Page 27 of Persephone's Curse
“You okay?” I asked.
She reached over and patted my leg. “I’m okay, honey. I’m glad you’re with me.”
“You were trying to sneak out,” I reminded her.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But this was a happy accident. I’ve found I’d much rather be with you than be alone.”
It was about a six-hour drive to Burlington, Vermont, where Aunt Bea lived in the big old farmhouse where she’d grown up with my mother. There was a huge barn in the back where she made her art. Clara had gotten her love of painting from Aunt Bea, who was a few years my mother’s junior and had never married or had kids herself. She was a professor of art history at the University of Vermont and although she traveled all the time and was constantly zipping off to faraway locales, she always returned to her childhood home. “It’s my favorite place in the world,” she often said. “Why would I ever leave it?”
Aside from art, she was also an accomplished musician (that’swhere Evelyn had gotten it) and had a very cool sense of style (Bernadette had inherited her love of vintage clothing).
It seemed like all of my sisters had gottensomethingfrom Aunt Bea, but what about me?
What did I have in common with my aunt?
“Status check?” Mom asked, glancing at me.
“Oh, just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Do you think Aunt Bea and I have anything in common?”
“Hmm. What do you mean?”
“Like, you know. She and Clara are both artists…”
Mom tilted her neck left, tilted her neck right, flexed and unflexed her fingers on the steering wheel. Finally she said, “There is something, yes. You both show up exactly when you’re needed. Like tonight. I walked down the stairs andboom—there you were.”
“And I was needed?”
“You’re always needed,” Mom replied. “But yes, when it’s most important, you’re always there. And you always seem to know exactly what to do. Empathic. Maybe that’s what I’d call it. A bit of empathy, coupled with a bit of ‘right place, right time.’”
I scratched the insides of my wrists as I thought about what she’d said.
“You really think so?”
“You know I don’t lie,” she said. And it was true, she didn’t.
She put on an audiobook a few minutes later, some very boring nonfiction thing about people who were absolutely batshit in love with orchids, and I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, notreally meaning to fall asleep, but waking up with a jerk, surprised to find that two hours had passed.
“Are we there yet?” I mumbled, my mouth dry and sour.
“We probably won’t get there until about one,” Mom replied. “Rush hour slowed us down a bit.”
Aunt Bea was a night owl, another thing she shared with Clara, and I knew she’d be awake and ready for us with cups of tea and a midnight snack.
And I knew Esme would be there, too.
The first time I’d seen her, I’d been younger, just around the age she’d been when she died. I’d asked her name, and then repeated it aloud, verifying. My mother had heard me, but luckily, just past the ghost-Esme, on the mantel over the fire, there was a photo of her. Mom had thought I was looking at the picture, and she laid a hand on the top of my head and said, “That’s right. That’s Esme.”
Years later, I would learn that Esme had died in the house, after a short battle with a particularly aggressive cancer. She had been six years old, and she had never left.
Now, her favorite activities included playing with dolls and attempting to scare the absolute bejesus out of me (a skill at which she was most adept, though I couldn’t tell if it was malicious or accidental).
Despite being constantly in fear of her sneak attacks, I was actually looking forward to seeing her again.
“Has Aunt Bea said how Bernadette is?” I asked now, my thoughts wandering back to my oldest sister.
