“Just tell me what he was looking for.”
“Stones, of course,” she says, quietly, defeated. “He was looking for stones to throw.” She pulls away from me then, slips from the bathroom into the dark of the corridor.
No sleep for me. I try counting my breaths, counting my heartbeat; but when I do this my heart speeds up, as if startled by such scrutiny. It rushes along, makes my head ache. I shut my eyes so tightly that colored shapes bloom in the dark and flounce across the ceiling when I open my eyes again. There’s a bright moon tonight, and as I skim sleep, as the hours spin past, I see it sail heedlessly from one pane of the window to the next.
I feel dreadful when I get up: heavy and tired. My throat is sore; there’s an ache behind my eyes that won’t go. It was a hard frost last night-Dinny was right about what might have happened if I’d lain about on the ground, drunk and befuddled. Now there’s a dense mist, so pale and luminous that I can’t tell where it ends and the sky begins. The thing is, we ran. That day. Beth and I ran. I remember scrambling out of the pond as fast as I could, bruising my feet on flints. I remember Beth’s fingers closing tightly on my arm like little bird claws, and we ran. Back to the house, back to lie low, to hide and stay quiet until the trouble started. Or rather, until the trouble was noticed. We didn’t go back, I am sure of it. The last time I saw Henry he was by the side of the dew pond; he was teetering. Did he fall? Was that why I got out, so desperately fast? Was that why I told them all he was in the pond-why I insisted upon it? But he wasn’t, and there was only one other person there. There is only one person who can have moved Henry, who can have taken him somewhere else, because I know he didn’t take himself. He was taken somewhere so secret and so hidden that twenty-three years of searching couldn’t uncover him. But I am close now.
It could be this memory that I’ve fought so hard to regain that’s hurting my head. I don’t have to concentrate to recall it now. It capers in my mind’s eye of its own accord, again and again. Henry bleeding, Henry falling. It worries me that I didn’t want breakfast. I looked at the food and I remembered Henry and there was no question of eating anything. No question of putting anything into my mouth, of enjoyment or satisfaction. Is this how Beth has felt, for twenty-three years? The thought turns me cold. It’s like knowing there’s something behind you, following you. That neck-prickling feeling, a constant distraction. Something as dark and permanent as your shadow.
The doorbell startles me. Dinny is there, wearing a heavy canvas coat for once, his hands thrust deeply into the pockets. In spite of it all my cheeks glow and I feel a wave of something ill-defined. Relief, or perhaps dread.
“Dinny! Hello-come in,” I greet him.
“Hi, Erica, I just wanted to check you were all right. After last night,” Dinny says, stepping over the threshold but staying on the doormat.
“Come in-I can’t shut the door with you standing there.”
“My boots are muddy,”
“That’s the least of our problems, believe me.” I wave my hand.
“So, how are you? I wondered if… if you’d swallowed any of that pond water, it might have made you sick,” he says. An awkwardness about him that wasn’t there before, a diffidence that touches me.
“I’m fine, really. I mean, I feel like death, and I’m sure I look like death, but other than that, I’m OK.” I smile nervously.
“You could have killed yourself,” he tells me gravely.
“I know. I know. I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention, believe me. And thank you for rescuing me-I really owe you one,” I say. At this he looks at me sharply, his eyes probing my face. But then he softens, puts out his hand and brushes cold knuckles lightly down my cheek. I catch my breath, shiver slightly.
“Idiot,” he says softly.
“Thanks,” I say.
There’s a thump from upstairs. I picture a full suitcase, pulled off a bed. Dinny drops his hand quickly, puts it back in his pocket.
“Is that Beth?” he asks.
“Beth or the ghost of Calcotts past. I expect she’s packing. She doesn’t even want to stay for one more day.” I give a helpless little shrug.
“So you’re leaving?”
“I… I don’t know. I don’t want to. Not yet. Maybe not at all.” I glance at him. I really don’t think I could stay in this house by myself.
“No more Dinsdales or Calcotts at Storton Manor. It’s the end of an era,” Dinny says, but he does not sound regretful.
“Are you moving on?” I ask. My heart gives a little leap of protest.
“Sooner or later. This is a rotten place to camp in the winter. I was only really here because of Honey-”
“I thought you said you saw Meredith’s obituary?”
“Well, yes, and that. I thought there was a good chance you and Beth might be around.” For a moment we say nothing. I am still too unsure of him to test this tide that’s towing us apart. Perhaps Dinny feels the same way.
“I’d like to say goodbye to Beth before you disappear,” he says quietly. I nod. Of course he does. “I didn’t get the chance, the last time you went,” he adds pointedly.
“She’s upstairs. We had a fight. I don’t know if she’ll come down,” I tell him. I study his hands. Square shaped, smeared with grime. Black crescents under the nails. I think of the mud by the dew pond, him hauling me out. I think of the way he held me, just for a while, while the embers sank low and my body shook. I think of his kiss. How I want to keep him here.
“What did you fight about?”
“What do you think?” I ask bitterly. “She won’t tell me what happened. But she has to face up to it, Dinny-she has to! It’s what’s making her ill, I know it!” Dinny sighs sharply, shifts his weight onto the balls of his feet, as if he would run. He rubs a hand over his forehead, exasperated. “You never did get to tell her the things you wanted to, Dinny. But… you can tell me instead,” I say.
“Erica-”
“I want to know!”
“What if knowing changes everything? What if, for once, your sister and I are right and you’re better off not remembering?” Fierce eyes lock on mine.
“I want it to change everything! Change what, anyway? She’s my sister. I love her and I’ll love her no matter what she does. Or did,” I declare adamantly.
“I’m not just talking about Beth,” he says.
“Who, then? What then? Just tell me!”
“Don’t shout at me, Erica, I can hear you. I’m talking about… you and me.” His voice grows softer. I am silent for two heartbeats. They come quickly, but seem to take for ever.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… whatever this is… whatever it might have been, it would all change.” He looks away from me, folds his arms. “Do you understand?” he asks. I bite my lower lip, feel my eyes stinging. But then I see Beth, in the bath, as she was last night; whole in body, but slipping away. I swallow the hot little flame that Dinny has just lit inside me.
“Yes. But I have to know,” I whisper. My nose is running. I scrub it with the back of my hand. I wait for him to speak, but he doesn’t. His eyes dart from the floor to the door to the stairs and back again, focusing on nothing. Knots in his jaw, tying themselves tighter. “Just tell me, Dinny! Beth and I ran off. I don’t know what happened, but I know we ran off and left you and Henry at the pond. And that was the last anybody saw of him and I want you to tell me!” My voice sounds odd, too high.
“Beth should-” he begins.
“Beth won’t. Oh, maybe she will, one day. Or maybe she’ll try to kill herself again, and this time she’ll manage it! I have to get this out of her!” I cry. Dinny stares at me, shocked.