of daisies—but she doesn’t know it. This is because all her life, everyone has been telling her how smart she is, but the first time someone other than my dad told her she was pretty, she was, like, thirty.
I say, “You look beautiful.” It’s now my job to say these things, and to buy her honeysuckle perfume. And in that moment I want to tell her I’ve decided not to go to Columbia, that instead I’m going to stay with her forever so I can make sure no one ever hurts her again.
She throws an arm around me and stares out at the sea. “Your dad once told me I was the second-prettiest girl in the room, and I was so flattered because I knew he was being honest. But now I’m thinking that was a really shit thing to say.”
She looks at me. I look at her. And maybe it’s the fact that we’re finally here, in this place I’ve been dreading, and it doesn’t look like a prison at all, or maybe it’s the fact that we are two emotionally shattered people in desperate need of sleep, but we sit right down on the sand and start to laugh. It’s a laugh I need, and I hold on to it longer than I would normally because it feels so good. As it dies away, we both make this winding-down noise, like a sigh, at the exact same moment, and that gets us started again.
Finally, she wipes her eyes and says to me, “Promise you’ll let me know what you need this summer. I’m still your mom, and I want to be here for you.”
“I promise.” But even as I say it, the laughter is already fading and I can feel myself closing up. We’re here together, but there is still the sense of separation, of every woman for herself.
DAY 1
(STILL)
By the time we get to the inn, the sky is turning a soft pinkish gold. In spite of its grandness, the inn also feels welcoming, maybe because this was once a family home, and I wish we were staying here instead of at Addy’s, which feels too personal. Here, at least, I might trick myself into believing we’re just on vacation. We join the other guests, who are gathered on the wide front porch, drinks in hand, for cocktail hour. They smile. I smile.
“I’m Lauren Llewelyn and this is my daughter, Claudine.”
“Claudine,” someone says.
“Claude,” I say.
“Claude.”
They introduce themselves, and I will never remember their names, but I smile and chat and laugh politely, wearing my green sundress, the one with the ballerina skirt, because at the inn you dress for dinner. We walk past the rocking chairs and porch swings and go inside, which is cool and dark and from a different era.
By now most of the guests have moved down the hall to the living room, which looks more like a rambling old library. There are two portraits on opposite walls, one of an African American woman in a white dress, around forty years old, arms crossed, dark eyes fixed on some faraway object, the other of a white woman in red, about the same age, with a sleek blond bob, pistol at her waist. She stares out of the frame as if she’s daring you to cross her.
Mom says, “That’s Claudine.” We stand in front of her and she half smiles, half glares down from the frame as if she’s making up her mind about us. This is not the Claudine I imagined. All this time, I’d been picturing someone frail and hollow-eyed, worn down by tragedy, but this woman sits ramrod straight, as if her spine is made of steel.
I can’t help myself. “Why did her mother kill herself?” I ask without looking away from her, because for some reason I can’t look away from her. I don’t want to.
“I don’t think anyone knows the real story. She didn’t leave a note, and there was speculation that she was depressed. I’m hoping my work here will help me find out.”
In spite of her mother’s suicide and the fact that she never left this island for long, even after she was grown, Claudine looks fierce and fearless—as if she could take on the world—and I want to be her.
Mom says, “Claudine was not only the grandmother I wish I’d had, but the woman who turned this estate into an inn. Before that it was a kind of guesthouse, meant to go to my grandmother