* * *
“Drinks?” the waiter said as he appeared. The twins were transfixed with the huge televisions on the walls, silent for one of the rare moments in their lives.
“Yes!” Luke and I practically shouted at the same time. My shoulders were already rigid with stress. It was our second table. Will had screeched when the hostess tried to seat us near the windows, so we allowed him to pick a different table for the sake of peace. Charlotte had immediately grabbed my phone and zoned out on a Disney game. I had pretended not to notice all the other diners staring at us, wondering why we gave in to our children so easily.
We ordered and the food came out quickly. Will ate two French fries before he started fidgeting in the booth. He reached for my phone, but Charlotte had pushed his hand away and they both screamed. Luke and I exchanged a glance and wolfed down what we could of our food.
As we were preparing to leave, a family next to us caught my eye. There were five of them. The boy and the girl looked to be around four and six and next to the mom was a small baby carrier with an infant inside.
As I slowly helped Will put on the shoes that he kicked off under the table, I stole glances at the baby carrier. Luke and I had always talked about having three, maybe four, kids. But, of course, that was before we entered the world of special needs and our present became much different than we had expected. I knew it was almost impossible to add an infant to our already-muddled mix, but I still couldn’t help but smile at the infant’s tiny knit cap and curled fingers.
On the way out of the restaurant, we bumped into Alicia Leeland, whose son, Mark, was two years older than Will. They had attended preschool the year before in the same autism program in our school district.
“Hi, guys,” she said. “I haven’t seen you all in ages.” Her eyes slowly slid to Will. “How is school going?”
Luke and I exchanged a glance and I looked to her and cocked my head to the side. “Okay . . . for now. You know how it is. One day at a time.” I lifted my palms in the air. “How’s Mark?”
“I sure do.” She rested her large arms on the ledge above a booth. “I have to tell you, he’s doing amazing things. I think we might try and mainstream him next year.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Really?” The thought of mainstream, of a typical classroom, was still something that seemed so far off for us, and yet it was within Alicia’s grasp.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t even know if he will qualify for services next year.” She shook her head slightly. “All that therapy, all that intervention.” Her face twisted into a smile. “It worked. One day it just all clicked for him.”
“That’s great to hear,” Luke said, leaning forward. I could practically hear his thoughts. See? Don’t worry so much, Erin.
“To think that we considered a therapeutic school at one point because we didn’t think public school was a good fit,” she added. She glanced over at Will, who turned and made eye contact and smiled at her briefly before looking away. My heart leapt in that moment, less than a second long, when I saw another flash of him enter our world, our situation. I squeezed him to me.
“That’s wonderful. We should get the boys together for a playdate,” I said. The playdate usually involved Will and Mark playing separately, ignoring each other, while Alicia and I made a few futile attempts to engage them before we gave up and chatted over coffee. Yet we both watched the other’s child, with the silent, shameful, constant question: Is my child better or worse?
“Well, I should go grab our dinner: takeout again.” She turned around but then stopped and called to us, “Good luck!”
“Well, that was encouraging,” Luke said as she left.
I waited until we were in the car before I said, “Yes. It was.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell Luke that Alicia’s son’s autism was always much less severe than Will’s. In preschool Mark was completely verbal, doing math problems, and reading books, whereas we still had yet to hear our son’s voice. It didn’t seem like an apples-to-apples situation.
“Why do you sound like that?” Luke said with a frown as he started the car.
“I don’t sound like . . . anything. I’m just thinking about what she said.” My throat constricted, as my eyes burned with tears. There it was, a real-life example of a mother who had fought hard enough for her child and made progress. Real, measurable progress. And yet instead of it making me feel inspired, the weight of defeat crushed my chest. Why isn’t Will progressing, too? What am I doing wrong?
I was so lost in my painful thoughts that I didn’t hear Charlotte calling my name until she was practically shouting, and Luke had to nudge my arm.
“Mom? Mom? Mom?” Charlotte said.
“What?” I said, and whirled around, my eyes flashing with annoyance.
Her bottom lip stuck out and tears formed in her eyes. I reached my hand back to pat her leg, but she twisted away.
“I’m so sorry. I’m just . . . thinking about something,” I said, but she refused to look at me.
I turned back around, swallowing everything I wanted to say: that I felt like we were failing Will. That we were failing Charlotte. That we had failed. That I had failed, before I had even begun to try.
I was supposed to be Will’s advocate, the gatekeeper to a life that was easier for him. I was supposed to discover the secrets that would allow him to talk, play, make friends. I had to be that resource for him. If I couldn’t protect and help him—if I couldn’t be the one to reach him—who could?
As I lay in bed that night, one question above all repeated itself no matter how many times I tried to silence it: What kind of a mother doesn’t know how to help her child?
CHAPTER 7
AMELIA
Amelia saw her sister Eleanor when she was still halfway across the lake, on an arriving steam yacht. She sat at the back of the boat, the ribbons on her hat flowing behind her in the breeze. One of her gloved hands secured the hat on her head, and she held the other in the air, waving to her sister.
“Look, it’s Aunt Eleanor,” Amelia signed to John as they stood on the white pier. She smiled and pointed toward the boat, a feeling of light moving across her forehead. Eleanor had always come to her rescue, with Jane or otherwise. She wished she could ask for help now, with everything before her. But it felt like no one could truly help her, not since Henry died.
John turned his face and looked out across the lake, shielding his eyes with his hands. His face broke out into a brilliant smile before he turned back to his mother, signing his aunt’s name.
As the yacht grew closer, the steam from the engine filled the air, and Amelia waved it off, pressing a finger to her nose and breathing through her mouth. When the captain slowed the engine and the deckhands began to jump out and secure the boat to the pier, Amelia and John ran down the dock.
“Has she started screaming yet?” Eleanor asked with a smile when Amelia released her from a tight hug.
Amelia raised her eyebrows in response and they broke out in laughter. It felt so good to laugh, she realized. A momentary relief, like slipping her head under the lake’s surface on a brutally hot summer day before the heat returned and suffocated her.
“I figured as much,” Eleanor said. “Poor Father. This wedding will nearly break him.” She shook her head and her mouth turned down into a frown.
The sisters were silent for a moment as they reflected upon how much stress the financial burden of the wedding had to have caused their father. Since Prohibition began a few years earlier, the brewery had tried to shift to selling Near Beer, with the same taste but none of the alcohol, but it didn’t amount to anything close to what annual sales used to be. For Jane’s sake, and the sake of every other party that happened for however long the law remained, thankfully it wasn’t illegal to consume alcohol, only to manufacture or purchase it. The people with means—the sisters’ parents and everyone in their social circle—had stockpiled liquor before the law went into effect. Heaven forbid any of their parties be affected. And ce
rtainly, Jane’s wedding would put a large dent into their parents’ stash.
Eleanor lifted the white skirt of her summer dress and knelt down on the dock until her face was level with John’s. “And hello, my handsome nephew. I’ve missed you so much.” She held her arms out, and John slowly leaned forward, allowing her hug. His arms fell at his sides for a moment before he felt safe, and then, slowly, he hugged her back. “There it is,” Eleanor said, and she hugged him tighter. “Such a strong little boy.”
Eleanor turned and pointed to the yacht, where her husband, George, and her daughters, Emily and Louisa, were being helped onto the pier by a dockhand. The girls wore matching starched white dresses, short white socks with black mary janes, and enormous white bows on top of their dark curls. As soon as their feet hit the wooden boards, they ran toward their mother, bookending her skirts.
“Girls, you remember your cousin, John?” Eleanor said.
Three-year-old Louisa buried her face in her mother’s skirt in response, but five-year-old Emily nodded slowly and took a step toward John. “Hello,” she said.
John looked at Amelia and she signed, “Your cousin Emily.” She reminded him that he had last seen her two summers before, at the Midsummer’s Eve party at Monarch Manor. They had both been three years old, and young enough for them not to notice there was much difference between them. They ran around the front lawn, holding sparklers, making the nannies worry. Their pressed white clothing had been stained from the grass and the dirt of the garden, but what Amelia cared about the most was how often she saw John smile. It felt as though that was the last time he was able to be just one of the children. The last time before the chasm between him and other children grew too wide to broach.
“Mother, can John and I play in the garden and look for monarch butterflies?” Emily asked as she tugged at Eleanor’s white skirt.
Louisa gave a squeak in protest and Eleanor sighed. “As long as you take your sister with you.”
“Come on.” Emily grabbed John’s hand. He startled for a moment, before he relaxed in her grasp. “I want to see if I can find my favorite one, with the three black spots on the right wing.” She began to run off, pulling John behind her, with Louisa trailing them and whining in protest.
“That’s very sweet. I’m not sure if John remembers her, but it’s wonderful for him to have a playmate. As you know, this place is best explored with other children.” Amelia winked at Eleanor and they clasped hands and began to walk across the lawn, toward the house. Amelia felt a pang of sadness when she saw Emily chatter along, a familiar feeling whenever she was faced with a child the same age.
“Truly, our summers here were the best summers a child could possibly have,” Eleanor murmured. “What wonderful times we had, before . . .” She trailed off as she watched her husband, George, trudge across the lawn, ignoring his own family and Amelia.
Amelia squeezed her sister’s arm in sympathy. Eleanor had written that George hadn’t been the same since the financial troubles in New York two years before, his existence barely that above a ghost. Being alone was one thing Amelia understood. Tears, impossible choices, and loss were the steel framework that encased her soul.
“I presume the Cartwrights have not arrived yet?” Eleanor asked with a frown, scanning the lawn.
At the mere mention of her in-laws, Amelia’s stomach turned and fear ran through her body like an electric shock.
Eleanor saw her sister’s face and squeezed her hand. “I’m here now,” she said, her voice low.
They silently walked toward the estate, Amelia steadying her breath. The Cartwrights would certainly not let the event pass without the suggestion that John not be allowed at social functions . . . or, really, anywhere at all.
“How I’ve missed this place,” Eleanor said as they walked up the wooden steps to the large veranda that overlooked the lake. She breathed deeply and closed her eyes before staring out at the water.
“And I think it has missed you, too,” Amelia whispered as she leaned on the porch railing.
They settled into the white wicker chairs at the far end of the porch, closest to the water. The floor was painted a light blue, a color that mirrored the lake water. The veranda was scattered with white chairs and tables, and a few rocking chairs that faced the water. Amelia had spent more than a few hours in them when John was young, rocking him to sleep as the cool breeze off the lake lifted her hair from her neck, waving away the irritated nannies.
Eleanor took off her hat and leaned back in a chair. Amelia saw new lines on her face, around her eyes and forehead. “I remember thinking that it was the most beautiful house in the entire world the first time we came up here,” Eleanor said. “It was like something out of a fairy-tale book.”
Amelia was just ten and Eleanor thirteen when the construction was finished on the estate. Their father, Conrad, had found the exact spot to build while visiting a business partner who was building his own estate on a different part of the lake. It took three years to build, and once it was complete their family spent every summer there, from Memorial Day to Labor Day. As was customary for all the families, their mother and the girls stayed there all summer while their father took the train back into Chicago to work each week.
The women held tea parties and meetings for the Lake Geneva Garden Club on the lawns of their estates, competing with one another for the best event. The children were cared for by a rotation of nannies, who hopelessly tried to get them to pay attention to lessons instead of running through the grass barefoot, picking berries off the bushes, and trying to capture the butterflies with nets stolen from their fathers’ fishing equipment.
As she looked back from her place in adulthood, it felt to Amelia like it was all a dream, a time and a place separate from the world they lived in. It was close enough, though, for her to step back into if she closed her eyes and reached her hand out, through the thin veil that separated the worlds. And then she could only touch it for a moment, before it went away again.
“Let’s stay here forever,” Eleanor said.
Amelia smiled, yet her nose pricked with tears that she could not allow Eleanor to see. “I like this plan,” she managed to say. She could feel her sister’s gaze on her, but she didn’t meet it, keeping her eyes trained on the water ahead.
They silently sat on the veranda, ignoring the commotion around them, their eyes focused on the lake while their minds were in the past, in a time when their dreams were possible.
In the light of Before. Everything was Before.
CHAPTER 8
ERIN
This can’t be it, I thought as I turned down the long gravel driveway just outside of Williams Bay on Geneva Lake. I quickly glanced down at my phone, which still impatiently pointed ahead, the dropped pin quivering as though tapping its tiny red foot. A canopy of trees, leaves beginning to turn brilliant autumn colors, shaded the rocks below as my car bumped and hopped along the uneven path. I winced every time I heard the car’s undercarriage squeak and grind, hoping a wheel didn’t come off and strand me in the middle of nowhere. The late-afternoon sun was blacked out from all the foliage as I passed a long field of grass overgrown with wildflowers, cattails, and wispy prairie grass.
Finally, the tree line began to thin out and the path wound to the right, toward what I assumed was the lake. It bowed out like the mouth of a river, into a larger gravel circle, and I pulled my car into Park and got out.
I took a step forward, squinting in a way that I could feel accentuated my crow’s-feet and other wrinkles. I shielded my face with my cupped hand and exhaled. The house that I had thought about so much over the last few days was now in my gaze, rising above the lake like a beacon, as it had for more than 100 years.
Monarch Manor.
I took a step toward the estate and felt a rush through my bones that ran from my head to my toes. I once read a study that said memories can be passed down through DNA and I had the strange sense that Monarch Manor was both like nothing I had ever seen and
yet an old familiar friend.
I heard the roar of my mom’s motorcycle make its way down the gravel driveway, and I turned in surprise. Earlier, at the end of the day at my grandmother’s house, I had invited my mother to go on a treasure hunt with me to find the estate, armed with the geographical location from Gerry at the museum. She had quickly declined, stating she and my father had a poker tournament with friends that night.
“What happened to poker?” I said as she killed the engine.
She frowned and stepped off the bike. “I’m not that good anyway. I figure your father can figure out how to lose our money all on his own.” She took her sunglasses off and whistled, stepping back slightly. “Shit,” she said.
“Agreed,” I said.
Our necks strained as our collective gaze moved along the turret on the left side of the house. It reached toward the cloudless fall sky, like an upright pointer finger. An expansive front porch faced the lake, with one deteriorating white wicker rocking chair left. I could picture the Hoppes gathering on a hot summer day to feel the breeze off the water or enjoying afternoon tea when the air held the crispness of a McIntosh apple from the orchard that I spied on the edge of the property.
Various dormers and levels graced the front of the house, additions over the years as the whims of the owners changed with the times. I tugged on my mom’s sleeve and pointed to tiny, delicate cherubs carved into the roof and, I imagined, having long begun their return to the heavens. The entire outside was made of wood, but the foundation looked to be stone. The house was edged in rows of milkweed, the blooms long having been spent for the summer. I didn’t see any of the namesake monarch butterflies around the plants, though.
“What do you think is inside?” my mom said as she eyed the rickety wooden front porch.
“My nightmares.” I shuddered as I pictured decades’ worth of animals and bugs residing happily inside. My own old house was overrun every spring, even with the aid of tea tree and peppermint oil to keep out the mice, and a seasonal spray from the only natural exterminator I could find in a thirty-mile radius. I couldn’t imagine years of pestilence having free rein.
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