Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [126]
“Do you know anything about a boy named William who drowned in the river?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s all I know. I’m not even sure if I’m remembering right.” She smiled the same vague way she had before and left us to our breakfast.
Outside, the mud collected at our feet like coffee grounds. We followed the river down the line of stores. Most of the stores were raised off the ground, with wooden steps leading up to them and awnings keeping the steps dry. I was quiet as Costas took photo after photo.
“They were both just girls, so many years ago,” I said. “Maybe we do want too much from this, from coming here. But someone must remember.”
“It’s this place, part of why my mother left, I think. The rain wipes everything out,” he said, and I realized that something more was bothering him, something bigger than what was happening right now. “Who we live next to, who dies, what they meant. No one should vanish without a trace.”
I laughed at that, brushing past leaves dangling in front of me. Trees hung all about us. “Oh, I bet you could walk through Oakley today and it would be like I was never there. That’s what it was like when I was there.”
Costas stopped, turned to me.
“What do you mean? In Oakley everyone remembered you.”
“They did?”
“Yes,” he said, giving me a funny look. “Did you think people would forget someone like you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging and suddenly feeling self-conscious. I thought of the kids who’d pointed and laughed at me in the town square. I thought of Geraldine, how astonished I’d been to learn that they had seen me in the papers when I thought I’d been able to vanish into thin air.
“People talked about you at the library, how sweet you were, and smart. How you could look at someone and know what kind of book they needed to forget all their troubles.”
“Really?”
He laughed at my surprise. “Of course.”
I was silent for a moment, thinking about what he had said. It didn’t make sense to me, but then I remembered that what Geraldine had said hadn’t made sense either. That she had envied my lightness, my book learning, my friendship with Mary. It was frustrating, knowing we could be so wrong in the way we saw the world.
We had almost reached the end of the street, where a large white building marked the beginning of the woods, which spread out in front of us. Just leaves and wet, wet earth, running up against the river. I almost imagined I could hear the movement of the water, shifting and becoming more intense, ominous. These were her woods, her river. I squinted, thought of Mary barefoot, wading into the river, carrying a basket full of herbs.
“Look,” Costas said, pointing.
His voice startled me. I looked back to what he was showing me. It took a second to make out the black letters stamped over the door of the white building. Library. I almost gasped out loud.
“I need to go inside here,” I said, my voice trembling.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said, taking my hand. “Are you okay, Tessa?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “But please let me go in alone.”
Costas looked at me and nodded. “Should I come back for you in an hour? I’ll just keep talking to people around here.”
I nodded, grateful.
With quick, nervous steps, I walked up to the front door and pushed my way in. It felt exactly like being a child again, back in Mercy Library. For several long seconds I just stood there, taking it in. Feeling the past and present run up against each other.
I could feel it in my skin and bones, Mary’s presence, more vividly than I’d felt it on the street or the riverboat or by the river. I hadn’t been in a library in years, I realized. The musty smell of old books, the shelves rising toward the ceiling, the piles of books on the front desk.
I walked down an aisle of books, fingering the spines, peering through the space in the shelves, and I almost expected to see Mary sitting there with