother’s book to a new play and start to skim Love’s Labour’s Lost. I examine one of the passages she’s circled.
Biron: Your mistresses dare
never come in rain,
For fear their colours
should be wash’d away.
I look up at a sudden outburst of Will’s laughter followed by a good-natured groan by Mrs. Cliffton. Then I hear Miles’s cackle, high and easy to recognize. I smile in spite of myself. He’s allowed to laugh, I think. And right now, he’s the only family you have.
I close the book and roll the dart between my fingers, wondering if it’s too late to join them. If I should swallow my pride and ask to be dealt in, instead of hearing everything filtered through the slats of the Clifftons’ pure, unmarked floorboards.
But by the time I reach the bottom of the stairs, they are emerging from the library. I pretend that I was coming down for another reason and give a small wave, then keep walking. “I hope we weren’t too loud,” Mrs. Cliffton says.
“I barely heard a thing,” I lie. “Good night.”
I wait until their footsteps fade on the stairs, and then I crack open the side door to walk in the garden. The air is cooler than I thought it would be. I look up, expecting to see stars spread out overhead like a dewy web, but instead the sky is black and endless, punctured only by the stark white moon.
I circle the garden pathway and lie down on one of the benches, watching the moon until the iron laths dig into my back. I sit up, sneak a look to make sure no one is watching, and stoop to smell the flowers. Nothing, just like before.
When I straighten, voices are murmuring from the second floor.
“I tried to talk to Aila earlier, but I didn’t get very far,” Mrs. Cliffton says. My ears prick.
Dr. and Mrs. Cliffton’s bedroom window is cracked just enough to carry out their drifting conversation. I move out of sight beneath the window and perch on the fountain ledge, waiting. I pretend to examine the fountain’s statue. It’s of a stone girl, frozen in a skip across the water’s surface.
“We’re working on borrowed time at this point,” Dr. Cliffton says. “I can’t believe they haven’t noticed something by now.”
“I can tell Aila is suspicious,” Mrs. Cliffton says. “Maybe I should have told them first thing. I just didn’t want to scare them, after they’ve already been through so much. I thought they could settle in a bit first. But you’re right. It can’t wait any longer.”
“Do you really think they know nothing about it? If Juliet hid all of this from them, it complicates things even more.” Dr. Cliffton sighs. “Maybe this was a mistake . . .”
“Malcolm,” Mrs. Cliffton says, her voice sharpening. “These are Juliet’s children. I could never live with myself if I turned them away when they had nowhere else to go. We said we would try it, and if it doesn’t work out, then we’ve at least bought Harold some time to find another arrangement.”
She pauses. I slide along the wall and crouch under the window, holding my breath until Dr. Cliffton’s low voice begins again.
“All right, Matilda. I agreed to try it, and we will. But their being here is going to stir things up again at the worst possible time. And I just don’t want them to walk into a hornets’ nest.”
There’s a long pause, and I wonder if the conversation is over. But then Mrs. Cliffton asks softly, “Do you really think we made a mistake?”