The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White (32 page)

Late afternoon, Elliot’s mother watched him cycle down the driveway, park his bike, and join her on the porch.

She was sitting on the top step shelling peas, and she tilted her straw hat at Elliot to say hi.

Elliot sat beside her, grabbing a pea pod and getting to work.

“Got another letter,” he said.

“Can I read it?”

“Ah.” Elliot shifted the bucket of pods a little. “It’s just words.”

His mother accepted that. She snapped the ends from a pod.

“You’re still careful, right?” she said. “Make sure nobody’s around when you look for her letters?”

“It’s Saturday. Nobody’s around.”

“The Sheriff station’s right across the road. All he’d need do is look out the window.”

Elliot held a handful of peas to the light. “Some of these look perfect,” he said. Then, after a moment: “You really think Hector would turn me in?”

“Elliot, you beautiful boy, I’m not sure you get how serious this
kind of thing can be. Hector’d
have
to turn you in, he’d have no choice.”

Elliot shrugged. “I think our letters are winding up, so you can stop worrying.” Then he smiled. “Anyhow, Hector sees me in the schoolyard from his window, what’s he gonna do? Arrest me for an unnatural interest in sculpture?”

Petra smiled faintly but
tched
at the same time.

“You see Kala today?” she asked.

Elliot nodded.

“When’s she leaving anyhow?”

“Next week.”

“Seems so sudden,” his mother said. “You’ll miss her, won’t you?”

Elliot scratched the back of his neck. He stood up, moving across the porch to the front window. “Might go inside a moment.” He reached for his backpack. “I’ve just collected some sycamore bark for the Butterfly Child to try to cheer her up. Apparently it tastes good. Who knew? She in there now?”

He looked into the shadows of the living room. There was the fireplace, the couches, the doll’s house — but something was odd. A kitchen chair was standing right beside the doll’s house, and — he pressed closer to the window — a person was sitting in the chair.

“It’s Corrie-Lynn,” said his mother, still shelling peas. “She’s been coming by now and then. Just sits by the Butterfly Child.”

“I never knew.” Elliot knocked on the glass. Inside, Corrie-Lynn shifted in her chair and turned toward him.

She turned away again at once.

Elliot raised an eyebrow.

“She not talking to me?”

He sat by his mother again and reached into the bucket of pods.

The sun was slipping lower in the sky, light glaring their way. Petra raised her head, blinked, and lowered it again.

“It’s your friends. Corrie-Lynn’s mad at you because of what they’ve been doing to the Twicklehams.”

Elliot looked up and was caught by the sun too. He sheltered his eyes with his hand.

“My friends aren’t doing anything to the Twicklehams,” he said.

“Ah, you know exactly what I mean. They’re driving them out of business, Elliot. Things being how they are, nobody’s got spare cash for fixing electronics, so they’ve started on the back foot as it is. The Twicklehams might end up leaving town, you know. We’d lose the rent on the shop, which is one thing, but more to the point, Corrie-Lynn would lose her little friend.”

Elliot squinted. The fields were lighting up in silvers and golds, fences running shy and dark through all that magic light. In the distance, the greenhouse was practically a starburst.

“Shame if she loses her friend,” he said, “but if they have to leave, well …” He shrugged.

“Elliot.” Petra stopped, collected her face, and tried again. “Elliot, it’s not the Twicklehams’ fault that they’re in your dad’s shop.”

“Sure it’s their fault,” Elliot said lightly.

Petra scraped peas into the bucket of pods, then gathered them back and put them in the pea container instead.

“Okay,” she said, her voice taking them in a whole new direction. “Okay, here’s the situation as I see it. About your dad, I mean — and so forth.”

Elliot stopped moving. He closed his eyes.

His mother continued talking.

“As I see it, there’s two possibilities. One is that all three of them were driving along in the white truck, and the Purple killed your Uncle Jon and then took off with Dad and Mischka Tegan.”

A pod sat still in the palm of Elliot’s hand.

“As for that story,” continued his mother. “I know the Sheriff believes it, but listen, what were the three of them
doing
in the truck? Headed down the Acres Road toward here? In the middle of the night? Why would they even’ve
been
there? And how come there’s been no … trace of Dad or that teacher? Which you’d usually expect.”

She sensed Elliot move again, and talked faster. “I know, Elliot, I know, it’s because the Purple took them to a cavern someplace and it’s keeping them prisoner now. But, honey, the Purple that got your Uncle Jon, did it seem all that patient to you? It’s cruel of me to ask, you having seen what you did. But there it is. The chances of that particular Purple carrying somebody all the way to its cavern, well, seems to me the chances are about as small as —”

She reached for an unripe pea pod, and split it, holding out the barely formed seeds.

“Smaller,” she said.

Elliot sheltered his eyes again. The wind rustled leaves. Far away, the shadow of a deer crossed a tree.

“The second possibility,” Petra continued, snapping pods, quick and rhythmic, “is that your dad and that teacher ran off, and Jon was bringing the truck home to let us know when the Purple got him.” Her voice had changed again and it reminded Elliot of the way he himself read the coroner’s reports. She was shifting away from herself, talking side-on, or as if she wasn’t really there. “As for that possibility,” she said, “well, yeah, I know they didn’t pack their bags or make plans. Didn’t take anything special. Haven’t used their bank accounts. But listen. Listen, Elliot.”

The evening breeze picked up. In the distance, a truck changed gear.

“Your dad was wonderful, we both know that. But we also know that he’s always been a … wanderer. He and Jon ran off to see Cello when they were still in school! Nearly killed their parents with the worry. And he’s always been a heartbreaker too. Nobody believed for a moment he’d stay with me as long as he did — and that includes me.”

Now Elliot looked at his mother.

She kept her head down, ducking the sun.

“Yes, that includes me. I knew he wouldn’t stay, Elliot, and he did play around when we were first married. Stopped when you were
born, but that was because of you. Lately, though, well, you were growing up, so I guess …”

She was rising a little as she spoke, shifting positions, adjusting her hat, tilting it forward then raising it, trying to balance the sun.

“That teacher, that physics teacher, she was so pretty and bright. Interested in Dad’s kind of things — electronics and suchlike. Going to the pub together just about every night, him getting home later and later. The whole town was talking, Elliot. It was only —”

She caught her breath, struggled with a pod a moment, then snapped it hard.

“It was only a matter of time. As for him not packing, well, spontaneous is just like your dad, Elliot. You know that too.”

She stopped, and half laughed.

“He
did
take his magnifying glass.”

“You knew that?” Elliot said.

“And their not using any bank accounts,” she continued, “well, Elliot, if a person wants to start afresh, if a person doesn’t want to be found … the person will find a way.”

There was a powerful silence. Petra’s voice turned inside out, and urgent. “You’ve got to stop taking these journeys,” she said. “I know you’re just waiting for the Butterfly Child to be gone, and then you’ll be off again yourself. I’ve been letting you go because I knew you needed to do it — for yourself — and maybe I kind of hoped too — I wanted that tiny chance to be true. But you
cannot
put yourself in danger again. Not one more time.”

She was almost crying. “He loved you so much, Elliot, you know that he’s the crazy one, right? That
he
’s made the terrible mistake in leaving you behind, that wherever he is, he’s missing you like mad, that this is none of your fault, that …”

But Elliot wasn’t listening.

He was staring straight and hard into the glare of the sun. His hand was in his pocket twisting at the letter from the Girl-in-the-World.

Two days later, another letter arrived.

12.

P
arker’s Piece is an enormous square of green near the centre of Cambridge.

It’s bordered by trees and fences, but just beyond these you can see buildings: the green turrets of the University Arms Hotel, the steeples of the Roman Catholic church, houses and shops.

Two paths run diagonal across Parker’s Piece, forming a giant X, and in the centre of the X, there is a lamppost.

On this particular Sunday afternoon, the sky over Parker’s Piece was overcast. In the northeast corner, there was a straggling cricket game. Opposite were two groups of picnickers, one of which was playing reggae music. Two girls sat cross-legged looking at photos on an iPhone. Nearby, a boy read a newspaper, his bicycle sprawled on the grass.

Leaning against the lamppost was a girl. Her dark hair fell around her shoulders but was held back from her forehead by a black and white headband. There was a spot high on her cheek, near her ear, and she’d covered this with makeup. Under her arm was a book (
The Life of Isaac Newton
), and over her shoulder was a backpack with a broken strap. In her eyes was a light that was defiant, ironic, amused, defensive, frightened, and hopeful all at once.

Now and then she stared at the boy with the newspaper, and when he looked up, she lifted her chin ever so slightly. The boy returned to his paper. The girl looked up at the lamppost. It was hung with four lanterns, and scratched into its base was the word
Reality
. A slow smile formed on her face.

The girl was remembering that the lamppost is known around Cambridge as the “Reality Checkpoint.”
Funny place to meet an imaginary person
, she thought.

Then it occurred to her that this lamppost was the first electric lamp in all of Cambridge; that Parker’s Piece was named after Edward Parker, a college cook who used to farm on it; and that she would share these facts with her imaginary friend.

A frown flickered. She was changing her mind about sharing these facts.

Reminding herself that she used to be kind of cool.

Striding along the path towards the girl came a man with a deeply lined forehead, wearing a T-shirt that said
Beer Belly Under Construction
.

Panic crossed her face. But he carried on without looking at her.

The girl looked down at the palms of her hands and saw a memory inside a memory.

The outer memory was herself under apple trees at Grantchester, eating scones with jam and cream, and talking to Jack and Belle.

Inside that was the memory of herself losing control on a skateboard: a highway just ahead, her father watching from the side of the road.

But what was the point of that memory?

That she used to have summers in Genoa? That she used to fly down hills and cause collisions?

That her father had watched and waited to be sure she was okay?

She let her palms fall to her sides, and realised what the memory meant.

It was the lines her father had traced in the air with his fists, the ones she joked were to show how long he planned to grow his beard.

He had meant to remind her of the speech he used to give her every time she ran away.

“We must think outside of
ourselves
, Madeleine,” he’d say, and he’d wave his hands over the space of his body. “Live for
others
, not just yourself.”

She’d been spinning down that street on her skateboard without thinking. She could have killed herself, but worse, somebody else. Cars had swerved, crashed, and skidded sideways.

“If you do not learn this thing,” her father used to say, “people will give up on you. You only get so many chances.”

He meant, “One day, I will give up on you.”

The letter is taking a while to find him
, she told herself fiercely.
He has
not
given up on me.

Her body trembled. She stilled it, pressing her lips together:
I just need to wait.

The cricket game wound up.

Several more people biked along the path, some with wire or wicker baskets, some with handlebars strung with shopping bags. A few caught her eye, most ignored her, but all of them rode past.

When the rain started, it was unconvincing. The picnickers gathered things together slowly. Cyclists pedalled a little faster, hunching forward. The boy folded his paper and rode away. A woman pushing a baby in a pram stopped to click a plastic rain cover into place and carried on.

The rain became more persuasive. Water ran down the lamppost and spilled onto the girl’s neck. She pressed the book more firmly beneath her arm, and waited.