This, I realize, is why the only room in the lighthouse is the room I’m in. The stairs come and go because I only need them when I walk to the lantern galley. Because it makes sense for my bedchamber to be above the kitchen.
Willa’s presence looms. I feel her in every room now. I hear her voice in the grinding gears of the lamp. I see flickers of copper in my kitchen; her chair isn’t tucked beneath the table where it belongs. It sits at an angle, just as she left it.
Closing my eyes, I hold myself painfully still. In the dark, nothing exists around me. Now that I understand this, I blossom with a terrible fear. This lighthouse is empty. These dinners are lies. The beribboned boxes at my plate are fantasy.
Now that I know this, now that I can so keenly feel the difference between flesh and fantasy, what will I see when I open my eyes?
With a breath I don’t need, I steel myself. Then I look.
The kitchen remains the kitchen. The black stove radiates warmth; my fish broth has gone cold. With my fingers lifted, my book’s pages flicker and flip, losing my place. Willa’s chair remains askew. The walls vibrate still from the mechanicals working overhead. An ordinary, awful listing of things that simply are.
There’s a difference between thinking and believing. I can no more prove myself unreal than I can prove myself real. Finer philosophers and thinkers than I have tried it; some may have achieved it. Ascendance from their mortal remains, existing as pure thought and naught else.
My logic was ruined when I closed my eyes. To truly accept my nothingness, I would have needed to believe that I had no eyes to close.
“I hope you’re embarrassed,” I tell myself.
Stirring my broth, I upset the sediment in the bowl. It swirls, white haze like fog.
THIRTEEN
Willa
“I wish you’d quit climbing on my trellis,” Bailey’s mom called out.
One hand on the second-story window and one foot on the trellis, I leaned over and offered an apology through the window. “Sorry, Ma. I was trying to sneak up on her.”
Ma Dyer came to the window, lifting the sash so I could hear her more clearly. “Works out better for everybody when you come through the door. My clematis lives and you get cookie dough.”
Hopping down, I pointed toward the back, then headed that way. Bailey and her mother were the only people in Broken Tooth who locked their doors. Bailey because her mom insisted on it. Ma Dyer because she liked choosing the time and place when she’d socialize. By day, she did medical transcription. By night, she liked to paint. If it weren’t for my mom and Bailey, Ma Dyer might have been a straight-up hermit.
The deadbolt chunked, and the back door swung open. I got one foot inside and found myself gathered in warm, fleshy arms. Even though I towered over her, Ma Dyer managed to wrap me up completely. The kitchen smelled of onions and garlic. The cookie dough was for eating, not baking.
With a shake, Ma Dyer set me free. Reaching for the bowl of dough, she dangled it from her fingers, toward me. “You don’t come around much anymore, kid.”
“I’ve been sticking close to home.”
Ma Dyer snorted, moving so I could open the silverware drawer and claim a spoon. “That’s not what your mother says.”
Shrugging, I skimmed my spoon into the bowl. “I bet.”
“It’s not my business.” Ma Dyer shrugged. “But she’s having a hard time right now. Try to help her breathe a little, will you?”
Though she didn’t mean anything by it, the advice rankled. Since the funeral, there was always somebody asking about my parents. Wanting to know how they were. If I was being strong for them. Telling me to take care of them.
All along, I tried. The bills got paid; the phone got answered. I donated my boyfriend for sternman when Daddy wouldn’t let me go myself.
If people didn’t ask how I was, that was fine. It was my fault, a disaster I built with my own two hands. People were good enough to keep that to themselves. Still, it seemed backwards that everybody expected me to take care of everything.
I did it because Dixons are proud, and they keep their own. I would have done it anyway. It was everybody whispering it in my ear that left me full of sour, bitter anger.
Had anybody taken my dad aside and reminded him to care for me? I knew Mom hadn’t gotten that advice, because it would have insulted her. She would have ranted the air blue about it and probably made me pancakes.
Losing Levi had been a direct ticket to the hall of mirrors. Everything distorted. Nothing certain. I scraped up a buttery mouthful of dough, then dropped my spoon into the sink.
“Fanks for the cookies,” I said.
Then I took the stairs two at a time. Photos quivered on the wall, all the way to the landing. Bailey grew up step by step—her hair crazy white blond when she was a baby. With each school picture and summery snapshot, it grew darker. Her eyes grew more thoughtful.
The bathroom door opened, and Bailey padded into the hall. Swathed in orange terry cloth, she looked like a steamed tangerine. Smiling curiously, she tightened her towel. “What’s up?”
“Chicken butt,” I replied. I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. “Ma caught me on the trellis. She punished me with cookie dough.”
With a laugh, Bailey started down the hall to her room. “That’ll learn you.”
“Won’t it, though?”
I ducked into her room and helped myself to the bed. With my gaze, I traced the patterns we’d made with the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling. We grew up with real astronomy: a constant, nagging awareness of the moon, the stars, the tides. So in sixth grade, we made up our own constellations.
While Bailey dressed, I drew outlines in the air with my finger. The witch ball. Captain Jack’s rum. The bloodworm. My throat tightened, though I wasn’t sure why. We had a year yet. Our stars were immovable.
“So how’s things?” I asked.
Bailey pulled a sweatshirt over her head. “With Cait? Still weird. With SAT prep? Still terrifying. Oh, and my best friend. She went and got a little barmy, so I’m worrying about her, too.”
“Screw her,” I said with a snort. Rolling onto my side, I stuffed Bailey’s pillow under my head. “I saw the Grey Man. Up close.”
Another snort and Bailey hauled her hair from her collar. “What have you been smoking?”
“I’m being dead level with you, Bay.”
“Okay. I don’t want to upset the delicate nature of your fish senses or whatever, but here I go. Don’t freak.” Twisting her hair into a loose knot, Bailey fixed it with a pencil and then flopped at her desk. One of her toy tops wobbled, threatening to hit the floor. Scooping it into her hand, she set it on the floor and spun it. “There’s no such thing as the Grey Man, baby.”
“What if I told you I really, really have seen him?”
Bailey stepped on the top to still it. Picking it up with her toes, she tossed it out of the way and came to sit beside me. Her hands were still hot from her shower, radiating heat right through my jacket. “Then I’d be really, really worried about you.”
“He made me cocoa.”
“Why are you messing with me?”
Things were a lot simpler back in our fake-constellation days. We’d believe anything together, back then. The time that had passed had cured us of fantasy, though. Even if I spilled out the whole truth, she wouldn’t be convinced. Not unless I carted her to the lighthouse and made her sit down for a cup of tea with Grey. That would happen half past never, by my clock.
I sighed. “I don’t know. I’m just mean, I guess.”