The Companion

by Katie Alender

  “She really cried? At your wedding?”

  Laura smiled wryly. “Actually, she sobbed. Grandmother Copeland had a flair for the dramatic.”

  “Could you have just kept your last name?”

  She laughed merrily. Another joke, how delightful! I could practically hear her saying. “Oh no,” she said. “That kind of thing isn’t done in my family. Anyway, it’s okay. ‘The Suttons of Copeland Hall’ sounds perfectly fine to me.”

  My first thought was, You are your family, can’t you do what you want?

  But then I decided to hold my tongue. Who was I to say that if I was faced with a decision, knowing my parents would want me to do something a certain way, that I wouldn’t do it their way? In fact, I probably would. Look at how committed I was to my tooth-brushing routine.

  “So when my first child was a girl—Agatha—I was a little sad, but then I thought . . . what matters isn’t the name, is it? It’s a person’s substance.”

  “So Agatha’s the one who’s going to be in charge someday?” I asked.

  I had assumed from the flow of the conversation that Laura was comfortable with the direction it had taken. But now she clammed up.

  “I—I had hoped,” she said, her tone cooling. “But . . . I don’t know. It’s not worth discussing.”

  Mortified, I doubled my focus on our work. I picked up an earwig (a gross little bug with pincers coming out of its face) and tossed it into the water. Then I made a critical mistake—I looked into the bucket.

  The earwig struggled in the soapy water, its tiny body flailing as it disappeared out of sight. Laura had told me that the soap killed them quickly . . . but this didn’t look quick.

  Nausea rocked my body like a shock wave.

  “Margot?” Laura asked.

  I scooted frantically away from the bucket, away from the dozens of innocent beings I’d heartlessly sent to dark, watery deaths. Somehow I’d failed to make the connection earlier, but now all I could think of was my whole family dying the same way.

  “Margot,” Laura said, a little worried. “You’re flushed.”

  I couldn’t answer. If I opened my mouth, I would throw up all over the pumpkins. Instead, I got to my feet and backed even farther away.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked. “Is it too hot for you, or—”

  She glanced in the bucket and the realization dawned on her.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh, dear.”

  I heard movement behind me, and then I heard her walking away, and the splash of water as she dumped the bucket somewhere. Then she came back and stood behind me. I didn’t move. I was a statue made of shattered glass.

  “Margot,” she said. “I’m here.”

  I didn’t answer. I was afraid to move for fear I’d fall apart. I didn’t want to cry. Not here, in the daylight, in the bright, exposed space of the garden.

  Laura hesitated, as if she had more to say. Then, finally, she put her hand on my back. “The hard things are always going to be right there,” she said. “Your mind is always going to be looking for reasons to bring them to the surface. Sometimes you can forget them for a little while, but at the strangest times, you’ll see something—or hear a song, or . . .”

  She trailed off, and I expected her to bounce back with some bland greeting-card saying, like, But you have to look on the bright side and focus on the things going right for you!

  Only she didn’t. She just left her words hanging in the air, left me with the sense that she, too, knew a little bit about the kind of loss that ripped your heart out, tied it in a knot, and then shoved it back inside your chest.

  She patted me on the shoulder and walked away to clean the tools, and after a minute or two, I went and joined her.

  But she didn’t try to talk any more about it, not then and not later, especially not in front of John.

  The days plodded on peacefully, except for the awareness hanging over me at all times that my family had died terrible, agonizing deaths and for some reason I had not, and I was just going to have to suck it up and deal.

  But hey, you have to look on the bright side and focus on the things going right for you, yes?

  All in all, I was adjusting to being a resident of Copeland Hall. John seemed to come and go according to some secret lawyer schedule, but when he was home, he was friendly and courteous. I liked Laura a lot—she was almost like a friend, but with a reassuring air of authoritative momness. Her mysterious dark moments appealed to me and made me feel less alone.

  And Agatha—we were getting used to each other. She still knocked Blue Bunny flat on his face every chance she got, but that wasn’t going to scare me away.

  Even the clothes were all right. They fit so well that nobody ever mentioned buying me something else, and that was okay. You moved differently in the structured, formal styles. You didn’t flop over on the furniture; you sat up straight. It changed the way you walked, stood, and spoke. My table manners magically improved, and my hair was always brushed. What’s more, it changed my thoughts and emotions. Everything seemed steadier, more manageable. Like the new persona was a suit of armor holding me together.

  In a small way, I was becoming almost like one of them—not quite a Sutton, but no longer an alien presence in the house.

  Was it amazing to be the servant-orphan of the exalted Sutton family of Copeland Hall? No. But was it as bad as being the end-of-the-hall freak of Palmer House? Or being committed to the state institution? No. If I couldn’t have my old life, I would make this one work.

  And something about the place—the routine, the silence, the solemn sense of history—calmed me in an unexpected way: I hadn’t had a nightmare since I moved in. Not a single one.

  CHAPTER

  11

  AFTER LUNCH ONE rainy Friday, Laura came to the door of my room. I was trying very hard to make myself enjoy Tess of the d’Urbervilles, but my eyes kept slipping shut.

  “Margot, are you awake?” Laura asked, and I put the book aside and sat up. “Today is Agatha’s appointment with Dr. Reed.”

  A mild flash of panic hit me: She was going to try to take me to the doctor, too. My potential “issues” seemed always to be on the periphery of her thoughts. Not a day went by when she didn’t ask how I was doing, and the question always carried the lightest suggestion that she suspected the answer would be bad news. Maybe that was the natural consequence of having a daughter with a random, serious illness. But I still found it slightly aggravating.

  I don’t want to see a doctor, I whined in my head. I was fine, really, and I kept telling her that. She just didn’t seem willing to let it go.

  Then she went on, frowning a little. “I would invite you, but I’m afraid today isn’t a good day for it. Agatha seems a bit irritable. Also, I think you’d be bored. You might as well be comfortable here rather than sitting in a waiting room.”

  Oh. So it wasn’t about me. In which case, the whiny voice in my head began to complain about being left behind. After being confined to the house and garden for a few solid weeks, a trip to town sounded as exciting as a mission to the moon. Even at Palmer House we got to take trips to the mall or the grocery store.

  I tried not to let my displeasure show. Then, since we were already having an uncomfortable conversation, I took a chance. “Any news on the Wi-Fi password?”

  She paused, and I prepared myself for yet another apology and overly detailed explanation for how it had slipped her mind because she had been negotiating with the roofers all morning, or she wasn’t really sure who to call because John’s office was full of paperwork that needed to be dealt with, and so on and so on. I believed her—I knew how busy she was—and I tried not to resent the fact that she had more going on in her life than just looking after me. But I did really want internet access. At least if I went into town with them, I could get a signal on my phone. I would happily sit in the car if it m
eant spending a few minutes reading about the world (and, let’s be real, celebrity gossip).

  “John and I had a talk about this last night. I was going to bring it up in the garden earlier, but we didn’t really get a chance.” She glanced away, leaving an unspoken criticism hanging in the air: my weepy episode while trimming back the lavender that morning must have sidetracked her plans. “Margot . . . we don’t believe in giving children unlimited access to the internet.”

  “Oh, I don’t need unlimited access,” I said.

  I guess she’d expected resistance, and my spontaneous answer caught her off guard. She pursed her lips. “I mean . . . unsupervised access.”

  “So I get no access?” I cringed at the bratty sound of my voice. Bad orphan.

  “No, no,” she said. “We just don’t want you to be glued to a phone or computer all the time. Numbing your synapses with electronic stimuli is just about the worst thing that can happen in terms of your mental, emotional, and intellectual maturation. You’re young, and your brain is still in a crucial developmental stage.”

  Even though she hadn’t said it, I got the feeling she meant my defective brain in particular. I felt too stung to answer. Embarrassed, even. For weeks, I’d believed her when she said she was trying to find the password. And all that time, she’d been bluffing. Probably relieved that I was too dumb to question her.

  “Do you actually have the internet at all?” I braced myself for a lie. I’d seen the little Wi-Fi signal on my phone—I just couldn’t access it.

  She cocked her head slightly. “Of course we do. There’s a computer in John’s office and one in mine. You can use those, if a need arises—like for school.”

  “But how—” I stopped myself. I’d been about to ask, How do I get in touch with my friends if I can’t even text? Then I remembered I didn’t have any friends. And living here, I had no way to make new ones.

  Laura, looking quite apologetic, leaned against the doorjamb. “I’m fully aware that we aren’t like most families. We’re living in a bit of a bubble, out here on our own. But it’s a very peaceful life. And with the books, and the garden, and all the history here . . . it’s a good life.”

  Maybe there was some shadow of skepticism on my face, because her smile grew firmer, more determined to convince me.

  “You’ll see. All the things you think we don’t have . . . it’s noise. Before long, you’ll understand.”

  I suddenly felt self-conscious under her gaze, as if she was seeing more than I wanted to show her. I turned my face away. I felt angry, but I didn’t want to be angry at Laura.

  “Margot, the world wants you to grab for every shiny object. But sometimes all you really need is time and space to be yourself.” Then she reached down and gently smoothed my hair, the way she did with Agatha. “So what I’d like you to do is stop asking about getting online. Our answer is no, and it will always be no.”

  Her voice was so silky and calm that it took a moment for the impact to land. And then I felt like I’d been slapped. Scolded like a child, for what—asking to have a minor connection with the world outside of Copeland Hall? Was that a crime?

  If she could tell I was seething, she didn’t let on. “You may not know who you are anymore, but we see the real you. And we want to help you find yourself again. Because we like you, Margot. We like you a lot.”

  She slipped away before I could answer, and then I sat there reeling from about eight hundred different emotions—shock, sadness, anger, humiliation, and also a splinter of resentment against myself—resentment for being angry at Laura, when part of me thought she might be right. And hoped she was. Might I find myself again? If I was quiet enough, if life moved slowly enough, could the real me emerge from the silence?

  Still, even if that were true . . . she’d been lying to me. I hated the word, and I tried to keep myself from thinking it, but I couldn’t suppress it because it was so obviously true. She’d lied to me in a strange, controlling way, when it would have been easy to tell me the truth.

  But that was just Laura, I thought in her defense. She was a strange and controlling person.

  Yes, she was, wasn’t she? She was old-fashioned, inflexible, moralistic, and demanding. And none of that had been an issue yet, because I was so eager to win her approval. The question that scared me a little was, what would she do when I finally felt at home enough to defy her? Surely that would happen one day.

  How would she react? Would she send me away? Or, by the time it happened, would I be so entrenched in life here that there would be no fallout? I’d seen her annoyed at Agatha, but she never punished her. You couldn’t punish someone who was so sick that she had no idea what she was even doing most of the time. And maybe you couldn’t punish an orphan, either.

  Barrett would be home soon, and then I could observe up close the way a normal teenager acted around Laura.

  If he even was normal. Laura loved to go on and on about his achievements at school: star of the lacrosse team, student government VP, honor roll . . . and how he had dated two different state senators’ daughters last year, when he was only in tenth grade. I’d heard enough about the extraordinary Barrett Sutton to make me wish he would stay away for the rest of the summer.

  * * *

  AS DISAPPOINTED AS I was about being left behind, it was surreally relaxing to have some time by myself. On the other hand, the pressure to make good use of these few, precious hours was immense, and almost paralyzing. Should I go search the pantry for junk food? Should I fire up one of the ancient TV sets and see if it got any trashy daytime TV?

  Or . . . should I see what else I could find out about Lily?

  No, Margot. Don’t you dare.

  Right. Obviously that was a terrible idea. If Laura wanted people wandering the green wing, she wouldn’t have locked the door.

  Without a clear idea of where I was going, I left the nursery.

  I let my hand rest on the banister, and as I did, I wondered how many people before me had touched the gleaming polished surface as they went up or down these stairs. How many of them had been important or famous? How many of them had secrets? How many had tragedies in their pasts—or futures? How many lived to be a hundred? How many died young?

  An unpleasant tingle spiraled down my spine as I imagined the stairs crowded with the ghosts of all those people. Because if there were such things as ghosts, wasn’t this where they would be—stuck in the space between spaces?

  No. That was foolish. Even if I believed in ghosts, which I didn’t, the last ones I’d be concerned with were rich strangers.

  I imagined my own family, waiting in the shadows of the foyer, their skin the color of molding bread, puffy and moist. The image was so vivid that I could almost smell the scent of stale canal water wafting up toward me.

  I stopped halfway down to catch my breath and reassure myself that this was just my crazy imagination. Obviously my family was not waiting for me in the foyer.

  But what if they were?

  I turned and went back upstairs.

  As my eyes swept across the deserted hallway (because now I was paranoid), I saw something I hadn’t noticed before: the second door on the right stood slightly open.

  Agatha’s real bedroom, where she lived before she became ill.

  I walked toward the door, thinking I would close it. That was all—just close it.

  Except I didn’t close it, did I?

  I went in.

  * * *

  A FEW STEPS past the door, I had to stop and stare. It was as if two galaxies had smashed together—Copeland Hall’s stately, historical style, and a teenage girl’s bedroom from a movie about how messy teenage girls are.

  Its fundamentals weren’t very different from the rest of the house: It was spacious, with high ceilings and tall windows. The floor was carpeted in plush pink, a shade too close to magenta to feel current, and the bed was a f
our-poster with a canopy of stiff, shiny fabric decorated with multicolored flowers. It exactly matched the skirt around the base of the bed and the drapes that hung grandly over the windows. There was also a matching armchair in the corner. The furniture was white wood, with little carvings tucked into the corners and crannies. The walls had lemon-yellow wallpaper in alternating lines of shiny and matte finish. And in the corner was an elaborate white vanity with a round stool that had a fluffy pink fur cushion.

  It was a room built for a princess.

  But no princess lived here—it looked more like the lair of a sloppy troll. Strewn, scattered, hung, and draped on all of its refined, feminine surfaces were clothes, bags, shoes, books, stuffed animals, papers, magazines, and even empty water bottles (the expensive glass kind, I couldn’t help noticing).

  I walked over to the vanity. There were so many photos tucked into its frame that half the mirror was blocked. I carefully pulled one out and inspected it.

  Even though I’d expected to see her face, I drew in a sharp breath.

  Agatha.

  She was nearly unrecognizable. Even in a still image, her spirit and life shone through. It was a photograph of her and a friend standing on the deck of what must have been a very nice boat. Agatha wore a red bikini with little bows on each hip. As a cover-up, she wore a loose white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted to match her bikini. Her hair, in a thick braid, lay casually over her shoulder like an accommodating pet snake, and under a smattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks and berry-colored lips, her face was perfectly tanned.

  She had one arm lazily slung over the shoulder of the girl next to her, who might as well have been wearing an invisibility cloak. No one could have taken the spotlight off Agatha. She was too pretty, too vivacious, too exciting. Too effortlessly cool and fun.

  A sick, heavy feeling filled my stomach as I slid the photo back into its spot. Then I looked at the pictures surrounding it—Agatha laughing in front of a giraffe at the zoo, Agatha staring into the distance with the Chicago skyline behind her, Agatha in a floaty white dress standing before an ivy-covered brick wall, Agatha and two other girls sitting in the bleachers of a stadium, bundled up in warm clothes with coffee cups in their gloved hands. The other people in the photos wore clothes as nice as hers, and their hairstyles and makeup were just as expert and expensive looking, but they all faded in comparison to the shining brilliance of Agatha’s beauty. She was like an angel surrounded by mere mortals.