Chapter 5
Streamers hung everywhere in the billiard room.
Balloons crowded the ceiling. A banner said, CONGRATULATIONS, KEME!
with little graduation caps at either end.
(I just remembered they’re called mortarboards.) We’d turned the fireplace into a temporary stage, complete with a podium that I had ingeniously made out of a Costco pack of toilet paper.
(Keme was not impressed.) We’d moved the chesterfield back and lined up the chairs from the servants’ dining room, and “Pomp and Circumstance” was playing on Bobby’s Bluetooth speaker, and Fox had taken the Xbox—power cord and all—and hidden it.
“OH MY GOD!” Millie exclaimed from the doorway. “IT’S PERFECT!”
“Is Keme ready?” I asked.
With an enthusiastic nod, Millie said, “HE’S SO EXCITED!”
“No, I’m not” floated in from the hall.
“Bobby?” I asked.
“Ready,” he said, holding up his phone.
“Fox?”
They’d somehow managed to put together an old-fashioned aviator’s ensemble, and now they flung one end of their scarf dramatically over their shoulder.
In their other hand, they held a recorder—the musical instrument kind, like you learn how to play in elementary school. “I was born for this moment.”
“Millie?”
“THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER!”
I worked my jaw, trying to check my eardrums. And then I said, “Indira?”
Nothing.
A quick scan of the room showed me that we were down a person.
“Anybody know where Indira is?”
Bobby was tapping something out on his phone again.
Fox, lips pursed, was practicing silently on the recorder—they’d insisted on performing the national anthem.
Millie had disappeared into the hallway, but I heard the phrase “SO CUTE” loud enough to bring down a belfry. (That’s an expression, right?)
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll do it. Just like I’ve done everything.”
“You didn’t pick up the balloons,” Fox lifted their mouth from the recorder long enough to say. “Bobby did.”
“I meant—”
“And Millie put up the decorations.”
“Yes, but I—”
“And Keme and I moved the furniture in spite of my bad back.”
“Your back is fine,” I snapped. “You challenged Keme to a somersault race the other day. And I came up with the ideas! That’s the real work!”
“Playing the martyr,” Fox said, raising the recorder again. “What an attractive look.”
I stalked out of the room.
A flurry of movement and Millie’s breathless “Dash!” made me walk faster and put my hand up.
“I didn’t see anything,” I said. (I had practice by this point; the two of them had been dating for months.) “Although as a reminder, public spaces, etc., etc.”
“You almost saw Keme,” Millie said—and she was standing in front of the door to the den, arms spread like I might try to charge past her. “You know it’s bad luck!”
Was it? I’d thought that was only for weddings, but at this point, I honestly had no idea.
I found Indira in the kitchen. She had the water running in the sink, and her back was to me as she stared out the window. She wasn’t moving.
I stopped. Waited.
After a while, I reached past her and shut the water off.
Indira shook her head, trying to smile, and pressed a tissue under each eye. “I’m sorry,” she said. The words wanted to be bright, but they came out thick and labored. A few seconds later, she added, “This is so silly.”
I put my arm around her, and to my surprise, Indira turned in, so that the movement became a hug.
It’s hard, when you have another person in your arms, not to be aware in a very immediate way how fragile we all are. How easily everything breaks.
“I’m fine,” Indira said, and she stepped back, wiping her eyes. “I’m fine. This is ridiculous.”
“It’s not ridiculous,” I said. “You love him. For heaven’s sake, Indira, you practically raised him.”
She gave a smile and an automatic shake of her head.
“Yes,” I said. “You did.”
Her fingers tightened around the tissue, and she looked out the window again. On the bluffs, the hemlocks grew thick and tangled, and beyond them, sunlight winked on the deep blue of water.
“Do you know how we met?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“It was outside the Keel Haul. I’d just come out, and he was passing on the sidewalk, and he threw a gum wrapper on the ground. I told him to pick it up.”
I winced.
“Nicely, of course,” Indira said with a laugh.
“I’m sure he loved that.”
“He stared at me. You know the look.”
I did, as a matter of fact, know the look. The look showed up in some of my more bone-melting nightmares.
“By that point, I’d been living here for almost a year. I’d heard about this wild boy, the one who ran around town, the one everyone was slightly afraid of. And I thought, I’m too old for this kind of nonsense. So, I told him again.”
Even though I knew how things had eventually worked out, I couldn’t help imagining a particularly gory ending to this story. “What happened?”
“He picked it up,” Indira said. “And I told him I’d give him five dollars to help me load the groceries in Vivienne’s car.
He threw the gum wrapper in the trash, and he carried the groceries.
My God, Dash, he was such a pitiful thing.
He was skin and bones in ratty old clothes.
He hadn’t washed his hair—he had grass in it, as a matter of fact, because he’d been sleeping outside, although I didn’t know that until later.
And that tiny, angry face. He was so angry.
” She shook her head. “Vivienne didn’t want anything to do with him.
She always liked things nice and neat. And I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like something inside me…
opened. Something I’d been holding shut.
Holding with both hands. I told him I wanted him to come to Hemlock House and do some chores, and I’d pay him.
And he did. And I made him clean up afterward, and I gave him some clothes while I washed his, and he ate a full meal.
And I cried that night like I hadn’t cried in years. ”
The shadow of a bird flowed like water across the lawn. And then it was gone.
“He’s lucky he met you,” I said.
“Is he?” Indira seemed to turn the question around in her head. “I think I’m very lucky to have met him.” She gave her eyes a final dab with the tissues and said, “All right. I promise I’m perfectly back to normal. Here we go.”
And with that, she strode out of the kitchen.
We were sitting in our seats. Bobby was at the podium. “Pomp and Circumstance” was still playing on repeat in the background.
“Friends and family,” Bobby said. “Please rise for the class of 2019.”
We stood. Fox clutched their recorder. Millie wiped her eyes.
Keme appeared in the doorway. The black gown was a little too big, and it swallowed him. The mortar board was too small. He held himself with that familiar blend of wariness and belligerence that I’d noticed from the very beginning—like he suspected a trap.
Indira’s hand found mine.
I cupped my free hand around my mouth and cheered. Millie clapped. Fox gave a celebratory toot on the recorder.
For a moment, there was no trap. No savage world. Nothing to fear. And my feral wolf child beamed with happiness.