“But she left the house to us in her will. She must have known that one day, when the time was right—”
“No,” Melanie interjected. “I’m pretty sure about this. She doesn’t want us there.” She bent down, rooted around in her purse, and pushed a folded rectangle of yellow paper into Kelsey’s hands. “That’s Mom. In her own words.”
Kelsey couldn’t open the note quickly enough. One of the edges ripped as she unfolded it.
Who is this? the note read in the loopy, precise cursive of a teenage girl. I don’t know how you found this room, but it is OFF LIMITS and very private. Please respect that and keep out of my business. You clearly don’t know the first thing about me or what happened last month. Let’s keep it that way. C. A. M.
Kelsey flinched as if she’d been personally scolded. She glanced up at Melanie, who was studiously looking away, then back down at the note, scouring it for clues in an effort to understand. The words were written so deeply in the paper, she could trace the raised ridges on the other side with her fingertips. C. A. M., Christine Ann Montclare, had clearly been very angry when she’d written them.
“What the hell?” Kelsey half whispered, half shouted at her sister, vaguely mindful of the couple at the table next to them, who were packing up to go. “Why did she write this? What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Melanie insisted. “Like I told you, I went into the portal for five minutes last night, saw Mom and Vinnie kissing, and left. But I couldn’t help wanting to reach out to her in her grief. I wanted her to know that someone else understood her and wasn’t judging her, so I... I left a brief note. Then this morning, I stepped back inside and found this reply on the bench.”
Kelsey leaned forward, tensing the muscles in her back. “And what did this ‘brief note’ say?”
“Just that it wasn’t her fault that the boy drowned and to not be so hard on herself.” Melanie jutted her chin out defensively. “It was only a few sentences, and I didn’t sign my name.”
“Obviously.” Kelsey rattled the thin paper in her hand for effect. “And you didn’t think that would freak her out? Getting a note from some creepy, anonymous Big Brother? In a secret place she thinks no one else knows about? A place that travels to her most intimate memories?”
“Writing her a letter was your idea!” Melanie said. “And yes, clearly, it was a misguided one. But when you put it like that, can’t you understand why we need to stop this thing right now?”
Kelsey wanted to say so much, but she didn’t trust herself to thoughtfully articulate it to her sister when she was so furious. How dare Melanie impose rules on the time portal and say they needed to be “smart about it and not rush into anything we can’t take back” then disregard her own advice and potentially muck everything up.
“Listen, I really need to get back to work, but this conversation is far from over. So I have a proposition for you.” Kelsey gritted her teeth and tried to sound more welcoming than threatening. “If you don’t have anything pressing to do today, why don’t you stick around Bartlett? You can hang out at my apartment with Sprocket until I get home and just relax for once, and when I get off work, I can make us dinner, and we can finish this discussion. You could even stay overnight if you want. I still have the guest bed made up.”
Melanie was going to turn her down, Kelsey knew, rattling off some excuse about needing to re-grout the bathroom tiles or be there to meet Everett early in the morning. She didn’t even know what had made her offer except that, for better or for worse, she and Melanie were embroiled in the hot mess together, and they had no one else to confide in without sounding like crazy people. But Melanie had probably had enough “sisterly bonding time.” She probably wanted to return to her delusional place of moral high ground back at the lake house, where no one was around to contradict her.
But Melanie surprised her. “Sure. Thanks.” She stood up from the table, grabbing her to-go coffee cup. “But just so you know, there’s no way you’re changing my mind. I am officially done with the time portal, and I would strongly advise you to do the same.”
Chapter Eleven
Kelsey’s apartment was tiny and rather messy—not dirty, just cluttered with open cookbooks on the kitchen counters, brightly colored dog toys littering the carpet, and so many take-out menus stuck to the fridge with magnets that Melanie couldn’t see the cream-colored surface beneath. If it were Melanie’s house, it would have driven her crazy, but since it was someone else’s place, it felt artistic and kind of homey that way. It was a temporary refuge from her real life—both her old troubles back in Ohio and the new ones brewing at the lake house. She and Sprocket went for a long walk around the neighborhood, as Kelsey had suggested, since the weather was so beautiful. She snapped a picture with her phone of Sprocket grinning and texted it to Ben with the caption, Hard not to become a dog person when I’m in the company of this cutie.
He replied almost immediately, even though she knew he was probably still at work. Great! Does that mean we’re getting the St. Bernard I’ve always wanted?
Sitting down on a bench near the apartment complex’s man-made pond, she let out more of the retractable leash so Sprocket could explore. There’s no emoji to reflect my facial expression right now, so let’s just say no.
He texted her a string of frowny faces. What about a dog that weighs less than me? Something like a border collie? Or even a Yorkie. I’m not picky.
She laughed, surprising herself by how carefree she felt despite the past twenty-four hours, and Sprocket shot her his droopy-tongued smile again. She texted his picture to Kelsey with the simple caption, Look who misses you.
Give me a little more time to warm up to dogs in general, she replied to Ben. Right now I love only one, and I doubt that Kelsey would ever give him up.
She didn’t want to get Ben’s hopes up, but she had been more seriously considering his proposition of getting a dog, which was among the hundreds of other propositions he’d made, like ballroom dancing lessons, learning to rock climb together, and hosting a monthly board game night with their friends. Not having grown up with pets, she had never been an animal person, and it mystified her how Kelsey could have turned out so differently. She wondered if Kelsey had learned to love dogs or if her love was just somehow innate. While Melanie thought some cats and dogs were beautiful creatures, they just didn’t seem worth all the effort—cleaning up the fur, the slobber, and the poop, having to commit to a rigid feeding and walking schedule, and needing to find someone to take care of them whenever she traveled. It was like having kids without the benefit of having kids, which of course was her main problem.
She watched Sprocket rolling in the grass on his back with joyful abandon. That was why people loved dogs. Dogs embraced life and savored every second of it, no matter if it meant looking like a total dork. When she bent forward to scratch his belly, he licked her wrist in appreciation. She liked how she was out there in the middle of the day, sitting on a bench unselfconsciously, something she would not have ordinarily done, and all because she was walking a dog. Not only was Sprocket a good companion, he was also like a permission slip to be more present in the world.
They headed back to Kelsey’s apartment at a leisurely pace, Melanie allowing Sprocket to mark his territory every ten feet or so. Either he was an overzealous little guy, or he had a bladder problem. It was nearing the time Kelsey had said she would be home from work, but there was still no sign of her, so Melanie curled up on one end of Kelsey’s couch. It took her a second to realize it was her parents’ old sectional—silvery gray with navy-striped pillows. When their dad had sold their house in Elm Grove and moved to Tucson, he had asked both of them if they wanted any of the furniture because his second wife, Laila, wanted to pick out new things. Melanie had asked only for the dining room table, which had been Grandpa Jack and Grandma Dot’s wedding gift to her parents. But Kelsey had apparently snagged the couch, the coffee table, some end tables, and even an ottoman. No wonder the place felt s
o homey to Melanie.
She pulled one of her mom’s old throw pillows onto her lap and balanced her phone on top of it. I learned something pretty shocking about my mom, she texted Ben.
Five minutes later, his reply came. Do tell.
It’s not something I can really explain over text, she said.
I’m leaving soon. I’ll call you.
I can’t really talk tonight. I’m staying over at Kelsey’s, and she’ll be home any minute.
Okay, he texted. Tomorrow, then. Keep me in suspense.
She ran her fingers over the row of buttons on the pillow’s slipcover. Just one hypothetical question for you before I go. If you found one of your parents’ diaries, would you read it?
You found your mom’s DIARY?
Melanie couldn’t help smiling. If he only knew the truth of what she had really found. I said this was a HYPOTHETICAL question!
There’s no way my mom would have ever kept a diary, and if my dad had ever kept one, it probably would’ve just detailed every fish he ever caught, so no. Too boring.
While she agreed with Ben’s assessment of his straightforward, salt-of-the-earth parents, she had once thought the same thing about her mom, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine that Jim and Barb Keyes also had surprising secrets in their pasts. Maybe Jim’s adolescent journal, if it existed, was a rip-roaring, adventurous page-turner complete with his own homosexual encounters. But probably not.
Thanks, that’s very helpful, she texted. Not.
Oh, so this was more of an ethical scenario than a hypothetical scenario?
You could say that.
Several minutes passed without a response, and she figured he was busy helping a customer. There was more to her resolution to quit using the time portal than she had told Kelsey earlier. Invading her mom’s privacy and the handwritten warning she’d found were about seventy-five percent of her reasoning. The other twenty-five percent was fear, plain and simple. The kiss between her mom and Vinnie was like a stray thread on a sweater, a thread that her sister was eager to pull. But Melanie was afraid that if they dove any deeper into their mom’s past, the whole sweater would unravel right before their eyes. They would continue to find out more things about their mom that they wished they didn’t know. The memory of her mom was the only thing Melanie had left of her, and she couldn’t bear the thought of it being tarnished, not when her mom wasn’t there to answer their questions and contextualize her past for them.
Her phone dinged as Ben’s response arrived. If one of my parents was dead, and it was my last connection to him or her, I think I would want to read it.
Even if you found out something shocking?
Yes.
She sank back into the couch. It was one of the things she loved most about her husband—his sense of assurance. At his core was an abiding belief that he and the people he loved deserved good things, so good things would happen to them. Most of the time, they did. And when they didn’t, he had faith that things would turn out all right in the end. It seemed like such a naïve, childlike way of viewing the world, yet it had been one of the qualities that had initially drawn her to him. He was such a happy person with that worldview, and she was happier in his company. If she could only adopt his same upbeat strategy, it seemed like she could let go of so much of the stress that plagued her on a daily basis. But it was a lot harder to do than it seemed.
Even if the front cover said, ‘Warning! Keep out! Do not read! This means you, Ben!’? she wanted to ask but didn’t. Her mom’s outraged rebuff of her well-meaning note still smarted.
“Hi-ho, Kelsey the Frog here,” Kelsey called from the front door in the Kermit impression she had perfected in childhood. She was carrying a paper grocery bag and shoved over a cookbook on the counter to set the bag down as Sprocket sprang from the couch to greet her.
“Hey,” Melanie said, slipping her cell phone into her pocket. She stood up to stretch and gauge her sister’s mood.
“Are you hungry? I thought I’d make us some comfort food. Dad’s famous artery-clogging bacon macaroni and cheese and double-fudge brownies.” Apparently, most of the pissed-off energy that had been crackling off of Kelsey earlier had dissipated. She bent down to Sprocket’s level. “Yes, I know you’re hungry. You’re always hungry. Would you like some dinner? Some food? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?” The schnauzer spun more and more frantic circles around Kelsey after each emphasized word, until she finally filled his dish. “Gosh, I can’t tell you what a relief it is to come home and know that this poor dog isn’t holding his bladder and bowels. Thanks so much for walking him earlier.”
“It was my pleasure,” Melanie said, and she genuinely meant it. “And yes, I’m starved. I think we deserve some comfort food after today.”
THE BROWNIES WERE IN the oven, and Melanie and Kelsey had played a quick game of rock-paper-scissors to see who would get the mixing bowl and who would get the wooden spoon. Melanie had won, and she was standing against the counter, lazily licking the rich, chocolatey batter from her index finger. It was probably salmonella laced from the raw eggs, as her mom had always warned them, but at least she would die a happy death. For the two months she had carried her baby, she had religiously steered clear of all the common foods to avoid during pregnancy—raw cookie dough, sushi, deli meats—but it hadn’t mattered.
“I’ve been thinking more about what you said,” Kelsey started, “about respecting Mom’s privacy. And I totally get it, especially since Mom could be such a private person. But you have to understand where she was coming from with that note, right? Here she is, only sixteen years old and at a crazy low point in her life, and she finds this random message from God knows who in her special hiding place. It would be like finding a stranger’s commentary at the end of your diary entry. Of course she was upset. I know I would be! But that doesn’t mean that the woman she grew up to be wouldn’t be open to letting her daughters view her memories, right?”
“That’s awfully convenient logic, though, isn’t it?” Melanie asked. “Since we can’t really ask her older self how she would feel about us time traveling through her life.” The shameful memory of her voyeurism washed over her. Spying on her mom and Vinnie wasn’t fair to Melanie’s sixteen-year-old mom, so vulnerable in her grief, so new and fumbling in her sexuality, and it also wasn’t fair to her deceased, middle-aged mom, who had never hinted at the fact that she and Lavinia Fletcher had ever been anything more than friends. If her mom hadn’t been cremated, Melanie suspected that she would be rolling in her grave at the thought of her adult daughters ogling her teenage exploits.
“But we can ask her.” Kelsey had stopped licking the wooden spoon and was staring at her. “We might have to wait a few weeks until she’s a little older, of course, but then we can write her another a note. A clearer note, identifying ourselves and explaining everything—”
Melanie reeled backward as if her sister had struck her. “Identifying ourselves?” She set the bowl in the sink so she could steady her hands against the counter. “You mean you want to tell her our names, who we are, and what year we’re traveling from?” She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the shockwave that could set both in backward and forward motion. Their mom would know ahead of time what gender her children would be and what names she was going to give them, for starters. She would know that they were watching her and could access any moment she lived through at the lake house, which could alter any of her major life decisions. It might make her want to destroy the tapestry or board up the closet. If it changed the past, she might try to talk to them, approach them one afternoon when they are adolescents, and say somewhat mysteriously, “I know what you’re going to find in the lake house one day.” A chilling thought suddenly swept across Melanie’s mind. “You’re not going to tell her about her death, are you?”
Kelsey blinked her wide-set blue eyes very slowly. “No, of course not. Well, maybe. God, I don’t know.” She flailed her hands between them as if trying to erase t
he last minute of their conversation. “I’m not trying to open up Pandora’s box here. I’m really not,” she repeated when Melanie sucked in a breath in preparation to protest. “I don’t want to botch up our lives, and I certainly don’t want to botch up Mom’s. I just miss her so much, and I want to know her better, and I can’t help feeling like she or maybe even some higher force is guiding us, like we were meant to discover that closet and we were meant to see those particular glimpses of Mom’s life. I don’t know the reason yet, but I’m confident there is one. We can’t just walk away right now. We have to keep exploring.”
Melanie made her way back to the couch, feeling like she might otherwise collapse. Kelsey had always been fearless, but the line between fearlessness and reckless stupidity was sometimes razor thin. “Maybe you’re right. But I just don’t think I can go inside the time portal in good conscience anymore. Though I understand if you still want to,” she added hastily. “Mom and the time portal belong just as much to you as they do to me, so I can’t tell you what to do.” She wasn’t exactly trying for reverse psychology, but if it worked, then all the better. But her big -sister instinct told her that Kelsey’s enthusiasm for dredging up her mom’s early love life would wane once she witnessed her mom in as compromising a position as Melanie had. “I just ask that you exercise extreme caution in your interactions, and if you do decide to write Mom a letter, would you please just let me read it ahead of time, just to make sure...”
“Just to make sure I don’t reveal that bell-bottoms go out of style, spiral perms briefly make Mom’s naturally curly hair the envy of all her friends, and that Y2K is really no big deal? Don’t worry. I won’t.”
Melanie frowned at Kelsey’s joke. Part of her suddenly wished the thought of taking the tapestry down for a cleaning had never occurred to her and she’d never looked behind it or, at the very least, that she’d kept her temporary insanity to herself and not shared the discovery with her sister, because it seemed Kelsey wouldn’t be satisfied until she’d let all of the evils escape from the jar.
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