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Theodora knelt before the grave stone, resting hands worn by time across carved letters that had grown fainter, smaller, as timid and fading like Eleanor Vance had been in life.
"You must have been lonely this past year, my Nell," she said, smiling. "But I'm here now. Your Theodora is here, and she brings our promised picnic."
Her words fell upon the silent cemetery, expecting a rapt audience where there was none; foolishly, foolishly Theodora laughed to herself. As if she could hear me under that stone, she thought. Here I am, sitting here with a bright yellow blanket and a picnic basket with food that I do not even fancy. Why must I do this; why must I come here every year to eat these tasteless sandwiches and drink tea long gone cold; why must I fulfill a promise I had never intended to make in earnest—you know me, Nell, I was silly and frivolous and petty in your eyes, in the end, wasn't I?
"I hope you like cold chicken salad and apple pie," Theo said. She brought out the napkin-wrapped bread, setting it on the cheery yellow gingham before she reached for the hard-boiled eggs. "They are certainly no fine creations of Mrs. Dudley's, but I have learned how to make a few things."
She had tried to recall what foods Nellie had taken to in those few days at that house, but could come up with no recollection—the trappings of daily life had seemed so irrelevant at the time, so inconsequential when the walls felt like they were pressing in on Theodora while Nellie chased after her smiles and acknowledgement and then spurned them in the very next breath she took.
Sentimentality and pathos were things that she was impoverished of and Eleanor wealthy in. But Nell had always been so certain of the things Theodora took for granted and was in excess of, and in some twisted way, thought it had made them equals. Perhaps that was why they saw each other with such painful, loathsome clarity, perhaps that was why they loved and hated each other in equal measures to be unmatched by the people that came and went in Theodora's life since Hill House.
She was the only one to visit Eleanor Vance's lonesome grave, through the decades when time ought to have softened the edges of tragedy; Dr. Montague had passed many years ago, survived by his lovely wife, and Luke had by some miracle shaped up to be a responsible man while she wasn't looking, now surrounded by family of his own. What of her, and what of Nellie? She knew with a certainty rooted deep as how Hill House's claws had sunk into Nell that this little patch of earth was an empty shell.
How could it contain the enormity of Nellie's soul? The selfishness and the hate and the love and the little lies she told, and the jealousy and the admiration and the simpering, desperate way she looked to Theodora—to her, and to Dr. Montague and Luke Sanderson—for even the barest scraps of affection and belonging. Nell had been like one of those pitiful animals, Theodora had known this, with the acuity of a hound scenting the vulnerable.
And thus like the wretched woman she knew she was, Theodora had pounced upon that susceptibility.
"You're not really under this stone, are you?" she asked after she finished eating. "You're back there, waiting for me. You want me to follow you home, don't you, baby?"
Theodora gave up on all pretense of responsibility and reached into the basket. The flask was filled with good brandy—the taste brought her back to the parlor, sat cross-legged on the hearthrug. Nellie's fingers had been warm against her cheek, before she had taken her hand back, always running away.
"Well, you will have to wait," Theodora said, cynical. "I intend to live as long and as full as possible, my Nellie—it is only right, you see, for me to make the most of this life, after what I have given up." After who I have given up, she thought, if only I had said yes. If only I had thought to let her come with me, no matter that we may have ended up hating each other and parting ways, if only, if only—
There it is, Theodora observed, the flash of bright red in the corner of my eye. You always only come when I am hateful, and not when I try to love you, Nell. Why is that? Is that how you will forevermore think of me?
If she turned, she knew that there would be no one looking at her with that sad, beloved face she knew in both dream and nightmare. So Theodora closed her eyes, and brought the mouth of her flask to her lips, and pretended that the cold fingers resting atop her free hand was as warm as it had been back when her hair was not yet grey at the roots, when she had been the loveliest thing in Eleanor Vance's eyes.
And not this haunted old woman who sat alone.
She is the haunting, Theodora knew this now, had known it the way she knows what cards the researchers hid in another room she cannot see.
My Nell is the haunting and I am the house she has made herself welcome in. My heart is the blue room—I have never left it, have I?—and it beats in time with the soft breaths against my neck when I retired to bed knowing I was alone. She sleeps there and has made herself welcome; Nell is as selfish and horrible and unbearable as I, and this is why we so rightly deserve to be inflicted upon each other. After all my failures, do I deserve to turn her out and leave her, cold and alone and lost within the luxurious trappings of that hateful, odious, and selfish house?