A Sound Among the Trees (19 page)

For a moment Marielle almost believed the apparition in front of her was a time-travelled version of Adelaide as a middle-aged woman. This staggering thought tore at her as she grabbed the fallen journals and struggled to her feet.

But then realization flooded her. “Caroline …,” she sputtered

The woman’s eyes widened. “Who are you? I don’t know you.” Her tone bristled. “Where’s my mother? Where are the children?”

“I’m … I …” Marielle was suddenly unable to recall if Caroline knew Sara was dead. A half-second later she remembered Adelaide had told her Caroline had shown up at the funeral and left the next day without a word to anyone. “My name’s Marielle Bishop.”

“Bishop? Your last name is Bishop?”

“Yes. I’m married to Carson.”

Caroline seemed to need a second to process this information. She stood staring at Marielle for several awkward seconds. “You know who I am,” she finally said.

“Yes.”

“Well, where is everyone? Where’s my mother? Where are my grandchildren?”

“Carson and the children are on Long Island at his parents’. He’s returning home tomorrow morning, but the children will be there for three weeks. And Adelaide fell and broke her wrist today. She’s at the hospital, but she’s supposed to be released tomorrow.”

Caroline’s wet brows rose. “She broke her
wrist
, and she’s in the hospital?”

Marielle swallowed, pushing back murmurings of inadequacy. “She fell down the stairs, actually. The break required surgery. And she hit her head too. Her doctor wanted her to stay overnight as a precaution.”

Caroline stood unmoving and dripping rainwater onto the rug under her sandaled feet.

“Can I get you a towel or some dry clothes?” Marielle asked.

“What are you doing in this room?” Caroline’s gaze dropped to the journals in Marielle’s arms.

Marielle had no intention of telling Caroline what she carried. “Why don’t I help you find some dry clothes?”

“I have clothes, Mary-whatever-your-name-is—”

“Marielle.”

“Marielle. I want to know what you’re doing in this room.”

A shot of anger zoomed forward, replacing the intimidation she felt only seconds earlier. “I know who this room belonged to, and I’m sorry for your loss, really I am. But this is a spare bedroom in the house where I now live. I live here. And you’re dripping water on the rug.”

Caroline looked down at her feet and the amoeba-shaped puddle that surrounded them. She slowly raised her head. “You live here.”

“Yes.”

A second of silence.

“Well then, how about that towel,” Caroline said.

Marielle moved past her, holding the journals tight to her chest. She
made her way to the large bathroom on the north side of the hallway and flipped on the light switch. “The towels are in the cupboard on your left.”

Caroline walked past her. “I know where the towels are.”

“Come downstairs when you’re done. I’ll make us some tea.”

Caroline nodded and then closed the door.

Marielle spun around and walked quickly to her bedroom. Before she could even begin to make sense of Caroline’s being there, she had to find a place to stash Sara’s journals. She opened her closet, shoved the journals under a pile of sweaters and then withdrew them again. She knelt on the closet floor, opened the little door to her own crawlspace but then closed it.

She pulled out her laptop case and placed the journals inside, then zipped it closed. She set it back against the wall, behind her dresses. Then she stood and closed the closet doors and made her way downstairs to put water in a kettle.

In the foyer Marielle nearly tripped over something square and dark as she hurried past the front door.

A suitcase.

Caroline had brought a suitcase.

For a moment, Marielle stared at the wet evidence that Caroline might be thinking of staying more than a day. Then she took the suitcase upstairs and set it just outside the bathroom door.

Caroline stepped into the kitchen wearing a pair of jeans and a flowing top that fell to her hips. She had combed her wet hair and pulled it into a ponytail. In the warm light of the kitchen Marielle could see that Caroline’s face was heavily lined with creases and wrinkles, marks of a life spent in the sun—or in worry.

“Thanks for bringing up my suitcase.” Caroline pulled out a chair at the table in the kitchen’s alcove and sat.

“Sure. No problem.” Marielle set a cup of tea before her and a sugar bowl. “Need any milk or cream in that?”

Caroline pulled the cup toward her, studying its painted porcelain face. “No. Thank you.”

Marielle sat down across from her with her own cup. A dozen half-formed questions zoomed across her brain as she stared at the woman across from her. Caroline. Caroline the addict. Caroline the runaway. Caroline the horrible mother. Caroline who knew where the letters were. Adelaide’s estranged daughter. No one had seen or heard from her in four years, and now here she was—out of nowhere—sitting in the kitchen with Marielle and drinking tea.

“You shouldn’t leave the front door unlocked like that. Anybody could’ve come in here.” Caroline took a sip from her cup.

Stunned, Marielle rummaged for a suitable reply, but Caroline spoke again before she could respond.

“I remember these cups. My mother got them the summer before my father died.”

Marielle said nothing as she watched Caroline set the teacup carefully down on its saucer.

“So how long have you and Carson been married?” Caroline looked up at Marielle, but her hand was still on the cup. She was stroking its question-mark handle.

“A couple of months.”

“And you’re living here? You and Carson and the kids are living here?”

Marielle took another sip of her tea. “Yes. We’re living here.” She set the cup down. It made a tender clinking sound.

“Why?”

“I … I beg your pardon?”

“Why on earth are you living here?”

None of your business, thank you
, came quickly to her mind, and Marielle squelched it before it spewed itself out her mouth. She wondered
what Carson would say. He had never described Caroline as being overly blunt. Perhaps he didn’t know. He had only seen her a couple of times in the ten years he was married to Sara. Perhaps this was a side of her he hadn’t had time to see.

“We decided it was the best arrangement for the children right now. And for Adelaide,” Marielle replied coolly, amazement giving way to annoyance.

Caroline shrugged and took another sip of tea. “Best,” she echoed as she set the cup down. Then she looked up at Marielle, folding her hands under her chin on upturned elbows. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

Neither are you
, Marielle wanted to say. “I’m from Phoenix.”

Caroline opened her mouth, as if ready with a quip about Marielle’s very non-Southern hometown, but then she closed it. Softness fell across her facial features. When she opened her mouth again, her voice was gentle.

“Never made it to Phoenix,” she murmured. “Been to the Grand Canyon, though. I went there thinking you could jump off the edge of it. Turns out it’s not that easy.”

Marielle waited in silence. She could think of nothing to say in response.

Caroline unfolded her hands and placed them in her lap. Her gaze fell on the cup in front of her. “I suppose my mother told you all about me.”

“A little.”

Caroline looked up. “There are reasons why I left. Reasons why I stayed away.”

Marielle shrugged. “You don’t owe me any explanations.”

“But you’re raising my grandchildren so I would like you to know.”

Caroline’s frankness, which had angered her moments earlier, now made Marielle uncomfortable.

“That’s okay. You don’t even know me,” Marielle said.

“And you don’t know me either.”

Caroline sounded just like Adelaide.

“I made a lot of really bad choices when I was younger,” she continued. “And I got myself into situations I couldn’t get out of. I wasn’t well, and I chose all the wrong ways to remedy that. I know what people think of me, and I can guess what you probably think, but Sara was better off here with my mother than she ever would have been with me.”

A sudden boldness came over Marielle. “How do you know she was better off without you? You weren’t even here.”

Caroline stared at her. “Did you know Sara? Were you a friend of hers?”

Marielle thought of the journals hidden upstairs in her bedroom. “No. I just don’t see how you could know she was better off without you.”

“Because I was a terrible mother. I was an alcoholic and addicted to painkillers and who-knows-what-else. I heard voices in my head. I slept with whoever kept me warm and fed, and I couldn’t keep a job or a roof over our heads. I was a pathetic excuse for a mother. That’s how I know. If I had stayed here, she would’ve ended up hating me, or I would’ve ended up dead. I … I was a different person back then.”

“But what about your grandchildren?” Marielle asked, aware of a sudden swell of maternal concern regarding Hudson and Brette.

“What about my grandchildren?”

“Doesn’t it bother you that they don’t even know you?”

Caroline sat back in her chair. “Well, until recently, I didn’t want them to.” She turned to look out the alcove windows. The rain had lessened to a gentle shower, and the glass glittered. “But now I do. I’ve … I’ve had an experience. A resurrection—for lack of a better word. I don’t expect my mother or Carson or anyone else to understand. But I feel different. And I’m under the care of a doctor and am taking medication the way I’m supposed to—that’s a first. I feel … whole. For the first time in my life I don’t feel like a fragment of a person.”

“Is … is that why you came back?” Marielle asked.

Caroline turned to face her. “I want to see my grandchildren. They’re still young. There’s still time for me to get to know them and for them to get to know me. It’s too late for me to be a mother to Sara but it’s not too late for me to be a grandmother to Hudson and Brette.”

“So … you’re here to stay?” Marielle’s thoughts flew to sharing her home with not just a ninety-year-old matriarch but now the matriarch’s sixty-something renegade daughter. And maybe a ghost …

“No,” Caroline answered. “Not to stay. I have no desire to live in this house.” She shook her head. “Not this house.”

Marielle waited for Caroline to offer some kind of explanation for her feelings toward Holly Oak. But Caroline said nothing else. And Marielle didn’t quite know how to ask if it was because Caroline believed the house was haunted. It seemed a juvenile thing to say, like asking Caroline if she believed in the tooth fairy.

The two women sat quietly for a moment.

“I’m sorry the children aren’t here,” Marielle finally said.

Caroline inhaled, a cleansing breath perhaps. “Maybe it will be better this way. I can use the time to make some sort of peace with my mother before they come home. That is, if you will allow me to stay here until then. I promise not to stay more than a week after they come home.”

“Of course. You have somewhere else to go?”

“I’ll be living with a friend in Bethesda for a while. Until I can get my own place. Never had my own place before. But I’d like to visit Holly Oak from time to time. And come for Thanksgiving and Christmas—if that’s all right.”

“Of course,” Marielle said. “This is more your home than mine.”

Caroline cocked her head, as if to consider deeply what Marielle had just said. A question or comment seemed to form on her lips, and then it slipped away.

“Would you like to come with Carson and me when we go to the hospital to pick up Adelaide tomorrow?” Marielle asked.

Caroline shook her head. “I think I’ll just wait here. You can tell her I’m here. I’d rather she knew and didn’t faint dead away at the sight of me and break something else.”

Marielle smiled. “Sure. Carson’s hoping to be home by eleven o’clock, and then we’re going to go get her.”

“Carson. Nice guy. I always liked him.” Caroline stood. “I’m very tired, Marielle. In a lot of ways. If you don’t mind, I think I will go on upstairs and go to bed. It’s been a long day.”

Marielle stood also. “I don’t even know which room was yours.”

Caroline laughed weakly. “It looks like you’re in it. I peeked on my way down. It has the master bedroom look about it. And your wedding photo on the dresser.”

“I’m sorry, Caroline. Adelaide said it had been Sus—” Marielle stopped, Susannah’s name frozen on her tongue.

Caroline narrowed her eyes a bit. “Susannah’s room. So you’ve heard about Susannah.”

Marielle nodded.

“I don’t know what you’ve been told about this house and about Susannah Page but you should just know, Marielle, that things aren’t always what they seem. Thanks for the tea.” Caroline turned and started out of the kitchen. “I’ll be happy to sleep in Sara’s room—your guest room.”

n the sterile quiet of her hospital room, Adelaide dreamed of her great-grandmother. It was a dream she’d dreamed before, many times, though it had been years since the last time and more than eight decades since the first. The setting of the dream was always the same, Susannah’s eighty-fifth birthday, a real event.