They were almost done, though it was a mystery why they were doing it at all. Surely no one used the front door in the winter. Then it hit her: they had. They had used it the night Maurie arrived, and again when Maurie needed Matthew to clear the ice. The shoveled walkway was a courtesy for them. A courtesy, and an invitation. Justine’s hand tightened on her coffee cup. She didn’t like visiting people. She certainly didn’t want to visit the Millers—didn’t want to sit in that cramped, smelly room, “visiting.”
Still, she had to admit she was touched by the gesture. Maurie had said Matthew Miller had lived here since before she was born, and that he’d never married. He’d probably spent decades in that lodge with no one for company but his brother and the guests who passed through in the short summer season then returned to their cities and forgot him. And Lucy, of course, and Lilith and their mother. It must have been a lonely life, made even lonelier now that Lucy was gone. Of course he would want them to visit.
She herself wasn’t lonely, though. The thought surprised her. She’d been lonely for so long and so thoroughly that she never thought about it anymore. But here in Lucy’s house, where she was more alone than she’d ever been, she wasn’t. The snow-covered lake lay like milk between the charcoal of the points and the gray of the far shore. Its empty quiet, so unnerving when she’d first arrived, was soothing now, a balm upon her nerves. It was the sort of quiet she’d listened for each morning in her San Diego kitchen, that no matter how still she sat she’d never quite heard beneath the weight of Patrick sleeping down the hall and the humming of the hallway clock moving relentlessly toward seven fifteen. Here, even with Maurie making her mess, she could hear it: deep, mournful, and embracing.
She’d barely thought of Patrick since Maurie had arrived, she realized with surprise. That was one thing, at least, she could thank her mother for.
The walkway was done. Matthew reached out a hand and Melanie shook it. He patted her shoulder, nudging her up the steps to the lodge. Justine didn’t want Melanie going in there alone with him, so she went for her coat and boots, cutting off her mother’s question with the closing of the door.
She found Melanie and Matthew at a table in the main room, drinking cups of cocoa. They looked up at her and she stopped, feeling foolish.
“Would you like some cocoa?” Matthew asked. He knew why she was there; it was in his face.
“No, thank you.” She stood there awkwardly in her half-zipped coat as they continued to look at her. “Well, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“It’s a mix,” he said. “So it’s no trouble.”
She went to the table, feeling like an intruder. When Matthew brought her cocoa he set it in front of her with his callused hand and said, “She worked hard. I appreciate it.”
Justine put her hands around the mug. The cocoa was very hot; she wouldn’t be able to drink it for several minutes. She didn’t know what to talk about to fill that time. Finally she said, “We’re grateful to you for plowing the road.”
“That’s no trouble, either.” He gave a hint of a smile.
“Well, you won’t have to do it much longer,” she said. “We’re moving away after Christmas.”
His smile faded. He turned to Melanie. She bit her lower lip, the muscles in her neck working. The lines of his face seemed to deepen. He nodded, as though agreeing with something only he heard. “It is a hard place to live.”
Justine wished she hadn’t said anything. After all, he’d shoveled his walk in hopes they’d come visit; that they’d drink his cocoa and sit at his table. And she’d just told him they would never do that, or wouldn’t for long. It would have been better to leave without saying anything. Wouldn’t it?
“It’s not so bad,” she assured him. “It’s quiet. I like that.” He didn’t respond, so she rushed on, “It’s just so cold. For us, I mean. We’re from a warm place. And the school is so far away.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.” He shrugged his shoulders in the dirty brown coat. “I didn’t go to the school.”
Melanie watched him, her fingers picking at one another behind her cup. “Why not?”
“My grandmother taught us here.” He saw her envious look and gave a gravelly laugh. “I would rather have gone to the school.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to learn things my grandmother couldn’t teach me. And I wanted to be with the other children. Play on a baseball team. Go to birthday parties.” He spoke as though none of this mattered anymore, and looking at his ancient, weary face, Justine couldn’t imagine him as a boy who wanted to play center field and wear party hats.
“I’ve never wanted to do any of those things,” Melanie said.
“Why not?”
“Because they’re stupid.”
That small smile again. “Maybe they seem less stupid when you can’t do them.”
Melanie blinked. Justine had never seen her at a loss for an argument, but she was now. Matthew took a long, calm drink from his cocoa, watching her from beneath his bushy gray brows.
“Do you like it here?” Melanie asked. For once her voice held no challenge, only an honest curiosity. Justine turned to Matthew, surprised by how eager she was to hear his answer.
Matthew paused for so long that she thought he wouldn’t respond. He looked at the door that led to his small living quarters. His fingers considered the ceramic mug. “It’s been a good place for us,” he said at last.
As if he had been waiting for a cue, Abe opened the door. Justine was surprised to see him standing; he’d seemed too weak to walk. He held on to the jamb, his head shaking with his palsy.
Matthew turned to him. “I thought you were sleeping.”
Abe shuffled over. He wore sagging pants, a plaid shirt, brown woolen socks worn through at the big toes, and no shoes. He sat beside Justine, and she slid her chair back a little, away from him. He smelled like nicotine and menthol. He folded one purpled hand over the other and smiled at Melanie, who sat across from him. “Go back inside,” Matthew said. The sharpness of his tone startled Justine. “Company makes you tired.”
“This is different company. Not cabin people.” Abe sounded petulant, like a boy arguing with a parent. Justine had noticed his childishness the night she’d met him, but now it seemed like more than senility. He was probably mildly retarded. That would explain the odd way he’d touched Angela that night, she thought.
“That doesn’t matter,” Matthew said.
Melanie said, “Can’t he have some cocoa?”
Matthew ran one square hand across his face. His eyes were the same near-black as Melanie’s and Maurie’s, Justine saw. His hair had once been as dark as theirs, too, as had Abe’s. It was no wonder there had been talk about Maurie’s parentage. She studied Abe, hoping she wouldn’t find other traces of her mother, though surely Maurie was right; this simple man couldn’t have been Lilith’s lover. To her relief, other than the eyes and Maurie’s dusky complexion—which was probably the result of years in the sun, not genetics—she didn’t see any resemblance.
Matthew gave in, and went to the bar. Abe smiled at Melanie again. “What’s your name?”
Melanie smiled back. “Melanie.”
He tilted his head. “Emily?”
“No. Melanie.” She pronounced it slowly, but kindly. Justine couldn’t remember the last time Melanie had spoken kindly to anyone.
“I knew an Emily once.”
“That was my grandma’s aunt.”
Abe nodded. “I liked her.”
“You did?”
“She played with me sometimes. I showed her the kittens.” He pursed his lips. “Mimsy was her favorite.”
Mimsy was the name of the mouse in the Emily books, Justine realized with a jolt. The cheerful friend to the lost girl. When Melanie heard that name, she leaned forward with an intensity that was strange even for her, and Justine remembered how she’d asked Matthew about the photograph of the Evans sisters; the stealthy way she’d slid the Emily book beneath her co
vers; how she’d asked if the painting in the living room was of Emily. Justine had assumed, like Mrs. Sorensen, that Melanie’s drawings were self-portraits. Now she saw they weren’t of Melanie at all. They were of the lost child. Not lost in the fantastical summer forest of Lucy’s stories, but alone and frightened in the winter woods, pursued by a man with the savage face of a killer. Justine knew she should be glad the drawings had nothing to do with Melanie. Instead she licked her lips, which were suddenly dry.
“Do you know what happened to Mimsy?” Melanie asked Abe.
Abe drew his mouth down. “I don’t like to think about that.”
Matthew put one hand on Abe’s shoulder as he set his cocoa on the table. “We don’t talk about Emily. It upsets him.” He said this to Melanie, and his voice held a warning.
“Of course,” Justine said, gratefully.
Abe’s eyes were cloudy again. “She was too small,” he said, almost to himself. “Too small to be out at night.”
“That’s right,” Matthew said to him, soothingly.
“What about Lucy?” Melanie asked. “Can we talk about her?”
Matthew frowned. “Why do you want to talk about her? She has nothing to do with you.”
“You said I was like her.”
“I said you looked like her. There’s a difference.”
Melanie looked so hurt that Justine felt bad for her, but she didn’t say anything. Like Matthew, she wanted this conversation to be over.
Matthew drummed his fingers on the table. Then he reached for his brother’s cocoa, even though Abe had barely touched it. “It’s time for your rest.” This time Abe didn’t resist, and neither did Melanie.
When Abe and Matthew had gone, Melanie slouched in her chair, watching the door. On the wall behind her hung half a dozen faded photographs of men and boys holding large silver fish. None was more recent than the 1970s. The place really was a time capsule, Justine thought, its past separated from its present by the thinnest of veils. Maybe it wasn’t so strange that Melanie would be fascinated by the old story. After all, Emily had disappeared from the house they were living in, which, like this lodge, seemed unchanged from the day it happened. She herself had been intrigued by it the summer she’d spent here. “You seem interested in Emily,” she said.
Melanie’s head snapped around. Justine saw a flash of anger, then her features shuttered. “It’s okay,” Justine said. “I think about her, too. It’s hard not to.” She raised her fingers and lowered them flat upon the table. “Does it scare you, what happened to her?”
“No.” Melanie’s voice was flat.
“Well, it scares me. If you disappeared like that, I don’t know what I’d do.”
As the dim light cast shadows beneath Melanie’s cheekbones, Justine glimpsed again the adult face that waited beneath the girl’s, all hard edges and smooth, icy planes. “Would you stay here for the rest of your life?” Melanie asked. “Like Emily’s mother?”
Justine knew the answer: of course she would. She would stay here, waiting, just as Emily’s mother had. She would die without knowing, just as she had. And the not knowing would be almost worse than the loss itself. She looked down, gathering herself. Before she could speak, Matthew came back. He collected their empty mugs and began washing them in the small sink behind the bar.
The message was clear. Justine stood and zipped her coat. Melanie rose too, reluctantly. As they turned to leave, the back door opened and Abe was there again, holding a small wooden box. Matthew looked up in frustration, a mug in his hand, but Abe spoke to Melanie. “I have a present for you.” His manner was shy, like a boy giving a flower to a crush. Justine took the box before Melanie could reach it, then felt ridiculous. What did she think it was going to be? All that talk about missing daughters had rattled her.
When she opened it she found a little girl’s blue slipper. It was stained with dirt, and it was the match to the one she’d found in the trunk in Emily’s room.
Justine heard the crash of ceramic in the sink and turned to see Matthew picking up the pieces of the mug. She could sense his heart pounding and felt a corresponding surge in her own blood. What was this? Why did this old man have a missing girl’s dirty bedroom slipper hidden in a box?
Abe gestured at Melanie. “I want her to have it.”
“Where did you get it?” Justine asked.
“I found it by the creek. The night she left.”
“I thought they found no trace of her.” She was sure that’s what Dinah the librarian had said, and the newspaper clippings in the basement, too.
Abe stammered under the pressure of everyone’s attention. “I—I wanted to keep it. To remember her. She was my friend.”
Matthew put his hand on his brother’s arm. His manner was calm, but Justine could still sense the rapid pace of his heart. “You found that the next day, when we were looking for her, right?”
Abe’s fingers worked at his pant leg.
“It’s okay. You didn’t know they would want it, did you?”
“They were looking for her. Not her slipper.”
“That’s right. We were looking for her.”
Melanie’s eyes were wide as she watched them. Justine felt a tickle along the back of her neck. Abe had said he’d found the slipper the night Emily disappeared, not the next day, when the searchers had gone looking. Had he meant to say that? Or was it just the lapse of an old, simple man—a fumbling of time, or of words? For a moment she pictured the dark-haired figure who’d stalked Emily in Melanie’s drawings, but of course that didn’t mean anything. Melanie had no idea what had happened to the little girl, and it was in her grim nature to imagine the worst fate possible.
Justine put the slipper back in the box. “You should keep this,” she said to Abe as she placed it on the table. “Thank you anyway.”
She left then, nudging Melanie before her. As she shut the door she saw the brothers standing in the light from the back room. Matthew placed his hand on Abe’s shoulder and turned him toward the back door. He picked up the box as he followed.
Lucy
Matthew was here this evening. We had tea on the porch and watched the lake settle into darkness. Since Lilith’s passing, he comes by once or twice a week. We don’t talk much, but our silences are comfortable, and I’m always happy to see him walk up the road.
Tonight, as he sat in Lilith’s chair and I in mine, I found myself wanting to ask him if he remembered our time together as children. It was a difficult question, because we never talk about the past. Our conversations are always in the present or the immediate future: how are his guests, how is the library, what will the weather bring. I’ve always thought it a generosity on his part, to avoid raising memories of the worst time of my life. I still think that. But now that I’m writing this and remembering so many things I thought I’d forgotten, something else occurs to me. He and Abe are the only other people still living who were there, and they were witnesses to much of it. I wonder how much he remembers.
So I said it, straight out, the way Lilith would have: “Do you remember how we used to play in the forest?”
The question surprised him, as I knew it would. He looked at me, and then away, and in the quick turn of his head I saw the boy he’d been, smooth skinned and black haired and clear-eyed. “I do,” he said. His voice was melancholy, but there was happiness in it, too, as if this memory, at least, was a treasured one. Then my mind leaped ahead to the end of that summer, to our last day together, and the old shame bore down on me. I couldn’t speak anymore, and he, respectful as always, let it be.
When he left I watched him walk to the lodge. In the last, blue light his figure was straight and tall. He is nearly seventy-seven, but he could have been sixty, or forty. He will live a long time after I’m gone, and he’ll outlive Abe as well. He’ll be lonely here by himself, but I don’t think he’ll leave.
If you read this, I imagine you’ll think it strange that so many of us stayed. Strange that Maurie was the only one to go. Of
course, we always knew she would. As a girl she found her adventures in the forest, but as she grew she wanted adventures of a different sort. She hung around the lodge, teasing and flirting and God knows what else with the summer boys. Every year she had a new one on a string; some lawyer’s son or prep school baseball star who was “going places.” They played along, because she was alluring in a wild sort of way, but in the end they drove away with their parents, casting her off like an outgrown pair of shoes, and she cried behind her bedroom door. She had her pick of the local boys, too, but she treated them the way the summer boys treated her: as nothing but easy fun. Like Lilith, she got a reputation, but she didn’t care. Neither did Lilith, though it drove me to exasperation. She’s ruining herself, I told Lilith, but Lilith wouldn’t hear it. Let her play, she said. She’s not long for this place anyway.
Still, we weren’t prepared for the suddenness of her departure. That was my fault. I shouldn’t have kept those letters, the ones that boy Justin sent. They spanned about six months before he gave up and, I suppose, began to forget her, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. Maybe it was because I remembered the way they played in the early days, off in the woods, as Matthew and I had. I used to imagine them finding the Hundred Tree, with the cushions rotting where we left them. As if those things were still there, after all these years. Whatever the reason, I kept his letters in a shoe box in the back of our closet. And one night Maurie found them.
We were in the parlor. Mother and Lilith were watching the television, and I was reading. Maurie had been upstairs for some time. She’d taken to wearing some of Mother’s and Lilith’s old things—brooches, scarves, and wraps that she made lively in that way she had—so I suppose that’s what she was looking for. She came running down the stairs in her jeans and those cowboy boots she wore everywhere then. The tears on her face ran black with the mascara she slathered on. She went to Lilith, opened the shoe box, and threw the letters in her lap. Her fury had that elemental quality Lilith’s used to have, a crackling, combustive charge that lit her up from the inside. I was glad of the enormous wings of my chair, like a protective shell.
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