A few days after Daddy’s eruption at dinner, I arrived home from school and found sitting on the porch a half dozen closed crates, the kind the wine was packed in before it was shipped. One of the vineyard workers I recognized as Thomas was in the process of hauling the cartons onto the bed of a rusted-out pickup. I pulled my car up behind it and got out, catching Tom’s attention as I slammed the door.
“What’s this?” I asked and tucked behind my ears the hair that had escaped from my ponytail. “It looks like someone’s moving out.”
The broad-shouldered fellow finished dumping a load onto the truck and turned to face me, shrugging. “I’m just doing a job for your father, is all.”
“But whose things are these?” I said and might as well have been talking to myself as Thomas didn’t answer.
When I pushed the lid off a box, I saw a tangled mess of sweaters, books, and a faded Blue Birds uniform, all belongings of Anna’s. I went to the next crate and opened it as well, finding much the same, and my mouth went dry.
“Excuse me, Miss Evie.”
I straightened up to find Thomas wiping gloved hands on the front of his overalls as he waited for me to step aside.
“Sorry,” I murmured, my mouth gone dry.
This was wrong. Very wrong.
Panicked, I raced inside to find my mother, who was no help at all. She’d taken the prescription for her headaches and was out cold, curled up in bed, eyes closed. Even when I gently shook her arm, she didn’t respond.
Did she even know what was going on?
I left Mother’s room and began walking through the first floor of the house, calling out, “Daddy? Daddy, are you here?”
He had to be behind this, and I needed to find him, to make him reconsider.
After a fruitless search within, I ended up on the back porch. From there, I spotted him sitting on a wicker chair positioned in front of the big stone barbecue, watching a fire burn, its flames licking dangerously upward.
I strode down the steps and across the lawn toward him. “What are you doing?” I asked before I’d even stopped moving. “Why are Anna’s things boxed up?”
He didn’t answer nor did his flat expression change. Instead, he slowly rose from his seat and poked at the fire with a stick.
“Daddy, tell me what’s going on?” I demanded, looking away from him and toward the grill.
“It’s nothing, String Bean,” he said, a slur to his voice, and I wondered if he’d been drinking. “Just getting rid of some trash.”
I went forward, close enough that I could feel the heat, and realized then my father wasn’t burning charcoal bricks or even kindling. Paperwork and photographs fueled the flames, the edges brown and curling.
Instinctively, I grabbed the stick he’d leaned against the stone, and I poked the blaze myself. I glimpsed Anna’s name and what looked like “Pinkerton” on a bit of letterhead before everything crackled and turned to ash.
Turning around, I stared at him, horrified. “Did you hire someone to find Anna? You know something, don’t you? Tell me what it is,” I demanded.
“Go back inside, Evie,” he said, his voice rattling. “What I’ve done is my business. This has nothing to do with you.” Then he looked right through me as he stood again to toss more “trash” onto the fire.
“Daddy, no!” I grabbed his arm to stop him, and a photograph blew from his hand to the ground. I scrabbled to catch it. It was the shot of me and Anna from the rehearsal dinner. We stood arm in arm, my expression impassive; Annabelle gazed off into the distance, as if already planning her escape.
My chest ached, so distraught was I at the mere notion that Father had nearly destroyed it. Did he figure he could banish Anna from our memories as easily as that?
“You can’t do this—”
“I already have,” he said and prodded his makeshift funeral pyre, his brow slick with sweat. With a satisfied grunt, he sat back down again and picked up his pipe to puff on it, as if all were right with the world and he was just outside enjoying the afternoon sunshine.
“What’s gotten into you? I’m not saying I think she’s right for what she’s done, but this is wrong, it just is.” I stood in front of him, hanging on to the photo I’d saved, breathing hard, perspiration trickling down my back. “And the crates Thomas is hauling away, will you destroy those, too?”
He didn’t even glance up as he drew the pipe from his mouth, expelled a line of smoke, and said, “She’s not coming back. You should know that better than anyone. Every time I turn around, there’s something to remind me of how she humiliated us. It’s high time we did a little housecleaning, I decided. Your mother’s lucky I’m not burning every damned thing that ungrateful girl ever touched.”
Oh, God. This wasn’t right. I had cramps in the pit of my stomach. Anna may not have been the perfect princess everyone had long pretended she was, but she was still an Evans. She was still a part of us.
“Daddy, don’t do this, please,” I said, sure that he’d regret it, if not tomorrow then in years to come. “You can’t pretend she didn’t exist.”
“Go away, Evelyn.” He waved me off and went back to his pipe, puffing away and sweating profusely. “Get!”
. . . doing things that no good daughter would . . .
“She’s still your flesh and blood,” I insisted, my voice raw, my heart breaking, “no matter what she’s done.”
A parent couldn’t give up on a child, not in six months or ever. Wasn’t that the unspoken rule? I realized my father had never been a huggable man or one who showered us with affection. But this was something that went beyond aloof. This was downright cold. What was wrong with him? Did he not see what this was doing to me? What it would do to my mother? He could strip the Victorian of Anna’s existence, but we would never forget.
“If you could just try—” to be patient, I wanted to suggest, but he interrupted quite brusquely.
“I mean it, Evelyn, leave me be,” he barked, and I knew he didn’t care what I had to say. He’d already stopped listening. “I need to be alone.”
That was precisely what Anna had told me before the rehearsal dinner, and I had gone along with her, to disastrous results. It was clear I was no good at rescuing anyone.
Clutching the photo in my hand, I backed away, wanting to scream so the whole world could hear me; but I ran to the house instead and up the stairs to my sister’s room.
For the longest moment, I stood in the doorway, gazing at the starkness within—the bed stripped clean, the closet bare, and empty drawers hanging open—and I shook my head, astonished by how awry things had gone. When Daddy said Anna was dead to him, he’d meant it.
God forbid I should do anything to set him off, or I may be next.
Although I realized it would take a lot to let him down quite the way Anna had, and I didn’t have that kind of nerve besides.
I slipped the picture into my skirt pocket, drawing in some deep breaths before I deliberately went downstairs again. Peering out the front door, I waited until Thomas’ back was turned as he added more crates to the pickup. The two I’d opened still sat on the porch floor, without their lids. I dashed out and reached inside the closest one, snatching a shoebox from within. I didn’t know what was inside, and I didn’t care.
What I wanted was something of Anna’s before Daddy completely erased her.
Sweat stuck my shirt to my back, but I didn’t slow down. Scurrying away like a thief, I carried the parcel inside and to the safety of my bedroom. I locked the door before I put the shoebox on my dresser. Then I reached into my pocket for the photograph of Anna and me.
Next, I went to my closet and pulled the floral hatbox down, set it on the floor at my feet, and opened it. I dug within folds of crumpled tissue and withdrew the black dress, tossing it onto the bed.
I dropped my skirt to the floor and unbuttoned my cotton blouse until I stood only in my bra and underpants. My eyes went to the dress.
Do you truly want to do this? I asked myself, since I’d hoped never to use the dress again and to leave well enough alone. But how could I not in this circumstance? Did I want to know if I would see my sister again or not?
My answer then was yes.
Before I could change my mind, I tugged the dress over my head, wiggling the silk over my hips, not caring a whit if I perspired all over it. Suddenly, my skin felt strangely and oddly cold, and I rubbed my arms as I stared at my reflection in the mirror.
“Tell me if she’s coming back,” I demanded. “Tell me if Anna will ever come back, or if Daddy’s right and we should all just forget.”
I closed my eyes and waited, expecting the tingle of electricity that had happened twice before. Only I felt nothing, heard nothing but the house creaking as it always did and the rumble of Thomas’ engine out front as he started his truck.
“Please,” I whispered, my chest starting to heave, although I steadfastly refused to weep. There’d been too much of that going around of late, and I wasn’t good at it besides. “Please, give me something to go on, either way. Just let me know that she’s alive.”
I kept perfectly still and held my breath, hoping for the magic to happen. But not even the vaguest frisson of energy swept through me.
It wasn’t working.
A cry of frustration slipped out, and I stomped a foot on the floor, like an ill-tempered child.
What was wrong with it? Why couldn’t I see what was to be? What if all the magic was gone? Had I used it up already?
That first time I’d merely held it, about to toss it into the river, when it sent me a vision about Jonathan, and I’d simply been kissing Jon when I had the second brilliant flash.
Could it not give me answers about someone else? Was that it? Could it show me only something about myself?
Maybe it needed a piece of Anna in order to sense the connection. She was the first of us to wear it, and even now the scent of her lily of the valley clung to it.
Desperate for an answer, I tossed the lid from the rescued shoebox and rummaged within, finding a monogrammed silver hairbrush, a matching hand mirror, and a tortoiseshell comb that she’d used to pull up her hair on warm days such as this.
Yes, the comb. That would do. It even had a few of Anna’s dark hairs tangled in its teeth. Surely the dress would sense her presence in it.
I cradled it in my hands and shut my eyes, my mind suddenly flooded with memories: my sister racing through the vineyards, her dark hair streaming behind her, and Anna laughing as I’d caught her, giggling and telling me, “Really, Evie, sometimes you’re as slow as a tortoise. Try letting loose, why don’t you!”
Soon, I breathed in the scent of lily of the valley, as fresh and real as if Anna stood next to me.
When I saw the vision, it came in a burst of light, hitting me so hard that I dropped the comb to the floor and ended up on my knees. My palms pressed against pine planks, I settled onto my heels, eyes closed tightly.
There was Anna, her once-flowing hair cut short as a boy’s. She looked upon me with a thin smile, her blue eyes intense. She not only appeared very much alive but self-satisfied, as if she’d finally gotten what she wanted. I saw myself, too, seated in a wicker chair, gazing downward, my expression filled with disbelief and awe. For in my arms, I gently cradled a very tiny newborn.
Then I heard Anna’s voice in my head, telling me, “You are meant to be her mother,” and a chill raced up my spine. “You are the most level-headed and responsible woman. All things I am not. All things a daughter needs from her mother. Things I can never be.”
Oh, God, I gasped, keeping my eyes shut and praying it wasn’t over.
But as swiftly as it had come, the vision washed away, and I sagged under its weight, settling on the floor with my bottom on my heels.
“A baby,” I whispered and blinked as reality set in again. What I’d seen suddenly seemed so unbelievable, so distant. Was I going to have a baby?
I was twenty-two and unmarried. The only children in my life were the fifth graders in my classroom. But if the dress was right—and I had no reason to doubt it yet—I would have a baby of my own, and Anna would be by my side.
Even if my father had given up on her entirely, I could not. Not after this.
Anna would come home. I would see my sister again, and I would make her an aunt. Surely that would cause her to stay, wouldn’t it? How could she leave Blue Hills if she had a niece who needed her love and affection? Daddy would come to forgive her, Mother would cry tears of joy, and we could be as we once were, a whole and unified family.
“Thank you,” I said softly, beyond relieved, and pressed a hand to my heart, the energy of the dress still warm beneath my skin.
Once my pulse had slowed and I could stand without my knees knocking, I put away the salvaged photograph and Anna’s comb, brush, and mirror. Then I took off the dress, folded it carefully, and returned it to the hatbox, which I stuffed deep inside my closet where it would stay until I needed it again.