Carole (22 page)

Hi, Carole! Ditto for me on the welcome-home stuff in Stevie’s e-mail. It seemed like you were gone forever! All we had in your place was your friend Karenna, and believe me, she was no substitute. (No offense to her—she’s just definitely not
you
.) I’m sure you’ll be at Pine Hollow first thing tomorrow checking on Starlight. So I’ll see you then, okay? And I want to hear all about your trip.

As for your latest names, Stevie, I think you’d better go back to the drawing board. If your poor horse doesn’t already
have a complex from being called No-Name all these weeks, she’d
definitely
get one from being called Shahrina!

Hey, guys! Dad just turned on the computer to check for e-mails from work, so I figured I’d check for messages, too, even though it’s almost two
A.M
. and I’m so tired I feel like a zombie! It was great to have your notes waiting for me—it really makes me feel like I’m home!

I can’t wait to see you guys tomorrow. (Even though right now I feel like I might want to sleep right
through
tomorrow—and maybe the next day, too!) I have so much to tell you about my trip, including one story that is so amazing you might not believe it. I’m not sure I believe it myself, and I was there. Stevie, remember how you were kind of overwhelmed and scared and freaked after you and No-Name rescued Hollie last month? Well, let’s just say that now I know how you feel.…

It’s great to be home!

That sort of makes it sound like I didn’t enjoy my trip to Minnesota, doesn’t it? Well, that’s not what I meant. I wouldn’t trade the trip for anything. But it’s still nice to be back where I belong. Even if Minnesota did start to feel a little like home toward the end there …

By the way, I finished my family tree project yesterday after I got home from hanging out with my friends at Pine Hollow. It didn’t take that long to do, since I already had so much information from the trip. I’m sure my teacher will like it. It’s really detailed, thanks mostly to Grand Alice and her stories.

But even though I’m proud of the way the family tree project turned out, I can’t help thinking that it doesn’t even come close to telling the whole story of my family. There just didn’t seem to be a way to work in all the extra stuff I learned, the stuff that didn’t really have anything to do with who was married to whom or who had how many children or whatever.

I wasn’t expecting anything very dramatic to happen when we all arrived at the New Year’s Eve party. Christina’s family lives about four miles away, and the night was really cold—even by Minnesota standards. The house was warm, though, and crowded with what had to be the entire population of Nyberg. Everyone was laughing and talking and eating and having a good time, and we dove right in.

Aunt Jessie got there a little later than the rest of us. She
came over to me soon after she arrived. “Happy New Year, Carole,” she said. “Are you having fun?”

I was surprised—she actually sounded friendly! “Sure,” I said. “Everyone here has been super nice.”

Aunt Jessie smiled, a small but not unfriendly smile. “Everyone’s been nice to you except maybe me. I thought I should apologize. I know that I haven’t been as friendly as I should have been. After all, you are my niece, and I do want to get to know you better. Sometimes I’ve got a real attitude. I’m sorry, okay?” She held out her hand.

“Okay.” I shook her hand gladly. I still felt a bit strange toward Aunt Jessie—it seemed like every time I talked to her, she was angry about something—but I was happy to be on better terms with her.

Soon Christina came over to drag me onto the little dance floor in the family room, and I forgot about Aunt Jessie for a while. But when I stopped to catch my breath later, I saw her standing at the window and staring out at the night sky. I walked over to her.

“Hello,” I said.

Aunt Jessie turned with an excited smile. “Oh, Carole, this is just the kind of night I need to ride Kismet over to Lover’s Point to take my pictures.”

I was sure she couldn’t possibly mean that, but I was horrified that she would even talk about doing something so foolish. “You’d have to be crazy to take your horse out on a night like this,” I said. “You’d endanger her life, riding up there! It would be a pretty bad decision to go out.”

“I make my own decisions,” Aunt Jessie snapped. Her dark
eyes were blazing. “I don’t need you to tell me how or when to ride my horse. And I don’t need you—or anyone else—to tell me what to do.”

Suddenly I felt myself getting angry, too. Every rude word my aunt had said to me, everything I suspected about her, came back to me then. “I don’t think you’ve been making very good decisions with your life so far,” I spat out. “This one might be minor compared to some of the other colossal bloopers you’ve made, but it would be dangerous for Kismet as well as for you. It’s stupid and reckless, and I think you should know better.”

Aunt Jessie drew herself up tall. “And I think I don’t care what you think!” she shouted. Then she stormed out of the room.

I was staring after her, wondering how someone so different from my mother could look so much like her, be related to her, be related to me, when Louise came rushing over. “What did you say to her?” she demanded. “Why did you get her so upset?”

“I’m sorry she left. I didn’t mean to upset her,” I said stiffly. “But I don’t understand what the big deal is. She’s always getting upset. She was saying what a great night it was to ride Kismet to Lover’s Point, and I told her I thought that would be a really stupid thing to do.”

Louise looked horrified. I was glad that she seemed to agree with me. But then she spoke. “You mean she’s going to the lake without me?” she cried. “But she promised I could come!”

I told Louise that Aunt Jessie had run into the kitchen and
maybe she should go talk some sense into her. When she had hurried off, I went looking for a friendly face to talk to. I found Grand Alice sitting in an easy chair, tapping her feet to the party music.

“You look flushed, child,” she said when she saw me. “Sit down. Tell me, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said, still feeling upset. “Jessie said she was going to ride out to Lover’s Point and I told her she shouldn’t. I told her she might have screwed things up in her life before, but she shouldn’t do it again—she shouldn’t endanger Kismet like that. Jessie ran off and now Louise is mad and went off to be with her. I don’t know what’s wrong with either of them.”

Grand Alice looked very grave. “Oh dear,” she said slowly. “Oh dear, you shouldn’t have said that.” She looked very unhappy.

“Said what?” Suddenly I had the feeling that I’d done something very wrong, though I still had no idea what.

“Said that to Jessie. That very wrong thing to say.” Grand Alice shook her head. “You didn’t know. How could you? But, oh dear, you shouldn’t have.”

“What is it?” I asked. “What did I say?”

“Let’s go find a quiet place to talk,” she said grimly, getting up from her chair. “You’ll need to hear the whole story now.”

Again, I’m going to try to write down the whole story just as she told it to me that night.

Fifteen years ago, when Jessie was barely out of high school, she met a man named Lawrence Freeman. He was an artist. He
liked her photographs. She liked his paintings. He was tall and funny and as much in love with her as she was in love with him. I never saw anyone love someone so much as Jessie loved Lawrence Freeman
.

They got married and moved to New York City. He painted and taught art, and Jessie took photographs full-time. They did well. They had a few art exhibitions and started selling some of their work, and they really enjoyed living in the city. They were as happy as they could be—even more so when, after two years, Jessie had a baby girl. They named their daughter Joy
.

One fall weekend, they decided to take a short vacation. They rented a car and drove up to western Massachusetts to look at the fall foliage. The hills in New England are beautiful that time of year. They were driving down Route 9 when something went wrong. To this day we’re not sure exactly what happened. Maybe something was spilled on the highway. Maybe something was wrong with the car. Anyhow, it skidded without warning, flipped over the guardrail, and tumbled down the embankment. Jessie was hardly hurt at all
.

Lawrence and Joy were killed
.

Unfortunately, Jessie had been driving. No one blamed her for what happened—there were witnesses who saw the accident and said that the car went completely out of control—but Jessie blamed herself. She still can’t forgive herself. Now it seems like the only time she’s ever happy is when she’s taking photographs. It’s the only time she can completely forget about her family
.

We never talk about Lawrence and Joy, or New York, because it’s easier for Jessie not to remember them
.

After that, of course, I understood a lot more about Aunt Jessie. A whole lot more. I still don’t really understand why she doesn’t want to remember her husband and baby daughter—I think she would feel better if she talked about them and tried to remember the good times she had with them. But Grand Alice says that everyone grieves in her own way, and I guess maybe that’s true.

Anyway, I knew as soon as I heard the story that I should go and apologize to Aunt Jessie for what I’d said. I told Grand Alice that.

“I think that’s a good idea,” she said. “You’re a compassionate person, Carole. Be kind to Jessie. Her life hasn’t been easy.”

“Miss Alice?” Dad knocked on the door of the room where we’d gone to talk. “I came to see if you would favor me with a dance.” He looked at us. “Or am I interrupting?”

“Carole and I just came in here for a quiet chat,” she said. “I think we’re finished now.”

“We were talking about Aunt Jessie,” I told Dad. “Grand Alice told me about Lawrence and Joy.”

Dad nodded slowly. “So now you know,” he said. “Lawrence was a good man, Carole, and you would have liked him as an uncle. You and Joy might have been good friends.” He sighed. “I didn’t like not telling you about them, Carole, but Jessie keeps that part of her life so private. I thought you ought to hear it from this side of the family.”

I nodded. After what Grand Alice had told me, I understood why Dad had kept the secret. I also understood how wrong I’d been to think that Jessie was like Jackson Foley just
because they came from the same family. Jessie’s anger and grief were nothing like Jackson’s abandonment and betrayal. I was starting to think that maybe bloodlines aren’t as important in people as they are in horses.

Dad and Grand Alice went off to dance, and I headed to the kitchen, looking for Aunt Jessie. She wasn’t there, and neither was Louise. As I was wondering where to look next, the door opened and Christina hurried in, bringing a blast of arctic cold along with her.

“Brrr!”
she said through the folds of her scarf, which was wrapped around her face. “It’s
really
getting cold out there.”

I helped her unwrap, then asked if she’d seen Louise.

“Sure,” Christina said, shrugging off her coat. “That’s where I’ve been. I just gave her a ride home on my snowmobile. She said she wasn’t feeling well, but her parents are having fun and she didn’t want to make them leave the party.”

I had a sudden bad feeling. “What about Jessie? Have you seen her?”

“Uh-uh. I think she’s gone, too, because her truck isn’t in the driveway.”

At that point I still didn’t believe that Jessie would really ride out to Lover’s Point, but I was afraid she’d gone home because of the things I’d said to her, and Louise had followed. I felt as if I’d spoiled the party for both of them. Of course, in the back of my mind even then I was also aware of how terrible it might be if they
had
gone to Lover’s Point, but I didn’t let myself really think about that.

“May I borrow your snowmobile?” I asked Christina. “I’d like to go home and check on Louise.”

Christina was reluctant at first to let me go out alone, but finally I convinced her. She already knew I could handle the snowmobile because she’d let me drive it when she was showing me around a few days earlier. And the moon was bright to light my way through the snowy woods.

I don’t really want to remember that trip. The woods may have been brightly lit, but they were still strange and scary, full of weird shadows and threatening noises. The air was so cold that it felt hard to breathe, and I was really worried about losing the trail left by Christina’s tracks and getting lost.

Finally the lights of the compound came into sight. It was a lucky thing, too, because just a few hundred yards from home the snowmobile sputtered to a stop. It was out of gas. I struggled the rest of the way on foot through the knee-deep snow, noticing as I did that more snow was beginning to fall.