Ivy of Our Hearts

Twenty-three

I had no memory of getting into bed, but there I was tucked beneath the covers next to Margaret.

We'd fallen asleep at the table and Phillip must have carried us here. There must have been an ingredient more than sugar in his family recipe. I couldn't guess what, but whatever it had been made me serene, like I'd woken up from the best dream I would ever have, although I was sure I hadn't dreamt at all.

There was something else, too, something I had no words for, or maybe those words had been lost in my sleep. I rubbed my eyes and sat up.

Margaret stirred beside me. She rolled onto her side, smiling.

"Do you feel it?" I asked.

"What is it?" she said.

"I don't know." I pulled the covers back and got out of bed. No noise came from the other room. Phillip hadn't woken. The sky outside was painted in the yellowish tinge of dawn. The woods were more quiet than usual for a late summer's day.

Margaret sat up, turned towards the window. "Did you dream?"

"No," I said, picking up a dead petal on the nightstand. It crumbled in my fingers. All the flowers were dead. The water in the vase had become murky. I dusted the petal fragments off my hands. How long had we slept?

"I always dream." Margaret tossed back the covers and got out of bed. "I'm going to the bathroom."

I went to the wardrobe as the door closed behind her. In the wardrobe's mirror, I noted that nothing had changed about my reflection. My dark brown eyes, my coiled shoulder length mane, my full brown lips looked as they always had. Maybe I was being paranoid, making something out of nothing. We'd slept through the night and that was all. I left the wardrobe and switched places with Margaret in the bathroom. We got ready for the day, brushed our teeth, combed our hair, and changed into the clothing we'd separated between us. Half of the wardrobe belonged to Margaret and the other half to me.

"Good morning sleeping beauties," Phillip said when we entered the front room. I tried not to think anything of it because it was too impossible. I'd read too many fairytales to believe we hadn't slept for a day.

Phillip made it easy to push aside my uneasiness about that night with his thoughtfulness, his smile, and exquisite culinary skills. I couldn't drown in him. I would flourish here with him and Margaret. Manderley had gone out to catch her own breakfast.

"Compliments to the cook," I said when I'd finished my bowl of cinnamon oatmeal. I'd never liked oatmeal until I had his.

He dipped his head in a mock bow. "Thank you." He'd finished his own bowl seconds after me. "You aren't hungry, Margaret?" he asked.

She hadn't eaten much of hers and Margaret loved to eat. "I... um..." She let go of the spoon she'd been twirling in her oatmeal. "What happened to Simon? Did he get home?"

Phillip nodded. "I think so." He shrugged and picked up his spoon, although it, too, had been licked clean. "At least he should have. Do you want more?" he asked me.

I patted my stomach. "I'm stuffed."

He began to stand but sat again. He pressed his hands together and leaned his head against them, as if he were in prayer. Glances were shared between me and Margaret. He sat like that for a while, and we didn't want to interrupt in case he was praying.

"Phillip," Margaret said. "Are you okay?" She leaned forward in her chair; her head tilted as she tried to get a glimpse of his face beneath his hands.

"Sorry," he said. He took his hands from his face and gripped the edge of the table. "Yeah, I'm okay. I just didn't trust that guy."

"Simon?" Margaret asked.

"Yeah," he said. "You have to be careful of wanderers. I didn't want to take any chances. I'm sorry but I had to do it. For us."

"What did you do?" Margaret asked.

He sighed.

I stared at a speck of oatmeal in my bowl, so there had been more than sugar in that drink. Yet it was still too impossible to be true.

Phillip closed his eyes. We hadn't been with him for long, but in the short time it had become easier to read his body language. Closing his eyes meant he didn't want to say and wouldn't. Margaret reached across the table and gripped his arm.

He opened his eyes. "You wouldn't understand if I told you," he said. And for the second time since knowing him his tone was melancholic, but it wasn't his tone alone. It was in his eyes as well. Tears. He began to cry.

I had no idea what to do. Margaret drew her hand back right away, as if afraid to catch his sorrow or whatever made him sorrowful.

Nora. It had to be her.

What struck me about Phillip crying wasn't that he cried, but the way he did. They were silent tears, the kind you cried late at night, behind a closed door, because you didn't want anyone to know. I'd witnessed it before.

At fourteen, I'd walked in on my mother after a phone call with my father on one of his many business trips. I acted then as I did now, as rigid, and as cold. It made me awkward and uncomfortable. Comfort had never been what I could do well.

I remained in my chair; gaze trained on the speck of oatmeal in my bowl as Margaret went around the table to him. She put her arm around his shoulders. Good. She was the comforter. The one with the colic baby brother she'd stayed up with many nights.

"It'll be okay," she said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make things worse." Her mouth was close enough for her to steal a kiss, but she didn't. She rubbed his back and pressed her cheek against his shoulder. "We don't have to talk about it."

We didn't talk about it. We didn't talk about Simon or Nora or what Phillip had meant by he'd done it for us. We tiptoed around it the rest of the morning, but there were things too hard to ignore, too big to ignore. I saw them while I did the dishes. The trees, their leaves, somehow, during the night, they had changed color, transformed from summer foliage into fall foliage. We were in late September.

I saw them, but Phillip made it easy to convince myself otherwise. The star within me raged whenever he looked at me. Whenever he touched me. A slight touch on the elbow made it spit fire. I convinced myself the leaves had always been that way.

It had been autumn since we got here. Any other truth would have been too impossible and too much to bear.