The Companion

by Katie Alender

  “Oh, the nursery, Tom, of course,” Laura said. “She’ll be staying with Agatha.”

  CHAPTER

  5

  AS LAURA AND I walked back up to the nursery, a lump rose in my throat. This was not what I’d signed up for. No, no, no. Not this. Being friendly was one thing. Being roommates was different.

  What would happen when I screamed at night?

  Laura, ahead of me, knocked on the door and pushed it open.

  “Agatha, we’re back,” she said.

  The figure at the window didn’t move.

  “This bed is Agatha’s,” Laura said.

  Trying to conceal my dismay, I looked at the other bed, not six feet from Agatha’s. Like hers, it was perfectly made with a quilted white bedspread and a pale yellow throw pillow.

  “I was thinking . . . if you’d like a little more space of your own, you could take the nanny’s bedroom,” Laura said haltingly, gesturing toward a door in the wall to our right. I walked over and peered inside. It was a tiny space, painted pale gray, and the furniture looked like it was a hundred years old. The bed had a chipped white metal frame, and the dresser was ancient and sturdy with two missing drawer pulls. “I hate to even suggest it, because it’s so small and plain.”

  “Oh. Yes,” I said immediately. “This will be great.”

  “Okay,” Laura said, fighting to keep the disappointment from turning down the corners of her lips. “The doctor thought it would be good for you girls to be near one another . . . but this is close enough.” Her tone veered toward doubt as she finished the sentence.

  “We’ll be close,” I said quickly. “I’ll hardly spend any time in here. Only when I’m asleep. Mostly I’ll be . . . out there, right? With Agatha.”

  This appeased her. “The light’s so pleasant in the main room, don’t you think?”

  “Definitely,” I said, as if I’d taken any time to notice the quality of the light.

  “All right,” she said. “There’s the bathroom, that door right there, and then if you want to unpack, you can put your things in the dresser and closet . . . goodness, is that all you’ve brought?”

  She was staring at my two meager bags.

  If she thought the bags were unimpressive, wait until she saw the clothes inside them. My shirts had come from the charity rack at Palmer House— misprints from a souvenir T-shirt factory, shirts whose decals had peeled off unevenly, leaving incomplete phrases like MIAM IS HOTTER THAN HO and I LFFT MY HEAPT IN FLORID.

  The only halfway decent outfit I had was the one I was wearing: a ruffled blue blouse one of the nurses at the hospital had given me as a gift, a pair of old jeans from another nurse, and a pair of flip-flops one of the volunteers bought me at the drugstore down the street when she learned I didn’t have any shoes.

  What I wore hadn’t mattered at Palmer House. Once school started in the fall, it might have been an issue, but even then I couldn’t imagine caring.

  “It’s all I have,” I said.

  “Well,” she said, “we’ll need to get you some things, won’t we?”

  I can’t afford things, I thought, and then I remembered what John had said. Were they really going to buy me clothes? Give me money to spend on whatever I wanted?

  Maybe I could save up for a laptop, to replace the one I’d lost.

  “Wear whatever’s comfortable for tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow, we’ll take care of the rest.”

  I nodded. I didn’t want to unpack with her standing there, though I could sense her curiosity about my belongings.

  “Do you think I might be able to have that toothbrush?” I said.

  Laura stepped back. “Oh, yes. Give me two minutes. Will you be all right in here with Agatha?”

  “Sure,” I said, and she scurried away.

  While she was gone, I hurriedly dumped the contents of my bags into the top two drawers of the dresser. After that, which had taken maybe fourteen seconds, I wandered back out into the main part of the room and stopped short.

  Agatha’s chair was empty.

  The whispery silence of the room turned to a roar in my ears.

  I looked around but didn’t see her anywhere. And there was nowhere for her to hide.

  She was gone.

  The door to the hall was closed—I would have heard it open, right? And the bathroom door was wide open, the light on. There was no one in there.

  Oh, God, I’d lost her already. They were going to kick me out.

  Deep breath. First of all, I didn’t lose her. She lost herself. Second of all, it wasn’t my job to keep her in one place, was it? What should I have done, commanded her to stay still? Wrestled her to the ground? This wasn’t my fault. Of course it wasn’t.

  But I knew I needed to find her before Laura came back.

  Could she be hiding under one of the beds?

  I stared at the nearest one warily, half expecting Agatha to be hiding underneath, waiting to jump out at me when I leaned close. I crossed the room, steeled myself, and knelt down to push away the white bedskirt and look under the bed frame.

  Empty. Not so much as a single dust bunny.

  I went to the second bed, knelt, and lifted the bedspread. This time, I had no doubt that when I bent down and got my face near the floor, Agatha would come flying at me like a bat out of a cave.

  Nope.

  Some companion I turned out to be. I surveyed the room, wondering if Laura and John would simply send for the car and load me right back up.

  I walked over to the open bathroom door and looked inside. The walls were tiled with shining squares of pale blue, the floor a spotless retro checkerboard of white and black. The toilet squatted in the corner by the bathtub—

  And as I looked at it, the shower curtain rustled.

  Okay, I told myself. This is good. She’s in the tub. She’s waiting there for you to find her. This might even be her idea of a joke—like she’s hazing you. If she was capable of playing a joke, maybe we could communicate. Maybe it wouldn’t be a creepy one-way friendship. It could be a creepy two-way friendship.

  I walked over to the tub, paused, and said, “Agatha?”

  I gently pulled the curtain back, trying to figure out what I was going to say to convince her to return to the chair.

  But the bathtub was empty.

  Then I heard a low bump, the sound of an elbow or knee thudding against something solid.

  I waited.

  Bump.

  It was coming from the nanny’s room. My room. My stomach clenched and I felt an indignant flare of temper. Was this how it was going to be? Would I not be entitled to even a little bit of privacy?

  I expected to find her in there, but still somehow the sight of her startled me—her slender form, held stiffly with mannequin-precise posture, standing in front of my small dresser.

  As I watched, she removed the last of my clothes and dropped them carelessly to the floor.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  She looked over at me silently through owlish, indifferent eyes. I felt almost as if we were in a staring contest, but apparently that was just me, because a few seconds later she shifted her blank contemplation to the door of the small cabinet behind me.

  “What are you doing?” I asked again. But even then, so early in our acquaintance, I knew better than to expect an answer. “Why don’t you go sit down?”

  Without so much as the involuntary twitch of a muscle in her jaw, she wandered out of the room. I followed her as far as the doorway and watched her return to her chair.

  “Are you trying to make me feel like I don’t belong here?” I asked her. “Because if that’s it, you don’t need to waste your energy. I could never belong in a place like this.”

  I know she heard me—she must have. But she didn’t react.

  “I probably shouldn’t be here at all
,” I said, more to myself than to her.

  It was the strangest thing. There was no one else in the room with us, and obviously Agatha hadn’t spoken—I was looking right at her, so I would have known. She didn’t even open her mouth.

  But I had the distinct impression that I heard someone say, You’re right.

  * * *

  AFTER PUTTING MY things back in the drawers, I sat at the top of the stairs, waiting and watching the front hall below me. Finally, I heard Mr. Albright’s voice—that blend of hearty good humor and polite obedience. He made some kind of goodbye to Laura and then came shuffling closer, humming quietly.

  As soon as he came into view, I practically tumbled down the stairs. He looked up, alarmed, clearly thinking I was about to bowl him over.

  “Margot,” he said, smiling. “Are you settling in?”

  I had to say it quickly, or I’d lose my nerve. “I can’t stay here. I’d like to go back to Palmer House, please.”

  His eyes widened in surprise.

  “I just don’t think I can be a companion.” The whole idea was ridiculous. Me, keep Agatha company? How, by screaming at her? “I’m not good at things like this. And I don’t think Agatha wants me here.”

  Mr. Albright raised his eyebrows. He took a deep, relaxed breath. “I see,” he said quietly.

  “Can you please tell Mrs.—I mean Laura?—that I’m grateful, but I think I would be better off at Palmer House.”

  “But surely you understand,” he said slowly. “You can’t go back to Palmer House. As your caseworker must have told you, spaces there are in high demand. I recall Ms. O’Neil saying that a new girl was coming to occupy the vacancy this afternoon.”

  I froze.

  “I apologize,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “I assumed you would have known that.”

  “No,” I said. I grabbed the banister to keep from wilting to the ground. “I had no idea.”

  He cleared his throat. “I don’t know your exact history, but from what I’ve gathered, you are a . . . difficult placement in terms of foster families. I could take you away from Copeland Hall, but your only alternative at this point is the state institution.”

  The institution? “But . . . I don’t need to be in an institution.”

  “Of course not.” He patted my shoulder, two brief thumps of support. “Margot, you’re tired, you’re overwhelmed, and you’re in a strange new place. You haven’t even had the chance to take your shoes off.”

  We both looked down at my feet, in their cheap rubber flip-flops.

  I lowered my voice. My body was still thrumming with adrenaline. “Agatha doesn’t like me.”

  Mr. Albright cast a glance down the hall—I presumed he was looking for Laura. Seeing that the coast was clear, he lowered his voice, too. “Agatha doesn’t like or dislike anything, I’m afraid. Her reactions are reflexive. The doctors know this. Laura knows it, too. Only . . . she hasn’t been able to admit it to herself quite yet.”

  Now he seemed sad. I wondered what it was like to be expected to show up happy every day to a place like this, a house with so much sadness hanging over it.

  And if it was hard for him, what must it be like for Laura?

  A daily grind of misery. I certainly knew how that felt.

  Maybe I did belong here.

  “Why don’t you give it a chance?” he said. “A couple of days. In the meantime, I’ll speak with your caseworker about finding you a place to go if you still want to leave.”

  Of course I would still want to leave. But for the moment, what else could I do? “Okay.”

  “You’ll do great,” he said. “Wait and see.”

  “I’d better get back up to Agatha,” I said. I was already feeling bad about leaving her, and worried about what Laura would say if she found me out here.

  I had no idea what to expect when I returned to the nursery. Would Agatha have done something to my clothes?

  No. She sat at the window, meek as a kitten.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to her back. “I tried to go away, but there’s nowhere for me to go to.”

  No answer. Of course not. She didn’t care either way.

  I just had to keep telling myself that until I believed it.

  CHAPTER

  6

  “DOES THE FOOD taste all right?” Laura asked, her eyes roving over my plate.

  “It’s great,” I said. It wasn’t a lie—our dinner was simple but delicious, a Caesar salad topped with grilled salmon, a side of garlic bread, and a glass of some kind of fancy sparkling water, which I’d never really liked before but went well with the meal.

  We were eating in what Laura called the breakfast room, a narrow space off the side of the kitchen with blue floral wallpaper, blue floral curtains on the bay window, and matching cushions on the chairs around the eight-person table. A vase of fresh daisies sat in the center of the table, which Laura apologized for—adding that daisies weren’t “dinner” flowers.

  “Okay, I won’t eat them,” I said, and for a moment, she looked mystified.

  Then she brightened. “A joke,” she said, laughing approvingly, as if the idea of a joke was the funny part.

  Laura sat at the head of the table, and I sat to her left. Across from me was Agatha, who took small bites of her salad with the tranquility of a horse at its trough. Laura had chopped it into toddler-sized bites for her, explaining, “We always make sure that her food is cut into small pieces. She seems to prefer it that way. You’ll get used to it.”

  I tried to imagine what Tam would say if she knew I was sleeping in the nanny’s room and charged not only with babysitting a beautiful heiress who hated me, but also with cutting up her food. I had a feeling she’d laugh her head off and say it served me right.

  It was still better than the state institution.

  My main concern, looming larger as night approached, was the fear that I’d wake up screaming—not that the screaming itself would be so bad, because who knows? It might get me an actual room of my own. But what if Agatha freaked out and wouldn’t calm down? What if the Suttons decided I was more trouble than I was worth?

  I considered mentioning my nightmares to Laura, but decided not to do it in front of Agatha. Instead, we filled the time with small talk, Laura describing the layout of the kitchen and pantry and telling me to make myself at home. She explained that there were no full-time staff at Copeland Hall, but a cook came in the late morning, and cleaners came twice a week.

  “I’m happy to help clean up,” I said. “I can cook a little, too.” (Not technically a lie; I could scramble eggs and cook spaghetti, if there was a jar of sauce on hand.)

  “No, that won’t be necessary.” Laura looked vaguely alarmed. “Please don’t worry about it. They—they prefer to be left alone and uninterrupted. That’s how we’ve always done things here.”

  In other words, Back off with your peasant ideas, Margot.

  As we spoke, Agatha sat with her hands resting on the tablecloth in front of her. Every few seconds, the fingers of her right hand would gently flutter up, move in a small, quick spiral, and then sink back down, like she was conducting the world’s tiniest orchestra.

  Laura didn’t seem to notice, so I figured it was just one of Agatha’s usual quirks.

  “What kind of things did you do for fun at the group home?” Laura asked.

  “Mostly we watched TV or spent time on our phones. We had board games, but they were all missing pieces. You’d get halfway through a game and realize you couldn’t finish.”

  “Oh, how awful,” she said with a concerned head tilt. “Maybe we should send them some new games.”

  Awful, yes. And yet at that moment, I would have given almost anything to be back there, wallowing in the comforting communal bleakness, instead of being here in this terrifying castle. “I’m sure they’d appreciate it.”

&nb
sp; “I’ll speak to John. We’re always looking for ways to help the underprivileged.”

  I could hardly summon more than a weak smile. It was exhausting to be continuously grateful and impressed.

  Laura carefully balanced her fork on the edge of her salad bowl. “You know . . . this may be as good a time to speak to you about this as any.”

  Oh, God, there was more? I braced myself.

  “John, as you know, is a lawyer.”

  “Right,” I said. “He knew my dad in law school.”

  She smiled gently. “Yes. I met your father as well—only in passing, but I recall him seeming very gentlemanly. John and I married quite young, so I vividly remember the late nights and early mornings he spent in study groups—they were all so busy with their courses. And John’s been practicing law ever since. He’s very gifted. He takes excellent care of his clients—he represents several very high-profile companies between here and Chicago. And because of that, he takes his reputation in the community very seriously. We all do.”

  I blinked. I felt like I should understand what she meant, but I didn’t.

  “The Copelands have lived here for almost a hundred and fifty years,” she said, a note of reverence in her voice. “This family has been a pillar of the state—the entire country, some would say—for generations. My own great-grandmother was presented at court to the Queen of England. Everyone in the county looks up to us.”

  Did they? I guessed I’d find out. I’d never lived anywhere but the suburbs, and I’d never even heard of someone being famous on a countywide level. The only thing people in our neighborhood looked up to was the Homeowners’ Association Board. But maybe things were different out here. Maybe it was a slower, more genteel lifestyle, and when people saw Laura and John coming, it was like the arrival of a minor celebrity.

  Yeah . . . maybe?

  I didn’t dwell on the maybe not. I was too worn out from the day. Besides, what did I care if the Suttons had delusions of grandeur? It wasn’t hurting me. And maybe Laura seeing herself as a great lady was what had led them to pluck me from the orphanage. Kind of a PR stunt, but for their own egos.