“These were my favorites,” she said. “Ted gave them to me for our wedding.”
“They’re beautiful,” I said. “Put them on.”
“No,” she said, “I can’t wear these now. Look at my earlobes. They’d look ridiculous on an old lady. You put them on. Go on.”
I held one up to my ear.
“There’s a little mirror in that box,” she said. “Can you see it?”
“Yup.”
“Now, then, what do you think?”
“They’re beautiful.”
“You have them.”
“Me? No.”
“Go on. I’d like you to have them.”
“No,” I said, “really, Frieda. I can’t do that. They’re yours.”
“There’s no one else I want to give them to.”
“No.” I said. “Thank you. Really, I couldn’t.” I placed them in the box, pushing them back into their bed of old red velvet.
“In which case,” she said, “perhaps you’d be so kind as to put that box back where you found it. Put this photo on top too, please, I can’t lose that.” I placed the photo of the two girls on top and closed the lid before I pushed the box back inside the hole, under the eaves. She watched me put the panel back in place and it disappeared seamlessly into the wall. “One day I fully intend to shut myself in there and that will be it.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I didn’t say today.”
“You shouldn’t—”
“What? Acknowledge I’m going to die? Sweet girl, we all have to do that.” She fixed her gaze on me and I noticed the way her irises changed from brown to gray where they met the whites of her eyes, like quiet water lapping on a beach. Then she turned back to the pile of photographs in her lap, lifting each one with trembling fingers, to examine close up.
“Did Elisabeth get out?” I said.
The atlas of lines on her face folded and dipped.
“No,” she said, “she didn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m so, so sorry.”
After a while she looked up. She said, “You’re that girl, aren’t you?” I didn’t reply. I felt as if a glistening bubble was about to burst inside my chest. “The one from the news. The one that disappeared.”
Shame warmed my cheeks. I felt the blood in my ears. She bent down and touched the edge of my hair, still short but no longer patchy. I looked up at her.
“Do you want me to go?”
She looked at the window, where rain had started to lash against the pane. For the longest time she looked into the dark.
“I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know what I was doing,” I said.
“People always know what they’re doing,” she said, her voice firm. “Don’t let anyone ever tell you any different.” I held her eyes. “There’s been an almighty manhunt for you, you know.”
I felt my cheeks reddening.
“And, in the meantime, I’ve been busy wondering whether I’ll be going to jail for harboring an escaped fugitive, or kidnap.”
“I never thought about it like that,” I said. “I don’t know how to explain.”
“You must have had your reasons. But”—she tipped her head sideways like a bird—“there’ll be people missing you. People worried sick.”
I knew that. I thought about them all the time. I thought about Willa, my mother, her gentle gray eyes. But each time I thought about them, I saw my father too, looming up behind, his iron breath on my face; I saw myself being smacked, slapped, manhandled, my head cracking against the wall.
“Don’t think you can stay here indefinitely, hiding away. No—stop—I managed perfectly well until you came along, thank you. Believe me, I can look after myself. And I won’t be around forever.” She tapped her chest. “Dodgy ticker. Or is it a dicky todger?” Her lips lifted and her eyebrows rose into thin half-moons. “Now which one is it? I always get those two mixed up.”
Her eyes were bright and full of amusement. She waited. I said, “I think you mean the first.”
Her face opened into a smile, then grew serious again. “The truth is, I’ve had enough. I know that’s hard for a young thing like you to hear. People your age don’t like to think about the end. But life hasn’t been the same for me, since I lost Ted.” She lapsed into silence. After a while, she said, “You’ll meet people in your life that you’ll always wish you could have walked with a little longer. You’ll know it when you meet them. You hold on to them fast. They’re the important ones.” She went very quiet, and I sat watching her, her eyes fixed somewhere in the past. “This was always going to be fleeting, wasn’t it? Of course it was, Laika. Breathing space, I suppose you could say. Don’t think I say this lightly; I’ve rather enjoyed these past two months. But you’ll need to go your own way soon enough, and I will go mine.”
That was the first, and, as it turned out, the only time she ever called me Laika, and my face must have registered the shock because she reached for my hand. “You’ve already made hard choices, getting yourself this far, and, when you’re ready, you’re going to have to make some more. You have a life to live.” I wanted to say something, but I thought I might cry. She took my hand and squeezed it tight. “Some of life’s most important journeys you have to take on your own. Certainly the hardest ones. You just have to be brave.”
***
Ted’s niece Linda came back. She brought with her a sour-faced man in a T-shirt that had fuzzy bastards written across the front. Silent and hidden at the top of the stairs, I watched them talking to Frieda.
