The Lingering Grace (11 page)

They walked into her room and Alice hurried toward the closet.

“You can sit down wherever,” she told Eva. “I’m sorry—it’s a little messy.”

It wasn’t really that terrible. There were a couple shirts on the floor next to her dresser and a bunch of school worksheets and flyers scattered on her desk, but it was nowhere near as bad as Jeremy’s room, which was actually dangerous to walk through in the dark.

Eva sat down on the bed, and Alice wished she’d made it that morning. As it was, most of her pillows were on the floor and the sheets were tangled up under the lumpy comforter.

“It’s a big room,” Eva said as Alice dug through her closet for a duffel bag.

It hadn’t occurred to Alice before that her room might be called “big.”

“It’s ok,” she said, throwing her PJs into the duffel. “I’m gonna go grab my toothbrush. Be right back.”

The second Alice walked out the door, she regretted it. But she didn’t realize that there was a good reason for the panicky fluttering in her chest until she was stumbling out of the bathroom, trying not to drop any of her toiletries. She remembered Eva, sitting cross-legged on the bed, and seemed to see the outline of the spellbook, tucked under the covers where she left it this morning, only a foot away from Eva’s toes.

She froze, then sprinted back down the hallway, not pausing to pick up the mouthwash she dropped on the way. When she screeched to a halt inside her doorway, Eva looked up from the book in her lap.

Alice dropped the rest of the bottles and dashed forward, mouth agape, not sure what she planned to do.

But as she stretched out her hand to grab the book, Eva snapped it closed and Alice saw that the cover was bright red. It was just a notebook. Eva shoved it into her backpack.

“You ready to go then?” she asked innocently.

“Um … sorry. Not yet … ”

“Are you okay?”

Her eyes wandered to the bundle of blankets at Eva’s feet. They looked undisturbed and Alice relaxed. When she looked back up, she saw Eva staring at the comforter, her brow furrowed.

“I’m fine,” she said; she could feel her cheeks turning red. “I just … just remembered something.”

“Remembered what?” Eva asked.

Alice gestured awkwardly over her shoulder. “I … dropped a few things in the hall. I’m almost ready. I’ll be right back.”

She quickly gathered the things on the floor, her heart still pounding. She realized that her fear of showing Eva the book wasn’t entirely rational, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that if Eva got her hands on it, she wouldn’t willingly return it. The expression on Eva’s face when she’d looked at the spell Alice had copied out had more closely resembled greed than interest.

I’m being paranoid
, Alice told herself, shaking her head. All Eva had ever done was be nice to her. She’d helped her more than once now. And what had Alice done for her? Suspected her of stealing.

It was a crummy way to repay someone for being friendly.

When Alice returned to the room, she gave Eva a guilty smile. Eva was holding her backpack on her lap and re-zipping the outer pocket. She held out a pack of gum.

“Want a piece?”

Alice took one, eyes searching Eva’s face for any emotion, any reason to distrust her.

She didn’t find anything; Eva’s eyes were wide and clear and Alice felt a surge of affection for her new friend.

“Thanks.”

When they walked out of her room five minutes later, Alice was tempted to sneak a look under the covers, just to ease her mind, but Eva was watching her and Alice took a deep breath and walked by the bed without a second glance.

You’re not a crazy person,
she reminded herself,
so you’ve got to stop acting like one.

“It’s not much,” Eva said as they pulled into her driveway half an hour later. The late afternoon light painted the old house pale gold, highlighting every crevice in the peeling white paint. It
wasn’t
much. Two stories and narrow, the house was a decent size but in bad condition. It looked particularly disheveled compared to the tidy homes next door, with their preened lawns and smooth paint.

“It’s nice,” Alice lied, wondering how much work it would take to clear out the weeds that had overrun the small front yard.

Eva shook her head, “You don’t have to pretend. It’s pretty awful. But it had a pool. Penny wanted the pool.”

Alice stiffened. This was the first time she had heard Eva mention her sister by name.

“Penny?”

“Penelope. But we never called her that.”

Her discomfort was palpable and Alice quickly changed the subject. “Seriously, though, it’s not bad. I’ve seen some pretty awful houses. This isn’t one of them.”

She
had
seen awful houses—during a National Honor Society service project where a bunch of high school kids helped old people fix up their yards. They called it the Neighborhood Revival project; she’d only gone because Tony was going too. Tony was in NHS leadership. He liked to say it was the only thing he had going for him if he wanted to get into an Ivy.

But the comment seemed to cheer Eva up a little. As they approached the faded, pale-brown front door, she even pointed at one of the wild poppies growing in the lawn and said with a laugh, “I’m trying to convince Mom to make the whole lawn poppies. Penny would love that.”

Eva spoke about Penny as if she were merely out of town. Alice wondered if that was normal. It would probably be hard to get used to referring to someone in past tense—like admitting they were never coming back.

Hung on the door was a small sign painted with “The Graces,” and Eva grimaced at it as she unlocked the door. If Alice had expected the house to be better on the inside, she was disappointed. Eva held the door open for her as she walked in, nearly stumbling over several open packing boxes that had been left in the tiny entryway.

“Careful,” Eva warned, reaching out to catch her. “It’s still a bit of a mess.”

This was an understatement. Alice knew Eva was watching her carefully and so she did her best to keep her expression neutral, but her eyebrows shot up slightly before she forced them back down. From where she was standing, Alice could see the living room, with an adjacent dining room to the left. There was an open doorway into the kitchen, through which she could see a towering pillar of boxes on the counter next to a loaf of bread. The living room was hardly livable. A loveseat was set up in one corner, opposite a TV that balanced on a side-table. The rest of the room was a precarious maze of boxes and random objects.

A baby doll lay on the floor, cocooned in a pale pink blanket. Alice stared at it and Eva followed her gaze. When she saw the doll, she reached down as though to pick it up, but froze just before her fingers brushed its plastic face. Abruptly, she straightened, looking away from the doll.

“We haven’t had much time to tidy up since … ”

She didn’t finish, but Alice understood. The doll was exactly where Penny had left it. If it had been her brother, she wouldn’t have wanted to put it away either. Because as long as that doll lay where it had been left, you could almost believe its owner would be coming back for it.

“You can put your stuff in my room,” said Eva, her voice a little higher pitched than normal. “Come on.”

But just as she started to lead Alice through the boxes and toward the staircase, someone appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Eva? Who is that with you?”

“Didn’t you get my text, Mom? This is Alice. My friend from school.”

Eva’s mom descended the stairs slowly, gripping the handrail for support. She wasn’t a particularly large woman, but she walked heavily, as though she weighed three hundred pounds. She was wearing gray sweats and a pale yellow T-shirt. Her thin, wavy hair was chin length and ashy brown. Her face wasn’t unpleasant; she might have been pretty if her lips had not been so drawn, her skin so sallow—she clearly hadn’t spent any time outside for weeks.

When she finally got to the bottom step, she stopped and looked Alice in the eyes for the first time. But her gaze was flat, empty, and Alice wasn’t sure this woman was seeing her at all.

“A friend? Well … welcome. Sorry it’s such a mess.” Her face contorted into an awkward grin; she looked like someone trying to remember how to smile.

“Did you get my message?” Eva asked again. “Alice is going to sleep over tonight.”

Alice noticed that Eva did not ask permission, rather simply informed. Her mother nodded obediently, eyes wandering.

“I’m sorry, honey, but I didn’t have anything planned for dinner.”

“Mom, I told you this morning—I bought frozen pizza last night. Have you had anything to eat today?”

When her mom didn’t respond, Eva grabbed her shoulder.

“Have you eaten?”

“Yes, this morning,” her mom said, her voice carrying the trace of a whine. Alice stared at the woman’s worn face and clung to her duffel bag more tightly, suddenly wishing to be home again.

“I’m going to get you a snack, okay?” Eva said, without irritation, but forcefully all the same.

“Honey, your friend is here, you shouldn’t be—” Her mom gestured at Alice, then at herself. “Don’t worry about me. I’m just fine. You don’t need to worry about … ” She blinked hard and looked down at the floor. Alice realized with a flush of embarrassment that the woman’s eyes were glistening.

She pretended not to notice. “Well,” she said briskly, swinging her duffel bag. “I’ll just take this up to your room. Which one is it?”

Eva looked at her gratefully. “First door on the right. I’ll be right up.”

She hurried up the stairs as Eva put a hand on her mom’s back and guided her into the kitchen.

“But your friend … ” her mom murmured.

“She’ll be fine. I wanted to get a snack for myself anyway.”

The hallway at the top of the stairs was dismal—windowless and littered with boxes and random objects. It was less chaotic than the disaster downstairs, but the gloom here was even more oppressive. A single light flickered on the ceiling—the bulb was so dim that Alice was amazed it hadn’t burned out.

The door on the left was the only one open; she hurried inside and closed the door behind her (anything to block out that awful, pale light). Then, turning around, she took in Eva’s room, exhaling a long, relieved breath.

It was the first part of the house Alice had seen that looked remotely habitable.

The room was definitely sparse, but other than the boxes stacked neatly in a corner, it looked almost normal. It was less than half the size of Alice’s room at home, but there was plenty of room for the twin bed, desk, and dresser. Everything was made of the same pale wood; it could have been a furniture set straight from a store showroom. Alice ran her hand across the plain, light blue comforter, which was pulled neatly over the bed. She would never have connected this lackluster room to the girl with a hundred buttons on her backpack. The walls were entirely bare.

Maybe Eva hadn’t had the chance to decorate yet. Or maybe she didn’t have the heart.

Alice’s phone buzzed in her pocket and she pulled it out immediately, grateful for the distraction. But when she looked down at the message, she wished she had just ignored it.

Tony: You coming over today?

Maybe he hadn’t seen the text. She knew she should have tried again when he failed to reply. Grimacing, she flipped the phone over, rubbing the screen against her pants. Tony was probably sitting out on his porch right now, waiting for her to show up. Frankly, she wished she
were
there—sitting in the sun with her head against Tony’s shoulder—not standing in this house where the air was heavy as mud.

She was tempted to call him and tell him everything. He would have something comforting to say, she knew it. Even his voice would be comforting. But if Tony found out what she and Eva were planning to do, he would be upset. Tony had made his opinion on magic perfectly clear, and he certainly wouldn’t understand why she wanted to learn how to use it after it had nearly killed her.

She flipped her phone back over and typed.