Summer in the Hamptons.
She stepped forward, and the planks creaked under her tread. How many times had her grandmother scolded her for running into the house with sandy feet?
She pressed down harder, feeling the wood give a little beneath the pressure. Right there. That was where she and Harriet had hidden their “treasure.” Fliss knew about the loose floorboard because she’d been careful to tiptoe around it whenever she’d sneaked out to meet Seth. Harriet had returned from one of her many trips to the beach, her pockets stuffed with shells and stones rubbed smooth by the ocean. She’d wanted to take them back to the city, as a memory, but they both knew their father would throw them out, so Fliss had found a box and tucked them out of sight under the floorboards.
They were probably still there.
She stared down at the floor, lost in memories of happy times. And, despite everything, there had been happy times. And perhaps those times had been all the happier, even more precious, because of the tough times that surrounded them. The good moments shone brighter because of the dark.
She strolled through the house, and the years fell away. She remembered the camps they’d built, the games of hide-and-seek they’d played, the hours spent splashing in the waves and digging in the sand. In this place, Fliss had seen her twin sister blossom. The tortured, tongue-tied silence that punctuated their days in New York had been replaced by conversation. Reluctant at first. Tentative. A trickle of words. And then the trickle became a steady stream and the stream became a torrent, like a surge of water escaping past an unwanted obstruction. Harriet’s stammer had reappeared only on those rare occasions their father visited.
That was all in the past now.
These days there were no unexpected visits. He stayed out of all their lives.
Pushing aside that thought, Fliss shoved the door closed and walked into the kitchen.
It had all the signs that the occupant had left in a hurry.
A pan lay unwashed on the stove, a carton of milk on the countertop.
Fliss threw the milk away and washed the pan.
Domesticated? She could do that if she had to. And maybe she’d even ask her grandmother for a cooking lesson while she was here. That would surprise Harriet.
She moved through the rest of the house, checking everything. The back door was locked, so presumably whoever had helped her grandmother from the garden had taken the time to secure the house. She went upstairs and checked her grandmother’s bedroom. The window was secure, the bed made.
She wandered past the room her brother, Daniel, had occupied whenever they’d stayed and took the stairs up to the attic room she’d shared with her sister. Instinctively she stepped over the fourth step with its telltale creak, and then realized what she’d done and smiled. She knew a hundred ways to sneak out of this house undetected. She knew which stair would betray her, which window would stick and which door would creak.
She pushed open the door of the bedroom, remembering how she’d oiled the hinges.
Her mother slept like the dead, but had her grandmother known she was sneaking out?
Harriet had known, but she’d never said anything. She’d pretended to be asleep so she wouldn’t have to lie if questioned.
Fliss glanced around the room.
Not much had changed. Two beds were tucked under the slope in the roof so that you had to duck your head before you stood up in the morning. She strolled to the window and gazed down into the garden, noting the offending apple tree with its curved branches and thick trunk. The roots were visible on the surface, as if it was trying to remove itself from ground it had occupied for so long.
And there, beyond the apple tree, was the gate.
She’d oiled that, too, turning it from an alarm to an ally.
From her vantage point high in the house she could see that the path to the beach was overgrown. It didn’t surprise her. No one used the path except the inhabitants of Sea Breeze, and she doubted her grandmother was in the habit of taking the rough sandy trail that led through the sand dunes to the beach.
For a moment she was tempted to kick off her shoes and run down that path as she had as a child, eagerly anticipating the moment when she crested the dunes and saw the rolling waves of the Atlantic Ocean.
Her feet were halfway out of her shoes before she stopped herself.
She needed to stop giving in to impulse and behave responsibly.
She slid her feet back into her shoes and instead rose on tiptoe and leaned her forehead on the cool glass, trying to see past the knotted vegetation that obscured the path to the dunes beyond. She knew every dip and curve of that path.
People said that memories faded in time, but hers hadn’t faded at all.
She could still remember that warm summer night in minute detail, every sound, every color, every touch.
She moved away from the window. What was the point of torturing herself? It was behind her. She should be moving on. And she would have been doing exactly that if she’d just told Seth the truth when she’d met him earlier. A few words, that was all she’d needed to say. Instead she’d pretended to be Harriet.