“This is our sweet Agatha,” she said to me, letting her fingers trail slowly down a lock of the wavy hair. Then she reached over to a side table for a brush, and smoothed the hair back into place.
Agatha didn’t react. She might as well have been in another dimension.
“Nice to meet you,” I said to Agatha, fighting the urge to back away.
This delighted Laura. “How lovely, Margaret,” she said. “You know, that’s a very empathetic instinct, to speak directly to her. You’d be shocked by how many people treat her like she’s not even here.”
“Yes, very good,” John said, startling me. I’d forgotten he was in the room with us. “Perhaps it’s time for us to have a little talk.”
* * *
WE DIDN’T RETURN to the west parlor. Instead, Laura stopped short at the base of the stairs and said, “Oh, let’s talk in the library; the view of the grounds is so nice this time of day.”
So we went into the library, which was a large room almost entirely walled in by overflowing bookshelves. In the center, four olive-green leather chairs faced one another, each with its own little wooden table and an antique reading lamp dipping its nose over the chair’s shoulder. On the far wall of the room, an expanse of windows looked out over a breathtaking vista of velvety green hills backed by silver-pink late-afternoon clouds.
I had the distinct feeling they were trying to distract me with how lovely the property was.
“Please, Margaret, sit,” John said, and I sat in one of the chairs and then tried to make myself appear fascinated by the walls of books. Whatever they were about to say loomed over us like smog, and I didn’t want to look up into their eyes and see that they knew it, too.
Laura began to speak, then stopped herself and coughed a little, as if the words had choked her. There was a long silence. It was so painful that I was compelled to speak.
“So . . . Agatha,” I said. “How old is she?”
They both answered at once. “Sixteen,” John said, while Laura said, “Seventeen.”
They exchanged a tense look, and then Laura sat down in the chair across from mine. “Seventeen,” she said again.
“And what’s . . . wrong with her?” I cringed inwardly when I heard myself ask the question, but neither Laura nor John seemed bothered.
“Agatha is sick,” Laura said. “Up until eight and a half months ago, she was your typical happy teenager. She went out with her friends, went to parties, loved shopping . . . you know.”
I nodded as if I could relate. I had no memories of being a happy teenager. Everything in my life before the accident had been wiped into a smeary haze. Maybe I’d been happy. I guess so. But I didn’t remember much about it.
“And then, one day . . . everything changed. She changed. It was as if she became a different person. Angry. Disturbed, almost. We were baffled and helpless—we had no idea what could have caused it. And then just as we were getting help, she . . .” Laura’s voice trailed off.
I looked at John.
He swallowed hard. “She . . . shut down. Like someone had flipped a switch. And she became what she is now. She’s very cooperative and doesn’t cause any trouble. She can feed herself, dress herself . . . shower with a bit of help. She can walk. And we think she can read, though we’re not entirely sure.”
“She’s not interested in reading,” Laura said.
“What is she interested in?” I asked.
They glanced at each other.
“Nothing, as far as we can tell,” Laura said, her voice straining to sound casual. “Whatever you feed her, she’ll eat. Wherever you take her, she’ll go. Doctors’ appointments, needles, examinations—nothing bothers her. The doctors think it may have been some kind of aggressive bacterial infection that affected her frontal cortex . . . Do you know much about the brain?”
I shook my head and sat back in the chair. Well, no big deal, I told myself. So they have a catatonic daughter. Agatha’s a person with a medical condition. You can live with a person who has a medical condition.
I had nothing against sick people. When you thought about it, it really had nothing to do with me.
“You’re probably wondering,” Laura said slowly, “what this has to do with you.”
Oh.
“I’m afraid,” John said, looking down at his hands, “that our motives for bringing you here weren’t entirely as Mr. Albright explained. The fact remains, obviously, that we want to provide you with a comfortable home, with people who care about you. We are committed to giving you the same life we are giving our own children—spending money, clothes, even paying for your college education. The debt of gratitude I owe your father is in no way diminished by the fact that this situation is slightly more complex than it seems at first glance.”
There had been a little tower of feelings inside me. Something small and fragile, a house of cards made of hope. I’d thought I might be okay for a while—
“But—” he said.
—but.
“But we are going to ask you for something in return,” he said.
The tower imploded. I stopped pretending not to look at them and faced Laura head-on. I could see, suddenly, every flaw in her impeccable facade: wispy hairs rebelling against her sleek mane, fine lines at the corners of her lips and eyes. The way she held her shoulders so primly square, so purposefully rigid.
“We’d like for you to be Agatha’s . . . companion,” Laura said. She bit her lip. “The doctors have said that, while she can’t be out in public, it’s not good for her to live in total isolation. She needs people around, and not just her parents, or even a nurse. She needs . . . a friend.”
“A friend?” I asked. “How can we be friends? She didn’t even notice I was in the room.”
Laura leaned forward. “Of course she noticed. I could tell how happy she was to meet you. She was thrilled to have a visitor her own age.”
“We don’t mean you have to spend all of your time with her,” John said. “We have other help, and Laura manages most of it on her own. But a fair amount of time, every day—when you’re studying, perhaps. Just for her to have the sense of not being without friends. That’s all we want.” His voice tightened, like there was a fist around it. “If you had known her before—if you had met her before she got sick, you’d understand. She could light up a room. She was so vivacious and charismatic.”
“She was very popular,” Laura added, sounding proud. “She had so many friends. Unfortunately, when she fell ill, her friends abandoned her. It only took a few weeks for them to stop calling, stop offering to visit.”