Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [30]
She looked up at it. “It’s n-not a b-bad bed. B-but do you have any i-idea—” She stopped and again she tried to catch her breath. “H-how hard it will be to m-move?”
“I don’t want to move. I want to stay here. I want to settle down with you. I can take care of you, Bee.”
She felt like her lungs had turned inside out. They wouldn’t fill with air. It was urgent, what she felt, but she couldn’t explain it. She could never make him understand.
Lena believed it was the afternoon after the day Carmen and Bridget had left for the airport. She calculated it was the day after she’d spoken to the coroner and left a message for Kostos. She’d sat for a long time at the kitchen table and then she lay on the couch in the dark while some amount of time passed. It was probably the next day, but an extra day could have slouched away and a new day could have slipped under the door, and she might not have noticed it.
She believed, though, it was the day after they’d left that Kostos arrived.
She heard the knock on the door, and she gathered herself up off the couch and opened it. She didn’t expect it would be him. She didn’t expect it would be anybody. It used to be that a knock on the door indicated someone was almost definitely there, but just as time had gone haywire, her mind had shrunken away from most matters of cause and effect. Occurrences just kind of bubbled up in front of her eyes and either stayed there for a while or disappeared again. The occurrence, in this case, was Kostos.
He opened his arms to her, and she walked into them. He wrapped her tightly and she felt her face pressing into his cotton shirt. The smell in his collar was very familiar. He’d somehow fallen back down into the world where she lived. She sensed the emotions, the surprise and strangeness of this, but she couldn’t quite feel them.
“Come in,” she said, and she led the way to the couch. She’d forgotten how dark it was, that all the shutters were closed, until he was sitting next to her and she couldn’t see his face.
“I guess it’s dark in here,” she said wanly, walking to a front window and unlatching it. The sunshine crashed through, more of it than had been invited.
His face was sad, she realized. He picked up her hand and held it. She thought to ask him what was wrong. She was confused, forgetting where she was again. And then she remembered. On the whole, forgetting was easier, but it never stayed away long.
“Tibby’s gone,” she said. She had no idea there were tears leaking out, but there they were. Her face was wet; they had to be hers.
He nodded. Somehow he knew about it already. That was a relief in a way, because she wasn’t sure she could put enough words in a row to explain it.
“She drowned.”
He nodded again.
“Here.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“I thought you would probably be in London.”
“I was.”
“How did you get here?”
“On a plane.”
She nodded in spite of her confusion. Did that mean he’d come here because she’d called him? Did that make sense? This and other possibilities hovered in the air, but she couldn’t consolidate them. “I felt like I should be able to handle the police and the coroner and the embassy and everything else, but I haven’t done very well at it.”
“I hope I can help.”
She nodded. “They’ve all gone back. Tibby’s parents and Carmen and Bridget. They were all gone by yesterday morning. I think.” She paused. She was going to say something about Tibby going with them. Tibby’s body going with them. But she couldn’t figure out the way you said it. There was a way you said things like that. “I think it was yesterday morning.”
“I see,” he said.
“At first we thought it was an accident, but now it seems like she knew she was going to drown.”
He tipped his head; his eyes registered confusion. “What do you mean?” He looked not just sad but surprised now.
“It seems like she brought us here to say goodbye.” These were things Lena had not dared say out loud to anyone or even fully think, and here she was saying them to him. She who usually did so much thinking and considering for every word that left her mouth,