A Long Time Gone by Karen White Page A

had managed to contain itself within the four walls of the bedroom.
    I peered behind the door to make sure she wasn’t hiding from me. “Chloe?” I called out, just in case. I waited a moment before heading back into the hallway.
    I glanced into the empty third bedroom, then turned toward the second hallway, pausing on the threshold to the master bedroom. The tall black-ash four-poster bed dominated the large room, making the rest of the furniture appear to be shrinking back in awe. Nobody knew for sure which was older, the house or the bed, and I’d long ago stopped caring.
    Guests always asked why the master bedroom wasn’t in the main part of the house, and I’d had to explain dozens of times that it was thought this had been part of the original structure, the two front windows of the bedroom placed strategically in front of the oak alley that had long ago led up to the front door. It was assumed this vantage point was intended for the mistress and master of the house so they’d know when it was time to greet guests. Because it was my family, it was most likely a matter of knowing who they were avoiding.
    The bed had been neatly made; two house slippers—the pair my mother had been wearing the previous evening—sat primly by the side of the bed. An antique mantel clock chimed over the fireplace and I looked at it with surprise. Nine o’clock. I remembered Tommy saying that Cora usually got to the house by noon to help my mother get out of bed, and except for school days I’d never seen Chloe out of bed before one. Even accounting for jet lag and time-zone issues, she shouldn’t have been up and about.
    â€œCarol Lynne?” I called, walking quickly toward the bathroom that had been added when my mother had come home for the last time when I was sixteen, and Bootsie had relinquished the bedroom to her. It had seemed to me at the time that Bootsie had given up her room as a way of thanking my mother for coming back, and maybe even as a bribe to get her to stay. It had driven a wedge between my grandmother and me, an unbridgeable chasm that I’d never been able to cross.
    A silver-backed hairbrush and comb sat neatly on the laminate counter by the sink, surrounded by a mirrored tray where tubes of lipstick and mascara lay with precision between a powder compact anda bottle of foundation and a bottle of Youth Dew. The inside of the bottle was cloudy, the dark brown liquid viscous, and I wondered if the perfume had been Bootsie’s.
    Despite my growing worry as to where my mother and Chloe might be, I couldn’t stop myself from staring at the orderliness of my mother’s room. The Carol Lynne I had known had been disorganized and messy, a revolving hurricane of mindless, far-reaching plans that had her bouncing from one idea to the next, an indecisive bee unable to settle for long on a single flower. She was a constant revolution fueled by illegal substances and alcohol that allowed her to touch ground only sporadically. During her infrequent stays in this house while I’d been growing up, her room had more closely resembled Chloe’s than Bootsie’s meticulously ordered world.
    I backed out of the bedroom, closing the door with a slam before racing down the hallway toward the back stairs and the kitchen. A piece of folded paper with my name scribbled on the outside sat on the counter by the sink and I snatched it up. It was from Tommy, giving me his cell number and asking me to call him.
    I fumbled at my jeans pocket before I realized that I still hadn’t charged my cell phone.
Damn
. My head throbbed and I thought for a moment that I could run upstairs and plug in my phone and grab another pill. But then I thought of Chloe and Carol Lynne and assumed that if the two of them were together, it couldn’t be good.
    Sticking the note into my pocket, I headed out the back door and into the ruined garden, barely noticing the healthy collection of