fault her for this. And yet the brooding, melancholic girl was not what I’d imagined when we discovered we were given guardianship of a child.
Her voice is acidic when she speaks, quiet—she doesn’t ever raise her voice; she doesn’t need to. The muted tone is much more unsettling than if she screamed. “Stay the fuck away from me,” she says coolly.
She glowers down over the stair banister. My hands involuntarily move behind me and to Tate’s ears. Will stops where he is. He lowers his arms. Will has seen her before, just last week when he came and met with the executor of the estate. It was then that he signed the papers and took physical possession of her, though arrangements had been made for her to stay with a friend while Will, the boys and I drove here.
The girl asks, her voice angry, “Why’d you have to come?”
Will tries to tell her—the answer is easy, for were it not for us, she’d likely have entered the foster care system until she turned eighteen, unless she was granted emancipation, which seemed unlikely at her age—but an answer is not what she wants. She turns away from him, disappearing into one of the second-story rooms where we hear her futzing angrily with things. Will makes a move to follow, but I say to him, “Give her time,” and he does.
This girl is not the same as the little girl Will had shown us in the photograph. A happy-go-lucky freckled brunette of about six years old. This girl is different, much changed. The years have not been kind to her. She comes with the house, just another thing that’s been left to us in the will, mixed in with the house and the heirlooms, what assets remain in the bank. She’s sixteen, nearly able to be on her own—a moot point that I tried arguing, for certainly she had a friend or some other acquaintance who could take her in until she turned eighteen—but Will said no. With Alice dead, we were all that remained, her only family, though she and I were meeting just now for the first time. She needs to be with family, Will told me at the time, days ago only, though it feels like weeks. A family who will love and care for her. She’s all alone, Sadie. My maternal instinct had kicked in then, thinking of this orphaned child all alone in the world, with no one but us.
I hadn’t wanted to come. I’d argued that she should come to us. But there was so much more to consider, and so we came anyway, despite my reservations.
I wonder now, and not for the first time this week, what kind of disastrous effect this change will have on our family. It can’t possibly be the fresh start Will so auspiciously believes it to be.
Seven Weeks Later...
The siren woke us at some point in the middle of the night. I heard the scream of it. I saw the dazzling lights that streamed in the bedroom window as Will grabbed his glasses from the bedside table and sat up abruptly in bed, adjusting them on the bridge of his nose.
“What’s that?” he asked, holding his breath, disoriented and confused, and I told him it was a siren. We sat hushed for a minute, listening as the wail drifted farther away, quieting down but never going completely silent. We could hear it still, stopped somewhere just down the street from our home.
“What do you think happened?” Will asked, and I thought only of the elderly couple on the block, the man who pushed his wife in a wheelchair up and down the street, though he could barely walk. They were both white-haired, wrinkled, his back curved like the hunchback of Notre Dame. He always looked tired to me, like maybe she was the one who should be doing the pushing. It didn’t help that our street was steep, a decline to the ocean below.
“The Nilssons,” Will and I said at the same time, and if there was a lack of empathy in our voices it’s because this is what is expected of older people. They get injured, sick; they die.
“What time is it?” I asked Will, but by then he’d returned his glasses to the bedside table and said to me, “I don’t know,” as he pressed in closely and folded an arm around my waistline, and I felt the subconscious pull of my body from his.
We fell back asleep that way, forgetting altogether about the siren that had snatched us from our dreams.
In the morning I shower and get dressed, still tired from a fitful night. The boys are in the kitchen, eating breakfast. I hear the commotion downstairs as I step uneasily from the bedroom, a stranger in the home because of Imogen. Because Imogen has a way of making us feel unwelcome, even after all this time.
I start to make my way down the hall. Imogen’s door is open a crack. She’s inside, which strikes me as odd because her door is never open when she’s inside. She doesn’t know that it’s open, that I’m in the hallway watching her. Her back is to me and she’s leaned into a mirror, tracing the lines of black eyeliner above her eyes.
I peer through the crevice and into Imogen’s room. The walls are dark, tacked with images of artists and bands who look very much like her, with the long black hair and the black eyes, dressed in all black. A black gauzy thing hangs above her bed, a canopy of sorts. The bed is unmade, a dark gray pintuck duvet lying on the floor. The blackout curtains are pulled taut, keeping the light out. I think of vampires.
Imogen finishes with the eyeliner. She snaps the cap on it, turns too fast and sees me before I have a chance to retreat. “What the fuck do you want?” she asks, the anger and the vulgarity of her question taking my breath away, though I don’t know why. It’s not as if it’s the first time she’s spoken to me this way. You’d think I might be used to it by now. Imogen scuttles so quickly to the door that at first I think she’s going to hit me, which she hasn’t ever done, but the speed of her movement and the look on her face make me think she might. I involuntarily flinch, moving backward, and instead, she slams the door shut on me. I’m grateful for this, for getting the door slammed in my face as opposed to getting hit. The door misses my nose by an inch.
My heart thumps inside my chest. I stand in the hallway, breathless. I clear my voice, try to recover from the shock of it. I step closer, rap my knuckles on the wood and say, “I’m leaving for the ferry in a few minutes. If you want a ride,” knowing she won’t accept my offer. My voice is tumultuous in a way that I despise. Imogen doesn’t answer.
I turn and follow the scent of breakfast downstairs. Will is by the stove when I come down. He stands, flipping pancakes in an apron, while singing one of those songs from the jaunty CDs Tate likes to listen to, something far too merry for seven fifteen in the morning.
He stops when he sees me. “You okay?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say, voice strained.
The dogs circle Will’s feet, hoping he’ll drop something. They’re big dogs and the kitchen is small. There isn’t enough room for four of us in here, let alone six. I call to the dogs and, when they come, send them into the backyard to play.
Will smiles at me when I return and offers me a plate. I opt only for coffee, telling Otto to hurry up and finish. He sits at the kitchen table, hunched over his pancakes, shoulders slumped forward to make himself appear small. His lack of confidence worries me, though I tell myself that this is normal for fourteen. Every child goes through this, but I wonder if they do.
Imogen stomps through the kitchen. There are tears up the thighs and in the knees of her black jeans. Her boots are black leather combat boots, with nearly a two-inch heel. Even without the boots, she’s taller than
