Chapter Five

"Wake up! Wake up!"

My heart thumps. I don't know where I am, who is yelling, where these sheets came from, but the uncertainty passes as quickly as it came. I immediately realize what's happening, and it's the exact scenario I feared last night.

They're here. Much too early.

Rolling into my pillow, I groan, " Go away ."

Small, sticky fingers pry open my eye lids. "Auntie Vee," Alice whispers into my open mouth. Her nose tickles mine. "Auntie Vee…"

"I said, go away ," I sing into cotton.

She giggles and shouts into my ear, "Auntie Vee!"

"She's not here."

" Auntie Vee !"

"You silly girl," I mutter, scooping her up around the waist and squeezing her against me, flattened out on the bed.

She breathes through a smile and proceeds to dig into my hair, flip the shoulder of my tank top back and forth, smell my ear, and hide herself under the comforter.

"Did you just smell my ear?" I ask, rolling over on my back.

Thank God she didn't lick it.

The blob beside my hip doesn't move. It sits on its knees and bounces gently into the mattress like a quilted mountain on the verge of an avalanche. Her breath comes out in quiet shoots of little laughter.

I pull up to a seat. "Where did Ally go?"

She shakes.

"I know she was just here." I feel my hand around the top of the quilt, making audible sounds as my nails drag over the stitches, tormenting her with anticipation. "Ally girl? Oh, Alice ." I tuck my stretched legs beneath me. After a beat, I attack – fingers dancing into her squishy three-year-old belly.

She squirms and screams and throws the cover off her wild, white hair. It sticks up in all directions, a rainbow clip dangling off a chunk, and the gap of a knocked-out tooth is the star of her smile. She falls into a heap in my lap.

"What's going on up there?" Fran calls.

"A monster came in and disturbed my slumber," I respond, covering Alice's little pink cheeks with kisses.

She sighs and pushes back hair from my face.

I do the same to her. Her blue eyes sparkle with the innocence only children can express. They roam my face and hair with unabashed observation, so completely at ease and full of thought that I feel like strange phenomena being assessed.

The open bedroom door squeaks.

"It's so funny, Vienna," Francesca begins, coming inside. "I went to look for you in your bedroom, but you weren't there. I would have never thought to find you in the big bedroom. It's so funny that you thought you'd sleep here." She smirks, passing me a cup of coffee.

"Don't worry, I'm going to wash the sheets and go back to my quarters tonight, your majesty." I hold the cup high as Alice scrambles off the bed.

She asks, "Where's Grayson?"

"Helping Daddy unload the car," Francesca answers.

We watch her bound out of the room, and I take a sip of the freshly brewed coffee. "How was the drive?"

Francesca exhales, tucking her jean-clad legs under the covers and resting her back against the headboard beside me. "It was nice actually. I thought it would be weird."

"To be in a car together?"

"To do family things again." She grips the handle of the blue mug that she set on the side table. Her newly manicured nails scrape against the ceramic. "This is our first thing as a family. We haven't even had dinner together in the house in over a year."

"I thought you guys have been doing dinner three times a week?"

"We eat out. Or at David's apartment."

"You went to Six Flags. And soccer games."

She nods. "Yeah, we've been doing that kind of stuff and everything's been good. Great. Dave's been…he's the greatest, always has been. And apart from us still living in separate places, it feels like things are getting back to normal, just a better version of it."

She stares into her coffee, and I notice her eyelids are powdered with brown shadow and her eyebrows have been tinted. She's wearing a new cream-colored cable knit sweater and her hair bounces when she tips her head back.

"You look nice, Francesca," I offer. She doesn't respond, she doesn't care about my assessment. It's not for me, it's for her. It's part of the effort she promised to make to herself.

"But what if this trip is a bad idea?" she asks, meeting my eye. "What if it's too much?"

My mouth opens and closes.

She adds, "What if I'm not ready to be here and I can't handle the weight of it? I can't let anyone see it crush me. I can't afford for it to crush me."

Crushing weight is on more than one mind.

I look out at the window across from me. This large, perfect bedroom has a great view of the new sun shining atop tree branches and sparkles stretches of lake water. I imagine the cool smell of Fall air and the sound of leaves crunching under the kids' feet.

"I'm glad we're all here." I keep staring ahead. "It's not a mistake, you're going to be fine. You and Dave have loved each other for twenty years. You were married for ten. One year semi-separated won't make you strangers, especially not with all the work you've both been putting into yourselves and your relationship. It was never supposed to be over, right?"

"Just a break," she sighs. "We were always going to come back together when we were stronger individually. Now it's like a big test I'm afraid to fail."

"You're not going to fail," I tell her.

"I just don't want this trip to be a mistake."

I've been wrestling with the same question, I want to say. I'm worried being here is a huge mistake and all my regrets and self-hate will drown me in the middle of a family holiday. One look at the house next door and I almost got back in the car and booked it out of the trees.

But I can't tell her. I still don't want her to know about that summer. I don't want to talk about it or be the subject of anyone's scrutiny.

"Well, I can take this bedroom off your hands," I offer with a yawn, stretching my arms. "It might be too awkward for you to share this room. You don't want to move too fast."

She rolls her eyes. "We need this giant room because we need space. I'm not sleeping in a room next to Kate. She'll stick her ear to the wall just waiting for us to have some big blow-up and come running in to tell Dave that I'm toxic and –"

"When do they get here?"

I've known David's little sisters for most of their lives. They're in their early twenties. They'll have the energy for Alice that I can't muster.

"Tomorrow," she groans. "Katie had to get her hair cut." She pauses, flipping her hair dramatically. "By the way, I saw several mixing bowls on the drying rack."

I pull back the comforter and stick my feet into slippers.

"Did you have a good night last night?" she continues. "Stress baking all alone, up here, in the house you've refused to step foot in for fourteen years."

"Yes, actually. And I wasn't stress baking." I walk over to my bag and pull out a knitted cardigan. "I was baking baking."

"No issues being here at all?" she prods.

"Nope." I slide the cardigan across my tank top.

"Well…good."

" Well, good ," I mock.

"It is good. I'm glad you're here! Finally ." Fran scoots off the bed. She pulls the quilt back and begins stripping the sheets. "It's nice you had time alone, and I hope you were able to fix whatever issue you have with being here."

"No issue," I attempt, taking the pillowcase off and adding it to the pile of laundry.

She didn't want me to date Adam, so I snuck around with him behind her back and the thrill of having something all to myself, free from inspection or unwanted commentary, made it even more special.

I'm afraid to ruin the good stuff with the truth.

"Okay," she murmurs. "I mean, obviously Heddy knows what it is because she hasn't asked you to come in years and she doesn't seem to think it's weird that you don't come back for the summer."

"Well, Heddy's psychic," I point out, hoisting the pile of sheets in my arms and heading toward the laundry.

I cross hand-woven vintage rugs and crystal pendant lights and wind down the stairs. At first glance, this house appears as eccentric as Heddy, but the expensive details pop out like ancestral ghosts.

From a young age, I knew my family had money. Kids called us rich. You can't unlearn your parent's wealth through the eyes of a child who has every need met and then some. If Joey Parker said we were rich, we were.

When we were teenagers one day, David pointed to the living room piano and said, "That's a Steinway."

"So?" I asked.

"So, she has a crazy expensive piano, a library, and exotic taxidermy. Only rich people have those things. Heddy is loaded."

It didn't occur to me that wealth could present itself any other way than monochromatic furniture and working your life away. Heddy treated money like everything else in her life: with respect, not idolatry.

After she divorced the landscape guru Kenneth Gually, she no longer drove her Porsche. I asked her about it, and she shrugged. "Kenny wanted it." After that, she drove a twenty-year-old Honda she bought for less than a rare crystal.

I carefully step over the falling bedsheets in my arms.

Spindly as ever and wearing his Red Sox cap backward, David meets me at the back door, his arms full too, but with backpacks and nylon grocery bags full to the brim. "Vienna," he offers, leaning over his load – I do the same – to kiss my cheek.

"Hiya Davey," I say over my shoulder, continuing down the hallway.

From behind him, Grayson calls out, "Dad, where's my Switch?"

"Somewhere you can't touch for a few days," comes the answer.

I dump the sheets in the machine and start it, spinning around to my blonde five-year-old nephew who stands in the middle of the foyer, staring at the stuffed peacock on the entry table.

He cocks his head toward me. "Where did that come from?"

"Heddy hunted it," I answer.

"She shot it with a gun ?" His mouth gapes open.

From upstairs, Francesca calls out, "No weapon talk!"

"Oh, yeah," I ignore her. "That peacock was very aggressive. It used to prowl the grounds and attack anyone who came near. Slice you right around the belly like a velociraptor. Savage."

I sidle up beside him and view the emerald feathers and beady black eyes that have been perched on this table for longer than Heddy's been alive.

I continue, "And now this angry creature terrorizes the house. At night, when you're asleep, it haunts the hallways and particularly loves that part of the house."

Grayson glances in the direction of my gesture. "That's where I sleep."

My head nods, ominously, mouth fighting a smile.

"I've never heard anything in the middle of the night," he questions, raising a fair eyebrow and squinting his freckles.

"Well, that's because you didn't know about it. Now that you know…" I drop to a whisper. "You can't unknow ."

He swallows.

I wrap my arm around his shoulder, and he screams.

"Give me a proper hello!" I beg, reaching for a hug.

He backs away, "No, no, no. Why would you tell me that story? Dad! Dad!" He takes off out the front door.

"My God, Vienna," Francesca scolds from atop the stairs. "You are getting up with him in the middle of the night when he's screaming bloody murder."

I throw a hand over my mouth. "It's just so easy!" I cackle.

She narrows her eyes, carrying both of our coffee mugs, and we walk into the kitchen together, my favorite room in the house.

Big windows that overlook the lake, white marble countertops, and rich dark wood cabinets. Heddy hung stained glass and colored pendant lights that look like tulips over the butcher block island that always made me feel like a true pastry chef. I spy a drop of frosting from the cookies I made last night.

Francesca puts the dishes away and begins unpacking the grocery bags.

One loaf of bread. Then another. Then another. Five containers of juice boxes. Three bags of oranges. Two cartons of two dozen eggs.

"Are you moving in?" I lean my arms on the counter and inspect a package of dried seaweed. "Or is this apocalypse prep?"

"These kids eat a lot."

"Like a loaf of bread a day?"

"Nearly." She wrenches open the fridge. "Grayson says he's vegetarian once a day and he's ‘allergic' to milk every other meal but sometimes he will only eat dairy products, but most of the time he eats nothing until he's suddenly starving. I buy so much food just hoping he will eat."

"You were a picky eater, too." I rip open a box of granola bars.

"Well, he turns it into an extreme sport."

I take a bite and sink into the well-worn wooden stool, the backs of my thighs prickly from the cold surface.

"Where are your pants?" Dave asks from behind me. "It's forty degrees outside."

I shrug. "I like to be cozy but cool. You know?"

"No. I don't know." He heads up the stairs with suitcases.

Francesca asks, "By the way, did you bring anything nice to wear? Not that you don't already look fabulous , but we were thinking Caroline might babysit one night and the four of us can go out to dinner or drinks in town."

I grab a falling chunk of granola and argue with my mouth full, "Now you tell me? Why didn't you tell me this yesterday? I figured we were lounging around the house all week, stuffing ourselves, watching TV and refusing to read any of the books David tells me will make me a well-rounded individual ." I shake my head and scoff, "I prefer to get my well-roundedness from cookies."

Francesca waits for me to finish, frozen in human form, before scoffing, "You always pack more clothes than you need. You always have at least one outfit that would get you into the MTV movie awards."

I hold up two fingers.

"Two?" She sounds exasperated. "At least tell me they cover your complete ass."

"What exact portion of the body qualifies as ass ?" I tease.

She says, "Listen, babe, you're going to be Katie's date, you'll have to take that up with her."

As Francesca walks off, my smile fades.

Date.

It's been a while since I've been on an actual date, but even longer since I've been on one in Loxley.

Watching my sister mosey around the kitchen, I remember the day after I saw Adam in the grocery store, day three of our summer vacation. David had told me Adam was looking for me that morning, that I would find him in his workshop garage.

He wanted to ask me something.