I had heard it once tonight from Eleanor’s lips. I had never heard it before in our house.
“Who is Rosie?” I asked.
Nathan did not answer.
Eleanor pressed a hand over her heart. “My daughter.”
I looked from her to Nathan. “Your daughter?”
“My sister,” Nathan said quietly.
The words seemed to cost him something.
I stared at him. “You had a sister?”
He looked at the floor.
“She died before I was ten.”
The hallway felt suddenly colder.
I had been married to Nathan for eleven years. I knew about the scar on his knee from falling off his bike at thirteen. I knew about the professor who had inspired him to become a doctor. I knew his favorite song, his childhood dog’s name, the exact way he took his coffee.
But I had not known he had a sister.
Eleanor began to cry again, silently.
“Her name was Rosemary,” she said. “We called her Rosie. She was eight.”
Eight.
The same age as Lily.
I pressed my hand against the wall to steady myself.
Nathan looked at his mother with a pain that made him seem suddenly young. “You promised you wouldn’t do this.”
“I didn’t tell her,” Eleanor said. “She said it first.”
“She’s a child,” Nathan said. “Children say things.”
“She said Rosie’s name.”
“Maybe she heard it somewhere.”
“Where?” Eleanor asked. “From you? You’ve erased her from this house.”
Nathan’s jaw clenched.
I turned to him. “You never told me.”
He looked at me then, and for the first time, I saw not secrecy but shame.
“My parents never talked about it,” he said. “Not really. After Rosie died, our house just became quiet. Pictures disappeared. Her room was emptied. My mother stopped singing. My father stopped coming home before midnight. I learned not to ask.”
Eleanor whispered, “You learned from him.”
Nathan’s eyes flashed. “Don’t.”
I felt as though I had walked into the middle of a wound that had been bleeding for decades beneath clean bandages.
“How did she die?” I asked.
No one spoke.
Then Eleanor said, “She fell.”
Nathan’s face twisted. “Mom.”
“She fell out of bed,” Eleanor continued, staring at Lily’s closed door. “It was an old iron bed. Too high. I had told your father we needed a rail, but he said she was too old for that. She had a fever that night. I was exhausted. I lay beside her for hours, but Nathan was sick too, and he called for me. I went to check on him.”
Her voice cracked.
“I was gone five minutes.”
Nathan leaned against the opposite wall, looking sick.
“I heard the sound,” Eleanor said. “Not loud. Just a thud. When I got back, she was on the floor. Her neck…” She stopped, pressed her fist to her mouth, and shook her head. “She was breathing when I lifted her. She was warm. I kept telling her Grandma was there, even though I was her mother. I don’t know why I said Grandma. Maybe because my own mother used to say it to me. I kept saying, ‘Grandma’s here now.’ But she never woke up.”
The hallway blurred.
