Page 58 of The Manor of Dreams

Sophie laughed. “How could anyone not like you?”

Too soon they were hurtling on the highway back toward home. They could do this tomorrow, and the night after, all week. Ada felt a weightless thrill. Their parents were gone and they had the house to themselves. Could they keep doing this when all the adults returned? She certainly wanted to. This was fleeting, and already she ached with impending nostalgia. Sophie parked the car on the curb. They crept through the house and toward the garden and sat on the steps of the terrace. Sophie fidgeted with the car keys. “I’m still thinking about what you said the other day.”

Ada wondered what she’d said that could be so remarkable.

“How people used flowers to send messages.”

Oh.“A secret language.”

“It’s like when we speak in Chinese so your dad can’t understand. Or when my parents talk in their dialect from Jiaxing just so it’s between the two of them.” She leaned in. The corner of her lips curvedup in a playful smile when she said, “Except this one would just be between you and me.”

Between you and me.

“Hmmm,” Ada exhaled. Except she wasn’t really thinking; she couldn’t quite think when Sophie was looking at her so intently like this. Ada wasn’t used to being the one observed. She waited. Sophie didn’t pull away.

Ada also was never one to make a first move in anything. But suddenly she wanted to. It was like a predetermined course had set in, like they had been inching toward this moment for weeks. Suddenly she found herself closing the space between them. Closer, as if she was telling a secret. Even closer; a finger’s width apart. She pressed her lips to Sophie’s cheek and a quiet triumph blazed through her.

When she drew away, Sophie was looking at her in surprise, her eyes wide and lips parted. Ada’s own cheeks flared with heat. Triumph molted into shame. She rose quickly. “I’m going to go to bed.”

Still Sophie said nothing.

Ada turned back toward the house. When she looked up, she swore she saw Rennie peering out her window straight at them. Her heart jumped, but the light flicked off, and the next time she glanced up, the windows were dark. She tiptoed up the stairs and laid in her bed for a long time, thinking that she’d ruined something, until she finally descended into a fitful sleep in the early light.

The next morning something was different when Ada came down for breakfast. Lucille was making peanut butter toast for herself in the kitchen and talking with Sophie. Ada wanted to look at Sophie, but she also wanted to melt into the ground. Lucille asked Ada a question and she answered, not making eye contact. She retreated into the library, and after a while the door opened. Ada recognized the footsteps.

“Hey,” Sophie said. “You disappeared so suddenly last night.”

For a long moment they stood looking at each other.

Ada swallowed. “I’m sorry if I messed something up. It didn’t have to mean anything.”

There was silence. Then Sophie said softly, “You didn’t messanything up. I promise.” Sophie glanced behind Ada, at the shelves. “I left you something in that book, by the way,” Sophie said before she slipped away.

Ada peered at the shelf. One book jutted out from the others, and she opened it.

On the title page was a single pressed daisy, and Sophie’s scrawl.Tell me what this means. I want to know.

twenty

MAY 1990

RENNIEwoke in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. She knew if she made a little bit of noise, Ada would wake up and offer to make them hot chocolate or have some snacks. Ada was a bad sleeper too, but mostly because she was sensitive to noise. Rennie felt kind of awful waking her up on purpose.

Sometimes when she was little, she’d hear the wind pick up around the house and shriek as she was falling asleep. It sounded like people screaming. No one else ever heard it, though. One time, she dreamed that she looked out the window and saw a man with a beard standing in the garden. He was dressed in a suit and looking up at her, though she wasn’t sure exactly how she knew that, considering his face was gone. Out of the socket where one of his eyes should have been, a perfect, horrifying rose bloomed, the petals unfurling and then withering as she watched. It had terrified her for months.

Sometimes she couldn’t remember what she dreamed about at all. She just woke up feeling like she was breathing funny. She could never describe it to other people because it didn’t make sense to her, either. Instead, every night she aimed to push sleep off for as long as possible. She put on one-person skits in her room, cast herself in all kinds of scenarios, and created costumes out of what she found in her closet. Sometimes she’d slip jewelry from Ma’s vanity to try on at night.

Tonight, she settled on her bed in front of the small round mirror on her nightstand and clasped together a long pearl necklace she had borrowed from her mother’s drawer. She held her hair up and smiledsoftly at her own reflection, then glanced absentmindedly out the window. Two figures sat in the garden.

What were the twins doing out there this late? As Rennie peered closer, she realized that it wasn’t Lucille out in the garden with Ada. It was Sophie. Rennie craned her neck toward the window, her fingers fiddling with the necklace as she peered down at them.

They were talking. She saw Ada lean close to Sophie and—

Rennie went perfectly still. Had Ada just kissed Sophie’s cheek? She teetered over the edge of her bed, trying to get a better look.

Another moment passed, and Ada was walking back toward the house. She looked up for a moment, and her eyes met Rennie’s. Rennie gasped and ducked, hurrying to switch off the light. She lost her balance and pitched forward off the bed, putting her hands out to break her fall. Her fingers snagged on the long necklace, and only when she toppled forward, landing hard on her knees, feeling the sharp pain throbbing down her legs, did she realize she was surrounded by scattered pearls.

“Oh, shit.”

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