Maybe a Fox (13 page)

Where was the fox? Jules turned in all directions, craning for a glimpse. She had lost her. But then she took a step back and looked hard at the straight, neat line of rocks. What she saw next was a small opening into and through a curtain of brush that nearly hid an archway of stones, the opening about the size of her shower door.

She began to tremble.

All these years. All the times she and Sylvie and Sam had roamed through these woods. They must have passed this way dozens of times and never seen it, blocked as it was by the giant pine, a pine they had passed a million times. But now, in the waning moments of daylight, Jules knew exactly what she was looking at. The Grotto was right in front of her. And without even thinking that there might be a bear or a catamount in there, she pushed aside the brush curtain and stepped right in.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. The cave wasn't very deep or tall; the top of her head was only inches from the ceiling. A smattering of late sunlight filtered through the opening and bounced against the walls, each beam something like the thin beam from her LED light, only instead of the steady white that it gave off, bits of this light glittered red, yellow, and orange.

The air was musty, filled with dried leaves and dirt . . . and something else, something familiar. Coconut? Jules turned around and around in the small space. She wasn't imagining it.

Sam had given Sylvie a coconut candle for Christmas. That was it. That was what Jules smelled. The coconut candle. A glimmer of light flashed on the back wall. Ridges of dirt had been carved into the earthen walls, like shelves, and each was lined with rocks.

On one of them, just above eye level, sat the candle, and right next to it was . . . wait . . . it couldn't be . . . Jules reached for her hand lens and clicked on the LED light. It was! It was the flamingo mug with the chip. Their mom's mug, the one that Sylvie had told Jules their dad must have moved, because it must have made him too sad to see on the windowsill in the kitchen.

All those times that Sylvie took off running, running so that there was a big gap between them, she must have been running here! Sylvie had known about the Grotto all along and kept it a secret from her. And she had lied about the mug, too. She'd brought it here, along with the coconut candle.

Jules felt her cheeks burn with anger, felt her whole face light up. But almost as quickly she cooled down, because just then the little fox brushed up against her leg, like a cat who wanted attention. In the back of her mind she knew that this was a Do Not.
Do not touch a wild animal.
But here in the cave, the fox did not seem like a wild animal. She hardly even seemed like a fox. What was she? Jules didn't know. She reached down and ran her hand over the fox's coarse red fur. The fox didn't flinch.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Jules whispered. The fox sat down and wrapped her tail around her front paws.

Jules stepped forward until she stood directly in front of the wall of rocks. Cobwebs and dust covered many of them. Even with the light from her hand lens, it was too dim to be able to tell what sort of rocks all of them were, but a few stood out: dolomite and kaolinite and muscovite schist and talc. The kind of rocks that caught light and held it. The kind of rocks that Jules herself prized in her collection.

The shelf with the flamingo mug and the candle was cleaner. Rocks lined it the same way that they lined Jules's shelves and windowsill at home. The rocks were arranged the way Jules would've arranged them.

But the other earthen shelves were covered with dust and dirt and cobwebs. Those rocks had been there for a long, long time. She reached out to touch one, but then withdrew her hand. Someone, long ago, someone she didn't know and never would, had left that rock in honor of someone important. Someone like Zeke. Someone like her mother. Jules felt a buzz run through her. That was why Sylvie had brought the mug! To honor their mother!

Jules pulled the rock her dad had given her, the verde antique rock, from her pocket. She felt its heft in her hand as memories, a stream of them, flooded through her. Memories of Sylvie. Sylvie snaking her pointer finger across the blanket, Sylvie making snow families, Sylvie telling her about their mother, how Mom liked black licorice, never red. She loved to sing but had a terrible voice. She always won at marbles.

That was when Jules understood why Sylvie had never told her about this place. She had needed it for herself. Sylvie had worked so hard to keep their mother's memory alive for Jules; but here, in this hidden place, she didn't have to work at all. Instead she could just be alone with her own memories. In this place, she didn't have to share anything at all, not even with Jules.

The fox remained sitting and waited quietly while Jules took it all in. Jules began to say the names of the rocks out loud: “Granite, limestone, marble” . . . names that Sylvie probably wouldn't know. Sylvie knew a lot about a lot of things, but she didn't know everything. Jules was the one who had the eye for rocks, who knew one from another and where they were found in Vermont and New Hampshire and lots of other places. After all, she had been the supplier of wish rocks.

And in the midst of all the rocks, there was the flamingo mug. Jules slipped the serpentine back into her pocket and lifted the mug off the shelf as carefully as she had ever lifted anything in her life. Her mother's mug.

Wait. There was something inside it.

Jules shook it. A rock, of course. And something else, too, poking out just above the rim. A waterproof marker. It took Jules a second, but then she realized: Sylvie had also come here to write her wish rocks. Her burning wishes, every one of which was the same:
To run faster, so that . . .

Jules looked down at the fox, still so patient there on the dusty dirt floor.

“So that WHAT
,
though?”

Jules sighed. She plucked the waterproof marker out of the mug, and then she shook the piece of limestone out onto her palm. It was a perfect wish rock, a little bigger than a half-dollar and nearly flat on one side, a good surface for writing on.

But something was already written on it. Jules held it under her LED light.
To run faster.
Of course. Sylvie's one wish. It was strange and painful to see it, Sylvie's wish in Sylvie's handwriting, without Sylvie in the world anymore.

“It's not fair,” she said to the fox. The same thing she had said to Sam. There wasn't any anger in her today, though. Only sadness. And a kind of wonder, that Sylvie had kept this secret from them all. She turned the rock over, to hide her sister's wish. But there were words on the other side too.

To keep Jules safe.

J
ules stared at the words. “To keep me safe?” she said aloud. “What does that mean?”

She flipped the rock over, then back.
To run faster, to keep Jules safe.

The other rocks on the flamingo mug shelf all had writing on them too, she saw now. She picked up the first one, a piece of granite. On the front side, facing out, was the familiar wish:
To run faster.
But on the back side?

To keep Dad safe.

Now Jules picked up the third and fourth and fifth and sixth rocks, flipping from the front to the back. They were all the same—
To run faster
on the front, and either
To keep Dad safe
or
To keep Jules safe
on the back. She flipped each rock on the shelf, twenty of them, thirty, she didn't keep count. All the same.

She sank to her knees. The fox hadn't moved, not even an inch. She just sat back quietly, as if she were waiting for Jules to say something, or do something.

“Keep us safe from what?” Jules said to her, as if the fox might know. “And how? By running faster? That doesn't make any sense.”

But one more memory rose up inside her, a memory of a morning long ago, soon after their mom had died, when Dad had given them each a cup of hot chocolate. He had put it in their Peter Rabbit double-handled cups. They were still in their pajamas and Dad was making breakfast. But Sylvie wasn't happy. She stood in front of Dad, arms crossed, feet planted.

“The mug,” she said. Sylvie wanted her hot chocolate in their mom's flamingo mug.

Dad had argued with her. “Sylvie,” he told her, “it's too heavy for you.” But she insisted. Jules remembered it, she remembered her dad sighing and then finally setting the mug on the table in front of Sylvie. “Be careful,” he told her, “this was your mom's favorite mug.” Jules knew that was true. She could just see her mom, standing at the kitchen window with the mug in her hand.

But as soon as Sylvie lifted the mug to her mouth, it slipped out of her hand and tumbled to the floor. Hot chocolate sloshed onto the rug beneath the table, tiny marshmallows clinging to the braids while the chocolate soaked in.

Jules remembered Sylvie's horrified face, the way she burst into tears, the way Dad told her over and over, “Honey, it's okay. The mug was too big for you.” He set it on the table and they all saw the broken spot on the rim, a bright-white chip. Sylvie pushed the mug away from her, then put her arms on the table and buried her face in them.

“It's okay, baby. It's okay.” Dad said it over and over. But for Sylvie, it wasn't okay. Jules didn't say anything. All she could do was sit there at the table, the hot chocolate soaking into the rug, and Sylvie crying so hard, harder than ever.

Daddy had reached across the wet rug and lifted Sylvie out of her chair and into his arms, and Sylvie, her face a mess of tears and snot, just kept repeating over and over, “Daddy, I ran as fast as I could.”

“Of course you did, Sylvie. You ran so fast. Nobody could have run faster.” Jules had to keep wiping her own face, crying because Sylvie was crying.

At last Sylvie had said, “Next time I'll run faster.”

There in the Grotto, Jules doubled over as if someone had taken her rock hammer and swung it right into her stomach.

Next time I'll run faster.

“Oh, Sylvie,” Jules said. “Sylvie.” At last she knew the end of the sentence . . . so that . . .

Her mother had fallen, the jar of mustard had cracked open. And ever since, Sylvie had run fast.
As fast as the jet stream. As fast as a stingray. As fast as a fireball.
She was the fastest girl at Hobbston School. She ran so fast that she had to grab on to things to slow herself down—the porch rail, tree branches—she even grabbed on to Jules, sometimes pulling them both over. But that morning, that morning of new snow, with the banks of the river covered in ice, there had been nothing to slow her pace at the edge of the Slip, nothing for her to grab on to. No porch rail, no tree branch, no Jules.

No Mom.

Jules stood up now, the flamingo mug tight in her hands.

“She didn't want it ever to happen again,” she said slowly, her voice cracking, to the fox. “If it ever did, she was going to be ready.”

Her sister's one burning wish had been to keep Jules and Dad safe. She had felt responsible for their mother's death. Ever since that horrible day, the day the mustard jar burst open at the foot of the steps, Sylvie had been convinced that if she had run faster, their mom might still be alive. But it had been Sylvie who died. She had run too fast.

Jules reached into her pocket and pulled out the serpentine rock. She had brought it with her to honor Sylvie. Now it burned in the palm of her hand, and Jules knew that if she threw it into the Slip, it would shine up from the bottom like a shooting star. And Jules also knew this: she needed to break the rules just one last time. One very last time. She would take this rock to the Slip and throw it in the water. For Sylvie.

And for me, too,
Jules thought.

Because as of this minute, she had a brand-new burning wish. She picked up the waterproof marker and wrote it down on the verde green serpentine:

That Sylvie knows how much I love her.

How that could ever be, Jules didn't know. But if there were any way for a message to reach her sister, wherever she was,
if
she was, then a wish rock wished on here in the Grotto and thrown into the Slip seemed like the way to do it. She put the flamingo mug and the pen back up on the shelf. They had been safe here in the Grotto, and they would still be safe.

Maybe this was what her sister had left behind for her, a place where she could come to remember their mother. A place to think about her sister. Jules slid the new wish rock into her pocket and stepped out of the cave. At her heels, one small red fox.

S
enna knew that something was about to happen, even though she didn't know what it was. Jules was walking toward the river, toward the Disappearance.

Never,
her mother had told her.
Never go to the Disappearance.

But she could tell that Jules was heading in that direction. And Senna had to follow her, to stop her. She had led Jules to the cave because she thought the Someone, the woman with the red-brown hair, might greet them together. But the woman hadn't come.

Now Jules picked up her pace. Senna hurried to keep up.

Danger. Run faster, little Senna.

Yes. The woman had told her those words. Now they filled her ears. Now they streamed along her back. Now they pushed her.

Faster. Run faster.

And then, from a distance,
Kapow!
The sound of a rifle split the darkening air.

I
f Jules's ears had been as keen as Senna's, she might have heard the sound of the gun, but they weren't. All she heard as she moved along the path were her own beating footfalls and the growing sound of the river. The wish rock was deep inside Jules's pocket, and her mother's headband was looped around her wrist. She had no idea how long she had been in the Grotto. What she did know was that by now, she was sure, her father was home and looking for her. He would know right away that she had crossed the invisible line.