The Book That Matters Most (21 page)

She said yes, jumping to her feet and clapping her hands together like she'd won a prize. She let him take her to bed then, their first time together. Everything in that room was pale blue and flowery—forget-me-nots on the sheets and dried hydrangeas in a vase by the brass bed and a framed poster from the Museum of Modern Art of van Gogh's
Irises
above it.

Goddamn it, Hank thought as he stood in that depressing half-empty room. His
office
.

That was the same poster she'd hung in her sewing room. The
one that used to hang above her bed, the one he'd first glimpsed as he made love to her that long-ago night. After, she'd put on his white button-down shirt and went into the kitchen. He'd followed her, dazed from the terrifying realization that he was going to get married. Just a few nights before, he'd met a girl at Alias Smith and Jones in East Greenwich and scribbled her phone number on a cocktail napkin. He still had that cocktail napkin. Still had an image of the girl's rippled red hair and freckles. Damn, he'd intended to call her, to make a date. But here he was in his boxer shorts watching Nadine open a can of cherries, dump them in a pretty bowl because everything Nadine touched or owned was pretty, pour brandy on top and light the whole damn thing on fire. She'd looked over at him from beneath her eyelids.

“Cherries jubilee,” she'd said proudly.

Remembering, Hank swallowed hard, because he remembered too how the first thing he'd done when he got home the next morning was dig out that cocktail napkin and call that red-haired girl. He'd met her again at Alias Smith and Jones and bought her beer and shots called Snake Eyes and danced until they were sweaty and achy. Then they drove to a park and had sex in his car.

Oh Nadine
, he thought, his throat tight.

He padded out of the room, Miss Kitty moving in and out of his legs hoping for breakfast. He opened the door to Nadine's sewing room, the smell of the potpourri she kept in bowls assaulting him as soon as he stepped inside. Without pausing, he took that poster off the wall, and carried it to his office where he hung it—too high, he knew—from a hook left over from the old owners.

Hank stepped back and studied it. Van Gogh's
Irises
. Who would have thought, that long-ago night, the night of his engagement,
as he glimpsed it above a brass bed with a lean lovely girl naked beneath him, that he would hang it on this wall someday?

Nadine
.

Hank opened the file cabinet and took out the box labeled
“Lily North.”
He sat at the desk, shoving the behemoth computer to the side. The little girl stared out at him from her school picture. Blond with short bangs and blue eyes and a look of surprise.

Then he took out all of his notes, spread them on the desk, and began.

THAT MORNING

1970

Ava

Ava watched her mother running up the street, screaming the way their dog Butterscotch had when he got hit by a car last winter, and that's when she knew: Lily was dead.

Her mother ran past the policeman, who tried to stop her; past Aunt Beatrice, who tried to stop her; past Ava, who called out to her in a voice growing shrill with the realization that her sister wasn't okay, wasn't even hurt bad, but was dead.
Dead
. The word sounded as hard and cold and final as the thing itself. She'd just learned about onomatopoeia in English class, words that sounded like the thing they were:
rat-a-tat-tat, hiss, thunder
. And
dead
, Ava thought again as her mother finally reached the ambulance just as the two men rolling the stretcher did.

“Stop!” her mother yelled.

They both looked up, surprised.

“Stop!” she yelled again, her voice not sounding like her voice. Instead of gravelly, it was high and shaky. Instead of confident, it was desperate.

The men stopped. One of them kept his hands on the place near where Lily's head was. Ava couldn't see her sister—they'd covered her with a bright white sheet—but she could make out where her head lay and the two points of her feet. The man by Lily's feet stepped back.

So fast that Ava didn't even see her mother do it, the sheet was off and there was Lily, blonde hair somehow blonder—
like dandelions
, Ava thought—tiny on that big adult-sized stretcher. Her skin did not look like her skin. It was like blue and white marble, darker in some places, like her legs sticking out from beneath her favorite purple shorts and her feet, which had somehow lost her sneakers and now poked into the sky, bare and more gray than blue.

The sheet was off and Lily was there, clearly broken, clearly dead, Lily but not Lily.

And her mother was screaming again, calling “
LilyLilyLilyLily
.” And then “
My baby! My baby!”

And then she was on top of Lily, hugging her tight and rocking her and saying, softer now, “Wake up, baby. Wake up.”

When the man who had stepped back tried to pull her away, she wouldn't let go of Lily, and lifted Lily with her as the man lifted her. The other policeman, not the one who had talked to Ava but the other one, was gently trying to pry her mother's arms from Lily. But he couldn't.

Aunt Beatrice was shouting, “It's not my fault!”

At first, Ava thought Aunt Beatrice was right—it was
her
fault. She shouldn't have let Lily climb so high in the tree. She'd told her to come down, hadn't she?

Ava frowned and chewed her bottom lip.

She'd been sitting under the tree reading
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew
, not just reading it but lost in it, the way books she loved seemed to take her into them—as if she lived in the pages, in the world of the story. And Lily had been bored, begging Ava to put down her book and play with her. And Ava had said, “Just one more page.” But after one more page, she said, “Just one more.”

Lily stood up and twirled herself around and around until she grew dizzy and fell, laughing, back down to the grass. She kept twirling like that, Ava relieved her sister had found something to do so she could at least finish the chapter.

But if Lily twirled herself into dizziness so many times, she shouldn't have climbed that tree at all. Ava should have realized that. She should have put her book down and started a game of hide and seek. Or gone inside for a deck of cards and played War until Aunt Beatrice finally showed up.

Her mother wasn't listening to Aunt Beatrice. She was still stretched on top of Lily, rocking slightly, murmuring now, “Come on, baby. Wake up.”

The policeman who had talked to Ava came over to her again.

“Sweetheart,” he said. Ava narrowed her eyes at him because her mother always said,
Don't trust someone who calls you sweetheart
.

“I need you to come inside,” he said.

Ava glanced over at her mother, as if she might somehow intervene. But she was still on top of Lily and now all three men were trying to move her.

“Okay,” she said, hesitantly.

“I'm just going to talk to you about what happened today,” he said.

Lily died today, Ava thought.

The policeman put one big hand on her shoulder and steered her away from her mother and Lily.

T
hey were sitting inside, at the kitchen table. It was hot and stuffy, the way it always got around lunchtime in the summer. Lunch, Ava thought. Her mother made them chilled melons scooped into perfect little orange and pale green balls. Or egg salad with chopped tarragon served in a hollowed-out tomato. Cool, colorful things for hot days. She immediately felt guilty for thinking about something as normal as egg salad on a day like today.

“Ava?” the policeman said. He'd brought her a bottle of Coke, even though she'd said, “No thank you” when he asked if she wanted one. Ava and Lily weren't allowed to drink soda; their mother said soda rotted your teeth. Coke, their mother told them, could take the rust off metal. Even though she was thirsty, Ava didn't take a sip. The bottle, with a flimsy paper straw sticking out of the top, sat between them.

“Tell me about her,” the policeman said, sliding the bottle a little closer to Ava, as if that would make her drink the Coke. “About Lily.”

She shrugged.

“Was she smart?” he asked. “Did she like to, um, draw or play ball or read?”

Ava licked her lips, which were suddenly chapped and stinging.
She wished her mother were here. Her mother always carried lip balm with her, a little round jar of it. If she were here, she'd open the jar and stick her finger in the waxy stuff inside and gently run it over Ava's lips. “There, kiddo,” she'd say, and immediately Ava would feel better.

“Was she a good kid?” the policeman was asking.

Her lips stung. She wished she had some lip balm. And she was so thirsty her throat hurt. When they'd learned similes last week, she'd written,
her throat was as dry as the Sahara Desert
, and Mrs. Gaffney put a check plus next to it.

“My throat is as dry as the Sahara Desert,” Ava said.

The policeman glanced up at her. “You need another Coke?”

She shook her head. He didn't even notice that she hadn't touched the soda. She decided he didn't have kids. A father would pay more attention, maybe bring her a glass of water.

Ava picked up the bottle, and put the straw between her lips. It was disgusting, She drank the room-temperature Coke. Her tongue felt all fuzzy from it.

“So Aunt Beatrice shows up late today,” he said, looking at Ava.

“Yes.”

Ava thought of the time that had stretched empty and dangerous while she and Lily were alone waiting for Aunt Beatrice. If she had known those were the very last hours she'd ever spend with her sister, what would she have done differently?

“Had Lily already climbed the tree when Aunt Beatrice showed up this morning?”

“I already told you,” Ava said uncertainly.

He stared at her. His eyes were blue, which was unexpected because his hair was so dark. This time Ava looked away.

“I told her not to climb so high,” she said.

The events of the day were starting to crush her. When she thought about Lily, tears sprang to her eyes. How could someone who had been twirling around under a warm sun a few hours ago be dead?

“I . . .” Ava began, but she didn't know what to say.

“Remind me,” he said. “Your aunt was where?”

“Inside?” Ava said hesitantly, afraid she was getting Aunt Beatrice in trouble. “Maybe?”

The policeman put his pencil down.

A thought hit Ava.
Like lightning striking
.

“What?” Detective Bingham said.

“It's my fault,” Ava said. “It's all my fault.”

Ava

To Ava's surprise, when they got to the library, Luke was presiding over the drinks and snacks rather than Emma. He looked so young standing there in his silly hat that Ava actually blushed thinking about their foolish relationship. Was that even the right word? Relationship?

“Southern theme,” Cate whispered to Ava.

Ava watched as Kiki glanced up at Luke from beneath lowered eyelids, flirting as she took the metal cup from him. A small pang of jealousy shot through Ava, embarrassing her even more. Kiki
should
flirt with Luke. And go steady with him. It was
age-appropriate. So why did she find herself elbowing her way past Monique and Honor to get to the front of the bar? After the dinner party with Cate and Gray she knew she couldn't see him anymore and had ended it.

As a middle-aged woman—an adult!—she did not glance up at him like Kiki did; she looked him straight in the eye. “I'll have whatever you're making.”

“They're
good
,” Kiki gushed.

“It's all in the muddling,” Luke said, pushing his hat back on his head.

As Ava stood sipping her mint julep and wondering how to extricate herself gracefully, Kiki leaned her hip against a corner like she intended to stay put. The others were swarming around, tasting the pimento cheese and artichoke dip.

“The secret is mayonnaise,” Ruth told Ava, tilting her chin in the direction of the dip. “Lots of it.”

Muddling and mayonnaise. So many secrets, Ava thought. Like the one Jim had kept from her, claiming meetings and early-morning coffees when all the while he was courting someone else. Ava glanced at the people swarming around her. What secrets did they each have?

Up close like this, she saw that Kiki wore braces. Hot pink and purple ones on her upper teeth. A metal bolt pierced the space between her chin and lower lip, and her fingernails were covered in chipped dark blue polish. She reminded Ava of Maggie somehow, and with that realization came the sharp stab of worry. Now Diana was asking her if she knew what exactly was in pimento cheese that made it so orange, but Ava needed to sit down and calm herself.

“Are you all right?” Jennifer asked her.

Kiki was looking at her too, and Ava had to fight the urge to
take that girl with her braces and her bolt and chipped nail polish and hug her.

“Too much mayonnaise,” Ava said, attempting a smile.

“Mayonnaise?” Diana said, and folded her napkin around the cracker.

Thankfully, Cate was taking her place at the front of the room and everyone began to find seats.

“
To Kill a Mockingbird
,” Cate began when the room hushed. “A U.K. survey recently selected it as the book written by a woman that most impacted, shaped, or changed readers' lives.”

An impressed murmur spread through the group.

“I just want to add,” Jennifer said, getting to her feet, “that with human rights under attack worldwide even more than ever, this is a timely and important book to discuss. It gave me hope that justice will prevail, and I want to thank Honor for choosing it.”

Honor put her hands together and bowed her head slightly, the same way Ava's yoga teacher ended every yoga class. Ava half expected Honor to intone “Namaste.” Jennifer stood in her white cotton peasant blouse with hand-embroidered colorful figures dancing across the yoke, apparently trying to compose herself.