I pick up the scraper again, start on another part of the fence. I’m wearing Caleb’s work boots this time, which are two sizes too big. He’s been at Laurie and Bill’s longer than I have, but he’s a lazy no-good shit and probably won’t even miss them. Between the boots and Marty’s blue overalls, I look like a cartoon character. I’m a joke.
The cops are gone, but the old woman is still sitting there in her wheelchair. God, she looks ridiculous in those aviator glasses, her hair long and straight and whiter than snow, falling below her shoulders. She must be at least a hundred years old. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be that old, to have no life left to look forward to. And your memory probably gone, so you’ve lost your past, too. Nothing left but the next breath you take.
I take a breath. Long and deep. The irony almost escapes me.
“Morgan, is it?”
She’s speaking to me. She knows my name.
“It seems they’ve gotten a little busy inside. I’m sure that fence can spare a few moments while you push me back to my room. God knows you keep that up, you’ll have scraped right through to the other side. Only so much paint on there.”
She isn’t looking at me, but I can’t really ignore her. “I don’t think I’m supposed to, um . . . interact with the . . . residents.”
“You always do what you’re supposed to do?” It doesn’t sound like a question. She’s sitting straight in the chair, chin up, gloved hands folded in her lap. I wish I could see her eyes behind those stupid glasses.
“All right,” I say, dropping the scraper into the bucket with the other tools. “But this will be on your head, not mine.”
“The package,” she says to me, lifting one of her hands in the direction of the table. “The one they left. Bring it to me.”
I do as she asks. The parcel is wrapped in some kind of faded white canvas and smells of earth and mold. It’s tied with twine, but the knots have been loosened and the fabric gapes open so that I can see what’s inside. It looks like a set of books, leather covers with rippled yellow pages. I place it on the old woman’s lap.
I’ve never pushed a wheelchair before, so it takes a bit of maneuvering to get it through the door.
“Third room on the left.”
As we pass Marty’s office, I can hear him whistling. I don’t look at him, I just keep walking, my eyes straight ahead, and my borrowed boots scuffing the tile floor.
The residents’ rooms aren’t at all like what I expected. They’re like one-room apartments. I take a quick glance around as I push the wheelchair through the door. There’s a small dining table as well as a bed, a dresser with some framed pictures on it, and a comfortable-looking chair. The bed is covered with a quilt. The pieces are all faded, and I can tell that it’s probably handmade, maybe an antique. The furniture, too, is old. Like her. But it’s the lantern that catches my eye. We had one like it. It was red, and the glass got smoked up when we lit it, and I used to polish it with an old rag.
The woman sighs. “That will be fine, Morgan. Thank you.”
“Uh-huh.” I turn to leave.
The woman’s hands are moving across the parcel. She lifts it and places it on the table and then begins folding the blanket that was tucked across her lap. “Did you think the police had come for you?”
I stop in the doorway. “What?”
“Why did you hide?”
I turn and look at her. “I wasn’t hiding. The cops know I’m here.”
The woman locks the wheelchair into place, carefully stands up, and lays the blanket at the foot of the bed. With one hand drawing along the dresser, she moves toward the old chair and turns to sit. She removes the sunglasses and sets them on the table beside the parcel, her hand resting for a moment on the pile of books.
“Elizabeth. Elizabeth Livingstone.”
I look into her deep brown eyes, sharp and defiant, but at the same time uncomfortably blank.
The old woman is blind.
Something about those empty eyes makes me uneasy, but just for a moment. And then it’s gone. It’s stupid. I don’t give a shit who she is, and I have no interest in starting a conversation with her. So I don’t.
“Uh-huh.” I turn and walk out, boots clumping as I head back down the hall.
7
Elizabeth
I’m not surprised and I do not take offense, but it does make me sigh. Fear can turn to anger so quickly; she is afraid of what life can bring and mad at the world because of it.
I absently roll the oilskin between my fingers. The edge is tattered where the fabric has escaped the grasp of the loosely knotted twine. A gentle tug is all that is needed for the rope to release its grip, allowing the musty wrapping to fall open, exposing the leather bindings of the journals. I run my fingers over them gently, exploring the surface of the top volume, pausing for a moment on the embossing in the center of the cover and tracing the raised “A.L.”
Andrew Livingstone. My father.
The last time I held these journals was after Charlie returned to the island, before the fire. It was the moment I realized that the brother I knew, the brother I saw as an equal defender, as Emily’s protector, had been changed by an angry harsh world wrapped as it was in war and prejudice. I should have seen it then, should have known that he was capable of turning against her. Did he live to regret it? I always imagined that he did. It is likely now that I will never know.