thing’s comfortable.
“What can we do?” Bethie asked, her voice fretful. Harold took her in his arms.
“Not much more than what we’re doing right now,” Harold said. He slipped his warm hands underneath her pajama top and rubbed her shoulders. Bethie gave a happy sigh and closed her eyes. “We let her know we’re here for her. She knows that we’ll listen if she wants to talk.”
“Big ‘if,’ ” grumbled Bethie.
“That’s all we can do,” Harold said. “She’ll come to us when she’s ready.”
But after another week, Bethie decided that she couldn’t wait. On Saturday night, she went to the guest room where Lila was staying and sat on the edge of the bed. In anticipation of Lila’s arrival, she’d fixed up the room with a new pink-and-yellow bedspread and boxed sets of Trixie Belden and Sweet Valley High books, which, Sharon assured her, were all the rage for girls Lila’s age.
“Lila,” she began, “is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” Lila muttered.
“And you’re sure camp’s all right? Because, if it’s not, we could find you something else.”
“I could just stay home,” Lila volunteered. “I could help Sidney make dinner. I could help Isobel clean.”
Bethie shook her head, frowning. “I don’t want you working. I want you to enjoy yourself.” Sidney was the young man who prepared dinner for them four nights a week, which was expensive but cheaper than eating out. Even though Bethie enjoyed cooking, she was rarely home early enough to get dinner on the table. As for cleaning, she’d been thrilled when she’d been able to afford a housekeeper. Isobel vacuumed, changed the bed linens, even did the laundry, and Bethie paid her handsomely, feeling relieved that those chores were no longer her responsibility.
“I don’t want to interrogate you. I know there’s a lot going on at home. But you don’t seem happy,” Bethie said.
Lila bit her lip and didn’t answer.
“Is there anything you want to talk about?”
Lila shook her head.
“Anything I can do?” Another headshake. Bethie tried to breathe through her mounting frustration and said, “If you need anything, you know where I am. I love you, honey.”
Lila didn’t respond. Bethie waited until she was sure that she had nothing to say before slipping out of the girl’s room, down the hall to Harold.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
“Everything’s just fine,” Bethie said, imitating Lila’s hangdog droop, moving across the room in Lila’s bent-shouldered shuffle, reciting Lila’s Eeyore-like refrain. It reminded her painfully of her own wandering years, when she’d regarded everyone with suspicion and tried to hurt them before they could hurt her. She wanted to save Lila the way Jo had saved her from Uncle Mel, the way Ronnie had pulled her through the pillowed birth canal and into another life, but Lila wouldn’t let her get close enough to try.
“Poor kid,” Harold said quietly.
“Poor kid,” Bethie replied, pulling on her robe. She took her time in the big bathroom, with its his-and-hers sinks, its spacious, glassed-in shower, its deep soaking tub and the separate commode, all of it done in creamy white marble, and the forest-green tiles, hand-painted in Mexico, that had taken six months to arrive. She’d told Harold how surprised she’d been when Jo had announced her third pregnancy, how she’d been convinced, after Jo’s visit to Blue Hill Farm, that her sister was preparing to make a change in her life. When Jo had called three months later, her voice unusually shy, saying, “I have some news,” Bethie would have bet a week of the jam shop’s proceeds that Jo was calling to say that she was leaving her husband. Instead, she’d said, “Dave and I are having a baby.” As if Dave would be right there in the hospital, giving birth.
And that birth had changed her sister. The next time Bethie had seen Jo, Jo had been lying in bed, in a bathrobe, the baby in her arms, looking different than Bethie remembered after the previous births—smaller, quieter, utterly exhausted. It had been a hard pregnancy, Bethie knew, followed by a difficult delivery that had ended in a C-section and kept Jo in the hospital for six days, but it wasn’t just that. Bethie knew the truth. Jo hadn’t wanted another baby. Her sister would never say so. She probably didn’t even let herself think about it. But somehow, Lila must have picked up on her mother’s discontent and felt unwanted. And unhappy. So unhappy. The only time, all summer long, that Bethie saw even a hint of excitement or joy was when the