"I was suffocating. I couldn't breathe. Her sickness was infecting us all."

"So you left two children alone to look after her?"

"I didn't know what else to do."

"You could have taken us with you!" Bonnie shouted, stunned by the words coming out of her mouth. She burst into tears, then collapsed on the sofa. "You could have taken us with you," she sobbed.

For a long while, n.o.body spoke. After several minutes, Bonnie felt her father at her side, his hand on her shoulder.

"Don't," she said, shrugging off his hand. "It's too late."

"Why is it too late?"

"Because I'm not a little girl anymore."

"You'll always be my little girl," he told her.

"You have no idea," she told him, refusing to look at him. "You have no idea how much I cried, how every night I prayed that you'd come back for us. One night, I even walked in my sleep, packed a suitcase, and waited for you in the front hall. But it wasn't you who found me. It wasn't you who woke me up."

"I'm so sorry, Bonnie. I tried to reach out to you on numerous occasions. You know that."

"Yes, you were always very good about introducing us to your new wives."

"You made it very clear whose side you were on, that you didn't want anything to do with me."

"I was a child, for G.o.d's sake. What did you expect?"

"I expected you to grow up."

"You abandoned us. You abandoned me." A fresh onslaught of tears racked through Bonnie's body.

"I'm so sorry," her father said. "I wish there was something I could say or do." His voice drifted to a halt. He walked to the window, stared out onto the street.

"Are you happy?" Bonnie asked, eyes on the gradual slope of his back. "Does Adeline make you happy?"

"She's a wonderful woman," her father said, turning around to face Bonnie. "I'm very happy."

"And Nick? You think he's really getting his act together?"

"I think he is, yes. Why don't you give him a chance?"

"I don't trust him."

"He's your brother."

"He broke our mother's heart."

"He's not to blame for her death, Bonnie," her father said.

Bonnie swallowed, brushed the tears impatiently from her eyes, said nothing. "I should get going." She stood up, walked into the hall, feeling her father behind her.

"Is everything all right?" Adeline asked, coming out of the kitchen, one hand clutching a large wooden spoon.

"Everything's fine," her husband told her, looking to Bonnie for confirmation. Bonnie nodded, eyes wandering to the stairs.

"I'm making apple pies," Adeline said. "There's already one in the oven. It should be ready any minute, if you'd like a piece."

"I really have to get going," Bonnie said absently, drawn toward the stairs, as if by a magnet.

"Would you like to see how we've changed the bedrooms?" Adeline asked.

Bonnie's right foot was already on the first step, her left hand on the wall. Something was pulling her up the stairs, beckoning her forward. What was she doing? she wondered, slowly mounting each step, watching the white walls bleed and darken, then fill with flowers, their odor swirling through her head, making her dizzy. Don't be silly, she told herself, looking toward the bedroom at the top of the stairs. It's just the apple pies in the oven. There's no odor. There are no flowers.

Just like there's no one waiting in the upstairs bedroom, Bonnie told herself, reaching the top of the landing and crossing the hall, pushing open the door to what was once her mother's bedroom.

The woman was sitting in the middle of the bed, her face in shadows.

"We've changed everything, as you can see," Adeline was saying from somewhere beside Bonnie. "We thought blue was pretty for a bedroom, and I've always been partial to mirrors."

"Could I have a few minutes alone?" Bonnie asked, eyes on the shadowy figure in the middle of the bed.

"Certainly," Adeline said, confusion causing the word to waver in the air. "We'll be downstairs."

Bonnie heard the door close behind her. It was only then that the figure in the bed leaned out of the shadows and beckoned Bonnie forward.

25.

"Come closer so I can see you," the figure said, the voice surprisingly strong.

Bonnie pushed her feet toward the bed, catching her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror behind the light wood headboard, seeing it rebound in the smaller mirror on top of the dresser on the opposite wall. Except that instead of a woman in a shapeless ecru-colored shift, she saw a young girl of eleven, wearing a pale white cotton dress, her shoulder-length brown hair pulled into a ponytail by a shiny pink ribbon.

"How are you feeling today?" the young girl asked the woman in the bed, approaching cautiously.

Shadows danced across the woman's face, like waves. "Not very well, I'm afraid."

"I brought you some breakfast." The girl lifted a heavy plastic tray for the woman's perusal.

"I couldn't eat anything."

"Couldn't you try? I made it myself. Two eggs over easy, just the way you like them."

"I couldn't eat any eggs."

"Some orange juice then." The child lowered the tray on the night table and lifted the gla.s.s toward the bed.

"You're a good girl," the woman said, falling back against her pillows, ignoring the tall gla.s.s of juice in the girl's hand.

The child drew closer, brought the gla.s.s to the woman's lips. "Are you having a bad day?" she asked.

"I'm afraid so."

"Headaches?"

"Migraines," the woman qualified, bringing her hands to the sides of her temples, closing her eyes.

The waves washed over the woman's face, then disappeared, taking with them any signs of life, leaving only a pale, vaguely bloated mask, its pain evident, even in repose. Lost somewhere in all that pain was a beautiful woman, the child liked to imagine, a woman with sparkling blue eyes and a bright, expansive smile.

The child lowered the gla.s.s to the tray on the night table and brought her small hands to the woman's face, smoothing her thick brown hair away from her forehead, and gently ma.s.saging the area around her high cheekbones.

"Not so hard," the woman cautioned, and the child relaxed the pressure in her fingers. "That's better. Here," she indicated, pointing at the area around her slightly upturned nose. "My sinuses kept me up half the night. I don't think your father got any sleep." She opened her eyes. "Where is he? Has he gone out already?"

"It's after eleven o'clock," the child told her. "He said he had work to do."

"On a Sat.u.r.day?"

The child continued rubbing, said nothing.

"He's out with one of his women," her mother said.

"He said he had work to do."

"Nice work if you can get it."

The child pulled back.

"No, don't stop. It feels good. You have good fingers. You make your mother feel much better."

"Do I? Do I make you feel better?"

A sudden loud noise reverberated throughout the house. Bonnie spun around, her adult frame colliding with the child in the mirror. "What was that?" she heard her father call out from downstairs.

"It's nothing, Steve," she heard Adeline call back. "I dropped a mixing bowl. It's nothing to worry about."

"What's that noise?" the woman in bed asked, as Bonnie returned to the body of the eleven-year-old girl.

"Nick's playing cops and robbers again," the young girl answered.

"Bang, bang!" Nick shouted, bursting into the room, wearing a large tin badge and brandishing a toy gun in their direction. "Bang, bang! You're dead."

"Nick, you have to be quiet," the young girl urged. "Mommy's not feeling well today."

"Bang, bang," Nick insisted, oblivious. "I shot you. You're dead."

"You shot me," the woman in bed agreed, a faint laugh in her voice. "I'm dead." She closed her eyes, her head slumping over her right shoulder.

Nick laughed loudly and ran from the room, his eleven-year-old sister chasing after him. From her position at the foot of the bed, Bonnie watched them go.

"Come closer." The woman in bed beckoned again.

Bonnie straightened her shoulders and approached the bed, her fingers brushing up against the sky blue comforter. Instantly, flowers spread across its surface, like weeds. Bonnie stared into the mirror, watching another image take shape, this one taller than the previous one, the hips fuller, the b.r.e.a.s.t.s more developed. The image twisted in and out, grew wider, then thinner, distorting this way and that, like a reflection in a fun house mirror.

"Your father's left us," her mother said from the bed, her face tight with anger.

"He'll be back," the teenage girl a.s.sured her.

"No, he won't."

"He just needed a little time to himself. He'll be home soon."

"No, he's not coming back. He's with her."

"Her?"

"That woman he's been seeing."

"He won't stay with her."

"He won't be back."

Bonnie watched the teen's eyes fill with tears. "I'll take care of you, Mommy," she heard the girl say.

"I'm supposed to see Dr. Blend on Friday. How will I get there?"

"I'll take you."

"I'm afraid," the woman cried out, and the girl rushed to her side. "My heart is pounding so wildly I'm afraid I'm going to have a heart attack."

"What can I do?"

"Get me my pills. They're right here by the bed."

The girl's hands struggled to open the small bottle of red-and-yellow capsules. She dropped two into the palm of her hand, held them to the woman's lips, watched her swallow them easily without water. "Are you all right?"

The woman shook her head.

"What can I do?"

"Nothing. You're a good girl." She wiped some perspiration off her forehead with the backs of her fingers, looked around the darkened room. "Where's Nicholas?"

"He's hiding from the neighbors," the girl said, afraid to upset her mother, but reluctant to lie. "He put handcuffs on Mrs. Gradowski, then flushed the keys down the toilet. Mr. Gradowski had to call a locksmith to get them off. He's really mad."

Her mother laughed, delighted, as she always was, by Nick's high jinks. He could do no wrong, it seemed. The teenage girl shook her head in wonder and dismay, then faded from sight.