24. Lucy
LUCY
Lucy started packing at five in the morning, and she only took what she had paid for herself. It was a stupid rule and she knew it, but she kept to it anyway.
Some of it took deciding. Two of the towels on the rail belonged to the house and the third was hers.
All three were white, but she knew hers by the fraying along one end.
She packed that one and left the other two.
The reading lamp stayed on the table and the paperbacks came off the shelf.
She left the good pans and took the small dented one she’d brought. She packed three boxes before six.
Wednesday, she had picked Grace up at three.
Thursday, she worked the whole day, drop-off to bedtime.
Two dinners, two homework sheets, and one morning on the coastal road with Grace counting up how many school days were left before summer.
Grace got it wrong twice, and Lucy let her keep at it until she had it.
She packed the clothes loose, rolling everything but the two good shirts.
She laid the shoes along one edge with the toes turned out and folded the coat off the hook over the top with the sleeves tucked under.
Books at the bottom of the next box, heavy end down.
She wrapped the mug in a sweater, since she had nothing else in the cottage to pack it in.
The fifth was the box labeled KITCHEN on the flap. The cardboard had been folded and unfolded so many times it had gone soft along the crease.
That left the top of the dresser. She sorted the random items as she went: a hair tie, two receipts, the plastic comb she had bought at the pharmacy in town in February and used on Grace's hair every morning since. She dropped it in the box, then fished it out again and slid it into her coat.
Then the bed. She stripped it, folded the sheets in half and in half again, and stacked them on the mattress with the pillowcase on top.
The throw she laid across the bottom the way it had been on her first afternoon here, when the place had looked like a hotel suite nobody had checked into.
It took her less than three minutes from start to finish.
She checked the room once more, opening drawers she had already emptied and running her palm along the back of the closet shelf. Under the bed she found a sock, a pen, and Grace's blue hair elastic.
Then she put the last box on the couch and taped it, then carried it over to the wall with the others. She stayed there a second with the tape in her hand. Then she set it down, washed her face at the sink, and laced her shoes.
Lucy came in from the courtyard. Bettina had the range lit and the back door wedged. The radio was on the shelf, softly playing, and she reached over and shut it off before she said anything.
"Ms. Cole said you're supposed to leave Grace with me this morning," Bettina said. "I'm running her over at ten past."
"Is she back tonight?"
"She's at the office until this evening. That's all I was told."
"Thank you."
Bettina set the flour bin down on the marble and returned to what she was doing.
Upstairs, Lucy saw Grace's door was open a hand's width.
She was in her uniform on the near corner of the bed, one sock on and the other in her fist. The whale book lay open and face down on the covers beside her, which meant she had gone under the bed for it in the night and hadn't said so.
"Can I come in?"
"Yes," Grace said.
Lucy came in and knelt down on the rug by the bed. From there, Grace's face was level with hers.
"I have to tell you something before school."
Grace waited.
"I'm leaving today. Everything of mine is packed already, and I'm going this morning after you've gone."
For a second, Grace didn’t move at all. Then she brought one knee onto the mattress and wrapped both arms around it and set her chin on top. She answered in the flat polite voice she used at the dinner table. "Okay."
Lucy wanted her to cry. She wanted Grace to make a scene—shouting, throwing the sock across the room, anything at all with heat in it. What she got instead was a stoic seven-year-old, who was sitting up straight and waiting.
"Bettina's taking you this morning, and your reading folder's in your bag already."
"Okay. Are you picking me up?"
"No."
"Who is?"
"I don't know yet. Somebody will be there."
Grace worked the loose sock into a ball in her hand and let it come open again.
"Is it because of the lady with the bag?"
"No."
"She talked to me at school. She asked me who puts me to bed."
"I know she did." Lucy laid both palms on the covers, out where Grace could see them. "You didn't do anything. Not to her and not to anybody in this house."
"Then why are you going?"
"That part's between me and your aunt."
Grace turned her foot over and looked at the sole of her sock. "Did she make you?"
"That part's between me and your aunt," Lucy repeated.
"Okay. Does Aunt Carrington know you’re leaving?"
"Yes. She knows."
"Is she coming home to say goodbye?"
"She's at the office today." Lucy left her hands where they were. "That's why I’m telling you now instead of someone else telling you later."
Grace looked at the window for a while.
Lucy continued. "At three, someone else who works here will pick you up. If you don’t see someone familiar, I want you to go back inside and wait in the office with Ms. Ford. Don't wait on the sidewalk. Then you’ll have dinner, then somebody will read to you."
"Two pages?"
"Yes." Lucy sat back on her heels. "Turn around and let me do your hair."
Grace slid off the bed and sat down on the rug in front of her with her back turned.
She pulled the sock on while she was down there and got it straight across the toe on the second try.
Lucy took the comb out of her coat, started at the ends and worked up, holding the hair above the tangle so it wouldn't pull at the roots.
"Are you coming on the aquarium field trip in June?" Grace asked.
"No."
"Kayla's mom is coming."
"I remember."
"Is Aunt Carrington going to come?"
"You'd have to ask her," Lucy said. "She can move things around when she wants to."
"Okay."
Lucy stopped with the braid strands crossed over one another in her hands and held them there and counted to four. Grace sat still and didn't turn around. Then Lucy continued, over and under, right hand and then left, down past her collar.
"Are you ever coming back?" Grace asked.
"I don't know."
Grace's head stayed exactly where it was under her hands. "You could say yes. Everyone else does."
"I could. But I won’t lie to you and promise something I don’t know. " Lucy worked it down to the end, fixed the blue elastic on, and turned the last twist under with her thumb.
Grace reached up and ran her hand down the braid to the bottom of it and let go. “Thank you.”
Lucy stood. Her knees had fallen asleep under her, and she leaned a hand on the mattress until the feeling came into them again. Grace got up and took the gray rabbit off the pillow by the middle and held him out at arm's length toward her.
Lucy took him. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," Grace said.
Lucy held the rabbit against her chest while Grace worked her arms into her cardigan and buttoned it up wrong before redoing them. Then Grace stopped with one button still open, went to the bed and moved the whale book off the covers to under her pillow.
Grace ate half a bowl of cereal, and Bettina stood by the door with the car keys in hand and her coat on, patiently waiting. At ten past eight, Grace hoisted the bag on her shoulder and walked out over the stones.
She stopped and turned around. "Bye, Lucy."
"Bye, Grace."
She climbed in. Bettina took her around the fountain and down through the hedge and through the wrought-iron gates. Lucy watched until they disappeared from view, then started walking along the path toward the cottage.
Lucy walked each box out one at a time and stacked them two boxes high by the fountain.
It took her twelve trips in total, and by the fourth, her arms had started shaking.
It was the box with all her books. She waited it out in the courtyard with the box pressed against her hip, then carried it over and set it down with the rest.
She walked in the kitchen and wrote a note on the pad next to the house phone. Make sure her closet clicks shut or she won’t sleep. Read her two pages from a book. Her nightlight automatically clicks off at four, so if she wakes up later from a nightmare, she might not call out.
Lucy paused and read through the note, then added another line: She won’t eat in front of people, so leave the plate in front of her and do something else. She’ll finish her food then.
She tore the page out along the perforation, folded it in half, and stood it up like a triangle against the blue binder with the meal plans on the counter. She took the cottage key off her key ring and placed it down beside the note.
Lucy waited outside, sitting on the rim of the fountain with Grace’s gray rabbit in her lap. She was absentmindedly stroking its ears. At nine exactly, the car pulled up and stopped short of her boxes. The driver was a woman of about sixty in a fleece with the company name across the chest.
She got out, looked at the six boxes, and then up at the house behind them. "Is that everything?"
"That's it."
The driver loaded four into the trunk and laid the other two across the back seat, and Lucy climbed in beside them with her bag on her knees. When they drove around the fountain and down between the hedges, Lucy turned in her seat to take a final look at the house as the gates closed behind her.