The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [1]
By nightfall when the fog begins to gather, Iona is so worked up that she’d like nothing better than to take one of her long treks through the undeveloped field behind Lindenwood Court, her usual way of burning off energy. But it’s dark, and the ground back there is too uneven to negotiate without a flashlight. She doesn’t want to walk on the street. Just her luck, she’d run into some gossipy neighbor who’d whisper about Paisley for twenty minutes. She goes into her house instead, picks up the newspaper, and fumes.
Up on Lindenwood Court, across the cul-de-sac from Paisley’s house, Ginger Logan stands rigid at her bedroom window, watching her twelve-year-old daughter, Rachel, slip quietly out into the front yard. It’s all she can do not to follow Rachel outside. They had their family discussion about Paisley’s situation at dinner. Theoretically, there’s nothing more to say. Ginger wishes Paisley well, of course; they’ve been across-the-cul-de-sac neighbors for more than nine years. But mostly, she’s concerned about her children. Well, not so much about Max who at fifteen wants only to drive. She worries more about her daughter. Twelve is such an impressionable age. Lately Rachel has become thoughtful and quiet, no longer a jabbering child. Ginger wants to act before it’s too late. Do something. Make sure her daughter is not scarred by this, whatever happens.
It’s so misty out in the yard that Ginger can just barely make out the way Rachel touches the ribbon tied around their oak tree and then turns to stare at the nearly invisible Lamm house across the street. The Lamms and the Logans are neighbors but not exactly friends. Paisley’s daughter, Brynne, is two years older than Rachel, a barrier thicker than this fog. For as long as anyone can remember, all Rachel has wanted to do is be Brynne. Tonight she’s probably thinking that if this terrible thing is happening to Brynne—well, to her mother—then it could happen to anyone.
Ginger watches as Rachel hugs herself against air fluffy as wisps of cotton, soft but creepy. She watches as Rachel turns her attention to the indecipherable sky. Until she donned her mask of silence, Rachel often gushed dramatically that, on an ordinary, cloudless night, the bowl of sky above Lindenwood Court revealed more stars than anywhere else in the neighborhood. Some of the lights moved and even blinked, because Lindenwood Court was in the middle of the landing pattern for the airport down in the city. It was hard to tell the difference between planes earthbound for landing and fixed points of light that stayed forever in the sky. “Imagine!” Rachel would say. There was something mysterious about this, and thrilling.
But tonight, Ginger doubts her daughter believes in a benevolence that allows stars and planes to share the heavens so comfortably. She doubts she believes in anything, beyond this claustrophobic fog.
She waits until she hears Rachel come into the house and go up to her room. Then she heads down the hall to comfort her. But there is such silence behind Rachel’s door, it’s as if Rachel is hardly breathing. As if she’s thinking with all her might, Don’t come in. Don’t come in. Almost a prayer.
Ginger moves away.
It’s only a little after nine, but all of Brightwood Trace is home now, too distraught for meetings or errands or visits with