Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [128]
I listened to her, my heart heavy, dull. I will never know what happened. The thought moved through me with a sickening clarity. “I wish I’d asked her more about it, when I had the chance,” I said.
She was silent for a moment. Her hands were like bird’s wings on her knees. So delicate and thinly boned. “So she passed, then?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “Some people said she ran away, but I think most of us thought she’d died back then. That she wouldn’t have been able to go on with William gone. He was her whole future, people said. Of course, plenty of people just thought she couldn’t live with what she’d done.” She looked at me and smiled sadly. “There have been so many versions of the story over the years. You’d hardly even recognize her if you heard one of them now.”
“Well, thank you for talking to me about it,” I said.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I was always real fond of that girl. Always felt a bit bad for her, growing up the way she did, in that house. The way she always needed to escape into these books. I’m glad to hear she had a good life for herself after she left here.” She stood then, smiled down at me. Her pale eyes and skin seemed translucent.
“What do you mean, that house?” I asked.
“It just seemed bleak there. Grim. Nobody cared much for her father, I know that. She sure didn’t want to be at home. I would tease her that she read too much, that her mind was getting so crammed with words there would be no room left. She’d say that was impossible, that there was so much room in her she’d have to read every book, go to every city, meet every single person to fill it.”
“Do you know Isabel?” I asked. My mind leapt and grasped. If anyone could tell me what had happened that day, I thought, it would have to be Isabel.
“Her sister?” She squinted. “I guess. She must still be around. I don’t really know.” She paused, looked down at me. “Mary was always partial to that book. I don’t know that anyone else in this town has ever even read it.”
I smiled, clutching the book in my palms, and watched her thin, elegant body walk away. I leaned back against the shelves. Pulled the book to my chest. I might never know what had happened to Mary, I thought. What she’d witnessed that afternoon on the river. What she had done. The thing that had made her leave me.
Closing my eyes, I imagined myself back on the floor of the library, sixteen years old, with no idea what the world had in store for me. Me with the smell of my father on my skin, the familiar ache in the center of my body, thinking only of the rope and the swing-over and the trapeze. And she, the whole time, putting one foot in front of the other, moving out of my life forever, walking toward the river and her fate. Taking all the answers, all her mystery, with her. Over and over I imagined myself standing up and running to the back door, past the herb garden with its buried silver key, into the grass beyond that led to the river. Coming upon her as she dipped her foot into the water, felt the cold of the river soak into her shoes.
“Tessa?”
I looked up, startled. I had almost forgotten where I was.
Costas stood over me, looking confused.
“I waited and waited for you,” he said, leaning in. “Have you been crying?”
“No,” I said, standing up and shoving a book back into the shelf. “Let’s go to the river. Let’s find Isabel.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine. What about you?” I looked up at him then and saw that he looked more than fine. His face was open, alive. There was an energy to him that hadn’t been there before.
“I am great,” he said. “I was just