Chapter III #5
Bernadette came out of the fitting room wearing acid-washed light denim jeans that somehow looked amazing on her and would have looked absolutely horrible on anyone else.
“Who are you texting? You look pained,” she said, turning around to check out her butt in the mirror.
“Evie.”
“Leave her be. She’ll come around. What do you think of these?”
“They’re perfect. Obviously.”
“Don’t be so fatalistic, Winnie,” she said, throwing a pair of wool sailor pants at me. “And try these on.”
Bernie made me wear the sailor pants out of the store, despite my concerns over when they might have last been washed.
But she had guessed my size perfectly, and they looked and felt great.
She even insisted on paying for them, so she could borrow them whenever she wanted (although she was a solid three inches taller than me and they wouldn’t have fit right).
When we got back to Aunt Bea’s, both she and my mom made a big fuss over them.
“Honey, these are cute,” Mom said. I thought she was mostly just happy I was wearing something other than jeans.
“Stick with me, kid,” Aunt Bea said. “Vermont has better vintage.”
“Than New York?” Mom retorted. “You’re out of your gourd, Bea.”
“Not better vintage,” Bernadette offered. “But definitely cheaper vintage. These pants would have been four times the price in the city.”
“Well, they look great, honey,” Mom said.
Bernie dumped her own tote bag on the floor to show off her goods, and I beelined for a cheese plate set up on the kitchen table.
My stomach was rumbling as I smeared Brie on a cracker and ate it in one bite.
Bernadette and I had been gone most of the day and it only just occurred to me that we’d forgotten to eat lunch.
“Salad and cheese plate,” Aunt Bea said, putting an enormous serving bowl of salad on the table, along with four bowls and forks. “How long are you staying, anyway, Sissy?”
“Oh, we’ll drive home Sunday, I think,” Mom said.
“Perfect,” Aunt Bea said. “We’ll go for a big hike tomorrow. Pack a picnic.”
“I didn’t bring hiking boots,” I said.
“Aunt Bea has a closet full of hiking boots,” Bernie offered.
“It’s true, I do,” Aunt Bea said, sort of proudly.
“What about tonight?” Bernie asked. “We should play a game or something.”
“Game sounds great,” Mom said.
I served myself some salad and took a seat at the table as my phone buzzed. I pulled it out of my pocket and checked it eagerly—it was Clara, not Evelyn.
Can I borrow that Dior lipstick you got for your birthday and never wear
No. How mad is Evelyn now?
She has taken up smoking and used her cigarettes to burn your face out of every photo in the house
How’s the painting coming?
It’s coming. I still don’t know what it is, but when I look at it, I get a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach
Oh that’s just great
In the interest of full disclosure, I have already borrowed your lipstick and it looks very good on me, probably better than it looks on you
Jerk
I put my phone on the table and bit my bottom lip.
Now I had a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I made myself another cheese and cracker and tried to ignore what the pit was telling me—that something was coming, that something was here.
We played Aunt Bea’s favorite game—Trivial Pursuit—which we were all hopelessly terrible at (including Aunt Bea).
Mom opened a bottle of wine without asking and it turned out to be some incredibly expensive bottle Aunt Bea had been saving for a special occasion (“Although, I guess,” she announced amiably, “what’s a more special occasion than simply being alive and with people you love”), and Bernadette made us all ice cream sundaes at ten o’clock.
We enjoyed short-lived sugar highs and then their inevitable crash, and everyone headed to bed by eleven.
I’d just settled under the comforter when I realized I forgot water.
Groaning, I dragged myself up again and plodded downstairs to get some.
Halfway down the stairs, I paused.
Aunt Esme was back, poised in her usual spot by the fire, playing with her dolls.
Despite no lamps being on, the living room was bathed in a warm, comfortable glow.
Esme herself was mostly transparent, and her eyes were glowing in a sort of creepy way.
She looked up at me and smiled, and that was sort of creepy, too.
“Play with me?” she said, which is exactly what creepy little ghost girls say in movies before they drag you down to Hell. But I knew Esme didn’t mean anything by it, and I was happy to oblige, folding myself into a cross-legged seat in front of her.
“It’s nice to see you again,” I said.
Esme shrugged and kept playing. When she asked you to play with her, this is what she meant: you sat and watched and were preferably quiet and didn’t contribute much, while she moved her dolls around.
She really just wanted a companion, someone to sit with her.
She was more distinct than all of the ghosts I ran into in Manhattan, but I still knew it wasn’t really Esme.
This wasn’t how she was when she was alive, this wasn’t the full, complete Esme, but a pale copy of her, an imprint left on the earth. A ghost.
But Henry …
Henry was different.
Henry had always been different.
In the right light, in the right moment, from the right angle …
It was impossible to tell him apart from a real boy.
And that was why Evelyn had fallen in love with him.
How could you not fall in love with a sweet, kind, handsome undead boy who lived in your bedroom and knocked at your closet door when he wanted to come out and court you?
How could you not love Henry? We all loved Henry. But Evelyn had just taken it too far.
“She can’t stay in that house forever,” I said aloud now, to Esme, who actually cocked her head a little, like she was interested in the drama. “He’ll ruin her life. He’ll stop her life. I can’t let that happen, right?”
“Who are you talking about?” Esme asked, pausing her game, looking up at me properly now.
“Evelyn.”
“I like Evelyn,” Esme said. “Our names start with the same letter.”
“She’s just … I’m worried she’s making a terrible mistake.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“Throwing her life away. For a…” I trailed off, not wanting to hurt Esme’s feelings.
She let her dolls drop to the floor, then looked around her, as if seeing the living room properly for the first time. When she looked back at me, her eyes were bright. “I could see them, too, you know. Back when I wasn’t dead.”
A cold prickled down the center of my spine. “You mean you could see…”
“So it’s not just you,” she continued. “If you were thinking it was just you.”
“You could see … ghosts?”
She nodded and picked up her dolls again. “You think you’re the only one, but you’re not.”
“Did your sisters know?”
“No. It was just for me.” Esme bopped her dolls up and down gently on the carpet in front of her.
“What do I do?” I asked her. Seeking advice from a six-year-old ghost might have been a low point for me, but I did my best to put that thought out of my head.
“What do you want to do?” Esme asked. She was barely paying attention now, fully invested in whatever tableau her dolls were currently involved in.
“I want to help her,” I said.
“You should help her,” Esme said with authority. “My sisters and I always help each other.”
“I should help her,” I repeated.
“Definitely.”
To help her, I’d have to make her stop. Stop knocking. Stop loving him. Stop all of this.
But how could I make Evelyn do anything?
I sat and watched Esme for a few more minutes, then got up and got a glass of water. I drank it all at the kitchen sink, suddenly so, so thirsty. I filled it up again and drank a second glass.
My throat felt tight; my head ached. I couldn’t stop thinking about Henry. I couldn’t stop thinking about Evelyn.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what Esme had said. You should help her.
In my pocket, I felt my phone buzz. I hadn’t even realized I’d brought it down with me. I pulled it out and looked at the screen—finally, finally, a text from Evelyn:
I’m not mad at all. See you soon.
I didn’t text her back.
I didn’t know what I would have said.
I stared at her text until the screen went black.
We drove back to New York on Sunday morning, after a tearful goodbye with Aunt Bea and a lot of croissants for the road. Mom and I got to the car first (Bernie’s tearful goodbye was lasting a little longer), so I slid into the front seat.
“You’re a good sister,” Mom said once our doors were closed.
“I didn’t really do anything.”
“That’s not true at all.” She reached over and squeezed my hand. “Status report?”
“Evelyn isn’t really speaking to me. Clara is Clara.”
“And you?”
“Oh. I’m fine,” I said. “I’m always fine.”
We got back to New York around five, taking our time, stopping for lunch in Saratoga Springs, a little town Upstate. It was already getting dark when we pulled into the parking garage and walked the block to home, and we were all quiet, for, I thought, entirely different reasons.
Our brownstone was dark and empty when we let ourselves in the front door.
Bernadette went to take a shower, Mom went into the kitchen, and I went to the fourth floor and barged right into Evelyn’s bedroom.
She wasn’t there. Nobody else was home, just the three of us, fresh from Vermont.
But Henry was there. I could smell the faint fragrance of jasmine, and something darker on the air.
And that was when I realized I hadn’t really been looking for my sister at all. I’d been looking for Henry.