The Roots of the Olive Tree Read Free Page A

her on the couch and the dog climbed into Erin’s lap and curled into a ball.
    “You need to eat,” Bets said, bringing in a plate of olives and saltines. “You’re too thin and your cheeks are all sunken in. What do they feed you on tour? I’d think in Italy it would be all pasta and bread.”
    Callie picked up where her mother left off. “Did you lay over in New York? Why didn’t you call to tell us you were coming? You didn’t have to rent a car, I would’ve picked you up.”
    Erin leaned her head on Callie’s shoulder and closed her eyes.
    “We should send her to bed.” Anna wanted to talk to the others without Erin present. They needed to piece together an explanation of the child’s behavior.
    “I’m old enough to send myself to bed,” Erin said. Her eyes were still closed, and Anna suspected she was crying. “I didn’t know I was coming home until I got here and by then it was too late to tell you.”
    Bets stroked the girl’s hair and murmured soothing words. The scene wasn’t much different from the one that unfolded when Erin had been a child, one who lost her parents and had come, quite unexpectedly, to live with them at Hill House. Anna listened to Bets’s hypnotic voice—there was some lilt, pattern to her speech that soothed the instinct to run and then watched as her daughter—old enough to need help herself—walked Erin down to the bedroom that had been hers when she was four. Bobo went after them.
    Anna pulled open the secretary in the living room and took out all the papers she had about Erin’s time in Italy. There were a handful of airmail letters written on tissue-thin paper full of vague descriptions of the other opera members, anecdotes of day trips they’d taken, and one particularly long missive when Erin thought she’d left her sheet music on a city bus. She also had the initial packet of information that Erin had received when she signed her contract to sing mezzo-soprano for the Academy of Santa Cecilia.
    Callie and Bets came down the hall and settled back into the couch. The exchange with Erin seemed to have restored some of their youth. They talked quietly, and Anna didn’t even try to listen. She’d never admit it, but she couldn’t hear as well as she used to. Instead, she searched for the copy of the contract that Erin had given her when Anna demanded to know how she was going to pay for her living expenses. There was money that Erin didn’t know about—money from an insurance policy that had paid out when her father died—but Anna was holding back, waiting for the right time to give it to Erin. At last Anna found what she’d been searching for at the bottom of the pile of letters. When she unfolded it, she realized every word was in Italian. It would be of no use to them.
    “She’s in trouble,” Bets said, at last bringing Anna into the conversation.
    “I’ve never seen her look so much like her mother,” Callie said. “Should we look in the car for clues? There has to be some indication of why she’s here.”
    Bets took the paperwork from Anna and scanned it. “You can read some of this,” she said to her daughter. “Spanish and Italian aren’t that much different. Both romance languages, right?”
    “They’re nothing alike,” Callie said, not even glancing at the papers. “I’m not sure we should pry. Chances are she’ll tell us when she’s ready.”
    “Her mother never told us anything,” Bets said, pulling at a silver strand of hair that escaped the low bun she always wore.
    Anna knew she should step between them, knew that the blame and the guilt for what had happened with Erin’s mother was deep enough to threaten the bond between the two of them. It had been ugly for so many years after it happened.
    “A woman is entitled to her secrets,” Anna said. She thought of all that she’d kept from her own mother, her daughter—suspicions that none of them were who they thought they were.
    Bets stood, quickly gathering the papers up