No.
“Is Adam home?”
A happy smile. “Can I tell him who’s calling?”
“Scarlett.”
“Come!” She waved Scarlett in. “You can wait in the sitting room.”
Scarlett stepped into the main hall—a curved staircase like for women in ball gowns—feeling small and even more poorly dressed than usual, and followed the woman into a room off to the right.
Couches the colors of coral—peach, turquoise—and large house-plants. Trees, really.
Walls of books.
An antique-looking globe on a whitewashed wooden table.
Large windows with sheer white drapes held back by golden sashes.
“Scarlett?”
She turned.
Adam wore an ivory linen short-sleeved shirt and plaid shorts—red, white, and blue; his shoes looked like they were intended for boating.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yes.” She hadn’t called before turning up because she figured he’d just put her off somehow. “Can we talk?”
“Come on,” he said. “I hate this room.”
So she followed him down a few hallways, this way and that, and ended up in a more casual sunroom that looked out at the yard; a few foam noodles and a pair of pink inner tubes floated lazily in a massive in-ground pool. He sat in a cozy-looking white armchair and indicated another one for her.
“So,” he said. “What’s up?”
He seemed so . . . normal . . . that it irked her, and yet something about how at ease he seemed put her at ease, too. She felt like she could relax for the first time maybe since coming home. As she sat, she said, “Kristen said she remembered something under hypnosis.”
“And?”
“You and me.” She hesitated at having to say it out loud, but there was no way around it. “Kissing.”
He tilted his head for a second, then righted it. “How do you feel about that?”
“Confused. How do you feel?”
“You want lemonade?” He stood and crossed the room to where a pitcher and some glasses sat on a tray.
“Uh,” she said. “Sure.”
He poured. “My mom’s gone all atheist New Age-y on me and she keeps saying this thing, ‘It is always now.’”
He turned to her with two glasses, handed her one, and sat. “‘It is always now.’ Some guru of hers says that. And that’s what I’ve been clinging to. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life trying to figure out what happened to the last eleven years.”
“Don’t you want to know if it’s true that you and I were together?” She sipped her lemonade; it was too bitter. “More importantly, don’t you want to know who did it and why?”
“Why does it matter if we were together if we don’t remember?” He drank, too. “And John Norton did it.”
A girl about seven years old walked into the room; her light-brown hair was in a wet ponytail, her sundress showing bony shoulders and a pale-pink leotard underneath it. Behind her trailed another girl with darker brown hair and skin, also wet ponytails and ballet gear.
“Well, hello, dancers,” Adam said.
“Hello.” The first one crossed her ankles and took a strand of her hair and pulled it toward her mouth, a nervous tic.
“Hello,” the other said, mimicking.
“This is my friend Scarlett,” Adam said.
“You have friends?”—from the darker-skinned girl, with a tickle laugh. Gen uine curiosity. Not a sarcastic bone in her body.
Adam laughed. “Yes, I have friends.” He turned to Scarlett. “These are my sisters—Belle and Nadia.”
“Hi, Belle,” Scarlett said. “Hi, Nadia.”
They both said hi shyly, then went to another part of the room and started playing with ghoulish dolls—Goth clothes, oversize hair, red lips scowling.
“My replacements,” Adam said. “The wonder twins.”
“No,” Scarlett said, when the meaning of the words sank in. “Don’t be like that.”
“It’s true.” He didn’t seem upset by it. “My parents were so miserable for like four years after I disappeared that they decided to have another kid. And it wasn’t happening, so they adopted Nadia from Costa Rica and then they got pregnant with Belle.”
“Wow,” Scarlett said.
“I think it was smart.” He nodded. “What else were they supposed to do? Spend their whole life mourning and wishing they still had a kid? Build some crazy stone monument? Blame it all on aliens?”
“Nadia!” A woman was calling from the other room. “Belle!”
“What?” Belle said back.
“Where are your ballet shoes?” from the hall.
“In the bag!” Nadia shouted.
“Come on or we’ll be late.”
Belle dropped the dolls on the rug, stood, said “See ya,” and left the room. Nadia followed, giving Scarlett a smile and a wave.
Adam just watched them go, then said, “They’re pretty much my favorite people on the planet right now.”