Элизабет Чандлер - Don't Tell

“Something is wrong,” I admitted. “Go look in my room.”

She did and I took another quick look at hers. Nothing had been disturbed.

“I don’t believe this!” I heard Holly exclaim. She returned to the hall. “What is going on, Lauren? When did this happen?”

I told her about the knots that I’d found and untied earlier.

“So it’s happened twice tonight?” She rubbed her arms.

“That’s creepy.”

“Do you remember the summer my mother came, how she kept finding her scarves and jewelry knotted?”

Holly nodded. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

“That makes two of us,” I replied.

She turned suddenly and pounded on her sister’s door.

“Nora!” she shouted. “Nora! I’m coming in.”

Aunt Jule came hurrying from her room. “What’s going on?”

“Look for yourself, Mom. Look at Lauren’s room. I told you before, but you wouldn’t listen to me. Nora is out of control.”

Aunt Jule entered my room, and Holly opened her sister’s door. Nora stood before us in a frayed nightgown. Her dark eyes darted between Holly’s face and mine.

“I’m losing my patience with you,” Holly said. “You’re way out of bounds, Nora. Get in there and straighten up Lauren’s room. And don’t try something stupid like this again.”

“Just a minute,” Aunt Jule said, coming back into the hall.

“How do you know Nora is responsible? There were lots of kids going in and out of the house tonight.”

“Oh, come on, Mom,” Holly replied, but then she turned to me for backup.

“I found the knots earlier,” I explained, “untied them all, then locked both doors to my room. When I came back, the knots were tied again in the exact same way.”

As I spoke, Nora slipped past us and entered my room. I followed her and watched from the doorway as she touched the knots in the sheets, then the knots in the curtains, fascinated by them, admiring them.

“Did you keep the key with you?” Aunt Jule asked.

I turned back to her. “Yes.”

Her eyes flashed. “So why do you think Nora had a better chance of unlocking the door than anyone else?”

I glanced away. If I talked about poltergeists, I would probably lose Holly’s support.

“It seems to me, Lauren, that if we want to start accusing people, you’re the most likely candidate for this prank,” Aunt Jule went on. “You’re the one who has the key.”

“But that doesn’t make sense!” I protested. “Why would I mess up my own room?”

“For attention. You’re a girl who is used to a lot of attention.”

I saw Holly glance sideways at me; she was considering her mother’s suggestion.

“I didn’t do it!” I insisted.

“Someone else did it,” Nora whispered, emerging from my bedroom. Her face was as white as a wax candle, her pupils dilated.

“Nora, you look ill,” Aunt Jule said.

“She is ill!” I screamed. “And you’re cruel not to get her the psychiatric help she needs!”

Aunt Jule gave me a stony look, then said in a gentle voice, “Nora, love, I want you to sleep in my room tonight.”

Nora slowly followed her down the hall.

I shook my head, amazed at how my godmother could twist things to accommodate whatever she wanted to believe.

Holly sighed. “Come on, Lauren, let’s take a walk. Then I’ll help you undo this mess.”

“Thanks, but you’ve got to be tired. It won’t take long to untie things.”

“Still, let’s walk,” Holly persisted. “You’re not going to fall asleep in the state you’re in now.”

“I’ll be okay. I’ll walk and talk to myself until I bore myself to sleep.”

Holly laughed lightly. “Well, you know where I am if you need me.”

When I reached the hall stairs, Aunt Jule stood at her bedroom door. “It’s late, Lauren. Don’t go far.”

I answered her with a slight nod.

Downstairs, I headed out the river side of the house, then turned toward Frank’s. I walked his land along the river and sat for a while in one of his lawn chairs, thinking things over.

I recalled what Dr. Parker had said at the prom and knew he was right: I could do nothing about Nora’s illness; the one person in my power to heal was myself. I needed to go to the place where my mother had died, this time on my own.

The moon was high, making the unlit dock stand out clearly in the water. I imagined it as my mother would have seen it that night, a vague shape in the river mist The bank wasn’t as eroded then, so she could have climbed up easily. Had she walked the dock the way she used to walk the porch?

Had someone cornered her there?

I climbed up and walked to the end where she had fallen. I forced myself to touch the piling, laying both hands on it, then stared down into the river.

Had my mother known she was going to die that night?

Had she blacked out the moment she hit the piling or did she sink slowly into watery unconsciousness? Did she cry out for me?

“Get over it, Lauren,” I told myself aloud. “You have to let go.”

But I couldn’t, not until I knew what had happened then and what was happening now.

I mulled over the poltergeist theory. Perhaps Nora was so traumatized by finding my mother drowned that she believed and feared she was still in the river. But Nora’s irrational fear would make more sense if she had actually murdered her.

My mother’s presence had brought plenty of anger and dissension to Aunt Jule’s usually quiet house. Perhaps Nora, already unbalanced — more so than any of us had realized — had been pushed over the edge and, in a sense, pushed back.

If Nora were guilty of murder and trying to repress it, my return to Wisteria would be intensely disturbing to her and could evoke a response as extreme as poltergeist activity.

The puzzle pieces fit.

Then Dr. Parker’s words floated back to me: A quick theory is a dangerous way to answer important questions.

But my experiences in the last three days, some of them spookily similar to my mother’s, had convinced me that her death wasn’t an accident And if Nora didn’t murder her, who else could have? Who else had a reason — or the momentary passion and anger — to push my mother against the piling and off the dock? I didn’t want to suspect anyone I knew; the excuse of insanity was the only way I could deal with it being Nora.

I retraced my steps, then climbed the hill and circled the house. It was completely dark now. Passing by the greenhouse, I was surprised to find that a light had been left on. I didn’t remember seeing it when I arrived home and it seemed odd that Holly, given her compulsion to turn off lights, hadn’t extinguished it. I entered the greenhouse, a little timidly after last night’s experience.

The place felt overly warm and stuffy. I wondered if Nora had forgotten to open the vents, allowing the day’s heat to build up. The bare bulb hanging over the center aisle was out; the beacon I’d seen was a large plastic flashlight.

Perhaps Nora had come with it tonight, planning to cool down the place, and been frightened away by party guests.

I knew that when the sun flooded the greenhouse tomorrow the plants would die in the accumulated heat. The wheel that opened the roof vents was at the end of the main aisle, where the small trellises were. As I headed toward it, I played the flashlight’s beam over the plants, listening intently, watching, afraid to blink my eyes. But every leaf was still. At the end of the aisle I shone the light on the pots with the young vines. All of them were limp, hanging from the trellises by their knots.

Above them was the six-inch metal wheel that cranked open the house’s high vents — that is, the axle from it — the wheel was gone. I was sure I had seen the vents open the other day. I reached for the switch that ran the big exhaust fan, flicking it one way, then the other. It wouldn’t turn on.