Here Lies Linc (9 page)

I strolled closer, trying to act calm and collected, but Delaney didn’t even attempt to hide her happy smile when she looked up and saw me. “Golly day,” she said, sounding more southern than ever. “You don’t use your locker much, do you?”

“I guess not,” I said. I was too self-conscious to admit I’d been circling hers like a buzzard all afternoon.

“Didn’t you want to talk to me about something. After American Studies?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, pretending it had almost slipped my mind. I reached for the dial on my locker and spun it round and round. Was it 6–12–21? Or 6–21–12? “I wanted to ask you about the last name on the grave you picked. It’s kind of different, right?”

She nodded. “That’s one of the reasons why I picked it.”

“Well, the funny thing is that’s my middle name. Raintree.”

She let out a soft gasp. “Really? So you’re related to him? Robert Raintree?”

I stopped spinning the dial. “No.… I don’t think so. I mean, that’s why I was surprised. If we have any relatives in town, my parents never mentioned them.”

Delaney tucked a stray piece of blond hair behind her ear, thinking hard. “Well, where’d the name Raintree come from? Who were you named after?”

“My father. Raintree was his middle name too. But Dad didn’t grow up around here. He grew up in Wisconsin. We
only moved here because my parents got jobs teaching at the university.”

The little crease between Delaney’s eyebrows deepened. “Well, who was your father named after?”

I banged my locker with my fist and tried the combination again, stalling for time. It was strange. All these years I had walked around with a funny middle name like Raintree, but I’d never thought to track down exactly where it came from.

“I think it’s just an old family name that kept getting passed down,” I said with a little shrug.

Delaney hesitated. “Well, would it be all right if I talked to your father?” she asked shyly. “Maybe he knows more.”

My locker finally decided to clank open. I stuck my head inside for a second and pretended to hunt for books. “I wish you could,” I said. “But he’s not around anymore. He died when I was seven.” I pulled my head out and slammed the locker shut.

Delaney stared at me with her mouth open, as if I had reached out and pinched her. “Oh,” she breathed. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” I told her. “I don’t even know why I brought all this up. It’s probably just a coincidence.”

“Maybe so,” Delaney agreed. Her shoulders sank a little.

“But I’d still like to see it anyway,” I said, just to keep the conversation going. “That grave you picked. Where is it exactly?”

Delaney told me she wasn’t sure how to give me directions, but then her face lit up. “I could show you, though,” she offered.

“Great!” My answer popped out so fast, I started to blush for the fifth time that day. “I mean, that would be good. When?”

“How about tomorrow? I’ll have to go home for a little while after school. But maybe we could meet in the graveyard after that.”

“Sure.”

The corners of Delaney’s mouth twitched up in a mysterious smile. “Then I can show you the real reason I picked Robert Raintree’s grave.”

“The
real
reason?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll see,” she said. “Tomorrow.”

W
HEN
I
CAME HOME
from jogging with the dogs that afternoon, our old Electrolux was parked in the middle of the kitchen floor with a repair tag attached to the hose. I found Lottie lodged behind the giant oak desk in her study, sorting through a pile of musty-looking books. She barely glanced up when I came into the room and moved a stack of papers off the tattered swivel chair in the corner.

I sat down and spun in a slow circle, waiting for Lottie to say something. Her office had been a sunporch before we moved in. But with all the filing cabinets and crowded shelves of books blocking the smeared windows, you could hardly tell anymore. I had always thought about how nice the room would look if we cleared away the clutter and let the light shine through all those hidden panes of glass.

I stopped swiveling long enough to study Lottie’s rubbing wall. The walls on either side of the door to her office were
papered, floor to ceiling, with charcoal impressions from tombstones all over the world—an imprint of a famous French poet’s grave, an English knight in full armor, an epitaph for a sea captain who had been lost somewhere in the Atlantic. A few of the rubbings on the wall were mine. I still remembered the first one Lottie had let me do on my own. We were at a little graveyard somewhere out in the country in Massachusetts, and even when my hand had locked up in a cramp, I wouldn’t quit rubbing—not until the name Thankfull Parsons and the year 1758 and a shadowy skull with wings had appeared underneath the side of my black crayon.

I spun around to face Lottie again. “Thanks, Thankfull,” I said.

She stopped what she was doing, thumbing through a heavy leather-bound book, and her face softened as she looked up at me. I
knew
she’d remember. We used to say that all the time after our cemetery trip to Massachusetts together, whenever one of us passed the salt or did something nice.
Thanks, Thankfull
.

“Thanks for what?” Lottie asked.

“For getting the vacuum cleaner fixed.”

“It only took the repairman two minutes,” she confessed. “Turns out it was only a sock stuck in the hose.”

I gulped back an incredulous laugh and wheeled myself closer. “I’m sorry about all that stuff I said yesterday.”

“No,” Lottie said slowly. “You were right about a lot of it. I know I get lost in my work sometimes. And I forget what it’s like to be your age.” Her brow furrowed, and then a puzzled expression wandered across her face. “Wait a minute. I guess I
have no idea what it’s like to be you. I wasn’t exactly the typical teenager, you know.”

“No kidding!” I said with a laugh bubbling out of my throat. “What
were
you like, anyway?”

“A bookworm mostly. Happiest when I had the old sofa on the second floor of the public library all to myself … with a stack of fresh books waiting at my feet.”

I winced, thinking of Lottie spending all her weekends in the tiny library in New Hope, Wisconsin, coming home to her prim and proper parents. Every other year we went to visit Grandma Dee and Grandad at their quiet retirement village in Florida. I could never wait to escape the way they watched my every move at dinnertime in the dining hall, waiting to see whether I would pick vanilla pudding or chocolate cake for dessert, or their funny rules about no baseball caps indoors or no swimming in the pool until at least two hours after eating.

“Weren’t you ever lonely?” I asked.

“Not really. I guess I was used to being by myself.”

With Lottie in such a talkative mood, I decided to push my luck. “It’s kinda funny. You didn’t have any brothers and sisters, and neither did Dad, and then you guys decided to have just one kid too.”

Lottie smiled wistfully, and I held my breath waiting for her to answer. “We used to tease each other about that,” she said at last. “About being spoiled only children. We called ourselves the Onlies. And we always talked about wanting to have another child, but …” Her voice faded on the last word.

I knew what she was thinking. Life didn’t go according to plan.

“I’ve been wondering,” I said, rushing to change the subject. “Who were we named after? Dad and I?”

Lottie gazed toward the rubbing wall. “The name Lincoln came from your dad’s uncle. And Raintree was a family name from way back on his mother’s side. When I asked Ellen about it once, she told me she had found the name Raintree recorded in her family’s old Bible, and she liked it well enough to pass it on to her son. I’ve always loved it too. Lincoln and Crenshaw are such strong, sturdy names, and Raintree seems to balance everything out. It sounds so clean and peaceful.”

“Whatever happened to that Bible?”

“It’s packed away up in the attic,” Lottie told me. “Your father came across it in his parents’ basement after his mother passed away.”

“I can’t even remember her.”

“I know. It’s a shame.” Lottie shook her head. “You were only three when Ellen was diagnosed with cancer. And your grandfather died just before you were born. He would have been smitten with you, just like she was.”

She let her sad gaze linger on me a little longer before she reached for one of the stacks of paper on her desk, ready to get back to work. But then she stopped. “Wait a minute. Why are you asking all these questions?”

“You know that Adopt-a-Grave Project that Mr. Oliver assigned us? There’s a girl in my class who picked a grave with
the name Robert Raintree on it. Maybe he’s a long-lost relative,” I said, trying to sound mysterious.

I was halfway kidding, but Lottie tilted her head to one side. “Huh, that’s funny. Your father used to joke about having some sort of family connection in Iowa City.”

“Really?” I leaned forward. “Why would he have joked about something like that?”

Lottie eyed her waiting pile of papers. “Please, Lottie,” I said quietly. “I want to hear everything.”

She tipped her head back with a resigned sigh and stared at the ceiling. “Well,” she finally began, “I used to tease your father about his so-called
signs
. Sometimes he would make big decisions based on what he thought were little omens—silly things like a black cat in his path, or it could be a coincidence like a report on the radio that mentioned whatever he had been stewing over.”

“Oh, I bet you loved
that
,” I interrupted, thinking back to her rants about the Black Angel yesterday.

“Oh, it drove me crazy. Here was this very science-minded geologist crossing the street so he wouldn’t have to walk under a ladder.” Lottie shook her head as if she were feeling the exasperation all over again. “Ridiculous!”

She pushed her curls away from her face and went on. “When we decided we wanted to find new jobs, your dad and I interviewed at four universities around the country, and we ended up with four sets of job offers.” She gave me a smug little nod. “But we had a terrible time deciding which offer to accept. Then about this same time, your father was cleaning out his parents’ house, getting it ready to sell. We had been
renting it out ever since his mother died. One day he came home and announced that he knew where we should move. Without a doubt! He had seen one of his signs.” She rolled her eyes.

“What was it?” I asked.

“He said he had been going through a crate of old mail that had been left behind over the last few years. The renters were always terrible about telling the post office where their mail should be forwarded. Anyway, your father found a letter in the pile that was addressed to his mother. Of course Ellen had been dead for quite a while by that time, so he opened it.”

Lottie squinted, trying to remember. “He showed the letter to me. It was very odd, just one or two lines long, and it said something like ‘I apologize for writing, but I’ve been worried about you. Please let me know if you’re well.’ That was it. But here’s the mysterious part. There was no name on the letter—just some initials.” She frowned in thought for a second. “Now I can’t even remember what they were. The only real clue was a return address from Iowa City.”

Lottie threw up her hands. “Anyway, you see how crazy your father was?
That
was his sign for us to move here, that this was the offer we had to accept. I tried to argue with him about it at first, but he would just laugh and say
obviously
his mother had a long-lost lover in Iowa City, and that was as good a reason as any to move here. Then we came for another visit, fell in love with the town, found this house … and there was no turning back.”

I sat there with my mouth hanging open, waiting for
the punch line of the story. “So Dad never figured out who wrote the letter?”

“Not that I know of,” Lottie said with a shrug. “I’m not even sure what happened to it. Your father talked about tracking down the address as soon as he got a chance. But we were so swamped with work and getting you settled and fixing up the house when we first moved here. And then …” Something in her face shifted, and when she spoke again, all the oomph had drained from her voice. “He ran out of time. We only had a few months here before he died.”

I couldn’t help myself. Even though I could see Lottie wanted to be done with the subject, I had to ask. “What about Dad’s omens? Do you think he had any warning about what would happen to him?”

“No,” Lottie said flatly. “He left for work that day humming a Beatles song.” Her mouth twisted with bitterness. “So you see why I’m not exactly a big believer in signs and superstitions.”

I nodded. Lottie pressed her fingertips to her eyelids for a long second. She startled me when she suddenly blinked her eyes open and demanded, “So who’d
you
pick?”

“What?”

“Whose grave did you pick for your project?”

I shifted uneasily in my seat. “Well, I—”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t done it yet? Didn’t you see that work sheet I left for you on the table last night?”