Striding past the caramel stone walls, the flagstone floors, the vaulted ceilings of the grand house, they didn’t speak.
Lacey, like some sly elf from a fairy tale, silently ushered her through a doorway with the sign Lacey’s Lair hanging over the frame.
The room smelled strongly of lavender and sweet pea.
On one wall the words Sweet Dreams! were painted in sprawling silver cursive, the exclamation point like a crisp command.
On the opposite wall, behind the satin headboard, hung a yard-high black silhouette of Lacey, that tilted nose and bulbous forehead.
A series of gymnast decals leaped and bounded and somersaulted over the vanity mirror. Beneath, a small banner read, in glittery ink, Concur Your Fears. No exclamation point.
With a slightly weary wave of the hand, Lacey gestured to a button-tufted settee on which Katie was invited to sit.
“Lacey,” Katie said, “you need to tell me. Where’s your mom? Where’s Devon?”
But Lacey just stood in front of her mirrored vanity, lustered Deco-style, like a Shirley Temple movie, and began brushing her ponytail with great care and tenderness.
Watching her in the beveled mirror, Katie was suddenly struck by what an unaccountably exquisite child Lacey was. So much time watching these girls, you looked at their bodies constantly but so rarely their faces. That white-blond hair, eyebrows that arched like a doll’s painted ones, a chin that came to a sharp point, and a gap between her two front teeth that made her look vaguely amorous, even though she was only eleven and had probably never even looked at a boy.
“Honey,” she tried again, “where’s Devon? You need to tell me, okay?”
The girl looked at her in the mirror, slowly setting down her hairbrush, frilled with her pale strands.
“They’re not here. Grandma’s coming soon,” she said. “Riley left early. That’s why I’m by myself. But it doesn’t matter to me.”
“Riley’s your babysitter?”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” she said, pulling her socks off gently. “Riley’s giving me privates.”
Katie looked at her.
“Beam and vault,” Lacey added, eyes lifting.
Ah, Katie thought, realizing. “How long have you been getting private lessons?”
Lacey swirled her finger across the back of the hairbrush and said nothing.
“And Devon?”
Lacey’s fingers danced over to the vanity’s glass knobs, one hand on each side of the vanity. Twisting them.
“Lacey, did your mom and Devon go on a trip today?”
Lacey looked down at her bare, gnarled feet and lifted them, tiptoeing.
The gesture was so Devon-like that Katie felt a rush of pity.
“Lacey,” she said, leaning forward on the settee. “I’m sorry they left you by yourself. It isn’t very nice. Do you—”
“They left you too,” Lacey said, “didn’t they?”
She turned slowly to face Katie.
“They’re at EmPower, which is far away. Mom takes Devon there for her privates. Mr. Ehlers thinks he can turn things around for her. It’s Coach T.’s fault Devon didn’t make Junior Elite. Coach T. can’t even control his own family. That’s what they said. I heard them.”
Katie shifted, her fingernails snagging on the tufted cushion. “Heard who?”
“Mom and Devon and Mr. Knox. They were all talking on the terrace this morning.” She pointed to her window. “You can hear everything people say out there. That’s where my mom goes to yell on the phone.”
“Mr. Knox?” The smell in the room, the lavender, the feeling of the cushion beneath her tearing. “Lacey, has he been here before? Since Devon came?”
“No,” she said, lifting her brush again. “But he was here this morning. And then Mom went inside and left Devon and him alone. He was crying.”
“What? What did you say?”
“I didn’t hear him, but Devon kept saying, Dad, Dad, Dad, don’t cry.”
Katie felt her fingernail gouge into the tuft and rip loose. The only time she’d ever seen Eric cry was the accident. Devon’s accident.
Lacey’s head lifted. She looked at Katie in the mirror.
“My dad used to cry,” she said. “When he came to pick me up on weekends. My mom made him stay in his car until he pulled himself together. Do you cry?”
Katie clenched her hand, tucking her wounded finger in the center.
“Everybody cries, Lacey.”
Lacey looked at her dubiously.
“I wondered if it was just dads,” she said. “Mr. Knox, he kept saying he was sorry.”
Katie felt something small and delicate unhook inside her.
“Sorry about what?”
Lacey shrugged, looking at Katie in the mirror.
Sorry about what, what, what—
“Blood,” Lacey said, turning.
“What?”
And they both looked down at the settee, its lilac satin daubed red.
Lifting her hand, staring at her shorn nail, its red tip, Katie found herself almost laughing.
Lacey walked her to the front door, her elfin feet now in flip-flops that gently slapped the stone floors, the sound echoing into the distant rafters like wings.
“Is Hailey in a mental hospital?” she asked.