“So, what’s your story?” Ian asked Evie, who until now had been a spectator of the conversational chaos rather than a participant.
“Why does she have to have a story?” Daisy snapped.
“Everyone’s got a story,” Ian replied. “At least, a beginning and a middle. We won’t talk about the end because Poppy wants us to change the subject.”
“But why does she have to tell you?” Daisy persisted. “You’re a stranger. You don’t matter to her.”
Daisy, Poppy thought, could be fiercely loyal. She was like their father in that way. She could also be rude, and that was something of which Oliver Higgins had never been guilty.
“It’s all right, Daisy,” Evie said. Then she addressed Ian. “My story is simple. After I graduated from high school last year I decided to take some time off before college.”
“That’s it?” he asked.
“That’s it.”
“Fair enough,” Ian said. “Is there any more risotto?”
“No,” Daisy said flatly. “You had three servings, more than any of us got.”
Ian shrugged and tossed his napkin onto his empty plate. “So be it.”
Poppy realized something then. Daisy was itching for a fight, but she was never going to get one from Ian. He just didn’t care enough about what people thought about him to take offense. And that, Poppy thought, must be an . . . interesting . . . way to get through your life. It certainly was not how she and her sisters had been raised. They had been raised to care about their conduct and the reputation that would result. And that, Poppy thought, was a pretty wonderful thing. To care.
Chapter 74
Yes, Violet thought, as she, Evie, and Daisy were clearing the table after dinner. Evie Jones was keeping a very dark secret. She was hiding an almost unbearable sadness. Violet knew it as clearly and as certainly as she knew her own name and that Grimace preferred turkey to chicken. What she didn’t know at all clearly or certainly was if Evie’s secret, whatever it was, might bring harm to the Higgins family. And that must not happen, not after all her family had been through. What she also didn’t know was just how much of her secret Evie had shared with Daisy. Daisy definitely knew something—enough to make her leap to defend Evie against Ian’s questioning at dinner.
While the food had been really good—a mushroom risotto and one of Allie’s special salads—Violet had felt uneasy and unbalanced throughout the meal. When she got upstairs to her room she would meditate with a piece of aquamarine. But first, she would try to learn a little bit more about Evie Jones, the newest resident in the house on Willow Way.
“When’s your birthday, Evie?” Violet asked her, as she gathered the dirty napkins from around the table.
“March twenty-second.” Evie laughed and touched her hair as if the question made her nervous. “Oh my God, what made me say that? That’s my . . . That was my aunt’s birthday. How weird. My birthday was, I mean is, November eleventh.”
Daisy laughed a bit too loudly for the occasion, Violet thought. “I’m always forgetting things like that—dates, what day of the week it is. Do you know the other day I couldn’t remember my own phone number?”
Forgetting the day of the week was hardly the same as forgetting your own birthday, Violet thought. But she didn’t argue that. “That makes you a Scorpio,” Violet said to Evie. “Funny. I don’t see you as a Water Sign.”
Evie picked up a fork and dropped it back onto the table. “Oh?” she said, grabbing for the fork again. “I was never really into astrology, so . . .”
“Yes, you don’t seem like a Scorpio to me. You seem more like a Fire Sign. A Sagittarius or an Aries. Yes, an Aries, I think.”
Daisy frowned at her sister. “But it’s not like you’re an expert, Violet, right?”
“Obviously. It takes years and years of study to become a good astrologer. And you also have to have a gift. Do you have a special gift, Evie?”
Daisy looked at Evie and Evie looked down at the table. “No,” she said. “What sort of gift would I possibly have?”
Violet shrugged. “Any sort. Musical. Athletic. Maybe you’re really good with animals. Or with languages.”
“No,” Evie said, grabbing a stack of dishes from the table. “I have no gifts.” She left the dining room with Daisy following her closely.
Yes, Violet thought. Daisy’s friend is hiding something big. And she hurried to her room where Grimace—and a big chunk of calming aquamarine—would be waiting for her.
Chapter 75
Evie had taken a shower before crawling into bed, her second of the day. It had been her habit since arriving in Yorktide, first at Nico’s house and now here at the house on Willow Way. It was as if she were making up for having been without a guaranteed source of running water those weeks she had been on the road. The grubbiness. The fear of being found repulsive and thrown out of a gas station convenience store. The thought of getting so dirty that it felt like bugs were crawling all over you.
Now, still warm from the hot water and smelling of coconut (there were three different types of hair conditioner in the shower caddy; Daisy had told her she could use whatever one she wanted), Evie held Ben to her chest and thought back to earlier in the evening. Poppy was seriously beautiful and it was so nice of her to allow Evie to stay with them for a while. Ian was kind of weird. She had never met anyone like him, so . . . So obnoxious. He was supposedly Poppy’s friend, but even she didn’t seem to like him all that much. Allie seemed very nice but a bit intimidating somehow. Maybe it was just because she was the most adult of the bunch, the one with the most experience, the one most likely to detect a lie.
Then again, Violet, who was only thirteen, seemed scarily able to hit on the truth. Evie was an Aries; her birthday really was March twenty-second. And how had Violet possibly guessed that Evie was good with languages? No doubt about it, she would have to be on her guard around Violet. She seemed very nice, not at all a vindictive type or someone out to make trouble, but you could never be sure. If only, Evie thought, she could lock this bedroom door when she left it. But she had noted that none of the interior doors in the house had locks. She would just have to be one hundred percent sure that she had any bit of evidence as to her true identity with her at all times. And that meant those old ID cards and the photo Daisy and Joel had found. About her friends’ promise to keep her identity a secret she felt reasonably sure. The real problem was that there were so many deceptions to keep straight. Why had she further complicated things by telling Daisy she was expecting a check from her mother’s estate? That was another lie. She would just have to be extra vigilant from now on, living amid the others in the house, and not allow a false sense of safety to dull her wits to the point where she made too many mistakes and was found out.
In spite of her agitation, the quietness of the night—there was no other house for almost a mile, Daisy had told her—the presence of other people just next door and down the hall, and the fact that there was an alarm system, lulled Evie into the first good, deep sleep she had had in what felt like years.
Chapter 76
Evie was at The Clamshell and the other women were in the kitchen. Poppy had suggested—rather strongly—that they give the inside of the drawers, fridge, and cupboards a good cleaning and reorganizing. That morning she had found an empty box of cereal put neatly away in the cupboard, a moldy lime in one of the vegetable bins, and the night before she had discovered that the good corkscrew her father had preferred had gone missing from the silverware drawer, where it usually lived.
“Where’s Ian?” Allie asked, removing the contents of the junk drawer in search of the missing corkscrew. “Not that he would be of any help to us.”
“Definitely not communing with nature.” Daisy laughed. “You should have seen him running away from a bee yesterday. It was hilarious.”
“Bee stings can be fatal,” Poppy pointed out, as she combined into one box two half-empty boxes of pasta shells. “Maybe he’s allergic.”
Daisy shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. He didn’t get stung.” “But he’s given me hives. Look.” Violet pushed up the right sleeve of her dress and held out her arm.
“What?” Poppy cried. “Has he touched you?”
Violet sighed and lowered her sleeve over the red and white lumps. “You don’t get hives from touching someone, Poppy. It’s just—him. I’m having an allergic reaction to him. My body is displaying my discomfort at his being in my home. Our home.”
Oh, Poppy thought. Is that all?
“He is kind of an idiot,” Daisy added. “No offense.”
“Of course not! Just that the guy I—”
Allie frowned. “Don’t say the guy you’re in love with, because you’re not, are you?”
“No,” Poppy said adamantly. “I was never in love with him.”
“The guy you used to have casual, meaningless sex with.”
“Violet!” Poppy cried. “How do you know . . . how do you know that we were romantically involved?”
Violet shrugged and looked up from the forks she was examining for water stains. “It’s not a secret, is it?”
“Is he even a friend, Poppy?” Daisy asked. “Seriously, he doesn’t treat you like a friend. He treats you like . . . like a lucky convenience. I can’t imagine Joel treating me that badly. And if he ever did, that’s the end of the friendship.”
“Thank you all,” Poppy said, hoping no one would miss the note of sarcasm in her voice, “for pointing out my poor judgment in character!”
“We’re not saying he’s bad or dangerous,” Allie said. “He’s no Lord Byron. He’s just a waste of your time. And it’s not the first time I’ve said it. Hey, I found the corkscrew!”
“I’m dying to shave his beard off some night when he’s asleep,” Daisy admitted. “Do you think we could drug him and then when he wakes up and finds his beard gone we could act all innocent and deny we had anything to do with it?”
Allie laughed. “Probably not a good idea.”
“It would violate the laws of hospitality,” Violet said. “Plus it would be like bullying and that’s always wrong.”
Daisy shrugged. “I know. Hey, Poppy? Why did you hang out with Ian in the first place? Really, I’m not trying to be challenging or obnoxious. I just want to know. Oh, ick, this milk has turned.”
“I don’t know,” Poppy admitted as Daisy poured the offending milk down the sink. “He knew—he knows—a lot of people. Musicians, mostly. And artists. Well, not professional artists. People who worked in interesting shops. We went to a lot of parties. He took me to these hip clubs and cafés. He . . .”
Poppy couldn’t go on. She was acutely aware of how pathetic that all must have sounded and the identical look on her sisters’ faces confirmed it. Allie, she knew, had probably long since figured out the nature of her relationship with Ian—that she had been using Ian (however unconsciously) for his connections, such as they were—and repaying him by being the gorgeous girl on his arm. The relationship had been an exchange of goods and services, not a real emotional exchange. How careless and wasteful she had been with her precious time!
“We all form bad relationships in this life,” Allie said briskly. “We all regret some of the friends we’ve made. The point is to learn a lesson from our mistakes and to move on.”
Yes, Poppy thought. It was time to move on. So much was becoming clear to her about what she wanted, at least in her personal life. She thought then about Jon. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since she and Ian had run into him on Main Street. And she thought of how lucky Julie and Mack were to have found each other before time gave either the chance to make terrible mistakes. Once upon a time Poppy used to think that all experience was for the good, but now she wasn’t so sure....
Daisy poked her arm. “Earth to Poppy.”
“Sorry,” Poppy said. “I was just thinking.”
“I know.” Daisy grinned. “I could smell the wood burning.”
Poppy swatted Daisy. “Ha, ha! Very funny little sister. Very funny.”
Chapter 77
“Bertie and I missed you.”
“I’m sorry. I missed you, too.” Daisy was way too embarrassed to admit to Mrs. Wilkin that she had quit her volunteer position in a fit of pique. They were alone in the Wilkins’ apartment. Daisy had brought Muriella a box of scones Allie had made that morning. It was the least she could do, she thought, after having abandoned her friends.
Mrs. Wilkin looked closely at Daisy. “I hope all is right at home,” she said. “With your sisters.”
“Everything’s fine,” Daisy assured her. “I just didn’t have a ride for a while, so . . . Tell me what’s been going on here? Is that guy Tom still cheating at checkers?”
“Tom is dead,” Mrs. Wilkin stated flatly. “He passed about ten days ago. I’m afraid Bertie’s yet to find another lying checkers partner.”
“I’m sorry,” Daisy said, and she was sorry.
“There’s already someone new in Tom’s room,” Mrs. Wilkin told her. “People keep dying and people keep replacing the dead.”
Daisy thought Muriella sounded sad, even angry. It had to make you angry at times, when your mature self-composure and sense of resignation slipped and you knew that you didn’t have very long left in this world. It must make you furious, Daisy thought. And there was nothing you could do about it.
“Where is Mr. Wilkin now?” she asked.
Muriella sighed. “He went for a walk on the grounds.”
“You didn’t want to go with him? We could go and find him if you like.”
Muriella shook her head. “I think he needed to be alone. Funny, isn’t it, that even near the end, when you’d think all that people would want to do is to cling to whoever is left, they sometimes need to be alone.”
Daisy felt a terrible urge to make up an excuse for having to leave—she had never witnessed Mrs. Wilkin in such a mood and it depressed her—but she fought the urge with all her might. She was going to be a doctor someday. And that meant she was going to have to deal with all sorts of people in all stages of life, young and old, healthy and ill. It was important and it was what she was meant to do.
“Tell me again about the trip you and Mr. Wilkin took to China when he retired,” she said, moving her chair a bit closer to Mrs. Wilkin so that she could take her hand. “You have such wonderful stories.”
Chapter 78
The Higgins sisters and Allie were in the sunroom, which was anything but sunny. Rain had been coming down in sheets all afternoon and every lamp in the room was lit against the gloom.
Violet was reading a book on astrology and drinking yet another cup of that decaf green tea she had become so fond of. Daisy was working on a crossword puzzle, her pen flying. Allie was once again attempting to get through one of Oliver Higgins’s books, a deep frown of concentration on her face. Poppy was thinking about Daisy’s friend Evie. She liked Evie. She had no problem doing small favors for her, like driving her to The Clamshell, even in a rainstorm. Evie was an excellent houseguest and more than repaid any kindness Poppy showed to her. Still, over the past week Poppy had caught a few inconsistencies in Evie’s brief tale of herself and was beginning to suspect that something was not quite right. For example, she could have sworn that Evie had said she grew up in Winter Lake, which was a town in Vermont, but then, just that morning, she had heard Evie tell Ian that she had grown up in Crookville, which was a town in New Hampshire. Both couldn’t be true. Unless of course at some point Evie and her parents had moved from Vermont to New Hampshire. And there was another thing. Poppy had been in the study a few days earlier, leafing through one of her mother’s coffee table art books, when Evie had come in.
“I’m sorry,” she had said. “Am I disturbing you?”
“Of course not,” Poppy assured her. “Hey, do you know French? I took Spanish in school. I don’t know what this phrase means.” She turned the book toward Evie and pointed to the words.
Evie shook her head. “No,” she said. “I h
ave no idea. Sorry.” And then she had left. The odd thing was that yesterday Poppy had gone into the study in search of her phone only to find Evie settled in an armchair, reading a hardbound book. She hurriedly thrust the book between her leg and the arm of the chair but not before Poppy had seen the title. Le Colonel Chabert, by Honoré de Balzac. And she recognized the volume as one of her parents’ collection of novels in the original French. She hadn’t commented on this to Evie, only glanced around for her phone and gone away. But the incident had been bothering her. . . .
“Penny for your thoughts?” Allie asked.
Poppy looked up to see that Allie had addressed the question to her. “Actually,” she said, “I was thinking about Evie.”
Daisy dropped her pen. “What about her?” she said, snatching it from the floor.
“Well, she hardly ever talks about her home or her family or her friends. And when she does tell us something it doesn’t always match what she’s told us before. Do you think she’s hiding something?”
“Yes,” Violet said promptly.
Poppy nodded. “So it’s not only me. I wonder if she is who she says she is.”
Daisy leaned forward in her chair. “Of course she’s who she says she is,” she said emphatically. “Why would she be lying?”
“To confuse anyone who was trying to find the truth about her,” Violet said matter-of-factly. “Like when her birthday is.”
“No,” Daisy said. “I don’t believe it.”
“I think,” Allie said, “that Poppy is probably right. Evie is hiding something. But then again, do you know anyone who isn’t? Secrecy isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
Poppy sighed. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter what went before. Evie’s a nice person and she’s a good houseguest. Unlike Ian.”
“Right,” Daisy said. “And that’s all that should matter. By the way, when is The Bearded Wonder leaving?”
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