LIBBY HAD NO INTENTION of going back to Waltham, though she did want to please Dr. Sheep. But what could she possibly gain by going back? She was too much of a scientist to believe in ghosts. Richie’s spirit wouldn’t come to her and forgive her. She wouldn’t feel better. Still, the idea of going nagged at her. Would she be a coward if she didn’t go?
That Thursday morning, she got in the car and drove north, the radio blasting the Kinks. When she crossed into Massachusetts, though, she didn’t want anything but silence. As soon as she got on Route 128, then Trapelo Road, she started to feel sick.
She went to Warwick Avenue, feeling more and more nauseated. There was her old house, painted red now with blue shutters. She parked the car and started walking, and then she was on Greer Street, where she and Richie had gone to play in the pool.
There. There it was. The house that had the pool was painted blue now, and there were all sorts of kid accoutrements scattered in the front yard. She walked to the side of the house. No gate. No pool. A bright blue patio and some lounge chairs, a little garden with a chaos of flowers. Libby sank down to the lawn. She felt the house humming to her, as if it were alive: I know what you did. I know who you really are and I hate you for it.
Libby put her head in her hands. This was a mistake. She’d go home. She’d go back to work on Monday. She’d try to be a better doctor. A better person.
“Hello, are you okay?”
Libby looked up. An older woman was standing on the lawn, staring at her. The woman looked vaguely familiar and Libby tried to remember who this person was. “Do you need me to call someone?” the woman asked, and then Libby stood, too.
“I live just across the street,” the woman said. “I saw you and—”
“I’m sorry. This used to be the Millers’ house. I used to come here—”
“The Millers!” The woman tilted her head. “The Millers moved away years ago.”
“Do you know where?”
“No,” the woman said. “I’m sorry.”
“Actually, I don’t want to find them,” Libby said. She had seen the Millers after the accident, when they came to see her parents and she was made to play in the backyard while they talked. She had encountered them again in a lawyer’s office, but she’d had her head down, not daring to look up.
“Who are you?” the woman said to Libby.
Libby said her name and the woman’s shoulders relaxed. “Libby. My God. Little Libby. I should have known,” she said quietly. “You still have the same red hair.” She shook her head. “Do you remember me? Mrs. Stanislovsky? Irma? I was friends with your mom, too.”
“No.”
“Really, you don’t? Your mom and I used to go shopping afternoons together. We’d take you, too. One of us would make lemonade and we’d sit on the chaises and talk.”
“I wish I remembered.”
“Please,” said Irma. “Come inside. I’ll make us tea.”
As soon as Libby was in Irma’s kitchen, she felt something familiar, like she was little again. She remembered something else. Running into this house to get her mom and finding her and Irma at this table, smoking cigarettes, quietly talking. She tried to remember seeing Irma after the accident, but everything was a haze.
Irma made them mint tea. “I loved your mom,” she said.
“She and my dad died in a car accident,” Libby said.
Irma took Libby’s hand. “I know, honey. And I’m so sorry. I always imagined that one day she’d just show up here, come in my kitchen, just like no time at all had passed. Your mom never knew if she had done the right thing. Your family was struggling so hard. She used to cry about it.”
“What right thing?”
Irma put down her teacup. “You don’t know, do you,” she said. “They never told you?”
Time rustled. Libby could feel the sun burning her skin, the drip of sun lotion on her back. She could see the hard blue of the pool and hear her brother’s laugh.
“Told me what?” Libby said. “That it was my fault? That I had taken him there?”
“What are you talking about? Who told you it was your fault?”
“My parents thought so.”
“I was there that day,” Irma said.
“I didn’t see you. “
“How could you have seen anything, you were so upset? And it wasn’t your fault. You were a kid. It was the Millers’.”
“The Millers? But they were never blamed—”
“Of course they were. It was negligence. They were supposed to have the pool locked up with a gate.”
Libby couldn’t speak. She remembered the gate, the broken lock, how easy it had been for her and Richie to open it up and glide right through.
“They were rich, the Millers. They had this large liability homeowners’ policy that required all sorts of things if you were going to have a pool. Numbers marking the depth. The right height of the diving board. And last but not least, a working gate with a working lock.”
“I don’t understand,” Libby said. “What does this have to do with anything?”
Irma studied Libby. “Tell me. What do you do now for work?” she said quietly.
“I’m a doctor.”
“How do you think your parents paid for your med school?”
“They told me they’d saved up for it. I don’t know how they managed, but they did.”
“Enough for four years? Enough for med school? Your parents didn’t have money. Your mom used to tell me that she knew Richie would grab scholarships, but you—she was worried about you. She didn’t know how they’d get you through school.”
“They never said anything about—”
“Listen to me. They didn’t have money, not a dime. But the Millers did.”
Libby, stunned, leaned away from her. “What are you telling me?”
“I told you, your mom and I loved each other. Who do you think sat with her comforting her while she cried? Who do you think she could trust to listen? I never gossiped with the neighbors, and she knew that.”
“What does this mean?”
“It’s probably good you don’t remember. It was an ugly time. There were lawsuits. Your parents had to sue the Millers, and they found a lawyer who’d do it on a contingency basis.”
Libby swallowed hard, the past rising up in her throat like bile. She didn’t want to go back to that time, to being that vulnerable teen sitting there in a lawyer’s office, wearing a freshly ironed dress, hands clenched in her lap, too terrified to look at anyone.
Negligence. She remembered that word. She remembered some of the questions the lawyers asked her. Had she noticed the lock was broken? Had she known she should have told her parents where they were going? She didn’t know what the right answers were. Whatever she said, they wrote it down.
But she remembered something else. Those terrible words: wrongful death. The lawyers kept repeating that phrase, over and over, and every time she heard it, she winced, as if she’d been struck. She had thought it meant that the death was wrong, which it was and that it was her fault because she hadn’t been paying attention. But the more questions the lawyers asked her, the more she realized that it had another, deeper meaning. Wrongful death. The wrong child had died.
“You were so young!” Irma said. “Your mom told me the lawyers deposed you. She told me how upset you were to be asked all those questions, how all she wanted to do was take you out of that room and take you home.”
“She never said that—” Libby said. “My parents never talked about that day ever.”
“The case was settled out of court. The Millers’ insurance policy paid out handsomely, and your parents, who could have used that money, didn’t take a penny. Instead, they used that money for your education.”
Libby felt a buzzing in her spine. “What?”
Irma reached over and took Libby’s hand, and only then, when her fingers bumped up against Irma’s, did Libby realize how hard she was shaking. “You understand me?” Irma said quietly. “Your mom sat here, right where you are, crying to me about how she could never tell you because she didn’t want you feeling responsible. She didn’t want you thinking about that day, and she wanted, more than anything, for you to be safe, to have options in your life. Your parents were broken after that accident. It was hard for them to show emotion or even love. For your parents, money was the only love they could give you anymore. So they sued the Millers and they took money from them.”
Libby went cold with wonder. The Millers’ money was in everything now, she realized: the apartment she owned, her profession. Her ability to have a life.
“Is this true?” Libby said.
“Why would I make this up?”
Irma poured her another cup of tea, but they didn’t talk much after that, and eventually Libby got up to leave. She left Irma’s promising to be in touch but knowing that she probably wouldn’t. She thought about all those years after Richie died, how she used to leave him what she called ghost notes. Richie, check this box with this pencil if you are here . . . Richie, are you mad at me? Check box yes or box no. There was never any checkmark. Richie was gone. And her parents were gone now, too.
Her parents had taken the money for her. Here she had spent all this time thinking they valued her less than Richie, their golden boy, that she got less attention because she deserved less, but now she realized that that wasn’t really true. If it was, then they never would have fought so hard to make sure she would be all right, to keep the legal dealings secret so that she’d never feel guilty. They had loved her and she had spent her whole life imagining they didn’t and she had been wrong.
A DAY LATER, Libby sat sobbing in Dr. Sheep’s office. She was embarrassed by her drippy nose, her red eyes. She kept pulling out tissues from the box in front of her until she emptied it. “Forgive me,” she said, but Dr. Sheep actually seemed more interested in her than ever. He handed her more tissues.
“You think of yourself as a certain kind of person, but you aren’t,” Dr. Sheep said.
“What are you talking about?” Libby blew her nose, then snuffled.
“You think you have no value just in your own self, but you do. Adults are the ones who are supposed to love and protect you,” Dr. Sheep said. “Your parents thought they were doing that, but they were not. They left you alone. And lucky for you, you were strong enough to survive that. By going back to Waltham, by realizing there was no faucet of love that can shut off, you can go forward.”
“How? Tell me because I really have no idea. I have no idea what to do next in my life.”
“You’ll think about it. You’ll figure it out. Just listen to yourself a little harder.”
Libby cried a little more. She thanked Dr. Sheep and made another appointment. Listen harder, Dr. Sheep had said. She could do that. She could try.