“You seem happy today?” I ask her, carefully.
“I am. I’ve come to a decision.”
“Oh? What kind of decision?” We’ve reached the barrow. Beth lets go of my arm, conquers the mound in three long strides and turns to gaze over my head into the distance.
“I’m going. I’m not staying,” she says, throwing her arms wide, girlish, dramatic. She takes a huge breath, lets it out with emphasis.
“What do you mean? Going where?”
“Going home, of course. Later today. I’ve packed!” she laughs, as if she is wild, reckless. “I’m taking that road,” she says, squinting and pointing to the line of tall poplars that march along the lane out of the village.
“You can’t!” The thought of being alone in the house fills me with a dread I can’t define. I would rather dive to the bottom of the pond, let it suck me down. I feel something like panic sputtering in my stomach.
“Of course I can. Why stay? What are we even doing here? I can’t even remember why we came. Can you?”
“We came to… we came to sort things out. To… decide what we wanted to do!” I grope for words.
“Come on, Erica. Neither of us wants to live here.” She drops her arms as she says this, looks at me suddenly. “You don’t, do you? You don’t want to live here? You don’t want to stay?”
“I don’t know yet!”
“But… you can’t want to. It’s Meredith’s house. Everything about it says Meredith. And then there’s… the other thing.”
“Henry?” I say. She nods, just once. Short and sharp. “It’s our house, Beth. Yours and mine now.”
“Oh my God, you want to stay. You do, don’t you?” She is utterly incredulous.
“I don’t know! I don’t know. Not for ever, perhaps. For a while, maybe. I don’t know. But please don’t go, Beth! Not yet. I’m… I’m not done. I can’t go yet and I can’t stay here on my own. Please. Stay a bit longer.” On top of the barrow Beth sags. I have stabbed her, let out all the air. We are quiet for a while. The wind rolls over the ridge, trembles the grasses. I see Beth shiver. She looks impossibly lonely up there.
At length she comes down to me, her eyes lowered.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“What do you mean, you’re not done yet?” Her voice is flat now, lifeless.
“I need to… find out what happened. I need to remember.” A half-truth. I can’t tell her about her splinter. I can’t let her know what I am working toward. She would snatch herself away, not let me touch; just like Eddie with his swollen finger.
“Remember what?”
I stare at her. She must know what I’m talking about.
“About Henry, Beth. I need to remember what happened to Henry.” She glares at me now, eyes reflecting the gray sky. She searches my face, and I wait.
“You remember what happened. Don’t lie. You were old enough.”
“But I don’t. I really don’t,” I say. “Please tell me.” Beth looks away, past the rooftops and chimney trails of the village below and into the east, as if projecting herself there.
“No. I won’t tell you,” she says. “I won’t tell anyone. Not ever.”
“Please, Beth! I have to know!”
“No! And if… if you love me, you’ll stop asking.”
“Does Dinny know?”
“Yes, of course Dinny knows. Why don’t you ask him?” She flicks her eyes at me. There’s a chilly touch of resentment there. For an instant, then it’s gone. “But you know, too. And if you really don’t remember then… then maybe that’s a good thing.” She walks away from me, along the ridge toward the house.
She stops at the dew pond. This is the first time she’s been back to it, that I know of, and it halts her so abruptly that I almost run into her. The wind skids over its surface, turns it matt and ugly. I expect to see her crying, but her eyes are dry and hard. The sad lines on her face, etched deeper than ever. She stares down into it.
“I was so scared, the first time you swam here,” she murmurs, so quietly I can hardly hear. “I thought you wouldn’t be able to get out. Like the hedgehog in the pond at home, that time. Do you remember? It had swum around and around until it was too exhausted to swim any more, and then it just drowned. All those videos we were shown at school-never to swim in quarries or rivers. I thought water without chlorine in it had some dreadful, lurking power that waited and watched and ate little kids.”
“I remember you yelling at me like a harpy.”
“I was scared for you,” she says, shrugging minutely. “Now you spend all your time being scared for me. Except today. Why do I have to stay? You must see that… it’s bad for me, being here?”
“No, I… I think it could be good for you,” I force myself to say.
“What do you mean?” she asks me, darkly. My heart beats faster.
“I mean what I say. You can’t keep running from this, Beth! Please! If you would just talk about it-”
“No! I’ve told you-over and over. Not to you and not to anybody!”
“Why not to me? I’m your sister, Beth, nothing you could tell me would make me love you any less! Nothing,” I say firmly.
“That’s what you think, is it? That there’s something despicable in me that I’m trying to hide?” she whispers.
“No, Beth, that’s what I don’t think! You’re not listening to me! But you are hiding something-you can’t deny it. I have no secrets from you!”
“Everybody has secrets, Erica,” she snaps. It’s true, and I look away.
“All I want is for us to be able to leave this place behind…”
“Good! That’s what I want, too! So let’s do it-let’s leave.”
“Leaving it isn’t the same as leaving it behind, Beth! Look at you-since we’ve been back here it’s been like sharing the house with a ghost! You’re… miserable and you seem determined to stay that way!” I shout.
“What are you talking about?” Beth shouts back at me, spreading her hands in fury. “You’re the one determined to keep me here-you’re the one determined to make me miserable! I only came here at all because you pressured me into it!”
“I’m determined to get rid of whatever it is that’s keeping you down, Beth. And it’s here-I know it is. It’s here at this house-don’t walk away from me!” I grab her arm, stop her. Beth is breathing hard, will not look me in the eye. Her face is pale.
“If you don’t let me go, I might not ever forgive you. I don’t know what I will do,” she says, her voice trembling. Startled, I drop my hand from her arm but I don’t think this is what she means. I am afraid of what she will do. My resolve wavers, but I fight to hold on to it.
“Please, Beth. Please stay here with me. At least until the new year. Let’s just… figure this out. Whatever it is.”
“Figure it out?” she echoes me, bitterly. “It’s not a riddle, Erica.”
“I know that. But life can’t go on the way it has been. This is our chance, Beth-our chance to put things right.”
“Some things can’t be undone, Erica. The sooner you accept that the better,” she whispers. Tears are bright in her eyes, but when she looks up at me they are full of anger. “It can’t be put right!” she snaps, and storms away from me. I pause before I follow her, find that I am shaking.
For the rest of the day we play hide and seek. This house always was perfect for it. The rain comes in sideways, drafts creep down the chimneys. I bring Harry inside and make him a cup of sweet tea. He sits at the kitchen table sucking it from his teaspoon like a child. He drips water onto the floor, fills the room with the smell of wet wool. But I can’t find Beth to give her a cup of tea. I can’t find her to ask what she wants for dinner, if she wants to go out anywhere, if she wants to rent a film from the garage on the road to Devizes. I feel it is my job, now, to fill her time. Time I am forcing her to spend here. But she melts into the house like a cat, and I stomp from room to room in vain.