“Yes,” Miles echoes. He wipes his palms on the tail of his shirt. “Thank you for having us.”
Mrs. Cliffton waves this off. “Your mother was like my sister,” she says. She blinks rapidly, and for a moment I worry that she’s going to cry. Miles stiffens like a rod next to me. “So you and Miles are family,” she finishes, and smiles instead, and Miles’s shoulders relax again.
“Shall we head upstairs? You can get settled in.” Mrs. Cliffton leads us back to the foyer, where I grab my knapsack from the floor and Will collects our suitcases. “Aila,” Mrs. Cliffton says brightly, leading us up the stairs, “do you remember the time I came to Gardner? Not for the funeral, but years back? You were still very young then. Actually, William was with me as well. Do you recall meeting as children?”
“No,” I say after a beat. The pins in my hair are starting to tug, and I want to find my room and take them out.
“Juliet and I turned our backs for one minute,” Mrs. Cliffton says, reaching the second floor, “and the next thing we knew, you were both down in the field, covered head to toe in dirt.” She stops in front of the first door beyond the balcony. “We promptly threw you both in the tub.”
When I realize that this means Will and I have seen each other in our unmentionables, and possibly even less than that, I do everything I can to avoid his face. Miles makes it worse with a muffled snicker.
“That’s right,” Will says quickly, juggling our suitcases for a better grip. “We were burying something we’d found in the field, some treasure. I can’t remember what it was. Maybe with some Mind’s Eye we could . . .”
The way he cuts off makes me look up to catch the most peculiar expression cross his face. His mother’s hand jerks back from the doorknob, and the air strains and crackles with a sudden tension, as if they are waiting for some sort of reaction from us.
“What is Mind’s Eye?” Miles asks, and Mrs. Cliffton gives Will an almost imperceptible shake of the head.
“Oh, just something we can talk about later,” Mrs. Cliffton says to Miles, pushing open the door to the first guest bedroom. “Aila, that’s a lovely necklace,” she continues, changing the subject as she ushers us inside. “I remember that ring. Wasn’t it your mother’s?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Did she really give it to you?” Miles asks quietly as Will places my suitcase on the floor. I nod, uncomfortable with how intently both he and Mrs. Cliffton are looking at my neck.
“She didn’t give me anything,” Miles says, and I wait until their backs are turned and then hide the ring behind the collar of my dress.
My bedroom is simple and cheerful, with yellow walls that are cozy even with the storm beating against the window. There is a white four-poster bed with an embroidered quilt, and a window seat that looks out on the branch of a large oak. Mrs. Cliffton has placed tight puffs of cabbage roses and a picture in a silver frame on the bureau. The image holds younger versions of her and my mother. Juliet and Matilda wear matching school uniforms, their arms slung around each other, their faces caught in open-mouthed laughs.
I’ve never seen a picture of Mother at my age. Her hair was a lighter auburn than mine, but she has my gray eyes that are a bit too wide, a small nose, and a sharp chin. It’s startling how much I look like her.
I unpack my dresses and line my toiletries on top of the milk-white sink, then shelve the poetry volumes I’ve taken from the castaway pile at the Gardner library over the years. Stevenson, Frost, Dickinson, Yeats, and Wilde, each missing its cover or spidered with stains the color of light tea. I can’t bring myself to unpack my winter clothes just yet. Maybe we’ll be home by then. Instead I arrange my father’s dulled throwing dart, Mother’s Shakespeare volume, and Cass’s ribbon on my nightstand. Then I run a bath in the porcelain claw tub and dress for dinner. There are no mirrors in the bathroom—?odd for a house that has just about everything else. I wonder if it would be too forward to ask Mrs. Cliffton for one.
I do the best I can with my hair, feeling only by touch, and head downstairs for dinner.
Dr. Cliffton stands from where he is seated at the mahogany dinner table to greet me when I enter the dining room. He is an older, softer version of Will, with blue eyes that aren’t quite as striking and are framed by wire-rimmed glasses. I make polite, stilted conversation—?“I’ve never been this far north before”; “The rain sure is coming down”—?over a dinner of watercress and grilled peach salad, roast chicken, and some sort of squash tart, all served by Genevieve. We did not eat like this even before the war and the rationing started. “One of the benefits of living in farm country,” Dr. Cliffton says as he notices me eyeing the small pat of freshly churned butter. I want to smear it, salty and smooth and creamy, all along my slice of bread, but I pretend that I don’t care for it and pass the plate on. Miles takes my cue and declines as well. We are impinging on the Clifftons enough without eating their precious butter.
Dr. Cliffton clears his throat. “Did your mother speak often of Sterling?” he asks me. He pauses in cutting the tart. His knife and fork hover over his plate.
“Only a little,” I say. In truth, she’d barely spoken of it at all. There is a long beat, as if this wasn’t the correct answer. For a moment all I can hear is cutlery scraping and the sound of my own chewing.
“She told me once she didn’t much like it,” Miles offers, followed by a yelp as my heel catches his ankle.
Dr. Cliffton laughs graciously, but there is something else in it as well. He pushes his chair back in concert with a loud crack of thunder and says, “You know, I believe I’ve just the thing for this occasion.” His right foot drags as he leaves the room, and I recall the collection of canes I’d seen during my tour of the house.
Dr. Cliffton reappears a moment later, trailing bright strains of Glenn Miller from down the hall. It helps to drown out the steady patter of the rain. “Shall we move into the library?” Mrs. Cliffton suggests. “Genevieve could bring us some coffee, maybe even some ice cream?”
Miles jumps up with a nod.
They are all trying so hard, I realize. But I don’t have the energy to keep up. “Actually, I think I’ll turn in,” I say.
“Long day,” Mrs. Cliffton says, nodding. The lights flicker.
The four of them move on to Dr. Cliffton’s library, and I climb the stairs to my room. “Good night, Miles,” I call from the balcony, and he gives a short wave without really looking.
I change into my nightgown and brush my teeth, staring at the blank wall in front of me. Tomorrow I’m going to ask about the mirror.