The Companion

by Katie Alender

  “But you must be kind,” Laura was saying. “She’s very nice, and her father was a classmate of your father’s from law school—Anthony Radegan.”

  “Anthony who?” Barrett said. “Never heard of him.”

  I felt a surge of anger. I was tempted to open the door and say, Keep my father’s name out of your mouth.

  “He saved my life,” John said. “I almost drowned, and he pulled me from the pool.”

  “What? You never mentioned that,” Barrett said.

  “It’s never come up,” Laura said. “We don’t tell you everything, Barrett.”

  He snorted. “I guess not.”

  “Barrett,” she said sharply. “Maintain a respectful tone, please.”

  If Laura had spoken to me with that note of pitiless authority, I would have run away and hidden under the bed. I waited to see how Barrett would respond.

  There was a pause. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said, much more quietly. “But I don’t understand—doesn’t she have any other family?”

  My hands went clammy and my stomach turned cold.

  “No, in fact, she doesn’t,” John said. “There was a great-aunt on her mother’s side, but she passed away several years ago. The grandparents are all dead.”

  “Not a single friend?” Barrett asked.

  “She was staying with friends . . .” Laura said carefully. “But it didn’t work out. She had nightmares. It disturbed the children.”

  What a polite way to say that my nightly screaming sent both of Becca’s younger siblings to psychotherapy.

  “Well, that sounds great,” Barrett said, and I could hear the eye roll in his voice. “Bring her here and let her disturb us.”

  My back was feeling sore from the hunched position I had assumed. I straightened up and bumped into the bookshelf, knocking down a stack of books that had been hastily piled on the edge of the shelf. I hurriedly gathered them and returned them to their pile while straining to hear what was being said.

  “It hasn’t been an issue,” Laura said firmly. “She’s doing very well here. We all like her.”

  I felt a swell of affection for Laura. She liked me. She wouldn’t let him force me out onto the streets.

  “But it doesn’t make sense,” Barrett said. “Who is she? Was her father even respectable? So he saved your life, Dad, that’s great, but couldn’t—couldn’t you just pay to send her to boarding school or something?”

  “Barrett,” John said, sounding appalled. “I didn’t realize we had raised a snob. Respectable? Her father was a good man.”

  “Listen, darling,” Laura said, sweetly conciliatory. “When your father proposed it to me, I thought it was an awful idea. The last thing I wanted was a stranger here, in our family’s home—with Agatha being as fragile as she is.”

  Wait. Laura hadn’t wanted me? I felt like I’d been sucker punched, right under the rib cage.

  “Our family’s home?” John repeated, with some scorn. “You two sound like you’re living in a soap opera. This is a house. A large house. We have the ability and resources to help a girl who needs help, and we’re going to do it. For heaven’s sake, Laura, how many bedrooms are required to sit empty to preserve the precious Copeland reputation?”

  “John, that’s not fair,” Laura said.

  “Dad, you don’t get what I’m saying,” Barrett said. “I’m saying—it’s enough work, isn’t it? With Agatha. And now there’s this other person to deal with, and it’s got to be hard on you guys. Especially Mom.”

  “Your mother and Margot get along very well,” said John. “In fact, I think it’s doing them both a lot of good. As far as I’m concerned, the discussion is closed.”

  His heavy footsteps walked out of the room. I hurriedly crouched down so I was hidden from view.

  There was a long pause from the other room.

  “Why is Dad so attached to some guy he knew twenty years ago?”

  Laura sighed. “You know your father.”

  “Yeah,” Barrett said.

  “But—it’s more than that. The specialists were starting to make it sound like Agatha was going to need to be transferred to a home.”

  “A home?” he repeated. “She has a home.”

  “Precisely what I said,” Laura said. “But your father believed them. And he was starting to make arrangements to have her sent away. Then, it just so happened that we learned of Margot’s existence. And he agreed that if she were to come and keep Agatha company, we could keep your sister at home.”

  “Oh,” Barrett said. “So . . .”

  “So be nice to her, please,” Laura said. “Agatha’s place here may depend on it.”

  I felt almost as if I was choking—as if part of my throat was closing up. I was being used. I was just a tool Laura was using to protect Agatha.

  “You know,” Laura said, “for the first week, I didn’t know what to think. But she really is a lovely girl.”

  There was a long silence. Then Barrett spoke again. “Well,” he said, “if you like her . . .”

  “I do,” Laura said. “She’s quite helpful with your sister. Besides, there’s something pleasant about having a helper around the house.”

  “You mean like a servant?” He laughed. “Don’t let Dad hear you talk like that.”

  “Oh, no, not like that,” she protested.

  “A pet,” he suggested. “Your very own pet orphan.”

  His tone was teasing, and she laughed. Meanwhile, I felt completely flattened. I had thought I was one of the actors in Laura’s little show, but it turned out I was a prop.

  I heard a long sigh. “You do seem . . . happier,” Barrett admitted.

  “Happier?” Laura repeated. “She’s a needy child, Barrett, not family. Why should she make me happier? Now please go change for dinner—you look like a deckhand.”

  They left the room and I sat in a ball on the floor, listening to the silence and trying to quell the ache in my heart. Laura, who had been my friend, now seemed like a stranger to me. Even John’s kind impulse to take me in had been motivated by convenience. And now that Barrett was home, their actual child, I felt my displacement as harshly as if they’d moved my belongings to the garden shed.

  I decided to count to a hundred before moving, just in case, and I rested my head on my knees and closed my eyes. But just as I reached seventy, disaster struck.

  “Margot? Is that you?”

  John stood in the doorway, looking down at me. I guess I hadn’t realized how tall he was, that he would easily see me tucked around the corner of the green chairs.

  “Oh,” I said, looking up. “Yes. I just came down to get a book.”

  Blindly, I reached for the first book I could find—which happened to be six inches from my feet, a leftover from the stack I’d knocked to the floor.

  John stared as if he didn’t believe me, and I could see in the surprised wrinkle of his forehead and the embarrassed pink of his cheeks that he was wondering how long I’d been there and what I had heard.

  “Can I escort you in to dinner?” he asked.

  I got to my feet and held the book in front of me like a shield. “No, thank you,” I said. “Actually, I feel kind of sick. I came down to excuse myself and get a book. If you don’t think Laura will mind, I’ll skip dinner and go to bed.”

  He glanced over at the door to my left, mentally calculating its soundproofing capacity. “Of course she won’t mind,” he said at last. “If you like, we can send something up for you.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m really not hungry.”

  “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well,” he said, too kindly. “Feel better.”

  He continued down the hall, and I rushed toward the stairs, desperate to avoid encountering anyone else.

  * * *

  I CLOSED MY bedroom door, dropped the random book on the pile
on my nightstand without looking at it, and changed into a pair of pajamas. Then I crawled into bed and covered my face with the blanket, breathing in the hot, stuffy air like it was my punishment for existing.

  Everything was ruined. My shaky peace was destroyed by the knowledge that Laura saw me as little more than a servant. Why couldn’t she have just treated me with cold disinterest instead of making me think we were friends? Instead of pretending she cared about me? And worse was the fact that Barrett knew how Laura felt. Any time we were together, he would be looking at me and thinking, She’s a needy child.

  My eyelids grew heavy and my vision began to swim. It was probably too early to go to sleep, but I was exhausted. So when my eyes closed, I let them.

  I guess it was only natural, after such emotional turmoil, that my brain would take that darkness and use it to create the first nightmare I’d had in weeks. I’d forgotten that the things that seemed horrible in the light of day became monsters when I let my guard down.

  And that was how I found myself sinking into the dark layers of a dream world that was as black as charcoal, where I was trapped in a windowless, doorless room between walls that seemed to move closer and farther away from me at random. A person stood in the corner with a veil over her face and hair, and as I walked closer, she hunched down, cowering away from me.

  “Agatha?” I asked.

  There was no answer, and it dawned on me that this wasn’t Agatha at all. It was someone else, someone I wasn’t sure I wanted to be locked alone in a dark room with. So I stopped and looked for a way out, and while I was facing away, a hand came to rest on my shoulder. I could see the fingers, grayish and lined with dirt, with bulging knuckles and shredded fingernails.

  “I’m here,” whispered a soft voice. “I’m always here.”

  In the dream I held my breath and tried not to move, hoping this would make her leave me alone.

  “Margot,” the voice said more insistently. And the hand clamped onto my shoulder. “Margot.”

  But I couldn’t look, because if I looked I would see her face, and I didn’t want to see her face.

  “Margot?”

  With a gasp, I opened my eyes and found myself staring up at Laura, who was watching me with concern.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. She reached her hand down as if to press it on my forehead, and I jerked away.

  I started to catch my breath.

  “Was it a nightmare?” she asked. “You look pale.”

  I nodded, my eyes darting around the room, taking stock of reality. More than once I’d thought I had awakened from a dream only to find myself in a second layer of unreality, and I didn’t want to take any chances.

  Finally, my senses had gathered sufficient data to convince me that this was actually happening, and I propped myself up on my elbow. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, a dream.”

  “I came to say good night,” she said, nodding at the steaming mug on the small tea tray on my nightstand. “But you were already asleep. I wouldn’t have woken you, but you seemed restless.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”

  She took a half step closer. “Would you like to talk about it?”

  “No, thanks.” It wasn’t just my desire not to live up to her expectations of my neediness; it was that I wouldn’t have known what to say about my dreams even if I did want to talk them over. It was embarrassing that my brain plucked inspiration from everyday life. It was disturbing that I had thought the scary veiled figure was Agatha. And it was frustrating that I still didn’t know who exactly it had been.

  Absolutely zero percent of that was anything I wanted to share with Laura. Today of all days.

  “Well, why don’t you have a little tea and read for a bit?” she asked. “I can bring you some toast if you’re hungry.”

  Her words were so kind. Her manner was so polite. And that made it worse.

  “I’m not hungry, thank you,” I said. “But I’ll drink some tea.”

  “That’s good,” she said approvingly. “Calm down a little.”

  I nodded, then reached for the top book in the stack next to me and scooted up to a sitting position. Laura switched on the reading light and then headed for the door.

  “Good night,” she said gently.

  “Good night.”

  And then she left, and I sighed and leaned back against the pillows. I had no desire for tea, or for reading in bed as if nothing in my life had changed. But I was afraid to shut my eyes and find myself back in that dark room, trying to figure out whose desiccated hand I’d been looking at.

  So I opened the book to the title page:

  Philosophical Foundations for Personal Morality:

  The Rights and Responsibilities of the Privileged Class

  Okay. Well, I had gone and picked out the absolute most boring-sounding book in the whole house. But I flipped it open anyway and read some of the text:

  The proof of virtue is the ability to obey in the face of inner resistance. A demand for obedience performed against the will is the ultimate test of rectitude. A child is led to righteousness by the lantern of his parents’ steadfastness and must by firm hands be molded into a creature of exemplary humility and worth. Abandoned to the darkness of parental deficiency, the child’s quality of character will assuredly be as weak as a lily grown in shade.

  Inwardly, I recoiled at the words, then flipped back to see the chapter title:

  Management of Children and Youth

  I was curious enough to go back and look at who the author was, and to my surprise it was a woman named Loretta Copeland. There was no author biography, so I was left wondering if she was a family member or just coincidentally shared their name. What was weirder was that there was no copyright date, but the book was made of blue fabric, threadbare on its edges, and the pages, though not falling out or cracking, were a light brown color that seemed very old.

  It was a vanity project, perhaps. Loretta Copeland had been bored enough to write a creepy book telling people how to mold their children.

  Gross.

  I paused my examination of the book and drank some tea, grateful for the distraction from the drama of the evening. Then I opened the book again and gently thumbed through the pages, reading the chapter headings, which were all like something from a museum: Public Decorum, Standards for Servants, Spiritual Purity, The Dangers of Education, and my personal favorite, The Particular Tendency Toward Wickedness in the Young Female.

  I browsed that chapter, hoping for some funny bits about what a disaster it was to teach your daughters to read and write and use their brains, but it ended up being an unfunny mix of dire warnings about the natural desire of young women to pursue sin and entrap men, and harsh instructions on what to do if you suspected your daughter was flirting with the devil, so to speak—or, I don’t know, maybe literally.

  One of the recommendations was to isolate her from evil influences. Another was to distract her with domestic labor. If that failed, you could marry her off and just make it somebody else’s problem.

  At the end of the chapter, there was a short summary.

  I stopped short when I scanned the paragraph:

  The moral sense of the world is reflected in the individual soul, and only with the greatest care can we avoid the descent into the darkest and most vile tendencies of human nature.

  I knew that sentence. That was the sentence both Agatha and Lily had written over and over.

  And the last sentence of the chapter sent a chill through my body:

  Be ever mindful that the female of the species was the direct cause of the fall of man from divine grace. Do not allow her to bring similar devastation to your family and its reputation. Undoubtedly she will try.

  I shut the book and set it down, feeling weirdly like I’d done something wrong by looking at it. Its tone was so hostile and unkind—especially toward girls—that
I wanted to bleach my eyes.

  I thought of Laura’s grandmother sobbing at her wedding. And the portrait of the Widow Copeland. And the designer of the garden—how had Laura described her? Preoccupied with the fall of man?

  No wonder Laura was the way she was, growing up in a family like this.

  But why had Lily copied those words? And why had Agatha—especially when she was facing a serious illness?

  I sipped my tea and tried to browse a gardening book, but thinking about gardening just made me think about how little I wanted to get back to gardening with Laura. So I stared at the wall and tried to keep my mind blank.

  Then I thought about Barrett. I tried to imagine him at some fancy boarding school, surrounded by friends with names like Chet and Trip and Woodward, or whatever ridiculously rich people named their kids. Whatever lacrosse was, they were all experts, and the beautiful daughters of lesser politicians wore pastel sweaters and tasteful loafers and waited in a line to date them.

  The whole idea was pleasantly revolting, and it kept me occupied until I finally fell asleep.

  CHAPTER

  13

  SOMETHING TOUCHED MY shoulder.

  I awoke slightly, sure that whatever it was had only been a too-real part of a dream—and then I realized that I hadn’t been dreaming.

  Agatha sat on the edge of my mattress, her hand hovering over my shoulder.

  I gasped and jerked back in my bed so fast that I almost fell off the other side.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  She jabbed me again. Her eyes, clear in the moonlight, contained not a trace of passion. She might as well have been a bored shopper poking her fingers into a display of throw pillows.

  “Okay, stop,” I said, sitting up and rubbing my arm. “I’m awake.”

  She took her hand away and turned to face the closet door.

  “What do you want?” I asked. “Do you need the bathroom?”

  No answer.