Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [130]
“Yes,” I said. I touched his arm.
We stepped out of the wood and onto the brick path. The house seemed like something out of a fairytale with its sloped roof, black shutters, and bright red door. I could see Mary slamming out of it, running into the wood, her hair flying everywhere. I looked up at the second-story windows and wondered which had been hers. I knew she had sneaked out into the night, climbing out that window and down the rain gutter to meet her lover at the river. I thought of myself running from Riley Farm to Mercy Library, remembered the exhilaration I had felt, that feeling of being unleashed on the world.
We walked up the front steps and knocked. We waited, looking at each other nervously. There was no answer. After a minute I knocked again.
“It looks like someone is home,” Costas said, peering into the small window I was too short to reach. “This isn’t how I pictured it.”
“What do you see?”
Just then the door wheezed open, and a beautiful woman appeared in front of us. Her hair was long and pale, and she had black-lined eyes the same blue as Mary’s, but shaped like large almonds. She was older than I would have thought. I had always pictured her as a little girl, I realized.
“Yes?” she asked. Her eyes fixed on Costas. “Do I know you?”
I frantically tried to remember everything Mary had said about her.
“I am Costas. I am your nephew. Katerina was my mother,” he said. “I’ve come back here to find you.”
Her face had a stunned expression. “You look more like Mary,” she said, finally. Something broke on her face when she said Mary’s name, I noticed, and then slipped past. “Where are you from? What happened to Katerina?”
“She ended up in Turkey and Greece,” he said, “with my father. I never knew her. She died soon after I was born.”
“Ah,” she said. Her eyes didn’t move from his face. “Katerina and Mary looked alike. Mary is my other sister, you know. I took after our mother more, I guess.”
She was silent then, taking him in, looking right through me where I stood in front of him in the doorway.
“You are very beautiful,” she told him, finally, “the way she was.”
I looked up at him, twisting my head behind me, and was surprised to see the expression on his face. He was staring right back at her, fascinated. Something was happening between them, I thought, and suddenly I felt queasy.
“My name is Tessa,” I said, holding out my hand to her. “I knew Mary when I was a girl. She lived in my town in Kansas.”
When she looked to me her eyes were so blue they didn’t seem real. “You knew her?”
I was about to respond when she seemed to catch herself suddenly and stepped back. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Please come in and sit down.”
We followed her through the hallway and into the living room. She was stunning, wearing a bright silk dress even though she was alone, her body slim and slight, but she seemed much less vibrant than Mary. It’s this place, I thought. A large fireplace cast a glow over the room. The house smelled of smoke and wood. Outside, the rain pummeled down.
“Please sit,” she said, gesturing to one of the old-fashioned couches. I smiled politely at her, but she just looked back at me. The couch was like a slab of stone.
“Mary was a librarian in my town, when I was young,” I said, as she sat across from us. Her chair fanned out behind her like a peacock’s wings.
“A librarian,” she repeated, as if she were feeling out the word. “She always loved books so much.”
“Yes,” I said. “She taught me to read, and to love words and stories.”
“Oh,” she said, looking at me as if Mary had come to life again for her, just for that second. “How is she? Is she alive?”
“She died,” I said, “some time ago.”
Isabel took in the information, her face blank. She leaned back into the chair. I was surprised at how uncomfortable I felt with her, and with being in the house in general.
“I tried to find her, you know,” she said, after a minute. Her voice was much lower now, sad. “I wrote letters to her, but