The Lingering Grace (21 page)

Alice looked up and saw the reason for Eva’s sudden transformation. Her jaw dropped.

“Mom,” she gasped.

Her mom had yanked open the front door. Alice stared at her, half shocked, half worried. Why had her mom chosen to come home so much sooner than she’d expected? How could she have come to terms with the surgery so quickly? Had they already scheduled a date? Alice, starting to panic, regretted telling her mom there was no other choice. Even if she
was
able to heal her mom, how could she convince her
not
to get the surgery? How could she make her believe she was better?

Not bothering to close the door behind her, her mom rushed down the walkway. She looked as beautiful as Alice had ever seen her look—golden hair curling around her face as though she’d just walked out of a salon, lips painted coral, skin glowing. She had exchanged her usual thick black eyeliner for a sheer, glittering eye shadow and a light coat of mascara, and the switch made her look five years younger. For a second she reminded Alice of someone, but Alice couldn’t figure out whom.

Alice searched her mom’s face for any sign of the news she’d just received, but either because of her deftly applied makeup or because she was just that good at faking, Alice couldn’t find anything more concerning than a slight darkening under her eyes and the barest hint of a tremble in her smile.

“Hi sweetie,” she said, giving Alice a hug. “Who’s your friend?”

Eva stuck out her hand and said with a smile so convincing Alice almost bought it herself, “I’m Eva.”

Alice had no doubt the binding spell was still working; the emotion that invaded her mind was clear as day. It was jealousy. Alice didn’t know the specifics—whether it was the house or the street or her mom—but she knew without a doubt that Eva wanted what Alice had. It was a strange feeling to experience, looking at all this through another person’s eyes. Alice was too well acquainted with her life to see it as something worth envying, but she could see now how it might seem to Eva, whose house and mother and car were all in shambles.

If only Eva knew how broken Alice’s life really was. But you couldn’t tell how a cake would taste just by looking at it. Appearances were powerful illusions.

“Eva just moved here, Mom. I invited her over. I … didn’t know you’d be home.” Alice gave her mom what she hoped was a significant look. Eva noticed and she raised an eyebrow, but Alice’s mom didn’t meet her eyes.

“Well, Eva … ” She pulled Eva into a hug too and Eva’s eyes widened though she didn’t protest. “Aren’t you just darling! Come in, come in … ”

As her mom pulled Eva toward the house, Eva turned back and mouthed over her shoulder, “That’s your
mom
?”

Alice nodded and followed her mom’s swaying hair. Her mom had definitely visited the salon because her layered bob was a few inches shorter than last time Alice had seen her. Suddenly Alice realized whom her mother resembled; her aunt’s hair had been that precise length, that exact cut, the year before she died.

Alice stopped in her tracks. There was a picture in her mother’s room of the two of them, her mother with her long curls, her aunt with shoulder-length, straight blond hair. They had often been mistaken for twins.

Her mom stopped at the door and turned around.

“Alice? Are you coming?”

She dizzily forced herself forward as reality shifted around her. Memories of visiting her aunt were too real for comfort, and when she looked at her mom, all she saw was her aunt’s smile, her brown eyes.

At the funeral, her eyes had been closed. Her smile gone.

“Honey?” Her mom grabbed her shoulder when she got to the door. “Are you okay?”

Alice nodded, biting back an urge to cry. “I’m fine. Are you?”

“I’m okay,” she said, and her smile faded slightly. She added softly, “I decided I needed to be here. There’s nowhere else that makes me happier.”

Eva was watching, and Alice’s mom perked up immediately, giving her a smile.

“You two girls must be hungry. Let’s see what we have …”

“It’s ok, Mom. We can get ourselves a snack. You must be tired from your drive—are you sure you shouldn’t take a nap or something?”

Her mom brushed off the suggestion. “Eva, how does popcorn sound to you? You know it’s actually very good for you—a whole grain!”

Eva stared at Alice’s mom in amazement. “Um … sure. That’s nice of you.”

“Don’t mention it, hon.”

It was an hour before Alice managed to drag Eva away from her mother’s interrogation. It would have been a lot easier if Eva hadn’t been thoroughly enjoying it. After about ten minutes of sitting on her hands and answering questions with a forced smile, Eva suddenly seemed to decide that she liked Alice’s mom. She helped herself to heaping handfuls of air-popped popcorn and talked about everything from doing track at her last school to getting the cutest guy in class to ask her out. It was the kind of conversation any girl might have had with her mom, and Alice might have felt a little bit jealous of the attention if she hadn’t known that Eva probably hadn’t had a casual conversation with her own mother in a long time.

Eva’s envy faded to a murmur in the back of Alice’s mind, which was a relief. Even feeling it at this muted level made her uncomfortably aware of the differences between her situation and Eva’s.

When they finally got upstairs and started thumbing through the spellbooks, it was nearly five o’clock. Alice hurried to read Eva’s book, but it was a little more difficult to make out than the one she had found in the library. The handwriting was old and slanted, and she squinted at the pages, trying to decipher it. It didn’t help that the leaves kept getting stuck together. She spent nearly five minutes working on a couple that were basically glued together before she got them separated. But, when she looked at the page she had just revealed, her gut heaved and she clapped her hand to her mouth.

The page was dotted with blood.

Alice dropped the book. It landed open and upside down, spine stretched dangerously by the splayed pages.

“Be careful with it!” Eva said, jumping to grab it off the floor. “It’s old.” She gently picked up the book and flipped it over; by some miracle, it had stayed open to the blood-dotted page, and Alice cringed. Eva, following her gaze, saw the blood and snapped the book closed.

“I’m sorry,” she said airily though she was gripping the book so tightly that her knuckles turned white. Alice could feel her panic. “I should have warned you about that.”

“I … I didn’t mean to drop it. It’s just that … it reminded me …”

Though she knew it was impossible, she would have sworn she could smell the heavy, metallic scent of blood. It left a bitter taste in her mouth. A vivid memory of Elizabeth’s bloodstained diary—its size and smell, the feel of the covers—overwhelmed her. She sat on her hands to keep them steady and tried to focus on Eva’s face.

But Eva wasn’t meeting her eyes. She was staring into the distance; even with the hot-pink lipstick, her mouth had taken on a purple tinge, as though under the makeup her lips had gone white. If that hadn’t been enough to tell Alice something was wrong, the waves of gut-wrenching regret sealed the deal.

“What is the blood from?” Alice asked.

“It was there when I found the book,” Eva said, so quickly that it seemed automatic. Then, almost as soon as she had said it, she pressed her hands to her head and groaned, “No. I’m lying.”

Maybe the spell wouldn’t allow fibs, either.

“What really happened?”

Eva didn’t answer at once, and Alice waited. The shock, at least, was passing. It was ridiculous, she thought, reacting so violently to a few drops of blood. The most likely scenario was that someone (maybe Eva) had gotten a paper cut and accidentally dripped. It was probably nothing.

But Eva’s face told a different story. She was gnawing on her lower lip and clearly thinking hard about something. At last, seeming to make up her mind, she said, “Alice, before we do anything else, there’s something I need to tell you.”

A full thirty seconds went by in silence. Eva rocked back and leaned her head on the bedpost. She gulped. She focused on the lamp on Alice’s nightstand.

“I need to tell you. I need to tell someone,” she said, eyes locked on the lamp. “The truth is … I killed my sister.”

It was like all the air in the room had vanished. Alice’s mouth hung open and she gasped for breath, but the effort only left her emptier and dizzier.

“You were right,” Eva continued, “when you said that I probably hurt Penny with magic. I didn’t mean to, though.” She gasped and choked back a sob. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I
love
Penny. I was just … I was trying to help. Please,” Eva begged, “don’t say anything, just … let me explain.”

Alice wasn’t sure she would be able to say anything if she tried. The heaviness, the struggle to breathe in the deadly silent room—it wasn’t just surprise or shock or echoes of Eva’s pain. It was the sinking feeling that her worst suspicions had been confirmed and the fear that Eva’s explanation would not improve things.

“It was an accident. She didn’t mean to, but she shouldn’t have interfered … ” Eva stopped; her eyes had glazed over. Shaking her head, she opened the book to the bloody page and stared at the trail of red.

“When I found the book, Penny was the first one I told. It was … hard for both of us when Dad left, but it was harder for her. Mom was never totally stable, and when Dad disappeared, she shut down for a long time. I had to do most of the packing for the move myself and take care of Penny, too. So when I was going through junk in the attic and I found … ” she gestured at the book, “I knew Penny would love it. She loved fairy tales and old things and especially magic. I didn’t know it was real magic, then. I didn’t know real magic existed.”

Alice already had her mouth open to ask how Eva discovered the truth, but Eva hurried on before she could get the words out.

“She liked it when I read to her at night. And that’s how it happened. When I was reading one of the spells, I felt it … working. It was a little spell, just a warming spell, but the whole room got hot. Penny was excited and she wanted to try, so I helped her read the spell and … it worked.”

Eva smiled bitterly. “Magic was all Penny cared about after that, but she was so
happy
. You should have seen her. Knowing what she could do, it changed everything. She had nightmares still—it was worst on the nights Dad called—but she was so much better. Having her happy, having the spells … it was the only thing that got me through the move. It gave us both something to think about besides … everything.”

Some of the weight in Alice’s gut had lifted and her breathing had eased, but her chest ached. Even though Eva was just one person and hers was just one sad story, it seemed like all the heaviness in the world had converged in a heap of heartache that clouded Alice’s vision and pressed down on her shoulders. She tried to distance herself from Eva’s words—after all, it wasn’t
her
tragedy—but perhaps because of the bonding spell, she couldn’t shake the despair. The bleakness was almost unbearable; she looked down at her blue bedspread with the coiling flowers, but the pattern seemed like a joke in this world without beauty.

Eva paused for so long that Alice thought she wouldn’t finish. But, with a sigh, she went on. “Things were fine until we got to the new house. Penny was really nervous. She didn’t want to go, even though Mom and I told her everything would be okay, that everything would be the same as it was before. I guess we were lying. Things were
never
going to be the same. But we didn’t want to believe it, so we just told Penny what she wanted to hear, and for a while, it was fine. The whole drive, it was fine.

“Mom was the only one who’d seen the house. When we got there, she was so excited—showing us how big it was, how nice the kitchen was, but compared to our old house … ”

Eva didn’t have to finish the sentence. Alice understood. To anyone who’d spent most of their life living in a fairly decent situation, Eva’s house would seem particularly old and worn down.