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P
ART 2:

Celine

(The Present)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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When I was eight, my Girl Scout troop went to a sleepover at the zoo. My mom, our leader, had agreed to do it even though animals terrified her—as long as the troop sold enough cookies to cover the cost. I think Mom thought it was a safe bet. We were rich, suburban kids who didn’t have to work for much. But the thing is, everyone wants cookies. We figured if we each sold 150 boxes, we’d have enough for the sleepover
and
matching leopard print bandanas. Then we nagged our moms to take us door to door or hold booths in front of Publix supermarket so we could make our goal.

Mom seemed way less excited than scout leaders are supposed to be when she announced we’d made it. I didn’t blame her. She was really scared of animals, and with good reason. When she was in high school, she was attacked by a dog that had bitten her face and arms
so badly she needed plastic surgery. After that, she freaked at every barking dog. More than one had come after her. So, of course, we’d had no pets. It wasn’t just dogs that stalked her. A few times, birds had attacked her, and once, when we were bike riding, a squirrel jumped right into her basket, ran up her arm, and grabbed her face. She’d crashed, and I crashed into her. She shook for an hour. So my mother’s fears weren’t unreasonable. But I really wanted to do the sleepover, so she agreed. Besides, the zoo animals were in cages.

That night, we got to the zoo at six. After a dinner of hot dogs, Cool Ranch Doritos, and pink lemonade (I remember all the details because of what happened after), we went on a special after-hours tour. One of the docents, a strikingly beautiful woman with bright auburn hair, took us first to the reptile house. Mom clutched my hand as we watched the savanna monitor show its pointed teeth. We walked on. Quickly. Next were the wild animals who’d been brought in for the night. The lion roared. Beside me, I felt Mom stiffen. I hugged her in solidarity.

“It’s okay, hon,” said our tour guide, assuming I was the baby who was scared. “The cage is made of steel and has two separate doors. He’s not getting out.”

My mother laughed. “I know. I’m being silly.”

“Not at all. Lions are powerful animals. Better to fear too much than too little.”

“Thank you.” Mom squinted at the woman. “You . . . you look so familiar. I wonder if we went to high school together.” She touched the scar on her arm. “But no, you’d be too young. You can’t be more than twenty-five.”

The docent nodded. “I get that a lot. I seem to look like a lot of people.”

We started to walk back to our sleeping quarters. The zoo at night was an eerie place, full of strange cries and creeping shadows.
Above us, the canopied trees seemed to move, even though there was no breeze. Then, I saw a shape.

“Look! A monkey!”

It wasn’t in one of the trees contained in a cage. Instead, it was in a ficus tree growing near the path.

All the girls looked up, picking it out from the shadows. “Aww, how cute,” my friend, Laurel, said.

“Is it supposed to be out here?” Mom said. “It’s not in a cage. Did it get out?”

“Oh, Mom, it’s just a little monkey.” I heard her heavy breathing.

And just as I said, “little monkey,” the creature let out a high-pitched shriek, swung down from the lower branch, then launched itself right at my mother. I stepped in front of it too late. It was on her.

From a distance, in the dark, it had seemed like a tiny monkey. Close up, it was way bigger, the size of a cocker spaniel, with long, powerful arms. My mother crumpled to the ground, and the monkey was grabbing her hair, pulling it over and over so her head was slamming, slamming, slamming on the pavement. The monkey sunk its teeth into her cheek, her chin. I screamed. I screamed and was kicking at it, over and over, get it off my mother, away from her! My mother must have screamed too, but all I could hear were my own shrieks, see the dark blur of my fellow troop members running for cover, the docent calling for help on her radio, my mother shielding her face, the monkey biting her arms, her legs. I fell backward from kicking, but the monkey was still on my mother, biting her.

Finally, someone came. They shot the monkey with a dart gun and pulled it off her. It was too late.

My mother was airlifted to the hospital, but the damage was too great. After a few days in ICU, they took her off life support.

My mother was dead.

“It was all my fault,” I kept saying at her wake. Everyone was
there, saying things I couldn’t hear, didn’t want to hear. My mother was dead. My mother was gone.

I couldn’t even see her. It was a wake, not a viewing. The funeral home hadn’t been able to fix her up enough to show. Despite her scars, my mother had been a beautiful woman. She’d taken great pride in her looks. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see her looking less than her best.

“Of course it wasn’t your fault,” a woman’s voice said above me.

I looked up to see an angel’s face with bright blue, almost violet, eyes fringed, long black lashes, all framed by wavy, auburn hair. I recognized her. The docent from the zoo.

“If anything,” she said, “it’s mine.” She turned to my father. “I’ve been over and over it in my head, so many times, reliving it—how the monkey got out, how I should have seen it first, taken you girls to shelter. Warned her.” As she spoke, a tear coursed down her face. She wiped it away, all the while staring at Dad.

“Do I know you?” he asked. “You look so familiar.”

My mother had said the same thing.

“I volunteer at the zoo,” the docent said. “I took the girls around . . . that night.”

Dad shook his head. “It was the fault of the zoo management or whoever should have locked that beast in a cage. If volunteers were responsible for safety, that is a sad state of affairs. Poor Jennifer was terrified of animals, and now . . .”

“I am so sorry,” said the docent.

Dad’s eyes glistened. He looked at the woman again. “Really, though. You look so familiar.”

The docent wiped another tear. “Don’t you remember me, Greg? We went to school together. Violet Appel.”

“Violet?” My father stepped closer, staring at her. “Violet, it’s been so long.”

I could barely keep my eyes off her myself. I hadn’t seen her that well that night at the zoo.

My mother had been beautiful, and people said I was too. But this woman, Violet, was different. She was stunning. Like, I actually felt stunned to look at her, like electric shock.

My father took her hand and sobbed. “Violet!”

“There, there, it will be okay, Greg,” she said.

They stood there a long time, Violet holding his hand, my father crying, until finally, she said, “I should let you greet the others.”

Dad nodded. “I’m so glad to see you, Violet. Maybe we can talk later.”

“Of course, Greg.” Violet moved away. “I’ve missed you.”

Dad said to me, “Violet was my best friend in elementary school. Such a nice girl. I haven’t seen her in years.”

At the time, I didn’t think about it, but now, I realize that Violet had told my mother she didn’t know her. She’d obviously lied.

After the wake, she was back. She seemed to really want to talk to Dad. “After what happened, I quit volunteering at the zoo. I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t go back.” She shuddered a little. “But I’ve loved animals since we made those birdhouses with your father.” She touched Dad’s hand.

Dad smiled. “I remember that. Dad was asking about you last time I saw him. He remembers all that old stuff.”

“Grandpa made birdhouses?” Grandpa didn’t remember my name, usually.

Violet knelt beside me. She smelled like roses. “Sweet child. Has your father never made a birdhouse with you?”

Dad said, “Jennifer was terrified of animals since the dog attack in high school—you remember. She avoided them, and yet, they couldn’t seem to stay away from her. Cats peed on her shoes. A raccoon lived on her car for a month and wouldn’t leave when shooed.
We had to sell the car. She had a job at an ad agency downtown, but she was forced to quit when pigeons ganged up on her on the street. Now this . . . ” His face broke, and he began to sob. “I should have taken the troop myself! I should never have let her near the zoo.”

Violet embraced him, rocking him back and forth while he sobbed in her arms. When I think about it now, it was weird, like he was a little kid. But at the time, it seemed so perfectly comforting that I hugged both of them. She said, “Don’t blame yourself, Greg. There’s no way you could have known.”

We stood there, crying, the three of us, and somehow, Violet’s presence made it better, made it almost right. It was like magic.

Two days after the funeral, Violet arrived with an animal carrier. From it, she drew a small ball of fur, orange and white. “Someone left her in my yard. My cat was my fondest friend when I was a lonely teenager, so I thought a kitten might help. A cat always helps.”

I couldn’t believe anyone as beautiful as her had ever been lonely.

She placed the kitten on the ground. I reached out, but she started to run away from me. Violet touched its back, and suddenly, it switched direction and gamboled toward me.

“I asked your dad if you could have it,” she said.

“Really?” The kitten pawed at my leg. I scooped it up, and it began to purr, like the small motorboats we used to rent on vacation at the lake.

“Really,” my father said from behind me. “A child should have a pet.”

That made me feel bad. The reason we hadn’t had a pet was because of my mother, her fears. Now, I could have a cat. I’d rather have had my mother. But the kitten curled itself into a ball on my lap. It felt so warm.

“She likes you,” Violet said, “but who wouldn’t like a sweet, pretty girl like you?”

“Oh, I’m not pretty,” I said, though I’d been hearing it all my life. In fact, I thought I was strange-looking, with jet-black hair and white skin like my father’s, though I had my mother’s blue eyes. I hated when people said I was beautiful because it was always something like what Violet had said, something that implied I should have no problems because of my looks.

Obviously, that wasn’t true. If anything, my looks made people like me less. The first day of kindergarten, the kids had just stood around, staring at me. But then no one asked me over to their houses or to sit together at lunch. Mom had always said they were scared of me. That was why she’d volunteered to be the scout leader, so she could help me make friends. Once people got to know me, they forgot about my looks—sometimes.

But I wanted Violet to like me, so I didn’t say any of this. The kitten nuzzled my face. Violet stood real close to Dad, smiling up at him.

“Your modesty makes you all the more beautiful,” she said. “Maybe one day, you can come over and see my cat. I’ll make you dinner too. I’m a good cook.”

“Okay.” I hugged the little cat.

“We’ll make a date.” Dad touched Violet’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

I named the kitten Sapphire for her blue eyes, and the next week, we had dinner at Violet’s house. She made what she called “gourmet” mac and cheese, with some kind of weird smoked cheese in it and told stories about working as a lawyer for the US Attorney’s office, putting criminals away in jail. I played with her cat, whose name was Grimalkin.

In the next few months, we spent more and more time with Violet until we were seeing her every day. I didn’t mind. Violet had two passions, animals and her beauty routine, so some weekends, we
went on nature walks, like in the Everglades, seeing alligators and birds and once, a panther. Other times, she did my hair so easily it seemed like magic, or we went for mani-pedis, stuff I’d done with Mom. Of course, Violet wasn’t my mom, but having her around made it a little easier. And Dad was a lot less sad. I noticed the photos of my mother went from the living room to his bedroom. Then, one day, they disappeared. I found a big photo of the three of us in his closet. I took it out and put it under my bed, but I didn’t let either Dad or Violet see it.

A year later, they got married. I wanted to be a flower girl in the wedding, but Dad said it wouldn’t be formal, and it had to be small. “I’m a widower. It’s only been a year since your mom died. We don’t want a public wedding.”

“Yes, no fancy dress for me, but I’ve got my man.” Violet leaned over and kissed my father on the mouth. I looked down. They kissed a lot. “Besides, none of your dad’s school friends liked me much.”

“Why wouldn’t they? Were they jealous because you were so beautiful?”

Violet looked at Dad and laughed. Then, she hugged me. “Oh, my sweet girl, you crack me up.”

I didn’t know what the joke was, but I laughed along anyway.

I wanted Violet to love me. She was the only mother I had, after all.

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“Can you guys stop making out?” Violet was doing my hair for dance. At least, she was until my father came in. Then, she launched at him like a pumpkin in a catapult.

“We weren’t making out. I’m just kissing my wife hello.”

I rolled my eyes. They were always kissing, and since Violet had my hair in her hand, it was getting tugged. “I’m going to be late.”

“Okay.” Violet tore herself away from Dad and went back to brushing. “Your hair’s so pretty. Black as a crow.”

“A crow?” I wrinkled my nose. “Crows are ugly.”

“Have you ever really looked at a crow, Celine?” Violet continued to brush my hair. I was eleven, old enough to do my own bun, but it was hard to tell Violet that. “I mean, up close? They aren’t completely black. In the light, you can see purple and green. They
almost shimmer. And each feather is lined up perfectly with every other one. So beautiful.”

“Why do you love crows so much?”

“I love all birds. When I’m old, I mean to travel the world and see as many as I can. But crows and ravens will always be my favorite. It was because of a crow I met your father.” She looked up at Dad. “Remember?”

“Of course. We rescued it on the playground. Some boys were throwing rocks at it, and Violet saved it.”

“After that, we were always friends,” Violet said.

I detected a false note in her words. She and my father hadn’t “always” been friends. She’d just showed up after my mother died. But there was no point in saying that, particularly when she had my hair in her hands. Besides, I loved Violet, and I liked birds too. Sometimes, we went for walks and counted how many different kinds we saw. “Well, if you like crows, I’ll like them too.”

She hugged me for that, though her eyes were on Dad. Then, she put the last pins in and sprayed my bun. I always had the best hair in class.

But then, everything changed.

I was thirteen when I had my first period. I had it at school, of course, because that’s just how things go with me. And, when I went down to the clinic to get a pad, one of my friend’s moms was there. “Do you want me to call your dad?” she asked.

“What? No! He’ll get all weird. Call Violet if you have to call anyone.”

Laurel’s mom got kind of a weird look on her face. “You and Violet actually get along, huh?”

“Yeah, she’s nice. We’re going bird-watching in Texas for spring break.”

She nodded. “Okay. I wish your mom were here. This is a day
a mother and daughter should share. I can’t believe it’s been five years.” She gazed at me. She and my mother had been best friends when they were kids. “You look so much like your mom.”

“You think so?” I could barely remember her face. When I tried to picture her, I could only see the photo I still kept under my bed, her in the same pink dress, the same frozen smile. I couldn’t remember the look and feel of her at all anymore. It was like the photograph had painted over my real memories of her. “I have black hair like my dad.”

“Yeah, but those big blue eyes, they’re Jennifer’s eyes.”

She looked about to cry, so I said, “It’s all right.” Because what else, really, was there to say? I just wanted out of there.

Finally, she called Violet and shared the news. “You can go back to class now,” she said after.

I got out of there as fast as I could.

But half an hour later, Violet was there, carrying dark jeans and checking me out of school.

“You didn’t have to,” I said. “We’re doing a lab in science. I sort of wanted to—”

“Science can wait. This is a special occasion for us girls.”

I shrugged. It was sort of weird that she and Dad hadn’t had other kids, but it was better for me. So I guessed if I had to act like her daughter, it was worth it.

She took me to Marble Slab Creamery. We both got chocolate with Oreos mixed in, and as we paid, the college boy at the register looked me up and down. I turned away, blushing like I always did when guys stared at me. Later, when Dad got home, Violet made my favorite dinner (still the mac and cheese) and filled him in. “Your little girl’s becoming a woman.”

I squirmed when she said that, squirmed more when he said, “A beautiful woman.” With his hand, he turned my face toward him. “Like your mother.”

“She doesn’t look like her.” Violet touched my dad’s face. “She looks like you.”

“More like Jenny,” he said. “My lord, Vi, she’s even as beautiful as you.”

It was only for a second, so I thought I imagined it. But, in that instant, I saw Violet’s eyes turn from lavender to black as a crow’s. Then they went back to normal.

But that couldn’t have happened. She wasn’t a witch or anything.

“Do you think so, Greg?” Violet asked. “Yes, I suppose she is, just as beautiful.”

She, too, gazed at me, and I saw hatred behind her smile. From that day on, she never looked at me the same way again.

And when we went to Texas over break, a black-footed booby swooped down and attacked my face.