It was meant to be a joke. But it didn’t land.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh—I just mean, you’d think they’d learned everything they needed to back after the accident.” Way to wreck a joke, Laura.
“No,” Laura said. “About the enrollment? We don’t have anything to do. It’s all set up.”
“It is? Oh, wow, okay. Great.” That was something to wrap my head around. And worry about. “When’s the first day?”
She smiled. “Whenever you like.”
Uh.
“No, I mean—when does the school year start? I can just start when everyone else starts.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” she said. “You shouldn’t worry so much about what other people are up to. It will disturb your inner balance.”
“But . . .” I sat in helpless confusion. How could I clarify this without insulting her? “But I need to be . . . where the teachers are.”
Now she frowned slightly. “I don’t follow. Perhaps it will be clearer if I just say that the curriculum is ready, and anytime you’d like to begin your studies, you’re welcome to. Did you know there’s even a schoolroom in the house? It hasn’t been used for probably a hundred years, but we can set it up for you—if you feel you need that kind of environment. Who knows, it might be a good change for Agatha, as well.”
Now I was starting to get it. “Are you talking about homeschooling?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“I . . .” I found myself utterly speechless. “I’m sorry, I don’t think . . . I don’t . . . I don’t want to do homeschool. I’d like to go to the regular school. The one in town. With people.”
“Margot, we talked about this.” She stared at me like I’d started making animal noises and declared myself to be in the process of transforming into a frog. “We had a conversation. It was decided weeks ago.”
“No,” I said. “No, we didn’t. I would remember that. Because I think it’s a terrible idea.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” she said, too offended to be sorry. “But this issue has been settled for some time now. I wouldn’t have ordered an expensive curriculum if I’d thought there was any doubt.”
I felt panicky. “Laura, I seriously did not agree to this.”
She set down her silverware and pursed her lips. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“No. Of course not. But . . . I really don’t want to homeschool. And I don’t remember ever even talking about it.”
“Just because you don’t remember it,” she said, “doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
We were both quiet. She watched me carefully, and I was struck by the horrible truth of what she was saying.
“But . . .” I said.
“I’ve already been through this with you, but I’ll explain again if you honestly don’t remember. John and I talked it over and decided that you would thrive with this home-study program. It’ll suit your self-discipline so well. I can provide whatever support you need, and John, too, when he has time—he’s obviously brilliant.”
“But why can I not go to normal school?”
“I don’t know how much you know about Agatha’s past,” she said. “But the truth is . . . since she had her troubles, I don’t like the idea of setting you loose among people we know nothing about. Wild people.”
I knew very little about Agatha’s mysterious “school troubles.” But that was irrelevant. Agatha and I were totally different people. She may have fallen in with bad kids, but that didn’t mean I would.
“You learn things about people as you get to know them,” I said through my teeth. “That’s . . .” I was going to say, That’s how making friends works. But I managed to stop myself, because it seemed disrespectful. “I don’t want to go out to parties. I just want to be near kids my own age.”
“But you have Agatha,” Laura said, surprised. “She’s your age.”
We stared at each other. It was as if we were speaking different languages.
“I never got in trouble at school,” I said. “Not even detention.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder. I suppressed the urge to duck away. “I don’t mean to imply that we have any doubts about you, Margot. It’s just that it’s such a big world, and you’re very vulnerable. We’ve grown quite fond of you and we want to make sure you’re protected.”
Protected from what, exactly? Whatever their phantom fears were, wasn’t it equally valid to worry about spending the rest of my childhood deprived of proper socialization? They couldn’t cut me off from everything. What would two years of isolation do to me?
“Could we talk about this more before making a final decision?” I asked.
She gave me a pleasant smile. “No.”
There was a beat of silence, and then next to me, Agatha tipped over her water glass.
* * *
I MADE A show of lazing around the library until they left for their appointment, and then I jumped up and ran upstairs. Using Agatha’s technique, I hip-checked the door to the green wing. And then I went into the hall and I . . . stood there.
I wanted answers. I wanted to know who Lily was and why Laura never mentioned her. I wanted to know why I’d been beckoned here—even if it was only my subconscious sending for me. What did my subconscious think was so great about the green wing?
It spread before me, silent and dusty, and I walked toward the room I’d been in twice before.
Just as I came to the doorway, the door shuddered slightly.
I stopped. Looking at it, my whole body began to buzz with apprehension. Almost like the room was putting out an electrical current—one that I wanted nothing to do with. But I forced myself forward anyway. It must have been the wind. Old houses were drafty.
I crossed the threshold and stopped.
On the surface, there was nothing spectacular about this room. It was just a bedroom. In the light of day, I could see that it looked rather lived-in—the furniture was all slightly shabby, and the bedspread had the limp, pilled look of having been laundered regularly. It was a perfectly fine room, if a little less fancy than I’d come to expect from Copeland Hall.
But still . . . there was something about it that made me feel almost ill. A bad vibe, you could say.
I stepped into the attached bathroom and turned on the light. I was surprised to see that this bathroom, like the one Agatha used, had been modified to accommodate a person with disabilities. What had once been a bathtub had been replaced by a shower. The shower curtain was pushed off to the side—thin ivory rubber, like something you’d find in a cheap motel room.
The whole thing looked and felt weirdly clinical. Someone had obviously spent a good deal of time in here, but it wasn’t personalized at all.
My nerves were vibrating, wanting to cut and run, but I forced myself to be rational. I looked around, and my eyes settled on the tall wooden wardrobe cabinet in the corner of the room. I walked over and tried to open it, but it was locked. So I gave the handles a sharp yank, and to my shock the doors swung open.
It was mostly empty—the bar held an assortment of hangers in various sizes and colors, and on the shelf there was a single pair of bedroom slippers and a folded hand towel. Leaning against the back wall, facing away, was a large picture frame.
Under that was a small drawer. I pulled it out and found a black, fabric-covered box, the size you’d use when giving someone a fancy shirt as a present.
I sat down and put the box on the floor in front of me.
And, well aware that I shouldn’t, I removed the lid.
It was full of papers—stuff like medical forms and school letters.
And each one had the same name listed:
LILY COPELAND
I felt shaky, so I leaned back against the bed. As I di
d, there was a thunk from inside the wardrobe. I looked up to see that the picture frame was now nearly falling out, held up only by an inch or so of overlap with the side of the structure. I hurried over to stabilize it, and then I figured . . . I might as well take a peek, right? When I pulled it out, I saw that it was an oil painting, a portrait of a man and two teenage girls.
The man, who looked vaguely familiar, was handsome and confident looking. His expression was mildly smug. He sat on an antique chair, and next to him, with her hand on his shoulder, was a girl who looked about fourteen years old. On his other side, standing slightly back, was another girl, one who might have been about eleven or twelve.
The two girls weren’t identical, but they were clearly sisters. The older one had her hair in well-defined curls that fell just past her shoulders. She wore a white shirt with a small pleated ruffle around the neckline. Her blue eyes shone, and a faint, knowing smile played on her lips.
Lily?
The other girl was more serious. Her hair was in a pair of severe braids, her brown eyes steady and almost dull. The painter had depicted her looking at her father, and in her gaze was a sense of admiration—but also a kind of loneliness. The father and his older daughter seemed like a team. But this younger girl was on the outside.
She was unmistakably Laura.
Looking at it, I could actually understand why she would have taken it down. The little girl’s hurt shone right through. Her sense of not belonging.
Doubt suddenly washed over me. I shouldn’t be here, looking at this evidence of Laura’s sadness. She’d hidden this picture for a reason, and here I was, snooping around. It was easy enough to enjoy being nosy when it wasn’t your secrets being exposed.
I pushed the portrait back into the wardrobe, feeling ashamed of myself.
Then I began to pack up the black box. But just as I was setting the lid in place, I caught sight of a newspaper clipping sticking out from some of the papers. And I couldn’t resist.
It was Lily’s obituary:
LILY ANNE COPELAND, age 17, was called to heaven Friday, March 18, after a prolonged illness. She passed from the mortal world as she lived, surrounded by her loving and devoted family at home. Miss Copeland, the heiress apparent to the extensive Copeland properties and fortune, was a vivacious girl, well liked in the community and known among friends at Copeland School as an A student with a love of reading and cats. Preceded in death by her mother, Beverly (Turner) Copeland, she is survived by her father, James Barrett Copeland III, her younger sister and faithful companion, Laura, and her aunt, Rosetta Copeland Gilbert. Services will be held privately, for family only. Flowers may be sent to Copeland Hall.
A prolonged illness? Like Agatha’s?
No wonder Laura was so frozen, so rigid and emotionally warped. Her older sister had died as a teenager and now her daughter was seriously ill. Who wouldn’t be messed up by that kind of awful coincidence?
I read it over a couple of times and then neatly replaced it in the box, which I put away in the wardrobe. On trying to close it, I discovered (to my dismay) that I had broken the latch. I could close the door, but it didn’t click tidily into place.
My only comfort was that no one ever seemed to spend any time here, and maybe Laura would never get around to noticing.
As I turned to leave, behind me I heard a slow creeeeak.
The wardrobe door had opened.
I stepped back, shut it, and started toward the door to the hall.
Creeeeeeeeeak.
How aggravating. And even more so because it was my fault.
I went back and spent a minute inspecting the damage I’d done. It was much worse than I’d thought: the latch on the right-side door hung pathetically by one screw on a splinter of wood that had cracked away from the body of the door.
Oh, great.
I reached up to try to hold the wood in place, but it wouldn’t stay long enough for me to close the door.
So I looked around helplessly for something I could use to put it back into place.
I walked over to the small desk. Maybe there was tape or glue in the drawers? I searched through them, but all I found were some desiccated rubber erasers and the caps to three pens. I reached my hand back into the drawer—and something touched my fingers.
My first thought was spider! but when I crouched down to peer inside, I could see that it wasn’t a spider. I reached in and moved my hand around, jogging the underside of the drawer above it.
Something hit the bottom of the drawer with a muffled whomp. I reached in and grabbed it. It was a journal, a thin book with a lavender-and-pink swirled design on it. In the corner was a small monogram: LAC.
Lily Anne Copeland. This was her journal.
Suddenly I looked around again. Was this really Lily’s bedroom? It didn’t look like the kind of bedroom a teen girl would live in, in a house this grand. Agatha’s room was about fifty times more posh. And Lily had been the heir, like Agatha now was—or was supposed to be. Didn’t she rate a nicer space?
Then I looked again at the bed. I lifted the skirt higher, revealing a white metal frame underneath. The whole thing was on wheels—a hospital bed.
I swallowed hard.
So this wasn’t actually Lily’s bedroom—it was the sickroom.
Which meant she’d probably died in here.
The feeling that came over me was hard to describe—a sense of being in a place where I wasn’t wanted and didn’t belong. A feeling of being too hot and too cold at the same time.
I backed toward the main door as if turning around would give a pack of zombies a chance to come for me. I closed the door behind me and headed for the double doors leading out of the green wing.
As I retreated to the safety of the normal hallway, I realized I was still holding the journal. I barely had time to stash it in my bottom drawer before Laura and Agatha came home, earlier than expected. Laura called me downstairs and asked me to fix lunch, which I did, and then Agatha and I ate in mutual silence.
The eerie sensation that had come over me in that room stuck to my skin like tar.
CHAPTER
24
“YOU’RE SO QUIET today,” Laura said, shoving the pointed end of her trowel into the roots of the bushy green plant. She used the other hand to gather the stems together and pull, until the mass of lavender came out of the ground. As she crushed the leaves in her glove, their scent filled the air.
Like screams, I thought.
She handed the plant to me and I tossed it onto the growing pile. We were thinning out the herb garden, which had become an overgrown jungle.
“Lavender,” Laura said, “is wonderful for bees. And the oil is lovely. So relaxing.”
She yanked another handful out of the ground.
“So . . . why are we getting rid of it?” I asked.
“No matter how nice something is, you can’t let it run roughshod. The other herbs suffer when we let the showy ones take over.” She indicated a small spray of tattered yellowish fan-shaped leaves on limp-looking stems. “Do you see how the cilantro has been stunted?”
“Too much shade?” I asked.
“Overshadowed,” she said. “And crowded out.”
“I know about Lily,” I said.
I hadn’t meant to say it. It just came out.
Laura froze.
“She was your sister, right?” I asked. “And she died? Is that why you told me you’re an only child?”
No answer. Sensing I was in very dangerous territory, I began to flail for something appropriate to say. “I’m really sorry for your loss. I know exactly how it feels to lose a sister.”
Then I waited—for the explosion, the tears, the anger, the stony, disapproving silence.
But she looked at me. “Thank you, Margot,” she said. “As ever, your empathy and kindness are appreciated.”
&nb
sp; Well, that seemed a bit of an overstatement, but who was I to say?
She finished rinsing the trowel and then carefully dried it with the rough cotton towel that hung on a hook nearby. After replacing it in its position on the pegboard, she turned to me.
“May I ask,” she said, “how you came to learn about my sister?”
I had given this some thought. There were two options that would be based in truth—that I had happened across the grave, or that I had discovered her sickroom and broken into the cabinet to snoop through her stuff.
I may not be a master strategist, but I knew enough to know that neither of these was the ideal option. I briefly considered lying, and then I decided to tell her a variation on the truth.
“The family portrait,” I said. “Of her and you and your dad. I found it.”
“You did?” Laura blinked. “Goodness, where is it? I haven’t seen it in years.”
“In the green wing,” I said. Technically true, right?
She hadn’t been expecting this. “How did you get into the green wing? Isn’t it locked?”
“I . . . bumped into the doors,” I said. “And they opened, so I went in. And then . . .”
“And then you happened across the portrait?”
“Yes,” I said.
Oh, no, she was going to ask where. Should I tell her? Would she hate me?
But she didn’t. “And I suppose you found the small plaque,” she said, “with our names on it?”
“Yes,” I lied. Yes, of course, because how else would I have learned Lily’s name? Certainly not by rooting through her medical records.
Her eyes bored into me. I waited for her to ask for more details, but she didn’t.
“That’s good,” she said, looking away as if it was no big deal. “I thought we’d lost it.”
“I’m sorry if I wasn’t supposed to go in there.”
She waved the apology off. “That doesn’t matter. It’s just a hallway. I have it locked to keep Agatha from wandering around and getting lost.”
I nodded, relieved.
The Companion Page 22
