Chapter 36
Violet
Vail was in the living room when I got back to the Fell house, sitting on the sofa with his booted feet on the cushions. He was reading a Life magazine with Frank Sinatra on the front. He gave me a glance and went back to his reading.
“She isn’t here,” he said.
“I don’t,” my brother replied, his eyes still on his magazine. “It’s just a shirt.”
“You weren’t wearing it when I left.”
“I changed my shirt.”
“Why?”
“I felt like it.”
“Why do you have that shirt if you don’t like baseball?”
He finally looked up at me, his annoyance prodding him away from the magazine. “Violet. It’s just a shirt.”
I shrugged, the gesture feeling hard, tight in my shoulders and my back.
I had been so brave when I left Fell College, but now I was afraid again.
Afraid and angry. If Sister ever hurt Vail, if she touched a hair on his stupid head, I would kill her.
I didn’t care that she was already dead.
I’d dig her up from hell and kill her with my bare hands.
Vail was either unaware of or uninterested in my turmoil, because he looked at his boring magazine again. “She’s not here,” he repeated.
“Who? Your ghost hunter?” She obviously wasn’t here, and her car was gone from the driveway. “Dodie?” Dodie’s car was here, but it was possible she was sulking in her room.
“No.” Vail turned a page, the sound loud in the silence. “Anne Whitten.”
A noise left my throat, or maybe it was just a breath. Vail looked up at me again and our gazes locked, for real this time.
“You know who she is?” I asked.
Vail dropped the magazine and sat up. He picked something up from the coffee table and held it out to me without a word.
It was a children’s book. Small, slender, and old, with a rabbit on the cover. I flipped it open and read the inscription. To Edward Whitten, from his sister Anne. On his fifth birthday. August 3, 1905.
Her handwriting, faded and neat. Sister’s handwriting. I didn’t know how I knew, but I did.
The marbles in the attic from 1899, the year before Edward Whitten was born. They were new when he was a child, and he’d played with them.
Her younger brother, Edward, had died in a childhood accident a year earlier.
I dropped the book back on the table, unable to touch it anymore. Vail didn’t pick it up again, either. “She died in 1907,” I said, unable to speak Anne’s name. “She committed suicide. The year after he died, age six.”
Vail’s jaw worked, and he nodded.
“She was older than him,” I went on. Everything made so much sense now. A crazy kind of sense, but still sense. “She was a teenager when he was born.”
“Like us.” His voice was low.
“Like us. But older. She was fourteen.”
My brother’s gaze moved to the words on the wall. I wondered what had happened in this house while I was out, what Charlotte had found. What Vail was thinking about as he stared at those words.
“She killed him,” I said.
“I know,” he replied.
We were silent. Nothing happened. I had said the words aloud, and nothing happened.
“Did your ghost hunter find that book?” I asked.
Vail nodded. “In the attic. Then Anne Whitten came down the upstairs hall, screaming, and I got Charlotte out of the house.”
“Screaming?”
Vail’s expression went hard. “It wasn’t good. I could hear her walking, and when I left the house, I saw her in an upstairs window. Charlotte is never coming back.”
“Some ghost hunter,” I said sourly. I couldn’t help it.
“I told her the same thing.”
“And how did she take it?”
“Not very well.”
Vail’s gaze stayed on the wall as he spoke again. “I came back in to look for her. For Anne. I shouted. I banged open all the doors and the closets. I yelled at her to come out, but she didn’t. I think she leaves this house sometimes. Her presence isn’t here. But where does she go? She’s gone.”
“For now.” The words were automatic. Sister could leave, but never for long. Never for good.
Vail looked at me again. “How many times have you seen her?”
The words stuck in my throat, because I’d had a lifetime of not speaking about Sister. Then they came, like painful shards. “Too many times to count.”
“Since you were a kid?”
“Yes.”
I dropped into the chair. My brother didn’t say anything stupid, like Why didn’t you tell me? He was Vail. He knew why.
“What does she do?” he asked instead.
“She used to stand next to my bed with her back to me. Nothing else, really. That was all she needed to do.”
He nodded.
“Did she hurt you?” I asked him.
He gave an annoyed scoff. “As if she could.”
I opened my mouth to argue, to tell him that Sister was more dangerous than anyone could know. Then the silence of the house hit me again. “Where’s Dodie?”
“Gone,” Vail replied.
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know. Violet, we have to talk about this. We have to focus.”
“Gone where?” I repeated. A pulse was starting to pound in my neck again, the panicked pulse that always had to do with Sister. “Vail. Where’s Dodie?”
“I don’t know.” He sounded irritated, and I wanted to shake him. “She was gone when Charlotte and I came down from the attic.”
“Her car is here.”
“So she walked somewhere. Violet, focus.”
There was no focus. There was nothing in my head except the moment twenty years ago when I first realized that though we were all looking for Ben, he hadn’t made a sound. No giggles, no clumsy shuffles in his hiding place. Just nothing. Nothing at all.
“Where’s Dodie?” I nearly shouted.
In the kitchen, the phone rang. The sound was shrill in the silent house. Vail rose and walked to the kitchen, where I heard him pick up the phone. “Hello?”
Lisette, I thought. My panic spiraled. No one else had the phone number. It had to be—
“Hold on,” Vail said, and then he shouted, “Violet, it’s for you.”
I was already on my feet, half running to the kitchen. I snatched the receiver from his hand. “Hello?”
“Where is she?” Clay’s voice was an angry shout on the other end of the line.
“Clay?”
“Where is she?” he shouted again. “Where’s Lisette? What did you do to her?”
“What do you mean, where is she?” I shouted back at him. “She isn’t here. She’s staying with you.”
“She said she was going to her friend’s for a sleepover last night.” Clay was furious. He rarely got truly angry, and the rage in his voice made my panic spin harder. “She didn’t come home this morning, and when I called, there was no sleepover. She left last night.”
Oh, God. I looked out the kitchen window, where the sky had darkened and rain had started coming down. “Where the hell did she go?” I shouted at Clay. “You’re supposed to look after her! You’re supposed to keep track!”
“This is your fault!” he roared back. “What did you tell her, Violet? Some load of bullshit about ghosts? Did you tell her to come to you? What did you promise her? You said something to her, I know it. It’s just like you.
You fed her a bunch of your crazy lies, and she believed you, and now she’s gone. ”
“I didn’t tell her anything.” My panic had blurred into rage.
It was just like Clay to blame me for his own mistakes.
It must be so convenient, having a crazy ex-wife with a fucked-up life.
He used me as a human garbage can so that he’d never have to be responsible ever again.
“I didn’t promise her anything. She’s your responsibility, Clay.
You wanted custody, didn’t you? You’re supposed to be so good at this. So where is our daughter?”
It was petty, childish. It was beneath both of us. Lisette was gone, and we were sniping our old hurts at each other, our fruitless accusations from years ago. We were selfish and stupid, and I couldn’t help it, and neither could he.
“You’re a bitch,” Clay shouted over the phone. “You’re just trying to undermine me with her every chance you get. Well, it won’t work, Violet. You’re nuts, and Lisette knows it. You may have gotten her to buy your lies this time, but you’ll let her down. You always do.”
“Violet,” Vail said behind my shoulder, but I ignored him.
“Where could she have gone?” I asked Clay. “Who saw her last? She can’t drive yet. Does she have any money?” Had she hitchhiked? I thought I might throw up with fear.
“The money is gone from my wallet,” Clay replied. “I had less than a hundred bucks in there. I can’t believe she would do this. She didn’t say anything. What the hell did you say to her?”
“Violet,” Vail said again. He reached a hand out, but I swatted it away.
“We have to call the police,” I said to Clay. “There’s no other option.”
“It’s been less than twenty-four hours,” Clay shot back. “They won’t do anything.”
“Still, we have to call them,” I argued. “We have to talk to someone, make them see—”
Vail’s big hand yanked the receiver from me, while his other hand pushed my shoulder. “Clay,” he said into the phone, “she’s here. I just paid her cab driver.”
Clay yelled, and Vail kept talking—She’ll be fine, I don’t know, she just got here, we’ll take care of it. I barely heard. I ran to the front door, which Vail had swung open while I was on the phone. I got there in time to see a taxi’s taillights driving away.
My daughter stood in the doorway, a backpack in her hands. Her hair was in a messy ponytail and her face was pale.
“Mom?” she said, her voice shaking.
I strode to her and swept her up. I didn’t care that she was fourteen, that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d hugged her, the last time she’d let me. I put my arms around her and buried my face in her shoulder, which smelled like sweat and drugstore body wash and Lisette.
She hugged me back, for a brief moment like the little girl she had once been. She hugged me like Ben used to. Then she remembered herself and squirmed, moving her hands to push me away. “Mom,” she said again, this time in protest.
I let her go, and she walked toward Vail’s voice in the kitchen. I followed.
“Hi, Uncle Vail,” Lisette said when she saw him, her tone suddenly shy.
Vail gave her a brief up-and-down assessment, decided she was unharmed, and said, “Lisette.” He held out the phone receiver, stretching on its curly cord. “Tell your father you’re not dead.”
“Do I have to?” she asked.
“You do,” he replied, his voice gruff.
My daughter sighed, dropped her backpack, and took the phone from him.
There would be more arguments, more accusations.
Clay would shout at all of us, including Vail.
I didn’t know why Lisette had come all this way, or how she had done it.
We still didn’t know where Dodie was. We still had the problem of Sister, of Ben.
But for just one moment, all I thought was, Lisette is here.
Those three words. Just for one moment.
It would have to be enough.