And then, at last, Cecily heard Jane’s door open, she heard footsteps in the hallway. Cecily leaped from bed and opened her bedroom door. Jane stood in front of her in a high-collared nightgown.
“I think your brother is trying to contact me,” Jane said.
“Excuse me?” Cecily said.
“He’s trying to contact me. He’s making noise.”
Cecily followed Jane down the hall and into the extra room. Sure enough, there was a light tapping on the window.
“Turn off the light,” Cecily said. She went to the window and peered out into the darkness to see if the wind was knocking a branch against the pane. But there was no wind; the American flag sagged in the spotlight, impotent. No one was outside, and yet Cecily heard the tapping, so light, so faint, it was all she could do to keep from imagining a baby’s fist, the size of an egg, tapping the glass, demanding to be let in. “I need to get out of this place,” she said.
“This room is haunted,” Jane said.
Cecily sat on the edge of Jane’s bed. “It could be. No one has ever slept in here before.”
“Why me?”
“My father overbooked,” Cecily admitted. She forgot about the ghostly tapping and became excited that at last she had gotten a chance to apologize to Jane. “Listen, I know you recognize me. Cecily Elliott, room two-seventeen, Darwin House. You saw me and my boyfriend…and I yelled when I shouldn’t have. I feel terrible about it, but I love him so much. It’s the kind of love that hurts whenever I breathe, practically, because he’s living in South America, and I’ve been saving my money to go see him.”
“I do know you,” Jane said. “You’re a hard person to forget. And your boyfriend, so handsome!”
“Yes,” Cecily said. Longing for Gabriel rose in her throat, like a song she couldn’t sing. “Anyway, I wanted you to know I was sorry. Also, I spoke with my father and he’s not going to charge you for the room.”
“Oh, please, dear,” Jane said. “I want him to charge me.”
“What?”
The tapping started again, and Cecily wondered if this were all just a very bizarre dream, caused by the unrelenting heat, a mirage.
“I want him to charge me,” Jane said. “I have to get rid of my money.” She opened the top drawer of the dresser and pulled out the paper bag that was twisted closed. She turned the bag upside down on the bed.
Money fell out of the bag, money the way it appeared in the movies, in neat stacks the size of bricks. Cecily gasped: hundreds and fifties and twenties.
“Where did you get that money?” Cecily asked. She almost asked Jane, Did you steal it? Jane, the cleaning woman, was filthy rich.
“It was my husband’s money. He owned apartment buildings in Lawrence, and this is twenty years of rent right here. It was supposed to go to my son but he refused to take it. My son thought Jerry was prejudiced because he wouldn’t rent to blacks or Puerto Ricans.”
“Was he prejudiced?” Cecily asked.
“Yes,” Jane said, sadly. “Someone with dark skin, like your boyfriend, wouldn’t have been able to rent from Jerry.”
“That’s really shitty,” Cecily said. “I told off a woman this summer because she didn’t want black people on our beach.”
Jane wrung her wrinkly hands. “I can’t excuse what Jerry did. But I don’t want the money to go to waste.”
“Why did you come here?” Cecily asked. “Why did you pick our hotel?”
“I found this,” Jane said. She opened the second drawer where she had put her clothes. She pulled out a Nantucket Beach Club and Hotel brochure with the picture of the pavilion and the five blue Adirondack chairs, and handed it to Cecily. “I found it when I was doing the final clean at school.”
“You found it in my room?” Cecily said.
“Must have been,” Jane said. “I was pretty sure I’d recognize someone around here, but I didn’t know it’d be you.” Jane patted Cecily’s hand. “I’m glad it was.”
“Me too,” Cecily said.
“How much money do you need to see your young man?” Jane asked.
“Five hundred dollars,” Cecily said.
Jane counted out ten fifties and pressed them into Cecily’s palm. “There you go,” she said, “a little graduation present from old Jane.”
Again, the tapping. Cecily closed her eyes and listened. Maybe it wasn’t W.T. at all. Maybe it was Gabriel knocking, beckoning to her from far away.
“I can’t take this,” Cecily said. “I really want to but I can’t.”
Jane frowned. “You feel like my son, then? Won’t take the money because it’s tainted?”
“Sort of, yeah.” Cecily thought of Mrs. John Higgens, and let the bills flutter to the bed.
Jane walked back to the dresser and pulled out her wallet. “I have four hundred and eighty-six dollars here from my last paycheck from Middlesex,” she said. “Will you take this?”
Jane’s paycheck, that she earned by cleaning up after Cecily and her classmates? It seemed strange to take that money, too, but at least it wouldn’t be unethical. Cecily could fly to New York first thing in the morning, and she’d be on her way to Rio before her parents even realized she was gone. It was thrilling, and positively terrifying. Terrifying! She couldn’t do it. But then Cecily thought of Gabriel, the way he cupped her face when he kissed her, the way his smile spread slowly across his face like a sunrise.
“Thank you, Jane,” Cecily said.
“Where are you headed again?” Jane asked.
“Rio de Janeiro,” Cecily said.
And with those words, she was free.
Therese knew the second her baby boy died inside of her, and she knew as soon as her feet hit the ground in the morning that Cecily was gone. The house sounded hollow beneath her feet; it sounded like a house without children. She didn’t let herself panic until she checked Cecily’s bedroom, however, because in this heat, her instincts could be wrong. Therese tiptoed down the stairs so as not to wake their guest, Mrs. Hassiter. Knocking lightly on Cecily’s door, Therese said, “Honey, are you in there?”
No answer, but that didn’t mean anything. Cecily was probably still asleep; she didn’t have to be on the beach until ten.
Therese was halfway up the stairs when she caught her reflection in the mirror. Fooling yourself, her reflection said. She marched back down to Cecily’s room and opened the door.
Cecily’s bed was made, the room neat and clean. It was a teenager’s dream room: queen-size bed, TV, stereo, built-in bookshelves that held Cecily’s schoolbooks and her field hockey trophies. There was a spartan desk-built to Cecily’s specifications-an old hotel door sitting on two filing cabinets. A framed black-and-white photograph of the Beach Club circa 1928 hung over Cecily’s bed. On the nightstand was a hotel envelope, the kind guests left tips in for the chambermaids. On the front, in Cecily’s youthful hand, it said, “Mom and Dad.”
Therese sat on Cecily’s bed, picked up the envelope, and held it in her lap. Her hands trembled.
Therese knew all about running away. She’d practically done the same thing on her eighteenth birthday when she took the Long Island Railroad from Bilbo to Grand Central Station, her father’s World War II army bag slung over her shoulder. She was only sixty miles from home, but it might as well have been another continent-her orderly, cookie-cutter neighborhood left behind for Manhattan. She would never admit it to Bill, but she understood why Cecily wanted more. Cecily was her mother’s daughter. Forty years ago, Therese had gone searching for beauty, and found love. Cecily searched now for love-maybe she would be lucky enough to find beauty. Maybe: if she didn’t get killed or end up in jail or contract some appalling disease.