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  She moved from the window to set a table near the entrance to the room, smoothing the white linen before she lowered each plate onto it. The plates would be whisked away when the first course arrived, and washed and dried although never used. She’d been working at the Hotel Vermont for two months and the practice still struck her as wasteful and ridiculous. She pushed the thought aside and concentrated on her work. She lined up the bottom edges of the silver, exchanged two wineglasses with water spots for clean ones and stepped back for one last inspection. Her job depended on getting each detail correct, and her family needed her wages, especially in winter. The work did not bother her. Her senses were keener here, where ambition and ease ran sweet and thick as syrup, and success rarely depended on the weather. She didn’t know what she wanted from this part of Burlington—it never seemed a question worth posing—but she was curious to see what there was.

  The table setting was in order. She started toward the service pantry to check the coffee. A swish of air brushed against her stockinged legs as the heavy doors to the lobby opened. Two men entered, father and son perhaps, in identical black homburgs. They handed their coats and hats to the attendant. The maître d’ appeared (from nowhere, as always), bowed slightly at the waist, and conferred with the older man.

  Solange busied herself stacking coffee cups and continued to observe the pair. The younger man—more of a boy, she could see now; late teens like herself—bore sun-bleached hair, strong cheekbones and a confident posture. He turned her way and caught her eye. She’d been trained to avoid customers’ gazes, but she could not look away. He held her there, an instant, two, three. A warmth like a flush of fever tingled the skin of her face and neck. And still she did not look away, nor did he. Her heart dropped to her feet and stayed there.

  He was handsome in the way people who never suffered often were, but there was something else about him, something both familiar and utterly new. A smile spread across his face, lighting it. The older man was moving toward her, escorted by the maître d’, but the young man stayed where he was. He began to fidget and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. Solange surmised he was nervous. She hurriedly scanned the room to see what it could be about, and, spying nothing more worrisome than a few regular customers and the local bridge club, concluded she must be the cause. She had unnerved him.

  Solange straightened and took a deep breath. Her mother, who was wise about such things, deeply wise, had told her she would know. An instinct, she had said, same a dog has for which strangers to trust and a duckling has for paddling after its mother. This feeling of being lifted out of her shoes, this had to be it, didn’t it? Solange opened her heart to the boy and smiled.

  With a few hurried steps, he caught up with the others. The maître d’ passed her, and so did the father, most definitely the father, she could see the resemblance clearly now. And the boy, who had never taken his eyes off her. He stopped beside her, within inches. She felt the heat of his body along her hip and leaned toward it, nearly closing the gap. He smelled clean and vibrant, like a cat come in from the cold. He put his ear to her mouth. Her heart fluttered, not in fear, but as if it were a nestling, ruffling its wings, eager for flight.

  “Solange,” she whispered.

  He smiled. “Solange.” His eyes were the slate blue of the lake in summer.

  • • •

  Solange’s finger on the cheek of her baby, sated and asleep. A pulse of heat running through her, liquid silver, the same heat that ran through her baby. Her warm milk in the baby’s stomach. They shared their bodies, the air, the world, life.

  Carole. A song of happiness.

  • • •

  Another baby, another girl. The familiar sense that the inch between them was of no consequence. It melted with each gesture, every sigh.

  But this time, surrounding them both, a cloak of fear. This baby, born between two worlds, would have no name.

  9

  Alison

  She filled her cereal bowl with milk and slurped it away. She was a giant moon making the tide rush out. Frosted Flake atolls rose from the white sea and the natives cheered.

  Her father sat across from her with the Free Press and a half-full coffee cup. Alison pulled the Living section closer.

  “Hunting for your horoscope, sunshine?”

  She shrugged. “Sure. And the comics.”

  He turned the page, bringing his hands together to do it, like he was playing cootie catchers. “How many people you reckon we got in the world, then?”

  “Not sure. Too many, maybe.”

  He nodded. “Almost four billion, last I heard. And there are twelve—what do you call them?”

  “Signs.”

  “Signs. So today, for instance, how many folks are going to have the same kind of day as you?”

  Alison smiled. He wasn’t asking her to do a math problem on a Saturday morning. He didn’t do that sort of thing. He’d just thought of something and was letting her in on it. “Millions and millions.”

  “That’s right.” He sipped his coffee and looked at her over the top of his glasses. “Makes you feel that, whatever your day is like, good or bad, you’ve got plenty of company.”

  “If you believe in horoscopes.”

  “Right. Or maybe either way.” He pushed his chair back and headed for the garage.

  Alison thought of all the bad days her mother had lately. “Daddy? Is Mom okay?”

  He paused at the door, surprised she’d asked. “Sure. Sure she is. Just missing some sleep. She’s right as rain.”

  He left. Alison wondered about the saying, about rain being right. How something could make sense but not be completely true. How words could explain things, and also hide them. All her life, she’d relied on her parents for answers to a million questions, never realizing answers could also be riddles.

  • • •

  Alison dug for earthworms in an old flowerbed and grabbed her fishing pole and wicker creel from the shed. Crossing the field, she skirted the Dalrymples’ yard and cut through the woods on a path she had worn with the help of deer. She reached the river’s edge. The water was so muddy that she’d have to dip her worms in Day-Glo paint for the fish to spot them. Oh well, she was here. She set down her creel and threaded a worm onto the hook, leaving a wriggling end free. Holding down the line with her forefinger, she flipped the bail and cast upstream.

  The rain had clouded the river, but the rest of the world was washed clean and the sky was the color of forget-me-nots. A phoebe sang from an oak on the far shore, the cool, clear notes like lines on a page. Alison stepped from rock to rock, and cast into a shallower stretch. She let the worm sink and rested her finger on the line. After a moment, it twitched. She stared at the current where the line disappeared, sure she had imagined it. The line moved again, a tug this time. She jerked the rod to set the hook and the rod bent sharply. A big one! Alison reeled in, a little at a time, and stepped across the rocks toward the shore, her heart flipping in her chest like the fish. She wound the reel bit by bit until only six feet of line was out, swung the rod to her left, dropped the fish on the ground and stepped on it. It had to be more than a foot long. She picked up a rock with a blunt edge, grabbed the thrashing fish and smacked the rock into its neck. She’d never gotten used to this part. With a small fish, she could just jamb her thumb in its mouth and snap its neck. But this trout had huge teeth, so she had to use a rock. She smashed it four times, her breath coming in gasps, before the fish lay still.

  Alison wiped her forehead with her arm and stared at the trout. The red spots on its side faded and its eye grew dull. Her excitement about catching it shifted into sadness. She was sorry the fish was dead. One moment it was nosing up the river, minding its own business, and the next it was suffocating on air and getting its neck smashed. She sighed and rinsed her hands in the river. Not even fishing was simple.

  She lined the creel wit
h ferns, placed the fish inside and carried it home, amazed at how heavy the creel felt. She got a knife from the kitchen, knelt by the shed and slit the fish open along the belly, spilling the guts onto the lawn. Sally sat beside her, licking her chops. Alison sliced off the head, scooped up the guts and dumped them a few yards off.

  “Here you go, Sallypants.”

  Alison watched Sally start in on her treat. A gleam of white in the shiny mess caught her eye. She gently pushed the cat from what she thought might be the stomach. Sally snatched up the fish head and moved off a few feet.

  The stomach had a gash a quarter inch long. Alison poked at the opening with the tip of the knife. Something round and white appeared, the size of a pea. She made the slit bigger and nudged the object out onto the grass. She picked it up and rubbed it clean. It was smooth, and milky. A pearl? How could a pearl get inside a fish? She stood, lightheaded. She balanced it in her palm. It was like holding a tiny moon.

  She pocketed it, a calm settling on her like a storm of bees returning to the hive. She didn’t know what it meant, but it was a sign. The pearl was hers, a gift of beauty and mystery from the river.

  Alison put the fish in the fridge and washed the slime off her hands. She went to her room and hid the pearl in a small box of blue leaded glass with two mirrors inside: one on the lid and one on the bottom. When she first moved to the attic, she’d searched through the boxes and crates, not discovering anything worth taking to the bedroom side other than the blue box, which had been tucked in a pile of soft, yellowed blankets. Her baby blankets, she guessed, handed down from the twins. She’d shown the box to her mother, who’d said it belonged to Alison’s grandmother.

  “Can I have it?”

  Her mother shrugged. “Of course. It’s been up there a long time.”

  Alison had only met her grandmother once, when she was eight. It’d been Mother’s Day and her mom was arguing with Aunt Janine, who didn’t want to visit Grandma. Finally, her mom gave up and said, “I’ll take Alison, then. At least I have a daughter who wants to be with me on Mother’s Day.” It was true. Alison did want to be with her, pretty much all the time, and especially on Mother’s Day.

  No matter what day it was, Alison was anxious about meeting her grandmother because it meant going to Underhill. Whenever a kid acted nuts at school, someone would say, “They’re gonna send you to Underhill!” Alison imagined a huge room full of people making faces and jumping around.

  During the car ride her mom explained that if Grandma was having a bad day, they’d just leave the flowers and the cards and come back another time. Alison knew, though, she was only there because of the fight with Aunt Janine. There wouldn’t be another time, so she tried to be brave.

  Because it was raining out, they met Grandma in the lounge. Alison sank into her seat at the card table, relieved that her grandmother seemed perfectly normal. More normal than a lot of people actually. For one thing, she didn’t ask Alison all sorts of questions about school. For another, she didn’t say a word about Alison’s freckles or her hair. In fact, Alison was a little mad at her mother for never telling her about Grandma’s red hair. It was mostly gray now, but she could tell. If they had that in common, there was probably a whole lot more.

  Her grandmother smiled when she read the card Alison made. The writing was almost straight and the flower petals had come out pretty even considering she’d drawn them in the car. In her grandmother’s smiling eyes, Alison could see she belonged to her, like she belonged to her mom. There was something else, though. A feeling arrived inside Alison as she listened to her mother talking softly and Grandma saying something small now and then. Her grandmother had once been just like Alison. Not just related, but exactly the same, inside and out.

  Three years had gone by since the visit. Alison couldn’t picture her grandmother’s face but she could pull up that feeling. The blue glass box had stayed empty on her dresser all that time. Now the pearl lay on the bottom. Alison lifted the lid partway; the pearl shone like a moon in a lake, but upside down.

  • • •

  After lunch, Alison put on her swimsuit and headed for the river again. She pulled a towel off the line and walked down the road to where the path, slick with mud, angled through the Buchanans’ woods. As she picked her way down, voices floated up to her. She reached the top of the giant rock that sloped into the deep pool, and her heart sank. Her brothers and about six of their friends. So much for a relaxing swim. A couple of them spotted her, so there was no way she was leaving. They didn’t own the river. She crossed the big rock, staying high, and dropped down to a narrow ledge inches above the water and backed by a tall rock wall. She liked this spot, lapped by the current, with a view upstream where alders and birches bent to shake hands over the water and scattered shifting circles of light and shadow on the surface.

  “Hey, Alison!” Lester was standing knee-deep opposite the big rock, smacking his palms against the water again and again with his face turned from the spray. He loved to swim, except he couldn’t stand water on his face.

  She waved. “Hey.”

  She dangled her feet in the water and let the minnows worry her toes. The boys cannonballed and hooted. After a while she got bored, found a chunk of soapstone and drew designs on the rock wall. The surface was rough in places, but it worked okay. She drew Sally sitting on her haunches, but it looked more like a turtle, so she washed it off. Her mind skipped to the day before yesterday when Warren had ditched her at Gaynes. She remembered the man who’d offered her a ride and how she couldn’t tell if he was a kidnapper or just being nice. Grown-ups were good at hiding the truth and didn’t necessarily do the right thing. Warren wasn’t a grown-up yet, but he had that down pat.

  Someone shouted, “Looky here!” A boy, high school age, coming down the path. He was tall and kind of tubby, at least compared to the rest of the boys, whose skin stretched across their ribs like plastic wrap. Judging by the new boy’s light green shirt with the collar turned up and the perfectly white towel slung over his shoulder, he was from out of state. Local kids wore T-shirts, and if any of them brought towels, they were like Alison’s: faded, with mysterious stains. He’d probably come from the Greenville Inn, halfway between Adams and Daventry, the nearest ski town. The owners of the Greenville Inn told their guests about the swimming hole, a quaint Vermont attraction, like the cider mill and the covered bridge.

  The boy came onto the rock, slipped off his sandals and folded his towel in a neat square on top. Someone sitting nearby sniggered. Warren hoisted himself out of the pool and flung his head to the side to clear his hair from his face. Hands on his hips, he stuck out his chin. “You here to try out our river?”

  The boy nodded. “It’s hot.”

  “I’ll bet you can do a hell of a cannonball.” Everyone laughed. The boy turned red and looked at his feet. Warren puffed himself up more. “Well, come on. Show us what you’ve got.”

  The boy sat down, rested his arms on his knees and glanced around at the group, not lingering too long on anyone. When he got to Alison, she smiled at him. She knew what it was like to have Warren on your case.

  “Actually,” the boy said, pointing to a nearby shallow, “I thought I’d go over there.”

  Warren’s eyebrows shot up and his grin spread wide. The others elbowed each other and shook their heads. Alison winced. Only babies and old people sat in the shallow.

  “What do you want to do that for, New Jersey?”

  “I’m not from New Jersey. I’m from Poughkeepsie.”

  The boys hooted. Lester was loudest. “Poo-keepsie. That’s funny. And kinda dirty. Isn’t it dirty, Warren?” The boys laughed louder and socked each other on the arm.

  The Poughkeepsie boy squirmed. Alison said, “The pool’s really nice. You should try it.”

  He shrugged. “I can’t. I don’t know how to swim.”

  Warren climbed two steps closer. “Don’t
yank our chains, Jersey. Everybody knows how to swim.”

  The boy looked up, jaw working, and locked eyes with Warren. “Everybody? Everybody in the whole world? That’s not even physically possible. What a dumb thing to say.”

  Rooster Cantrell, Warren’s best friend since kindergarten, had been sprawled on his back, shades on, hands behind his head. He sat up and swiveled toward the boy from Poughkeepsie. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The boy shrank.

  A boiling anger rushed through Alison. Being mean made Warren feel big and powerful. The only person he thought about other than himself was Lester. It was a kind of shield. Who could criticize him when he was so protective of Lester? It made him seem to be a better person than he actually was.

  Warren was practically standing on the boy’s toes. And his face had gone from teasing to looking as if he wanted to pull the legs off something. He knocked his foot against the boy’s shin. “You call me ‘dumb’?”

  Alison stared at the design she’d been scribbling onto the wall. It reminded her of something—maybe in a book? She’d drawn an arc from twelve o’clock to six o’clock and two angled lines meeting on the inside of the arc. Now she drew a line diagonally from the angled line to the arc, then away again and down, at the same angle. She hadn’t planned it but, ignoring the arc, it looked like the beginning of a star.