I watched Dulcie wash her canvas with thin layers of color in grayed shades of blue and purple and green: a rainy day at the lake. I tried doing the same thing with the tempera paint, but my brush was too wet. The colors ran and pooled and wrinkled the paper.
“Look, Ali.” Emma held up a painting as blotchy and runny as mine, its colors mainly dark blues and blacks with a blob of white.
“Is that the lake on a rainy day?” I asked.
Emma looked at her painting. “Yes, but it’s got something else.” She pointed to the white blob. “This is a skeleton ghost. See? Here’s its head.”
Dulcie took the picture and looked at it intently. “What gave you the idea to paint a ghost in the water?”
Emma shrugged. “It’s something I dream about.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “Bones in the water, bones that come out and chase me.”
The studio was so quiet, I could hear raindrops splash against the skylights. A cold draft slipped under the door and wrapped around my ankles. I shivered.
Emma hugged Dulcie. “Don’t be mad, Mommy.”
Dulcie stared at Emma. “Why would I be mad?”
Emma stroked Dulcie’s sleeve. “I don’t know.”
Dulcie laid the picture on a stack of paper on the table and picked Emma up. “How about painting a rainbow and a smiling sun and a flower?” she asked. “Can you do that for me?”
“I already did lots of those, Mommy.” Emma picked up her pictures and sorted through them. “One rainbow, two rainbows, three rainbows,” she said. “And here’s you and me sitting under a rainbow, and here’s one flower, two flowers, four, five, seven flowers.”
Dulcie looked at them. “Very nice,” she said. “Much better than bones in the lake, don’t you think?”
“I guess.” Emma went to the window and looked out at the lake. “I wish the rain would go away.”
“Me, too.” I joined her and frowned at the dark clouds over the dark water. In the glass, I saw Dulcie’s reflection behind me. She was sitting at the table, staring at the ghost picture. The expression on her face made me uneasy.
That afternoon, I read to Emma until she fell asleep. While she was napping, Dulcie came in from the studio and made a pot of tea for us. We sat at the kitchen table, warm and snug and dry. Rain gurgled in the downspouts, poured from the eaves, and ran down the windowpanes in large drops.
“Emma has an amazing imagination,” I said.
“Sometimes I think she spends too much time alone,” Dulcie said slowly. “I wonder if it’s good for her.”
“I’m an only child, too,” I said. “It might be nice to have a brother or sister, but I’m perfectly happy the way things are.” Except for Mom, I thought. If only she was like you—never depressed, no headaches, full of energy, going places, doing things. I stopped myself, guilt stricken.
Dulcie opened a tin of fancy cookies and offered me one. They were thin and crisp, smelled lovely, and tasted even better. Given the opportunity, I could have eaten every one and not left a crumb.
“In New York, we live in a neighborhood with lots of artists but not many kids,” Dulcie went on, talking to me as if I was her age, her equal, not a little kid. “I’ve kept her at home because I can’t afford preschool.”
“She’ll be in kindergarten this fall, won’t she?”
Dulcie nodded. “Maybe she’ll make friends then.”
“Of course she will.” I took another cookie. “And this summer she’ll have me to play with.”
Dulcie smiled and patted my hand. “I’m so glad Claire decided to let you come.”
“She almost didn’t.”
Dulcie shrugged. “Your mom worries too much.”
“Has she always been like she is now?”
“Pretty much.” Dulcie sighed. “Our mom overprotected her—said she was ‘sensitive, delicate, sickly.’”
“Was she?”
“I don’t know. I was just a kid myself.” Dulcie peered into her teacup as if the answer might be there. “Every time we had a fight, it was my fault. I got blamed for everything.” She looked at me. “Sometimes I think Claire played it up to get attention.”
Shocked by Dulcie’s unkind words, I leapt to Mom’s defense. “She has horrible migraines, and she’s always feeling bad. Grandmother was probably right about her.”
“I know, I know. Believe me, I know.” With that, Dulcie gathered the empty teacups and carried them to the sink. “I have to get back to the studio. Please fix Emma a snack when she wakes up. Cookies and juice. Not too much, though, or she won’t want dinner.”
I jumped up and followed Dulcie to the door. “Are you mad at me? Did I say the wrong thing?”
She gave me a quick hug. “I had no business criticizing your mom. We’re just so different, you know? It’s hard for us to get along. Always has been.”
I watched Dulcie leave the cottage and pause at the top of the steps. She stood there for a few minutes, staring out across the lake. The rain had stopped, but the water was still dark under the gray sky. The wind tugged at her hair, pulling curly strands from her ponytail. She looked small against the churning clouds.
I went back to reading To Kill a Mockingbird. After a while, Emma came into the kitchen, still sleepy from her nap. I closed my book and fixed her a glass of juice and a couple of cookies. Outside the rain started falling again and the wind blew. I began to worry Mom had been right about the weather.
That night, Emma’s screams woke me from my own dream about “T” and the girls in the canoe. I sat straight up in bed, clutching the covers. Downstairs, Dulcie’s footsteps hurried to Emma’s room. I ran to the top of the stairs just in time to see her open Emma’s door.
“Emma, what’s wrong?” she asked.
“The bones came out of the lake,” Emma cried. “They’re going to get me!”
“It’s okay, sweetie, it’s okay.” Dulcie’s voice shook as if Emma’s dream had frightened her, too. “There aren’t any bones in the lake. You were dreaming.”
I leaned over the railing. “Is she all right?”
In the hall below, Dulcie hugged Emma tight. “She had a bad dream. A nightmare.”
Emma looked up at me, still frightened. “The bones came out,” she sobbed. “The bones came out.”
For a moment, I had a scary feeling that someone else was in the cottage—unseen, watching, waiting. I looked behind me, into the shadowy corners of my room. No one was there, but I couldn’t get rid of the feeling or the goose bumps on my arms.
Dulcie smiled up at me. “Everything’s all right, Ali. Go back to bed. You look cold.”
As Dulcie carried Emma to her room, I wished I could run down the steps and squeeze into the big double bed with them. But that would have been way too babyish. After Dulcie’s door closed, I went to my room and snuggled under Great-Grandmother’s quilt, shivering with cold.
In my head, Emma’s words repeated themselves like a song you can’t get out of your mind. “The bones came out, the bones came out, the bones came out.”