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By Root 1142 0

But it crashed on approach to the airport, and so it was near enough to civilization that news crews were on the scene in moments and footage of the fiery wreck was on television for days. Chip had been gone at the time, in the midst of three days of flying around the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic. Emily recalled the ways she had tried to shield her girls from the images—as she did always when there was an accident—but this time the twins had gotten wind of the crash and become frightened. She had had to sit Hallie and Garnet down in the living room, the three of them in what had become their accustomed spots on the massive, L-shaped couch with the upholstery of lovebirds, and reassure them that they needn’t worry. Their father was safe. Their father’s plane (and even though Chip flew many planes, they seemed to discuss Chip’s work as if he always flew the same exact jet) was not going to crash. Because she harbored her own small superstitions, Emily did not want to jinx Chip by stating that his plane was never going to crash. It was a small, semantic distinction, but it reassured her; it gave her the sense that she wasn’t really tempting fate. (Still, in even her worst, wildest dreams, she didn’t honestly believe that someday his plane might pinwheel into a lake minutes after takeoff.)

And she had managed to comfort the girls that day. Other planes might crash—but not Daddy’s.

She wondered now if when the twins were alone they discussed that afternoon on the couch three years ago. She assumed they remembered it. She considered whether they felt betrayed by their mother, whether they had come to the conclusion that her reassurances were meaningless. That she would say anything to calm them down. But what mother wouldn’t? The fact that neither girl had reminded her of the conversation meant nothing to Emily.

She was glad they lived three hours east of Lake Champlain. She could never have tolerated a move to New England if Bethel had been anywhere near that lake.

“Garnet?”

The girl opened her eyes when she heard her name and swam slowly to the surface of wakefulness. At first she presumed she was home. West Chester. The room overlooking the front walkway and the apple tree, the two windows on one wall opposite the foot of the bed. The homes of their neighbors—the Morrisons and the Browns—visible if she craned her neck to the left or the right. But here, she noticed, there was only one window at the foot of her bed, while there was a second one to the right side of it—both horizontal. She saw the wallpaper in the night-light, the green and red plaid that looked like Christmastime wrapping paper. She saw the moon, a day or two short of full, through the glass and the gauzy curtains that her father had hung the day before yesterday. And finally she remembered precisely where she was. New Hampshire. Not home. No, that wasn’t right. She was home. It was just that home now was New Hampshire. She and Hallie had the two bedrooms on the third floor of this house. The floor with the attic (though you couldn’t get to the attic from either her or Hallie’s room; you had to pull down that trapdoor in the ceiling in the hallway on the floor below them). Their old home, she recalled, had only the two floors. For a moment her eyes focused on the last remaining moving box that she hadn’t yet begun to unpack, and she tried to remember what was inside it. It was a big one. Barbie dolls and the Dream House? Summer T-shirts and shorts and bathing suits? That seemed right. It had clothes and dolls and the Dream House.

The day and the evening slowly came back to her. Snowboarding. The tram with her mom and Hallie, and the way the snow on the pine trees at the top of the mountain reminded her of vanilla cake frosting. Hot chocolate at the base lodge. Then there was the dinner at home that was completely inedible: a bean loaf followed by bad-tasting brownies that some woman had baked for them, though Hallie had liked the brownies more than everyone else and had been so hungry after the main course that she had ended up devouring the brownie