Once she’s on the road again, and safe inside her rental car, Holly draws in a deep breath and lets it out in a scream.

It helps.

5

Charlotte embraces her daughter on the doorstep, then draws her inside. Holly knows what comes next.

“You’ve lost weight.”

“Actually I’m just the same,” Holly says, and her mother gives her The Look, the one that says once an anorexic, always an anorexic.

Dinner is take-out from the Italian place down the road, and as they eat Charlotte talks about how hard things have been without Henry. It’s as if her brother has been gone five years instead of five days, and not to a nearby elder care facility but to spend his old age doing stupid stuff far away—running a bicycle shop in Australia or painting sunsets in the tropic isles. She does not ask Holly about her life, her work, or what she was doing in Pittsburgh. By nine o’clock, when Holly can reasonably plead tiredness and go to bed, she’s started to feel as if she’s growing younger and smaller, diminishing to the sad, lonely, and anorexic girl—yes, it was true, at least during her nightmare freshman year of high school, when she was known as Jibba-Jibba Gibba-Gibba—who lived in this house.

Her bedroom is just the same, with the dark pink walls that always made her think of half-cooked flesh. Her stuffed animals are still on the shelf above her narrow bed, with Mr. Rabbit Trick holding pride of place. Mr. Rabbit Trick’s ears are ragged, because she used to nibble on them when she couldn’t sleep. The Sylvia Plath poster still hangs on the wall above the desk where Holly wrote her bad poetry and sometimes imagined committing suicide in the manner of her idol. As she undresses, she thinks she might have done it, or at least tried it, if their oven had been gas instead of electric.

It would be easy—much too easy—to think this childhood room has been waiting for her, like a monster in a horror story. She’s slept here several times in the sane (relatively sane) years of her adulthood, and it has never eaten her. Her mother has never eaten her, either. There is a monster, but it’s not in this room or in this house. Holly knows she would do well to remember that, and to remember who she is. Not the child who nibbled Mr. Rabbit Trick’s ears. Not the adolescent who threw up her breakfast most days before school. She is the woman who, along with Bill and Jerome, saved those children at the Midwest Culture and Arts Complex. She is the woman who survived Brady Hartsfield. The one who faced another monster in a Texas cave. The girl who hid in this room and never wanted to come out is gone.

She kneels, says her nightly prayer, and gets into bed.

December 18, 2020

1

Charlotte, Holly, and Uncle Henry sit in one corner of the Rolling Hills common room, which has been decorated for the season. There are ribbons of tinsel and sweet-smelling swags of fir that almost overcome the more permanent aroma of pee and bleach. There’s a tree hung with lights and candy canes. Christmas music spills down from the speakers, tired tunes Holly could live happily without for the rest of her life.

The residents don’t seem exactly bursting with holiday spirit; most of them are watching an infomercial for something called the Ab Lounge, featuring a hot chick in an orange leotard. A few others are turned away from the tube, some silent, some holding conversations with each other, some talking to themselves. A wisp of an old lady in a green housecoat is bent over a huge jigsaw puzzle.

“That’s Mrs. Hatfield,” Uncle Henry says. “I don’t recall her first name.”

“Mrs. Braddock says you saved her from a bad fall,” Holly says.

“No, that was Julia,” Uncle Henry says. “Back at the ohhhh-ld swimmin hole.” He laughs as people do when they are remembering days of yore. Charlotte rolls her eyes. “I was sixteen, and I believe Julia was . . .” He trails off.

“Let me see your arm,” Charlotte commands.

Uncle Henry cocks his head. “My arm? Why?”

“Just let me see it.” She seizes it and pushes up his shirtsleeve. There’s a good-sized but not especially remarkable bruise there. To Holly it looks like a tattoo gone bad.

“If this is how they take care of people, we should sue them instead of paying them,” Charlotte says.

“Sue who?” Uncle Henry says. Then, with a laugh: “Horton Hears a Who! The kids loved that one!”

Charlotte stands. “I’m going to get a coffee. Maybe one of those little tart things, as well. Holly?”

Holly shakes her head.

“You’re not eating again,” Charlotte says, and leaves before Holly can reply.

Henry watches her go. “She never lets up, does she?”

This time it’s Holly who laughs. She can’t help it. “No. She doesn’t.”

“No, never does. You’re not Janey.”

“No.” And waits.

“You’re . . .” She can almost hear rusty gears turning. “Holly.”

“That’s right.” She pats his hand.

“I’d like to go back to my room, but I don’t remember where it is.”

“I know the way,” Holly says. “I’ll take you.”

They walk slowly down the hall together.

“Who was Julia?” Holly asks.

“Pretty as the dawn,” Uncle Henry says. Holly decides that’s answer enough. Certainly a better line of poetry than she ever wrote.

In his room, she tries to guide him to the chair by the window, but he disengages his hand from hers and goes to the bed, where he sits with his hands clasped between his thighs. He looks like an elderly child. “I think I’ll lie down, sweetie. I’m tired. Charlotte makes me tired.”

“Sometimes she makes me tired, too,” Holly says. In the old days she never would have admitted this to Uncle Henry, who was all too often her mother’s co-conspirator, but this is a different man. In some ways a much gentler man. Besides, in five minutes he’ll forget she said it. In ten, he’ll forget she was here.

She bends to kiss his cheek, then stops with her lips just above his skin when he says, “What’s wrong? Why are you afraid?”

“I’m not—”

“Oh, you are. You are.”

“All right,” she says. “I am. I’m afraid.” Such a relief to admit it. To say it out loud.

“Your mother . . . my sister . . . it’s on the tip of my tongue . . .”

“Charlotte.”

“Yes. Charlie’s a coward. Always was, even when we were children. Wouldn’t go in the water at . . . the place . . . I can’t remember. You were a coward, but you grew out of it.”

She looks at him, amazed. Speechless.

“Grew out of it,” he repeats, then pushes off his slippers and swings his feet onto the bed. “I’m going to have a nap, Janey. This isn’t such a bad place, but I wish I had that thing . . . that thing you twist . . .” He closes his eyes.

Holly goes to the door with her head down. There are tears on her face. She takes a tissue from her pocket and wipes them away. She doesn’t want Charlotte to see them. “I wish you could remember saving that woman from falling down,” she says. “The nurses’ aide said you moved like lightning.”