Thirty—Bo
I
had been feeling pretty good about myself for the last couple of days, but I wasn’t particularly proud of that. I mean, my family was still more or less embroiled in a crisis—or the aftermath of a crisis—and I should have felt more subdued. That seemed more appropriate, even though Camille and the girls were now safely in Savannah, and by all reports adjusting well. That was a veritable triumph, and I wanted to give myself permission to relish it a bit. But no. I was obsessing about if that was really appropriate. And the very fact that I was engaging in this internal debate was proof of my enduring weirdness and then I started obsessing about that.
It's exhausting to be me.
The truth is, I am rarely the one to shine and seldom the one to save the proverbial day. But when Geneva Talbot pointed out that I had done everything right, I felt like I’d won the freaking lottery—and the feeling had stuck. In a very obsessive way.
That day, I’d been alone with my traumatized sister for several hours before I could track down my parents. And when they’d finally shown up, Camille had been brittle with anxiety, which of course had made me brittle with anxiety. She’d been like a caged animal. I’d offered her some Xanax—several times—but she’d refused. My mom had been able to calm her down to a degree, and they had made a plan to leave her car in Lully’s garage and bring her and the kids home with my parents. But then Peter showed up. He’d never been to Lully’s house, and Camille was floored that a resourceful man like her husband, desperate to track down his family, had figured out where Lullaby Sutton, a genuine who’s-who of Monterey society, lived. I’d never seen Camille like that. When she heard his car, she absolutely lost control. Shaking, unable to breathe, couldn’t talk. Raw, visceral panic. My parents didn’t react much better. But suddenly—and shockingly—I knew exactly what to do. Me . I grabbed Scout, a flashlight, a package of cookies, and some cans of juice and told Camille to focus— focus— and follow me with Olivia. As Peter pounded on the door, I got them all in the garage and into Camille’s car. “I’ll get rid of him,” I promised. “Just stay here and be quiet!” Six completely terrified eyes stared back at me with tenuous trust. Me. They had placed their trust in me .
With my parents looking completely petrified as well, I knew we didn’t stand a chance of fooling Peter. I ran downstairs for the snake choker that Katrina Gearhart had commissioned and brought it up to the living room. “We have to convince him that your being here has nothing to do with Camille,” I said, sounding unbelievably in charge. “You’ve come here to admire this. It’s not done, but just please admire it .”
Peter pounded again and began shouting at the front door. “I know you’re in there!” I took a breath and opened the door. I was shaking and my mouth had gone dry, but when I let him in, I was Oscar-worthy.
“Where are they!” he’d bellowed.
“Who?” I said, quick on my feet.
Peter barreled past me, screaming for Camille. If the absence of her car in the driveway was not convincing evidence that she was not there, then we were in trouble. But my brilliant mom used her overwhelming emotions to our absolute advantage. She looked suddenly terrified, dropped the snake choker. “What are you talking about? Where is she? What have you done?”
My dad made similar noises and threatened to call the police. When Peter lunged at him, I knew the whole thing was unraveling, and I had no answer for that. But then Mia and Ivy got back from Carmel, and it all changed. I would never forget how Geneva did her thing and looked inside my slimy, putrid brother-in-law. Peter, like me, had been unable to resist Geneva. It was like being hypnotized. It was like being helpless. Peter folded under her spell, and it seemed he couldn’t get away fast enough.
I couldn’t believe it. None of us could. It was as though Geneva had charmed my entire family. And when she looked at my sister and said: You’ve been placed in my path, it made all the sense in the world. To me, anyway. And if that was true—which strangely I didn’t doubt—then the old woman had been placed in my path as well. And if I believed that premise, then I had to believe that Ivy Talbot had been placed there, too.
But superstition and supernatural forces were truly unexplored terrain for me. I dwelt in the company of hard facts, finite, explainable truths revolving around cleanliness and germs and the small but myriad dangers of ingesting anything not purified. I lived devoted to schedules and time spent carefully with a trusted few. My mind rarely had the wherewithal to climb another story to the unexplained. Which I suppose was why all of this was so hard to process, and why it was so hard for me to find an explanation for Ivy. My growing awareness of Ivy. My growing preoccupation with her.
I shook my head in frustration. I didn’t have time for preoccupation—but here I was. Fixated . I’d never considered her unattractive for a moment—and I never understood why she did. But when she walked in that night, I momentarily lost my place in what was happening in my family’s crisis. Ivy looked so different, so… put together . Her hair was shorter, and it made something rather magic happen to her eyes; they got bigger somehow. I’d never considered her imperfect in size—even though she did—but I could see there was less of her that night. She looked amazing, and it threw me, because her looking amazing had not been a factor in my liking her, had not really been a factor in my awareness of her at all. I liked Ivy because I felt comfortable with her, and I felt comfortable with her because I liked her. The people in my life who actually fit that stringent criterion could be counted on one-and-a-half hands. And it would be a vast understatement to say I’d been unprepared to find that there was room for Ivy Talbot on that small committee. I was too odd. I was too me . Women who ventured near me usually came to their senses about the same time I did. I was a loner not necessarily by choice but out of a certain wish to be considerate of the rest of humanity. That didn’t mean I didn’t long for things, like friends, relationships, meaningful conversations—just awkwardness-free conversations, actually. It just meant most of those things seemed more and more unattainable, so I did my longing from a comfortable distance.
But today the distance was not comfortable. Today Ivy wasn’t feeling well, and I was worried about her. And that was definitely new terrain for me.
Today and yesterday, she had stayed in bed and refused to eat or be seen. And I couldn’t believe how that had affected me. I was worried and I was sad, which was in direct conflict with my feelings of triumph over life, and I was helpless—of course I was helpless—which fueled my anxiety. Ivy wasn’t talking to anyone. She could be dead, for all anyone knew. I’d made her breakfast, but when she hadn’t answered the door to the pool house, I’d just left it there outside on the mat. That was two hours and sixteen minutes ago, and it was still sitting exactly where I’d left it, undoubtedly now teeming with microbes. Should we call the doctor? Should we call her dad? 911?
Mia said not to worry. Mia’s dumb. Even so, it seemed the best I could manage would be, if Ivy hadn’t moved by lunch, to replace the nine-grain muffins and fruit that I’d left this morning with soup and cucumber salad and another knock at her door.
I groaned. Agitated with my sister, who’d just left for class, leaving me with the enormous responsibility of a sick person on the property. I groaned again, this time loudly. Why did I care? People get sick. Most of them don’t die. Not in pool houses. Why should I care? Why? I was too busy to care! I was too busy with a complex and time-sensitive order I’d received for three Renaissance poison rings. There wasn’t room for Ivy feeling under-the-weather in my thoughts today. I had things to do, important things. I filled my chilled water glass, intent on my tasks.
But my thoughts rebelled, and as I headed downstairs, I simply could not get the girl with the new haircut and the self-proclaimed worrisome backyard , the girl who would not eat or talk to me today, the girl who could be dying in the pool house, but probably wasn’t, out of my mind.