Echoes in the Walls Read online

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “So why aren’t you in it this year? I want you to enjoy these high school years. You’re a good student, a very good student, but when it comes time to apply to colleges, they’re going to consider how well rounded you are, too. It’s why I was happy Ryder had done so much.”

  “Won’t he ever get better?” I asked. I didn’t want to talk about myself and what my future could hold.

  “He’ll improve, I’m sure of it, but it will take more time, and when he does, he’ll still have a long road back. As the Chinese say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. We have to be patient.”

  Whom was he trying to convince, I wondered, me or himself?

  He rose. “I see from what your mother has told me that we’re having a real old-fashioned Christmas dinner,” he said, “with all the fixings, as they say. I’ve cleared my schedule to make sure I don’t miss this one.”

  “Good,” I said. So he wasn’t planning on spending it with someone else, some new female acquaintance.

  He started out.

  “Dr.—Daddy,” I called.

  He turned around slowly. He didn’t smile, but he looked pleased that I had finally dared to call him that. “Yes?”

  “What happened? Did you ever see your cousin again?”

  “Oh. I went to her wedding. She lives in San Francisco now and has three children, a girl and two boys. Her husband is a commercial airline pilot.”

  He leaned toward me.

  “She’s about twenty-five pounds overweight and has lost that innocent, angelic look in her eyes.” He smiled. “But I’ll never see her that way. She’s forever frozen in my mind as the beautiful young woman she was.”

  He turned and left. My emotions made me feel as twisted as a French knot. He was telling me not to think about Ryder as much, which depressed me, but he was more my father in the past ten minutes than he had been my whole life.

  Could I become the daughter he wanted me to become? Ironically, to do so, I would have to be what I had tried so hard not to be: selfish. I would have to put my concerns about Ryder aside and start my new life.

  I might have begun to do all that if Samantha hadn’t come into my room a week after my conversation with my father to tell me what she had seen Ryder doing and how he was holding my picture at the time.

  Something about our relationship was stirring inside him. Slowly, it was all returning. Why shouldn’t our days right before the accident be at the top of his resurrected memories? Maybe what he saw in his mind now was just like my father’s image of his beautiful young cousin, captured forever like a cameo. The vision would come and go, tormenting, teasing, but something he obviously still cherished. Ryder was struggling to grasp it. Should I help him?

  Surely, someday he would seize it and realize who I was, who we were together if only for a very short time. That was, in my mind, at least, a very intense time.

  How could I ignore that possibility now? How could I continue to avoid any references, even avoid looking at him too lovingly?

  Maybe worse, despite all the warnings and alarms, how could I not be happy about his possibly waking up one morning and saying to me, Don’t worry, Fern. I won’t ever stop loving you now that it’s all returned.

  Was that dreadful? Was I being too selfish?

  Would both my father and my mother be angry?

  Did I care?

  4

  ACTUALLY, I ADMIRED my father for not tolerating rationalization. Rationalization is really such an evil thing. It makes it possible for you to justify, at least in your own mind, something you shouldn’t have done or shouldn’t be doing.

  I knew what I was tempted to do would not please my mother or my father, but I was telling myself I wouldn’t be doing it only to please myself. I’d be doing it for Ryder, to help him recuperate faster. Once he regained most of his memory, we could work out what happened between us and how we had to behave now. Wasn’t that good? Or was I lying to myself?

  I couldn’t shake out of my mind what Samantha had told me about the picture she had seen in Ryder’s hand. A part of me wanted to believe her, but another part, perhaps what should have been the stronger part, did not. When I finally went to sleep that night, I lay there thinking about it, wondering what it really meant if she wasn’t lying. What sorts of twists and turns were going on in Ryder’s mind as he battled to find his memory?

  Suddenly, I sat up, wondering why I hadn’t thought about it before.

  How and when did Ryder get a picture of me in a silver frame? I had never given him one. If he really had one, why hadn’t I seen it displayed when I had been in his room all this time? Certainly, no one would have given him a picture of me since he’d returned. Didn’t that prove that Samantha had made up the whole thing? What a sick thing for her to do.

  There was no way I could fall asleep after thinking about this. I searched through my own memory, trying to tie in something I had forgotten. Surely, I wouldn’t have forgotten giving him my picture, even when we were both much younger. I didn’t recall him ever asking me for one for his room or even a smaller one for his wallet after we had begun being more like a boyfriend and girlfriend. The only framed pictures in his room that I knew of were of his real mother, him and our father together, and him in his baseball uniform during the school’s championship game. Shortly after the prom and the disaster at the party, he had gotten rid of all his pictures of Alison. I didn’t know what he had done with his prom picture with her. I had put mine and Paul’s in the garbage.

  When we were getting ready to move back into the main house, I had put all my cherished pictures and albums in a carton. That carton was still in my closet, unpacked. Even my father didn’t have a framed picture of me, not yet anyway. I imagined he would place my graduation portrait in his office someday. My mother had some pictures of me in her room, of course, but never mentioned one missing. Anyway, Ryder didn’t wander in and out of anyone else’s room but his own. Samantha dragged him into hers occasionally, but she had no pictures of me. As far as I knew, he had never been in my room while I was at school. My mother surely would have told me.

  When I considered all this, rage, rather than curiosity, got me out of bed. I felt like it had filled my veins with scalding steam. If Samantha had concocted this whole thing, created another one of her lies or fantasies to make herself more important, I vowed to myself that I’d go into her room one night and hold her down while I shaved off the rest of her hair.

  I flipped on the lights and went to my closet. My carton of pictures looked untouched, but I couldn’t be sure. I opened it and slowly began taking out everything. After it was all on the floor, I realized there was one picture missing, but it was one I had taken out of the carton shortly after we had moved into the main house. It was in the bottom drawer of my dresser. Mr. Stark had taken that picture of Ryder and me when Ryder, dressed for the prom, had come to bring me to our father’s office so he could see me in the dress that Alison, Ryder, and I had found among Ryder’s mother’s things still in the attic. My mother had it tailored for me.

  On our way out of the kitchen that night, Mr. Stark had stopped us to take a picture of the two of us all dressed up. I remembered thinking how much I wished I was going as Ryder’s date and not his friend Paul’s.

  Because of all the turmoil that followed the prom, Mr. Stark’s taking our picture, like so many other things surrounding it, was forgotten. The day my mother and I were gathering our things to move back into the main house, Mr. Stark arrived and gave me the framed photograph in an old paper bag. I could tell from the way he was behaving that he hadn’t reminded my mother about the picture or told her he had intended to give it to me.

  “It’s a memory,” he said, “and in and of itself, it isn’t a bad thing to have. I’ve got my own copy in my house,” he added in a whisper.

  I couldn’t stop the tears from coming when I looked at it. How healthy, bright, and handsome Ryder looked, and how perfect we looked together
. Mr. Stark put his hand on my shoulder and hugged me. I quickly swiped the tears away and smiled.

  “He’ll be all right; you’ll be all right,” he assured me.

  “Thank you.”

  He looked at the doorway leading into the main house. It was like crossing over the Rio Grande or the Rubicon.

  “If I was you, I would keep the picture to myself for a while,” he said, “considering . . .”

  He didn’t have to explain. I nodded and stuffed it into the bottom of my carton of pictures. Occasionally, those first few weeks we were in the main house, I had taken it out to look at it, but I still hadn’t placed it anywhere where it would be visible to others, and since Ryder had been brought home, I hadn’t taken it out at all. I transferred it to a dresser drawer. I was sure that neither my mother nor my father would be pleased if I had it displayed. We looked too much like we were dates for the prom, and I was sure my father would think that the sight of it would confuse Ryder.

  I opened the drawer in which I had hidden it and lifted away the sweaters folded neatly there.

  The picture wasn’t there!

  That little bitch, I thought, shocked and angry. But when I sat back on the floor and thought about it, I was also very confused. Why would Samantha have stolen my picture and then given it to Ryder? Really, how would that make her think she was more important? There had to be some other reason. What had she been up to now?

  She might have overheard my mother talking to me about my relationship with Ryder, warning me to be extra careful about what memories I mentioned. She wouldn’t understand the full reason my mother cautioned me, but because I was ignoring her and her dramatic crises so much these days, Samantha was just spiteful enough to plant that picture so I’d be blamed for doing something without our father’s permission or my mother’s, and especially without Dr. Seymour’s. That would be something that would especially anger our father. She was in what I knew would be a never-ending competition for his favor ever since he had acknowledged I was his daughter.

  I glanced at the clock on the night table beside my bed and saw it was twenty after two in the morning. It was very late, but I was thinking Samantha was more apt to reveal the truth if she was surprised. Maybe there wouldn’t be enough time for thinking up denials and lies, even for her.

  I rose, got into my robe and my slippers, and, as quietly as I could, walked out of my room. The long hallway was always kept dimly lit by the row of small chandeliers equally spaced along the ceiling. The moment I stepped out, I thought that every shadow awoke. I knew it was my overworked imagination, but long, gray and black shady streaks along the walls seemed to come alive, straighten up, or curl like caterpillars on my right and on my left. I smothered a gasp. I was imagining the air crackling around me and sparks raining down from the ceiling. I wanted to be extra quiet, of course, and not wake up my father or my mother when I passed their rooms. Practically tiptoeing, I went past Ryder’s room.

  The door to his room was always kept slightly open. My mother especially slept with one ear awake in her room, closest to Ryder’s. She and my father often discussed Ryder’s condition, and on more than one occasion, I heard both of them express the fear that Ryder would awaken at night and be terrified because he didn’t know where he was, much less who he was. I had yet to hear or learn such a thing had happened, but it was always out there, looming with every other dreadful expectation that haunted this mansion.

  Consequently, my mother’s door was always slightly ajar as well. When I reached Samantha’s room, I paused and looked back to be sure no one had heard me and stepped into the hallway to see what was happening. The crackling I had imagined was gone, and the hallway was as quiet as it could be. But the mansion was never perfectly quiet. That was something I had gotten used to years and years ago. A house this big and this old had tiny crevices and cracks that sucked in the swirling night breezes and winds. It was easy to imagine every shadow moaning. A chandelier might tinkle; the gusts that usually came in over the lake sounded like the fingers of hands with long witchy fingernails marching up and down and across the windows.

  It was especially like that tonight.

  I put my hand on Samantha’s door, and as silently as I could, I pushed it open enough for me to slip into her room. Samantha always slept with a small night light on. It threw enough illumination for me to clearly see her curled up on her left side, her light pink comforter pulled up and around her shoulders. In her four-poster king-size bed with its four oversize pink pillows, she looked smaller than ever and quite innocent, making me feel guilty for coming to accuse her of something so sinister.

  The floor of her room was covered with a plush light pink shag rug, easily hiding the sound of any footsteps. As usual, her room was messy, with blouses draped over chairs, a pair of jeans still on the floor where she had taken them off, gum wrappers, and a bowl of ice cream. Two pairs of sneakers lay outside her closet door, and a celebrity gossip magazine was open and on her bed, just on her right.

  I approached her and stood there for a few moments gazing down at her. I was hoping she would open her eyes herself. She didn’t, so I finally touched her shoulder, gently at first, and then, when she didn’t waken, I shook her. Her eyes popped open. Before she could scream out, I put my right hand over her mouth and the forefinger of my left hand on my lips. When she realized it was me, the terror left her eyes, which were now filled only with confusion. I lifted my hand from her mouth.

  “What are you doing here, Fern? What time is it?”

  “Forget about the time. Why did you take the picture of Ryder and me from my dresser drawer and give it to him?” I asked.

  “What picture?”

  Her eyelids fluttered. She pushed herself grudgingly into a seated position. Then she ground the sleep from her eyes and turned to me angrily.

  “I didn’t take any picture, and I didn’t give any picture to him,” she said. She pouted and folded her arms. “Daddy is going to be mad at you for accusing me and for waking me up, too.”

  “Not when he hears what you did with it,” I said.

  “I didn’t do anything with it. I didn’t take it.”

  I stepped back, scrutinizing her. Samantha was so good at lying, stretching the truth, telling half-truths, and pretending ignorance that maybe surprising her didn’t matter at all. A seasoned detective would have doubts.

  “Tell me again what the picture you saw in Ryder’s hand was. How was I dressed? Was I the only one in the picture? Was it just of my face? Are you sure it was in a silver frame?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “I’m tired. If you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to get Emma.”

  “Don’t call her Emma.” I took a deep breath. “You’re lying, Samantha. You’re going to be really sorry this time. Believe me, I’ll make sure of that. I won’t talk to you again until you tell me the truth. Don’t come into my room until you do. And don’t ask me to help you with any of your homework. I’ll find a way to get even. You’ll be sorry.”

  I turned and started out of her room.

  “You weren’t alone in the picture,” she said before I reached the door. I turned around. “He was with you, and you were both dressed up for the prom. I remember the dress you wore. It was Ryder’s mother’s dress.”

  I stared at her. She fell back onto her pillow. I rushed back to the bed. “Did you take that picture from my room and give it to him? Why?”

  “I didn’t take it from your room and give it to him. Leave me alone!” she cried, loudly enough to be heard down the hall. She pulled the comforter up and over her head.

  My heart pounding, I left her room, half expecting my mother to be out in the hallway. I would have a lot of explaining to do.

  But she wasn’t there, and I wasn’t going to press my luck. I practically ran all the way back to my room and closed the door quickly behind me. When I got into bed, I just lay there thinking. Of course she had to be lying. How else would he have that picture?

  I debate
d telling my mother or even my father. With Samantha doing her usual good performance of deception, suspicions might flow in my direction. They’d surely think I had given that picture to Ryder, and they would conclude that I had been trying to revive his romantic love for me. I could almost hear their accusations. Was I now blaming Samantha because I thought they would soon discover the picture in Ryder’s room? My mother would ask Mr. Stark about the picture, and he would confess to having given it to me. Why hadn’t I told her about that picture until now? Why had I hidden it under my things? It all appeared dark and sneaky.

  Look at how much trouble Samantha could have caused. That was surely her motivation. My father and my mother might want to restrict my contact with Ryder, even with someone else present. I could easily imagine the conversation with me.

  For now, it would be better for you both, maybe especially for you, to limit your contact with Ryder, Fern, either my father or my mother would say. Participate only in activities he shares with us all, but do not, not ever, go into his room and be alone with him, even downstairs in the living room or the game room. At least until his memory has improved and he’s about to understand everything.

  Hadn’t my father laid the groundwork for this? He wanted my attention and my energy to be attached to activities outside this house. He didn’t say it exactly, but in so many words, he suggested I find a social life, maybe even a boyfriend. The busier I was with my own activities, the less I would dwell on Ryder.

  Leave him in the hands of his therapist. You’ll only complicate matters now and cause setbacks to his recovery, my father would surely say.

  I had no arguments to offer.

  Samantha would get what she wanted; she would dominate whatever attention Ryder could give to anyone other than himself.

  I thought I’d feel like the daughter of the house manager again. Maybe I would spend more time in the help’s quarters. Maybe I’d move back there.