Page 114 of Persephone's Curse
“Is it okay?” Aunt Bea asked when it became clear I wasn’t going to be responding. “Is it going to be okay, Winnie?”
“Yes,” I said, and at least I didn’t think I was lying now. At least I thought I meant it. “Yes, it’s going to be okay.”
We hung up. I wandered the paths of the churchyard for a long time.
I saw the priest.
He was walking with a group of other people, some clergy, some not, and when he saw me, he smiled. A really big, genuine smile. And when no one was looking, he raised an index finger to his lips.Shh.
It was our little secret, that day in the crypt.
I smiled back at him and nodded.
What happened in the weeks that followed:
Our parents had, of course, noticed a shift in everyone’s mood, and while they might have written it off had it been just me or Bernadette or Evelyn, they looked to Clara as their canary in the coal mine, as their truest indicator that something was really, actually wrong.
Not for the first time in our collective lives, they thought maybe we’d had a sort offolie à deux, but not madness this time, rather, a seasonal affective depression.
It had been averycold winter.
We were prone to fits of crying, fits of silence, fits of staring off into space at nothing.
I sometimes caught our mother looking at one of us, a perplexed expression on her face, perhaps wondering if Melinoë was exacting some revenge on our family, perhaps wondering why she was being spared.
I wore Bernadette’s old college sweatshirt every day.
I spent long hours staring out of windows, watching the snow fall steadily, burying all signs of life.
Sometimes I would smell jasmine, and I would turn around quickly, trying to catch sight of him, convinced he had found his way back to us.
Sometimes I closed my eyes and when I opened them, I wouldbe, for a moment, among the stars, pinned across the sky like our Henry.
Clara spent hours in front of empty canvasses, holding a brush, never quite managing to paint.
Bernadette had started reading voraciously, an obsessive, frantic hobby. She ate breakfast behind a book, finished the last page of one and transitioned seamlessly into the first page of another, went days without speaking to anyone who wasn’t made of ink.
It wasn’t unusual to find Evelyn crying in strange places. Standing in the pantry. In the downstairs hallway. In the bathroom, sobbing so hard she made herself dry heave.
“All right,” my mother said at dinner, one of our last nights of Christmas break. “Whatis going on? Everyone is walking around like someone died.”
It was an unfortunate choice of words.
Evelyn burst into tears at the table. Clara, next to her, eyes widening with sudden fear, unsure of what else to do, wrapped her tiny arms around Evelyn’s shoulders. Bernadette covered her face with her hands.
My mother looked to me, and I could practically hear the unspoken question:Status report?
How could I possibly begin to sum up what had happened?
What answer could I possibly give that might satisfy them without raising too many questions, without giving too much away?
“Bernadette has decided to go back to school,” I finally said, and Bernadette uncovered her face and looked at me. “In Vermont. With Aunt Bea. And we’re all just really going to miss her.”
“Is that true, Bernie?” Dad said, brightening. “Oh, honey, that’s great.”
“It’s true,” Bernadette confirmed.
“And Evelyn has accepted a spot at the music conservatory,” I continued. “In Boston. She starts in the fall. And we’re really going to miss her, too.”
