Suddenly, Adrienne turned to Danny and Minna, who were still standing by the windows, silhouetted in light. “Can we have some privacy, please?”
Neither Danny nor Minna moved. But it was as though Adrienne believed they had. Now she turned and spoke directly to Caroline, pleading with her almost. What had she come for—forgiveness? Understanding? Caroline wouldn’t give her any.
“I didn’t ask for any money,” Adrienne said abruptly. “I haven’t spoken to Richard in ten years. He never answered any of my e-mails. I’d stopped calling a long time ago.” Now that she had started speaking, it was as if she couldn’t stop. She was trembling like someone in the grips of a bad fever. “It’s blood money. I don’t want it.”
“I don’t understand,” Caroline said coldly. She was playing the part of the queen. Adrienne was the penitent. Except that the part felt wrong. Caroline was the one who felt like begging—for Adrienne to go away, for Danny and Trenton to go away, too, for everyone to leave her in peace. She wanted to curl up in her bedroom—the bedroom that had been hers and Richard’s—and drink until the world started to soften and forgive.
“My daughter, Eva.” Adrienne’s voice broke on the name. “She was . . . his.”
For a moment there was silence. Minna turned away, rubbing her forehead. Caroline heard the seconds ticking forward, and then remembered that the big grandfather clock in the hall had been wrapped up and shipped off to the auction house, along with everything else of value.
She was seized by a sense of the absurdity of the scene: the big dining room table and the litter of food and plates and glasses; the narrow wedge of sunlight shining between the curtains; and Danny stuffed into his ridiculous uniform, like a sausage in a too-small casing.
The kitchen door slammed, and Trenton came into the dining room, stamping dirt from his sneakers. “We’re burying Dad under the weeping willow,” he said. Then, seeing Adrienne, he froze in the doorway. “Sorry. I thought she was . . . ” He trailed off before he could say gone.
When Adrienne turned to Trenton, her expression was full of such open hunger that Caroline’s stomach rolled. “How old are you?” she asked.
His eyes ticked temporarily to Caroline, as though requesting her permission to answer. “Sixteen,” he said.
“Eva would have been thirteen in July,” Adrienne said. A smile flickered over her face, but her eyes remained empty, huge, like open wounds. “She wanted—she wanted to go to Six Flags for her birthday.”
Trenton stiffened, as if a current had gone through him.
Caroline said. “Is she . . . ?” She couldn’t bring herself to say dead.
“I called Richard from the hospital. I don’t know why. We only met once. It was a mistake. We both knew it.” Adrienne’s voice cracked again. Caroline felt like spitting at her. She, Caroline, was the one who should have been crying. All this time, this other person, this phantom-child, had been running parallel to Caroline’s life, waiting to destroy it. “Still, I sent him pictures. Letters. A cutting of hair.” She didn’t stop herself from crying this time; she picked up a napkin Caroline was sure was dirty and wiped away the tears when they came. “My poor Eva. The doctors told me she would never make it. I—I thought Richard could make it untrue.” Adrienne’s face was white, like the center of a very hot flame. “But Richard was dead. Someone answered. ‘Don’t call back,’ she said. ‘He’s dead. He’s dead and he left you nothing.’ ”
Minna inhaled sharply. Trenton pulled a chair out from the table, letting it scrape on the floor, and sat down heavily.
“They were going to bury her,” Adrienne said, her expression wild, begging. “They were speaking her favorite psalm. The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures . . . I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t bear it. I was in Buffalo before I knew where I was going—before I knew I was coming here.” She was shaking so hard that the ice cubes rattled in her glass. “It was my fault. All my fault. I was driving—I should have seen the other car. I should have known . . . I should have saved her.”
“Holy shit,” Trenton whispered. “My sister.”
“Minna,” Caroline said sharply. “Get Adrienne something to drink.”
They sat rigidly, in silence, until Minna returned with whiskey. She had to physically remove Adrienne’s empty water glass from her hand, as though Adrienne had forgotten how to move her fingers. Caroline watched her drink. She remembered, now, that she had seen pictures of Adrienne’s daughter: a girl with a wide, frank face, freckled and grinning, like a child you would see on a commercial for pancake mix. She’d had bright blue eyes, like Richard’s. Like Trenton’s.
She remembered, too, the phone call from the police the night of Trenton’s accident; the blind drive through the dark, when the sky had seemed like a lid that might suffocate her.
People, Caroline thought, were like houses. They could open their doors. You could walk through their rooms and touch the objects hidden in their corners. But something—the structure, the wiring, the invisible mechanism that kept the whole thing standing—remained invisible, suggested only by the fact of its existing at all.
Caroline stood up. Adrienne froze, as if she expected Caroline to lean across the table and strike her. But Caroline wasn’t angry anymore—not at Richard, not at Adrienne. All at once, in one second, the past and its ruin of promises and disappointments had released its hold on her. She was filled with a golden warmth that made her limbs feel loose and light; it made her forget her swollen ankles and the fact that she was not drunk enough to ward off the beginnings of a hangover.
She didn’t have to forgive him—the idea came suddenly, like a deep breath of air after a long submerging. It was all over now. She didn’t have to forgive him, and she could love him and hate him at the same time, and it was all right.
She closed her eyes and felt, for a split second, a hand pass across her neck; and in that moment she had a vision of rooms like atoms, holding a universe of secrets; and she, Caroline, gripped in the small bounded nucleus of the past.
Now she was free.
She reached across the table to take Adrienne’s hand. “It’s not your fault,” she said.
“My sister,” Trenton whispered again. This time he spoke quietly and addressed the word to the walls.