Versions of Her
Page 32
“And I’m so, so happy to hear about you and Melanie agreeing not to sell the lake house. You’re going to be your own boss. A small-business owner. Congrats. That’s so wonderful.”
“Thanks,” she said, pulling him back to her and squeezing her legs more tightly around him. “And what do you think about this other idea I’ve been toying with? What if I made the Montclare Inn a pet-friendly B and B?” She planted a quick kiss on his lips, inadvertently preventing his reply. “That way, I can merge my love of animals with my dream for the lake house. Guests could bring their dog or cat with them.” She interrupted herself again to give him another kiss, longer and more lingering. “We can have an infinite supply of tennis balls on the dock and a jar of special homemade treats in the living room, watering stations everywhere and cushions and pet beds in front of the fireplace...” She drifted off as Josh took the reins and kissed her so deeply that she totally gave up on her train of thought and gave in to the moment instead.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kelsey couldn’t believe her sister and brother-in-law were leaving in the morning. She understood that Ben needed to get back to the pharmacy and Melanie needed to start prepping for the fall semester, and really, since they weren’t selling the house, they had no real reason to be here. But a small part of her had hoped they might stick around and help her with the initial legwork for the bed-and-breakfast, although she had repeatedly insisted that she didn’t need Melanie’s help. Their driving back to Ohio to return to their own lives while she grappled with the giant project of the lake house made her feel shaky and entirely out of her depth. And a large part of her couldn’t comprehend how they could just up and leave Wisconsin when any day, maybe even minute, their mom could come walking through the front door.
It was because they didn’t believe the time-traveling note would work its magic, that Melanie and Kelsey’s vague, veiled medical recommendations wouldn’t save their mom from her sealed fate. And Kelsey couldn’t blame them too much, either, because she was starting to lose heart as well. It had been five days since they had left the letter in the closet, and so far, they’d received no reply from Christine and seen no other discernable changes. How long is it going to take? And how would we know when and if anything happened? She tried to busy herself with her shifts at the pet lodge, the complicated paperwork she needed to file for her business license, and Harry Potter movie marathons with Josh, his cat, Tumnus, and Sprocket—who amazingly tolerated each other—but it was all she could really think about.
Melanie had suggested Kelsey, Josh, and Sprocket come over for “the mother of all bonfires,” as she put it, which sounded like the perfect distraction and a fitting farewell. They would have hot dogs, s’mores, Nutella pudgy pies, and bacon wrapped around a stick. But Josh was taking a woodworking class that he couldn’t miss, and the weather wasn’t cooperating—it was raining sideways and pinging off the windows—so it was just the three of them sitting around the kitchen table, eating frozen pizza, and playing B. S. instead. Sprocket was lying hopefully under the table. Kelsey suspected that Melanie had already slipped him a few slices of pepperoni.
“Two jacks,” Kelsey said, slapping two facedown cards onto the discard pile.
“Bullshit!” Melanie crowed, turning them over, and she was right, of course, as she had been right the last three times. Kelsey liked to think she was a perfectly adequate liar until she was around Melanie, who could read her like an open book.
“You suck,” Kelsey said, scooping up the entire pile and adding it to her hand. She already had over half of the deck and was struggling to organize it. Soon she wouldn’t have to lie, because she’d have multiples of everything.
Ben made a sympathetic face at her. He was a terrible liar too. “Maybe we should play crazy eights,” he said.
“I think you need at least four players for that.” Melanie wiped the pizza grease off her fingers and solemnly laid down a card. “One queen.”
“Are you sure you guys don’t want to take the patio table with you?” Kelsey asked for probably the fourth time that evening. “Melanie, you were the one to refinish it, after all. I can easily buy a new table.”
“Thanks, Kels, but I think it belongs on the porch with that view. Consider it my housewarming gift.”
It was hard not to think of those other rainy days when they had chowed down on popcorn and played seventies board games with their mom. A wave of nostalgia and sadness swept over Kelsey. Though she was tremendously glad they weren’t selling the house, and that even her dad was reluctantly on board with the B and B, she couldn’t help wondering if it was more the people and memories inside it that she cherished and wanted to preserve rather than the house itself. When all of the people are gone, when I’m alone and caring for overnight guests, will it still be as special to me?
She could almost hear her mom’s voice as the rain buffeted the house and Melanie and Ben teased each other. Kels-Bels, you need to find what makes you happy, no matter what that is.
I’m trying, Mom, she thought. I’m so scared I won’t be any good at this and I’ll fail, and I don’t know for sure if it will make me happy, but at least I’m trying.
Did you try? she couldn’t help wondering. Or did you just resign yourself to what you thought was your fate?
She was surprised when Melanie and Ben turned in early for the night, only ten thirty, explaining they were planning to pack up and leave at five in the morning for the nine-hour drive. Melanie insisted Kelsey didn’t need to get up to see them off, but the thought of waking up alone in the large house was too much for Kelsey, so she said she wouldn’t dream of sleeping in. She took Sprocket out to go potty one more time then retreated to Melanie’s old bedroom. She wasn’t even remotely tired, though, so she grabbed her iPad and started scrolling through pictures of bed-and-breakfast interiors, bookmarking her favorites and steadfastly ignoring the door behind the tapestry, which she had already checked for a note two hours ago—still empty—while Sprocket dozed at her feet.
A quiet knock on her door came at midnight.
“Come in,” Kelsey called softly.
“You’re still up?” Melanie rubbed her eyes against the bright light. She was wearing a pink camisole and gray cotton shorts.
“Apparently. Here, let me show you these lampshades. Don’t you think something like these would look perfect in the living room?”
Melanie sat down on the edge of the bed and looked over Kelsey’s shoulder. “So you’re going for a Victorian-era look? If so, I think they’re perfect.”
“Yeah, I wanted it to look reminiscent of when the house was first built.”
“You should hit some rummage sales and flea markets. I know there isn’t much around here, but Cleveland and Toledo have some great antique malls. You should totally come visit me sometime, and we’ll go antiquing.”
Kelsey set the iPad down, trying not to think about how much more fun it would be to hunt for vintage lampshades with a companion, even one as exasperating as Melanie. Maybe Josh would go with her. He’d already offered to build a pedestal-foot end table for the living room, and she couldn’t wait to see how it would turn out. The headboard he was making for his niece was stunning.
“Yeah, that would be fun,” she said, but she was already calculating the cost of her plane ticket and any shipping costs for antiques she purchased to send back to Wisconsin. Sprocket let out a loud, rumbling snore worthy of an old man.
“Aw, I’m going to miss my little jellybean,” Melanie said, stroking his side. She laughed when Kelsey shot her a look. “And you, too, of course! I thought that was implied. These last few weeks have been the most fun I’ve had with you since we were in elementary school, riding bikes around our cul-de-sac. When I didn’t feel like killing you, that is.”
“The feeling’s mutual.” Kelsey folded the sheet down. Though she hated to admit it, she would also miss her aggravating perfectionist of a sister. “I like to think that Mom had something to do with that, that she was
using the house to bring us closer together.”
“I think you’re right.” Melanie leaned over to rest her cheek on Sprocket’s fur. He stirred a little and let out another snore. “I’m sorry we haven’t heard back from Mom yet. I know you had your hopes pinned on that letter, but remember, it probably caught her off guard. It’s a lot to digest, you know, the implication that you’re going to die unexpectedly in your fifties. She might still be considering how to reply to us. I don’t think it’s quite over yet.”
“Maybe.” Or maybe the letter hadn’t reached her in time. Or maybe she hadn’t taken them seriously. Maybe she had planned to follow their advice but had forgotten the date because it was so far in the future.
Melanie gave Kelsey a sisterly shove so she could occupy more space on the bed. “I talked to Mrs. Fletcher the other day.”
“Really?” Kelsey still hadn’t seen their old neighbor, but in her mind’s eye, Mrs. Fletcher looked the same as she had in her early forties, sporting a strapless sundress, a turquoise necklace, and matching earrings, only with a shocking head of platinum hair.
“Yeah, she came over to lend us her watering can. I guess she’s on the Lake Indigo Neighbors Association, and she’s in favor of the bed-and-breakfast, although some of the other members aren’t.”
“Huh. I had no idea there even was a neighborhood association. Hopefully they won’t cause any trouble for me.” A row of additional hurdles materialized before Kelsey’s eyes.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. Vinnie’s on your side, and she seems like she can be pretty persuasive.” Melanie gave Sprocket one last pat and sat up. “She said something else that I just can’t get out of my head, though. About Mom and the day Jilly almost drowned.”
As Melanie described the conversation to her, Kelsey lay back against her pillow and tried to remember that day in as much detail as possible. But what she remembered most was the elaborate game of Sharks they’d all been playing, and when she noticed Jilly was no longer there, Kelsey had simply assumed someone had tagged the younger girl out and she was being a baby about it as usual and had swum back to shore. But then Beau had started diving under the water, and it wasn’t even his turn to be a shark. Whenever he surfaced, he screamed, “Jilly!” in one breath, then “Mom! Dad! Help!” in the next, and Kelsey had plunged under the water to help too. It was the first time she had ever dove under with her eyes wide open. Everything was a fuzzy blue green. Tiny fish and their shadows darted around her, but she saw no sign of Jilly.
“We should go inside the time portal,” she suggested. “Maybe it will take us back to that day and we can find out why Mom blamed herself.”
Melanie rolled her eyes. “What are the odds that it’s the correct year right now, let alone the correct day and exact moment? One in a thousand? A hundred thousand? A million?”
Kelsey pushed her sister off the bed so she could stand up, and Melanie groaned in annoyance. “I don’t know. Maybe pretty good. The house has been showing us important moments all along, hasn’t it? And this seems pretty major. It’s worth a try, at least.”
“I just don’t know if I even want to relive that again.”
“But it seems like you’re reliving it, anyway,” Kelsey pointed out. “You just admitted you can’t stop thinking about it. Maybe this will put it to rest. Besides, this is most likely your last chance to go in. Our last chance, for that matter, if it is the last summer and Mom’s memories end like we think they might.” She was laying it on thick, but as soon as she’d mentioned the possibility of going into the closet, she knew somehow that it was the right thing to do. It was like the house wanted them to, like the tapestry was calling to them. The deep-blue background looked even richer than usual, and the four birds’ beady eyes were shiny and bright, as if they were watching them.
Melanie threw up her hands. “All right. But I’m only going inside so that we can say goodbye.”
Kelsey tried to swallow her disappointment as she confirmed, for what felt like the hundredth time, that the bench was still empty of any correspondence from their mom.
TWO SETS OF FEET WERE pounding up the stairs, and the sound of giggles reached them. Young Melanie and me?
“This is definitely our last summer here,” Melanie said, pointing to a worn copy of To Kill a Mockingbird on her desk.
Kelsey peered into the hallway. A coppery head of hair emerged over the newel post, inch by inch, like a mermaid breaking the water’s surface. Her mom’s curly head wasn’t far behind. Vinnie was wearing a floral-patterned skirt, and Christine’s hand was tucked into the back of the waistband. Oh crap, Kelsey thought, turning to watch her sister’s equally dismayed expression. What are we walking in on?
“The kids,” their mom said breathlessly as they reached the doorway of the master bedroom.
“We’ll lock the door,” Vinnie said, and the next second, they were both inside and the door was closing. A lock clicked.
Kelsey turned to find her sister heading resolutely for the closet. “Where are you going?”
“Not sticking around to watch Mom have an affair.”
Kelsey ducked her head to look out the window. “But, Melanie, I think this is it! Look!” Outside, kids were splashing around the swimming raft. She could just make out Melanie in her green Hawaiian-print bikini standing on the raft next to Stephen, the afternoon sun illuminating them. “We’re playing Sharks!”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. We already know the one missing piece of the puzzle—that Mom wasn’t there because she was with Vinnie. I’d already suspected as much, but if I’d had any doubt...” Melanie tugged her fallen camisole strap back up on her shoulder, looking forlorn. “We already know the rest of the story. What else is there to see? Let’s just stop while we’re ahead and go.”
“But we’re not ahead.”
Jilly’s hot-pink swimsuit was as visible as a red flag. Kelsey tried to follow her every movement, but it was like watching ants scurrying at a picnic. She observed herself shoving Stephen off the raft and triumphantly pumping her arms into the air. And at just that moment, she saw something that none of them had seen the first time.
Jilly’s head, as small and shiny as a penny from where Kelsey was standing, was in the water, at the edge of the raft. As Stephen fell off and Beau attempted to climb on the opposite side, the raft rocked violently upward then crashed over Jilly, shoving her down with all its wooden weight.
“Oh God! I saw it! Jilly just went under!”
Melanie’s hands were suddenly on the windowsill, too, pushing Kelsey to the side.
“It wasn’t a rock like we all thought. It was the raft!” She wanted to run downstairs and dive into the lake, but she knew it would be useless. She would glide over the surface, ghostlike, unable to penetrate the depths, unable to grab Jilly and heave her upward. Still, her muscles twitched with potential energy. She knew it would all work out in the end—Beau would notice and call for help any second, and Mr. Fletcher would save his daughter—but it was still unbearable to watch, thinking of the slim seven-year-old sinking to the lake’s bottom like a stone.
“Why is it taking us so long to notice?” Melanie asked anxiously. “It’s got to have been minutes already!”
“Jilly?” Beau called uncertainly, and Kelsey felt the tension in her neck and shoulders loosen a little. She watched herself join Beau as he plunged below the surface. Stephen and Melanie caught on eventually, too, and all four of them were disappearing and popping up like a group of seal pups. “Help!” Beau screamed as he thrashed toward the shore. “Help! Mom! Dad! It’s Jilly!”
In the room next door, something made a loud thump. There were muffled noises and heavy, hurried footsteps, then the door burst open, hitting the wall with such force that it bounced back. Kelsey ran to watch her mom and Vinnie leave the room. They were both fully clothed, but their faces were flushed, their hair messy. Christine hurtled down first, the fastest Kelsey had ever seen her move.
In her haste, Vinnie nearly stumbled and
fell. “Shit,” she said, catching herself on the banister, and the curse seemed to open a floodgate. “Shit, shit, fuck!”
Kelsey ran down the steps behind them. They all reached the bottom of the stairs and snaked through the hallway to the kitchen.
“We did this!” Christine said, her eyes wild and frantic. “You did!”
“No.” Vinnie shook her head and groped for the kitchen doorframe to pull herself through.
“You distracted me, just like at Harris Beach. You make me selfish and reckless, and I hate myself. I already have blood on my hands, Vinnie. If Jilly—”
“Shut up. Shut up.” Vinnie grabbed Christine roughly by the shoulders as they stumbled out onto the wraparound porch together. “She’s going to be okay.”
Kelsey followed them to the sandy shoreline, where a knot of solemn kids, she and Melanie among them, was watching Mr. Fletcher perform CPR. Melanie fell into step beside her, her jaw set.
“My baby,” Vinnie cried as she fell to her knees beside Jilly’s abnormally pale body, but it was Christine who took over for Lance, showing him how to properly compress the center of his daughter’s chest with the heel of her hand.
“Like this,” she said. “Has anyone called 911?” When Lance answered in the affirmative, she switched places with him again and felt Jilly’s pulse. “The breaths are really important right now because we don’t know how long she’s been without oxygen.”
Kelsey didn’t remember her mom being such an active part of Jilly’s resuscitation. In her mind, Mr. Fletcher had been the hero, the one who’d fished his daughter out of the lake, the one who’d done mouth-to-mouth and kept the oxygen circulating to her cells. But she could see that her mom’s lifeguard training and the CPR certification she kept current every year for her elementary school job had probably saved Jilly from dying or being brain damaged. The ambulance bounced up the gravel driveway. Thank God it was the nineties and nearby Concord now had a fire department and ambulance service.