“She may not be the same girl she once was,” Smith warned.
Annie leaned in. “You don’t forget the people you love,” she told him. “That’s what I’ve realized. They just get farther away. Like a spyglass turned around.”
“All right.” Something happened to Smith at that moment. Despite the circumstances, he felt his heart lift. “I’ll find her for you.”
FOR HER JUNIOR year, Claire was sent to the Graves Academy, a private girls’ school. Natalia and her friend Madame Cohen, who was visiting from Paris, had checked the schools in the area until they found one that met with their approval. “She can’t sit home all alone,” Madame Cohen told Annie. “She’s a quiet girl, but even quiet girls need noise sometimes.”
Many of the students at Graves came from overseas and were uncertain about their English, so Claire’s silence was not completely out of the ordinary. The fact that she didn’t speak didn’t impact her grades. She was diligent and completed her studies on time, hunched over her books for hours each day. There was a school uniform: blue pleated skirt, white shirt, blue sweater, maroon sweatshirt. Just as well. Claire paid little attention to her appearance. She closed her eyes whenever she walked past a mirror, hoping to avoid her reflection. At night Annie could hear her fluttering around, like a bird trapped in the attic, where there were still two beds side by side.
Natalia and Madame Cohen had asked Elise to find a therapist for the poor girl. She recommended a Dr. Steiner, whose office was within walking distance. In her sessions with him, Claire communed in writing or not at all. Dr. Steiner suggested Meg’s belongings be boxed up and moved. Claire wrote Fuck you on her notepad and shoved it across the coffee table toward the doctor. She still carried the piece of paper on which her sister had written orange. She had it with her at all times. Meg’s books remained arranged alphabetically by author on the shelf. Her clothes filled the closet, the boots and shoes stowed in a neat line. But Dr. Steiner was right. None of these keepsakes kept Meg alive.
The psychiatrist also suggested bringing a dog into the house. In times of trauma a dog could often reach a person in crisis. Annie decided she didn’t have the energy to deal with a floppy, undisciplined puppy. On impulse she bought a fully trained German shepherd. Shiloh had been raised in a kennel on a farm in Connecticut and had spent his days traipsing after boys and girls who did dangerous stunts, diving into ponds, jumping into stacks of straw. When Annie brought him home, he padded right over to Claire, who gazed at him and frowned. She took out her notepad and wrote Take him back.
When Claire went upstairs, the dog followed. She kept him locked out for two nights but on the third night, she let him in. Dr. Steiner was soon proven right. Claire seemed less agitated. Annie no longer heard pacing at night. Now it was the dog she heard, keeping watch.
Shiloh proved his worth on the night someone broke in to their house. He immediately began to bark, and whoever had been there fled through the bathroom window, leaving blood on the windowsill. In the morning, Annie found long black hairs on the floor. She swept them up, then called in the glazier to replace the broken glass. She went to examine the footprints crisscrossing the yard. They weren’t evidence of anything, but she knew. She went to the back of the garden, then searched the woods behind the house. No one was there. When she called out “Hello” the sound echoed back at her. It made her feel lost even though she had been this way a thousand times or more.
THEY LIVED IN an apartment in a small brick building not far from Astoria Boulevard. The old lady who owned the place rented it to them, and in return, Lorry collected the garbage, shoveled snow, patrolled the laundry room. It was beneath him, but he didn’t complain. He knew all the old ladies in the neighborhood. They embraced him and shouted in various languages for him to get a job. They treated him like a grandson, one who attracted trouble. They all saw the girl in the bloody clothes looking for him that night in the spring. They took note of her long dark hair. They observed the way she held on to him when at last he appeared. It was easy for them to spot heartbreak from a third-floor window, despite their bad eyesight and the darkness of the street.
Lorry had taken her to the ER, but they couldn’t run any scans because Elv didn’t have insurance. She refused to give them her name or apply for Medicaid, even though the intake nurse told her it was possible that her liver had been damaged. Elv came out and told Lorry she was fine. She had pain, but she could cope with it. She deserved any punishment she might get.
When Lorry was forced to leave Elv alone, he worried. She didn’t bother to get dressed. Instead she stayed in bed all day. She hadn’t been eating. He limited her drug usage, portioning it out for her, but she’d sneak more whenever he went out. She was afraid of the needle, but after a while she got used to it. She fell in love with it a little at a time. She thought Lorry didn’t know. She’d be in a dream, naked on the bed, and he’d come to lie down beside her and stroke her hair and tell her it would be all right when it clearly wouldn’t be. She knew what she’d done. She had killed her sister.
Lorry told her he’d had a blood brother he’d lost in the otherworld. He’d known tragedy too, and he’d been responsible in a similar way. Elv had heard that those who lived underground were called the Mole People, but Lorry told her never to use that term. It was an insult, another way to reduce them to nonhumans. Kill a mole, and what did it matter? Slit one’s throat and who would care?