Rooms Read Free Page A

deepest, truest secret: there was something rotten growing inside of her. She had hoped, in an inarticulate way, that having Amy would change things—would change her.
    Amy was an Innocent.
    Minna, too, had read The Raven Heliotrope, and although she was far too old for fairy tales, she had clung to one of its major tenets for a long time: the Innocents could save. They could redeem.
    “It’s weird being here,” Trenton said. His head was still bent, his voice raw. “It doesn’t feel the same.” Then: “Why wouldn’t he let us see him?”
    “You know Dad,” Minna said.
    “Not really,” Trenton said.
    Minna nudged a chair out from the table—the Spider—with her toe and sat down. The chair creaked underneath her and she felt suddenly weird, like this had never been her house, like everything had been set up to test her. Like a stage set for an actress, to see if she could figure out her role. She wouldn’t put it past her father. Maybe he’d planned all of this.
    Minna put an arm around Amy, to keep her from wandering and touching things. Trenton still hadn’t looked up, and he was swiping at his phone, but she realized this must be hard for him. He had been young when their father and mother had divorced, and since then had seen their father only sporadically, when Richard would appear suddenly in Long Island like Father Christmas, toting gifts and a wide, jolly grin and a big laugh that made you temporarily forget that it would all be over by tomorrow.
    “He was sick,” she said. “He didn’t want us to remember him that way.” That, at least, was true. It wasn’t for their sake, but for his. Richard Walker had been in control until the end.
    “It’s fucked,” Trenton said. Amy put her hands over her ears.
    “Christ, Trenton,” Minna said.
    “Trenton said a bad word,” Amy said in a singsong. Then, keeping her hands pressed tightly to her ears, she spun away from Minna, twirling around the kitchen, humming to herself, her cotton blue skirt fanning around her knees.
    “Home sweet home,” Minna said.
    A large part of her wanted to leave already: to get back into the small white BMW she’d leased exactly two weeks before being fired from her latest job; to sink down into the upholstery that smelled like Amy’s shampoo and old juice bottles; to drive as far and as fast as she could from Coral River, and the Minna who had been stuck there.
    But there was another part of her that suspected—that remembered —that she had once been happy here. For years she had carried the image of a different Minna with her, a faint, heartbeat-shadow of a girl who had existed before the rot took hold.
    So she was here. To face the demons.
    To put them to rest for good.

ALICE
    C aroline Walker, like Minna, walks into the kitchen as though expecting a party and seems bewildered to instead encounter an empty room filled with old belongings, stacked newspapers, and crusted dishes in the sink—as though everyone else must have mistaken the date.
    “She got fat!” Sandra crows. “Didn’t I tell you she would?”
    I do not remember that Sandra ever said this. Although, to be fair, I spend the majority of my time trying to ignore Sandra, so it’s possible that I missed it.
    Caroline removes her sunglasses and, without going any farther into the house, calls: “Minna? Trenton? Amy? Where is everyone?”
    I can tell you where they are. Trenton is in the upstairs bathroom, next to the Blue Room, which was always his; he has a magazine unfolded on his lap, and his pants around his ankles. Amy is sitting on the floor of the Yellow Room, where Minna has installed her. Minna is lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, talking on the phone.
    “I just don’t see why he couldn’t do us a favor and die somewhere decent,” she is saying. “I told Trenton in the car—as far as I’m concerned, we can just burn the damn place . . . ”
    Amy is braiding the tassels on the worn yellow rug, humming to