The Promised World (31 page)

She was suddenly nervous. Nobody was talking. Lila was staring down at the table, and Patrick’s eyes were red with exhaustion. She didn’t really decide to tell them where her kids were, but once the words were out of her mouth, she knew why she had. If this screwed her future relationship with Barbara Duval, including an inheritance the old lady hinted at, she didn’t care. She didn’t even care about the fancy do-nothing lawyer Barbara was paying for. She needed to hear that the kids would be okay at Barbara’s house. If Billy couldn’t tell her that, she would have to trust his twin.

Patrick responded first. He sounded confused. “They’re in New Jersey?”

She told him no; Barbara Duval had another house about twenty miles from here. “The social worker says it’s a nice place,” she said, looking at Lila. “I guess your mom is looking out for them, right?”

Her sister-in-law’s normally pale face had turned ashen. She looked so strange that Ashley wondered if she was going to be sick.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Ashley sputtered. She felt frozen in Lila’s bizarre gaze. “Pearl called her first. I don’t know how she got Barbara’s number.”

“I’m sure they’re fine.” Patrick looked at his wife. “Let’s not panic.”

Ashley pushed back from the table like she was going to run, but there was no escaping this feeling. “Oh God,” she stammered. “I knew this wasn’t a good idea.”

And the weird part was, she had known. She’d ignored her instincts with Barbara Duval just like she’d ignored the feeling that Kyle was lying to her about his past, about looking for work, about how much he liked her kids. Just like she’d ignored the voice inside
her head that had told her, year after year, that Billy’s dream of a happy life was never going to happen, that no matter how bad he wanted it, it just wasn’t in him.

Then it hit her that she also knew what had driven Pearl to run to Lila’s house, and even to call Barbara Duval. It was so clear now she was angry at herself for not getting it before. The night Billy died, Pearl had gone into the basement and come up with one of his manuscripts, bound in a blue cover. An old one, written when he still used a typewriter, before Ashley had even known him. Pearl shut herself in her room and read that thing constantly whenever she didn’t have chores or homework. Her daughter never said what it was about, and Ashley didn’t think to take a closer look. She did notice that Billy had scribbled on a title—and recently, too, since he’d used one of Maisie’s stickers to write it on—but she didn’t think about what that title meant.

“For LEC: Truth Comes in with Darkness.” Now it seemed obvious. “LEC” was Lila’s initials. The rest was a quote from one of Lila’s favorite books, the one she wrote about in graduate school. Billy didn’t say it constantly like some quotes, but Ashley remembered it because he told her it came from the most heartbreaking story he’d ever read.

He must have given Pearl that sticker and told her which manuscript to put it on. But Maisie hadn’t even gotten those stickers until a few weeks before Billy died. Did he already know he was going to kill himself when he wrote this? Ashley felt sure he did. And he wanted Lila to have whatever he’d written all those years ago, but instead his daughter took it on herself to read it at least once and maybe several times. And this was why she stomped into Ashley’s room one night, when Kyle was watching TV, and said, “You never understood him, but I’m going to. He was my father and he deserved to have someone who wanted to know what the fuck happened to him!”

Ashley told Pearl to watch her mouth. She was folding clothes and she thought she didn’t have time to deal with her daughter’s anger. Were Pearl’s eyes red? Probably. She was always upset about her father. Why hadn’t Ashley paid more attention to this? Why had she only given Pearl hugs and repeated that same old crap about time healing all wounds, which she didn’t even believe?

Now Ashley felt like crying, thinking of what her little girl was up to. She’d gone to Billy’s sister, and when that didn’t work out, she’d arranged to be with Billy’s mother. Because she missed her father so badly she’d convinced herself that understanding him would make it hurt less. Even though he wasn’t there, she was still running to her crazy, magical daddy. The only one who could catch the air people queen.

CHAPTER TWENTY

T
he first few days at New Grandma’s house were mostly boring, except the ride back and forth to Chandler Elementary. That part was awful, just William and Grandma in the big white car, driving for what felt like hours instead of fifteen minutes like it had been on the bus from his real house. He used to hate that bus because Sophie Peterson liked to grab his backpack and dump everything out on the floor, but now he knew there were worse things than crawling under seats to catch pencils and markers before they rolled away.

New Grandma talked more than anybody in the entire world. That’s what William whispered to Pearl, and she held her hand across her mouth to keep her laugh inside so New Grandma wouldn’t say, “What’s so funny?” Wherever they went in the whole
huge house, they were never really sure they were alone ‘cause their grandma might just appear out of nowhere, like some ghost who could walk through walls.

If Pearl had been in the big white car, too, it might not have been so bad, but she got to stay home all day. After she told the social worker she was afraid to go to school ‘cause of what Kyle did to her, her teachers said since she already had an A+ for everything this year and high school was almost over, she could just come in to take the finals in a few weeks. So she wasn’t there when William was squeezing himself against the passenger door and trying so hard not to cry that his stomach hurt and then feeling dumb that he was such a baby that he kept wanting to cry when New Grandma hadn’t hit him or yelled or done anything but talk and talk and talk.

“I’ve made an observation about you, William,” she said one afternoon before they were even out of the school parking lot. “You want everyone to think you’re not very smart because it allows you to get away with more. Very clever.”

At first, he thought New Grandma was about to punish him. He knew trying to get away with things was bad, like trying to get out of doing the dishes. And clever wasn’t always good, because sometimes his father had said “how clever” when he and his mom were fighting and his mom would scream louder or even cry. But when he said he hadn’t done anything wrong, New Grandma smiled.

“Ah, you’re doing it with me, too. Touché. However, I do hope at some point you’ll realize you don’t have to bother. Nothing you could say would shock me. It’s one of the advantages of refusing to play the game.”

New Grandma talked about The Game constantly, but it wasn’t a normal game like Monopoly or baseball. William figured this out, though he wasn’t sure what it did mean ‘cause she said it so
many ways, like anything could be a game, even being a grandma. On Wednesday morning when they were late to school, before she came inside to say she was sorry to William’s teacher, she winked at William. “It’s time to play the grandma game. Don’t worry, I’ve always been very good at handling peons.”

When he got home, William remembered to ask Pearl what a “peon” was. His sister said it meant worker, like a foot soldier. He asked Pearl if a peon could be in a game and she said sure. “Pawns are peons. Dad used to call them peasants, remember?”

He did remember, but he didn’t see what any of this had to do with being late for school. Maybe he would’ve if he were better at playing chess, like Pearl was, but then he might be stuck playing with New Grandma all the time, like his sister. Grandma had a whole shelf of silver and gold trophies that she won playing chess, though William remembered what Daddy said about them. The trophies were one of the first things William had noticed when his father brought him to this house for the escape Challenge, ‘cause they were so shiny and cool-looking, way better than the stuff they gave out at school for the spelling bee. But Daddy said they were “worthless” and then took William upstairs, where he taught him how to pick a lock, in case he ever got locked inside a room somewhere and needed to get free.

Staying in this house, William missed Daddy worse than ever. Somehow New Grandma figured that out—it was another of those things she called her “observations.” And William hadn’t said one word about Daddy to New Grandma, ‘cause Pearl had warned him not to. So how could New Grandma know? He wasn’t going to ask, but she told him anyway. She said she could read his mind!

“And now you’re afraid, aren’t you?” She laughed. “And you’re more afraid that I knew you were afraid.”

She was right, he was really scared and clearing his throat like crazy. Since she’d never said anything about his tic, he didn’t even
try to control himself. He figured maybe grandmas were too old to hear stuff like tics unless they had one of those brown microphone things in their ears, like his grandma in New Mexico had.

“I could always tell what your father was thinking, too.” She touched William’s shoulder. “We were so close. I think I can safely say that for most of his childhood, he considered me his best friend.”

William knew this wasn’t true. Daddy had said a thousand times that Aunt Lila was his best friend when he was a kid. But before he could say one word, New Grandma had figured out what he was thinking again! It was so creepy. She also said he was wrong ‘cause Daddy and Lila weren’t that close. “Oh, your father liked to pretend that he and his sister had some mystical twin bond, but the truth was, he was far more like my side of the family than Lila ever was. Until they were teenagers, your father was only kind to poor Lila out of guilt. Then she bewitched him, but I can’t blame him for that. Whatever problems she may have had, Lila was a beautiful girl.”

New Grandma was smiling, but it looked wrong somehow. Later, when William was trying to explain all this to Pearl, he kept messing up the parts he didn’t understand, but he did know New Grandma’s smile looked like she just ate a spoonful of pepper. Pearl whispered, “I told you not to talk to her about Dad and that goes for Aunt Lila, too. She can’t—”

“What’s the secret?” New Grandma said. She was standing in the doorway of the kitchen when one second before she’d been upstairs in the bathroom. William had heard the water running with his own ears. He felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.

Pearl’s eyes were darting around, but she didn’t sound scared or nervous when she came up with a big fat lie. “I was just telling him I hope we don’t have leftover mushroom ravioli for dinner because I really didn’t like it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this before. I didn’t want to be rude.”

“And so we’ll have something else,” Grandma said. “Your candor is refreshing, Pearl. Most children would have made something up.”

Their grandma looked happy, which William didn’t get at all since she’d said she’d spent hours making that ravioli while he was at school. Plus, she winked at him when Pearl wasn’t looking, like she knew Pearl was lying about the secret. Later that night, when New Grandma was on the phone, he tried to warn Pearl, but his sister gave him a dirty look and hissed, “I already told you she can’t know what we’re thinking. She may be smart, but she’s not Santa Claus.”

Every day, Pearl seemed to get grumpier and grumpier, but William figured it was because she never went anywhere or saw her friends or did anything but hang around New Grandma, who kept beating her at chess. So far, Pearl had lost every game and Grandma said she would continue to lose until she thought about the game differently. This was on Friday afternoon, when William was already feeling happier ‘cause he knew he wouldn’t have to ride with New Grandma for the next two days. Then she told William that someday he would be a much better chess player than his sister, and he couldn’t help feeling a little proud. Nobody had ever said that to him, not even Daddy. But when New Grandma asked him if he liked chess, he said, “It’s okay.”

“Nicely done,” she said. “It’s always best to keep your true feelings to yourself. This is why your sister is failing. She shows all her disappointments to her opponent. Even when she believes she’s hiding her motivations, she goes too far the other way to be convincing.”

Grandma went on about Pearl and chess until William lost interest, but he couldn’t do much besides look out the window. This was the problem with New Grandma’s talking and talking and talking: he couldn’t multiply numbers in his head or think
about Daddy’s reminders or even daydream ‘cause her voice was so sharp, the words felt like pokes in the ribs.

“For instance,” New Grandma said, “look how hard Pearl is working to hide the fact that she doesn’t like me.”

Maybe he was kind of daydreaming. He thought she was talking about chess. He could feel her looking at him and his face felt as hot as when he was a kindergartner and he got sunburned at the shore.

“Ah,” she said, “so I am right about that.”

He knew she was reading his mind again, but this time it was worse than ever ‘cause he didn’t even know he was thinking Pearl didn’t like New Grandma until New Grandma said that. He was so scared, he yelled, “It’s not true. Pearl wanted to come stay here! It was her idea and everything!”

“Poor boy, are you worried I’ll tell her about this? I know your sister would be angry with you, and even if she wasn’t, she would undoubtedly consider you stupid for admitting this, when we both know you are at least as smart as she is.” She turned into the long driveway. “This can stay our little secret, agreed?”

He spit out “yeah” ‘cause he didn’t want his sister to be mad at him and he really didn’t want her to think he was stupid. But he felt so nervous that he ran into his room and shut the door without even saying hi to Pearl, even though he hated his room more than any other part of the whole house. Grandma called it the “brown guest room,” but the curtains and the sheets and the comforter weren’t really brown; they were like a swirly pattern of brown and white and black that made William think of dead animals. The bed was gigantic, but it was a lot harder than his bed at home and so high up that he couldn’t move away from the center for fear he’d fall out. The only good thing was he had his own bathroom and it was just boring brown, not the dead animal pattern. He spent a lot of time in the bathroom, looking out the window, wondering if he
could walk all the way home before New Grandma or the social worker caught him and made him come back. He was pretty sure he knew the way, but he hated the idea of being out there alone on the little road through the woods. If only he hadn’t chickened out when Daddy wanted him to stay in the woods by himself, maybe he’d be brave now.