So upset that she brought me down to look at them in the middle of the night?
And also . . . how would she even know I’d planted the flowers?
We went more slowly now—taking our time and moving between the trees, using them as cover. Agatha seemed to be carefully considering each bit of forward progress. I gave up on the idea of resisting—she was strong, and any struggle would have broken the silence that seemed to be an important part of this undertaking.
Finally, we passed the last of the large, gated memorials, and reached the part where the path wound like a snake around a thicket of low, dense bushes. Beyond this, I knew, was Lily’s grave.
I started shivering, and felt Agatha’s hand tighten around my arm. Was she reassuring me—or grasping me harder so I wouldn’t run away?
Then she stopped short and sidestepped, dragging me off the path to stand behind one of the tree trunks. Forty feet away from where we hid was Lily’s isolated grave site.
I blinked. Even from this distance, I could see that there was something . . . weird about it.
I looked back at Agatha. She was frozen, staring straight at the grave. Her right hand released my wrist and then hovered in the air, still, as if caught mid-gesture.
Suddenly in the darkness, movement.
A pale figure standing over the grave, luminous in the sliver of moonlight cutting down through the trees.
A ghost?
I gasped, and Agatha grabbed my hand again to express her disapproval.
Right. Quiet.
Don’t disturb the ghost.
Then the figure began to move almost frantically, bending and twisting. I held my breath, trying to figure out what I was seeing.
And that was when the fear began to seep through my skin. It started at the top of my head, and the coldness of it slid down my face, my neck, my shoulders, my back . . . but it was more than fear. I also felt a ferocious need to know what I was seeing. Was it Lily’s ghost?
I wrenched my hand free and darted to the next closer tree. I glanced back over my shoulder at Agatha, who stared at me, appalled by my lack of caution.
But I was glad I’d moved closer, because from this distance, I realized that I wasn’t seeing a ghost.
I was seeing . . . Laura?
And she was . . . digging up the flowers?
She grabbed them by the fistful and yanked, and even from this far away I could sense the violence and anger behind her movements.
But why?
We stood and watched in silence as Laura manically but methodically worked to unearth the entire blanket of lilies.
I felt hypnotized by the scene, and Agatha must have known she was going to startle me no matter what—which is why, when Laura was nearly finished, Agatha slapped her hand over my mouth before grabbing my arm. (Good thing, too. I definitely would have screamed.)
Once she saw that I was going to behave and stay quiet, she moved her hand and then pulled me away.
Standing still had made my feet go numb and my thoughts go small and hyperfocused. I swayed a bit, and Agatha propped me up and then got me moving. As we walked, I felt better.
After we passed through the iron gate, she let go of me, and then we walked together back to the house. There was so much I wanted to ask her—but I didn’t know where to start. And I knew I wouldn’t get answers, anyway.
So I settled for just one question:
“Do you know about Lily?”
She shot me a sharp look, her eyes shockingly bright.
I sighed. By now we were inside the house, headed up to our room. Agatha seemed to have lost interest in me, and I was feeling exhausted and cold and dizzy. Plus my feet were sore from running through the gravel and along the rough dirt path without shoes.
She slid back into her bed as I closed the door, and then I went into my own room. The delicately flowered teacup on the nightstand seemed ominous and stern, like it was judging me.
That doesn’t make sense, I thought. A teacup can’t judge you.
But I still moved it to the dresser.
Then I climbed into bed and reached for the switch to shut the light off—
And I saw, written on the back of the door, in streaky black:
GO
I pressed my eyes shut. I couldn’t deal with this tonight.
But as I began to drift off to sleep, my fuzzy brain began to wonder if, all this time, who or whatever had seemed to be telling me to go hadn’t just been trying to make me feel unwelcome.
Maybe they were trying to warn me.
CHAPTER
20
AT BREAKFAST THE next morning, Laura looked like her normal self—which is to say, she didn’t have the look of a person who had been awake all night digging up flowers in a graveyard.
She gave me a pleasant smile as I came in. “How are we today?”
“Right as rain,” I said. It was an old silly saying of my dad’s.
But something about it struck Laura wrong. It was as if a shadow briefly passed over her features, and then it was gone.
“I’ve never liked that phrase,” she said. “It’s overly colloquial. Please don’t use it anymore.”
Uh . . . okay?
I sat down next to Agatha, who didn’t look up from her food, and pulled a slice of toast onto my plate.
“What’s that?” Laura asked. “That mark on your arm.”
I twisted my forearm to see what she was looking at—a black mark. While I was cleaning the letters from the door, I must have rested my arm against it.
“Oh,” I said. “I don’t know.”
Her brow furrowed. “Is it a bruise of some sort?”
I rubbed it away with my hand. “Nope. Just . . . maybe ink or something?”
The mark was gone, but her suspicion lingered.
I waited for Barrett to show up—my whole body waited for the sight of him the way you wait for Thanksgiving dinner when the smell of food starts wafting out of the kitchen—but he never did.
In the void, my mind turned back to the strange events of the previous night.
GO.
Should I?
Was this place, its isolation, its utter weirdness, Laura’s intensity, Agatha’s silence, so bad that I needed to get out? Even if getting out meant taking myself to the state institution?
She wouldn’t let me take the clothes, I thought. And while it felt small and petty, I knew it was the truth. Laura would pack me off with the rags I’d brought with me. Maybe a nicer backpack, if there was an old one stuffed into a closet somewhere. But the cashmere sweaters, the tasteful trousers, the thin-soled shoes that fit my feet like they’d been made for me? Nah.
Laura was weird, and my future was uncertain—would I ever have anything approaching a normal life?
But were those things reason enough for me to leave? No. No, they weren’t. Maybe someone braver than me, but not me.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
It wasn’t just the threat of the institution—it was having to leave behind another home. As bizarre as life was at Copeland Hall, I understood how it worked (well, mostly) and I knew who I was there. I had Agatha. I had Barrett. Even Laura and John were reassuring presences.
Out there? In the real world? I would have to start over. Alone.
And I just couldn’t bring myself to do that.
And then the quiet voice in my head surprised me.
It said, Yet.
* * *
KNOCK KNOCK.
I sat up in my bed and smoothed my hair. “Yes? Come in.”
Barrett pushed the bedroom door open. When he saw me, he smiled, bemused. “The nursery was open . . . Do you always just sit around in your bedroom with perfect posture?”
“No—I thought you might be your mother.”
His eyes crinkled. “And . . . you sit like thi
s when she comes in?”
I felt acutely the squareness of my shoulders and forced them to slump a little. “I don’t know. Maybe. Why are you posture-shaming me?”
“I’m not,” he said, wide-eyed. “You look very nice.”
“Thanks.”
“Helpful,” he said. “Like a trained poodle. Eager to zip away and . . . fetch something.”
“You can fetch my butt,” I said.
“I would love to.”
I threw my pillow at him. “Are you just here to make fun of me? Or can I . . .” I was going to say help you, but I stopped. I’m no poodle.
Kiss you was the next thing that came to mind. But that wasn’t possible. Agatha was doing her homework right on the other side of the wall.
Nope. We would just have to wait until—
But then Barrett was slipping inside, closing the door behind him.
“This is dumb,” I whispered. “You’re being so dumb.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “You’re right. Be dumb with me.”
He reached for my hand. When I gave it to him, he pulled me close. I turned my face up and our mouths found each other, and for a couple of blissful, dumb, incredible minutes, we clung to each other and kissed.
At last, we forced ourselves apart, and Barrett took a deep gulping breath. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” he said.
“Out of where?” I asked.
“The house.”
“Permanently?”
“Ha.” He shook his head. “I actually came to see if you wanted to go for a walk.”
“Oh, and here I thought you came here to compare me to a dog.”
“I came here to kiss you,” he said, and then our bodies were so close, and his lips were whispering across the place where my neck met my shoulders and I would have been happy to just lie down and die.
But no. This wasn’t the time or place. With a frustrated grunt, I pulled away, then swung out of reach as he tried to duck his face toward mine again.
“Agatha is right there,” I said. “Literally on the other side of the wall.”
He sighed.
“Would you want her making out with someone five feet away from you?”
He made a face, and I knew I’d successfully killed the mood. “Okay,” he said. “Fine. How about the walk?”
“I can’t leave Agatha,” I said. “Your mom went grocery shopping, and I said I’d stay with her.” Was that how it had happened, or had Laura told me I should stay with her? I swatted the question out of my mind. What difference did it make?
“Well, Aggie can come, too.” He opened my door and walked over to the chair where his expressionless sister sat looking out the window. “Want to go for a walk, Aggie? Huh?”
“Hey,” I said, sharper than I intended. A flare of protectiveness had ignited inside me. “She’s not a dog, either.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.” Barrett looked crestfallen. “I’m sorry, Agatha. Do you want to get outside for a bit?”
She didn’t reply.
“Is she mad?” he asked me.
“No,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Are you mad, Ags?” I asked, and she ignored me. “See? She’s not mad. But it’s okay, really,” I said to Barrett. “I’ll stay in with her. Even if she wanted to come, she couldn’t keep up.”
“Wait,” Barrett said. “I have an idea.”
* * *
JOHN HAD BROKEN a femur ten years earlier on a ski trip and had to spend four weeks in a wheelchair, which had since been stored in a random closet. (Whatever a “double black diamond” was, I never needed to go near one, since it apparently led to your bones cracking like mishandled candy canes.)
I was afraid Agatha would balk, but when Barrett wheeled the chair over to where we waited on the front steps, she sat down as cooperatively as if it had been her favorite chair by the window. Then she waited patiently while I applied sunscreen to her face.
Despite his protesting that we would be back at the house well before Laura returned, I made Barrett leave a note in the morning room. And then we were off.
I felt a strange tremor in my body as we followed a brick-lined path across the front lawn, the feeling a bird might get if its cage door was left open. At some point, I had adjusted to the pace of life at Copeland Hall. The security of the house and its established, ancient-feeling routines were oddly comforting.
We weren’t going to the outside world, I reminded myself. We were staying on the property. So I walked alongside Barrett and tried to enjoy the fresh air.
It was a beautiful day, warm but not hot. Most of the paths we took were sheltered under the dappled shade of the gorgeous old trees scattered generously around the property. Off in the distance, a riding lawn mower growled in slow laps across the gentle hills. A breeze meandered around us, carrying with it the pleasantly tart green scent of mown grass (screaming in protest of its grisly fate).
For the first few minutes, Barrett was in a state of quiet contemplation, while Agatha kept her chin slightly raised into the breeze. When we passed through small patches of sun, she closed her eyes and seemed to be trying to memorize the feeling of the sunlight on her cheeks.
Their tranquility eluded me; I felt like I was walking on a precipice, about to fall off.
Just before we reached the main driveway gate, another brick path appeared in a break of the high decorative grasses. This one was slightly overgrown, and the bricks looked older, worn into roundness with age. Some of them had settled, and the whole thing seemed to undulate slightly. But if that made it harder to push the wheelchair, Barrett didn’t complain. And Agatha didn’t seem to mind the bumpy ride.
This part of the yard was lovely, but its isolation made me uneasy. We came to a fence made of white boards that were peeling and falling down. On the other side of the fence were lush, tangled green woods. Shoots of the plants reached into our path like the bony arms of hungry witches looking for lost children to eat.
I was starting to think I preferred the garden.
“What are you thinking about?” Barrett asked. “You’re so quiet.”
I couldn’t very well tell him that I was imagining his family’s property as fairy-tale villainy brought to life. And I wanted to spill the beans about Laura’s disturbing midnight jaunt to the graveyard, but I couldn’t figure out how to begin. “Just things,” I said. “Um . . . your mom.”
He sighed.
“So last night, Agatha woke me up and—”
“She did? How?”
“She . . .” Well, hmm. Did she wake me up? “She just did. And we went out to the garden—”
“You took her to the garden in the middle of the night?”
“No,” I said. “She took me.”
He looked doubtful.
“I swear!” I said, more offended than I’d expected. “I had no desire to go. She led me out there. And we went into the graveyard, and that’s where we saw . . . your mom.”
I explained what she’d been doing.
“You hid and watched her?” he asked.
“I didn’t want Agatha to get in trouble.”
“Agatha doesn’t get in trouble,” Barrett said. “Mom knows Aggie is . . . isn’t all there.”
I didn’t answer.
“I mean, you might have gotten in trouble,” he said uncertainly.
“Barrett, I swear, I only went because Agatha basically dragged me. But that’s not the part we should focus on. The part that’s weird is that your mom was down there ripping out all the flowers we planted. And she was angry.”
He shrugged. “Maybe she’s protective of Lily’s grave?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I guess . . .”
“Well, what else would it be?”
“Why isn’t Lily in the portrait?” I asked. “Of yo
ur mom and her dad.”
“What?”
“In the drawing room. It’s just the two of them. Doesn’t it seem like Lily should have been included? The other families had all their kids painted.” Even the dead ones.
“I—I don’t know. You kind of lost me with the going outside in the middle of the night.”
“You’ve done that, too.”
“But not with my sister,” he said. “What if she caught a cold?”
“She’s not sick,” I said.
He looked at me like I was out of my mind.
“Not like that, I mean. Not like she’s at more of a risk for a cold.” I looked down at Agatha, who stared straight ahead.
“Are you sure?” Barrett asked. “Mom made it sound like her immunity could be messed up.”
“I’m trying to tell you.” I fought to keep the seething frustration out of my voice. “I didn’t take her out there. She took me.”
He nodded shortly.
“What?” I asked.
“You didn’t have to go,” he said. “You could have told her to stay inside. You could have said no.”
I sighed.
He sighed. “Forget it.”
I did want to forget it, but I also didn’t. “If you don’t believe me, go look. The flowers will all be gone. Why would she do that?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “Maybe she hates lilies. Maybe she had other plans for that space.”
“But in the middle of the night?”
“What are you trying to get me to say, Margot?” he asked. “That Mom’s crazy? She’s intense, yeah, and she makes me angry sometimes, but I don’t think she was out in the moonlight acting like a maniac.”
But she was.
“And I don’t think you should let Agatha go outside at night,” he said stiffly.
“Okay,” I said.
“Don’t be mad at me.”
I shook my head. Don’t be mad? He’d just implied that I was a negligent liar.
“Let’s talk about something else,” he said. “Please?”
Like how there’s part of me that would rather live at the state institution than Copeland Hall?
The Companion Page 19
