“Were you?”
I don’t know what to say. My head feels full of air; my mouth is suddenly dry.
“You were,” she says finally. “I saw you.”
“Yes,” I admit, “I was.”
Clem’s jaw becomes tight. It occurs to me that this is the opposite of how things were supposed to go. I am her mother. In six or seven years’ time, I am supposed to catch her kissing a boy. I am supposed to give her the third degree.
“I don’t want you to kiss anyone,” she says. “Ever. Again.”
I feel a surprising urge to cry. Mostly because her request, unfair as it feels, is wholly appropriate. Her father died only four months ago. Four months. Did the fact that he had done terrible things reduce my mourning period? Or the fact that I found Angus impossibly attractive?
“Okay, Mom?” she says.
“Clem—”
“It’s Alice.”
“Okay, Alice.”
“So you won’t kiss anyone ever again?”
I glance at Angus, and he shrugs. It’s a shrug that says, Don’t worry about me. Do what you need to do.
I wish there were a handbook for parenting daughters whose whole world had been turned upside down in the past few months. A girl who had been having trouble at school and who, in time, would have to come to terms with the fact that her father wasn’t the man she thought he was. Then I realize I don’t need a handbook, because I already know what it would say. “Yes. Never again.”
I take Clem’s hand and lead her out of the room, leaving Angus standing there. And, no matter how much I want to, I can’t bring myself to look back.
26
That afternoon, Clem and I make a peanut butter Bundt cake. I wait for her to bring up my kiss with Angus again, but she doesn’t, and I don’t either—kids talk when they’re ready—but the quiet worries me. Even before she could speak words, Clem was loud. As a baby, she’d sit up in her high chair at the kitchen bench while I cooked, making high-pitched baby noises and banging toys and laughing toothlessly. As I watch her serious little face, I have such a pang for that Clem, I almost double over.
We put the cake in the oven, and Clem makes herself scarce before cleanup—at least in that regard, nothing has changed. When she’s gone, I finally allow myself to look for Angus through the window. He’s bent over a garden bed, his gloved hands buried in dirt. It makes me sad to think those hands will never be on me again.
When the last of the dishes have been washed up, I go looking for Clem in the parlor. Instead I find Anna. Her chair is right in front of the window and her hands are on the glass.
“Hey, Anna,” I say. “Everything okay?”
She doesn’t respond. She feels the corners of the window, then slams a fist into the middle.
“Anna?”
She spins around, clearly annoyed at the interruption. “What?”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you want me to open the window?”
Her eyes flicker to me, and her frustration turns to curiosity. “You can open it?”
“Of course.”
I roll her chair back so I can have a better look. The window is double-hung and floor-level. Eric told me that, since Anna’s fall, the top-floor windows have been bolted shut. These windows do open though, so I slide the top pane down an inch, letting in a slow breeze. “There.”
Anna looks puzzled. “But … how do I get out?”
“Oh, you want to go outside? We can go out the door. Here, I’ll take you.” I reach for the handles of her chair but she shakes her head.
“No. I want to go out there.”
She sounds stubborn, almost whiney. Her jaw is set.
“Why do you want to go out the window?” I ask.
“Because…” She swallows. “I’ve had enough.”
She crosses her arms and stares at the window resolutely.
I follow her gaze. There’s a slight ledge and from her vantage point, in her chair, it looks like a drop. I wonder if Anna thinks this is a second-floor window. If she thinks that by going out it, she’ll fall.
I’ve had enough.
I squat beside her. “Why have you had enough?”
A rogue tear slides down her cheek.
“Because of Luke,” I hear myself say. “Because you are being kept apart from him?”
She looks at me and I can’t tell how much she is following.
“What if you weren’t kept apart from him?” I ask. “Would you still want to go out there?” I gesture at the window.
Her eyes are two pools of pale green emotion. I think of Luke crouching in front of her when the dog came into the yard. Of Anna asking, “Where is he?” Of the looks between them. The love that so clearly still exists. And suddenly I understand what she’s been asking me all along.
“You wouldn’t, would you?” I say to myself. Then I look her squarely in the eye. “In that case I’m going to help you.”