Saving Ben (11 page)

We rode up and down the creek, in and out of the coves, and around by the Tide’s Inn. We were gone for more than an hour. When we got back to the dock, Emma grabbed me by the arm and began dragging me toward the house.

“Guess what, Katherine?”

“No telling.” I prepared myself for the jolt from the news to follow.

“Your mother’s going to write a letter for me.”

I cut my eyes at her. “That’s funny. I thought all college students knew how to write.”

“No, silly. I’m talking about the sorority. She’s going to write a letter of recommendation for me for the Chi Delta house.”

I walked faster, out ahead of her, making her work harder to keep up. “She writes letters for lots of people, Emma,” I said over my shoulder. “It doesn’t really mean anything. If I were you, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

“Yeah, but she promised to talk to some of her friends about writing letters for me as well.”

I shrugged. “If that’s what you want, I hope it works out.”

With Emma following close behind, I entered the game room and started up the stairs. “Are you going to stay mad at me all day?” she asked, tugging on the hood of my sweatshirt.

I yanked my hood out of her hands. “Here’s a news flash for you, Emma. The world doesn’t revolve around you. For your information, my dad just gave me some bad news about Abigail.” I climbed the rest of the way up the stairs and waited for her to join me at the top. “Besides, I’m tired. I had a hard time going to sleep last night after I heard you and my brother having sex down the hall.”

Her lips curled into a smirk. “Why don’t you just admit it? You’re jealous.”

“Jealous of who, you?”

“The sooner you can admit your obsession with your brother is unhealthy, the sooner you can get some help.”

I burst into laughter. “Only your sick and twisted mind could make a normal sibling relationship sound like incest. But then again, I wouldn’t expect someone like you, an only child, to understand a sister’s love for her brother.”

***

We spent the rest of the afternoon watching football and eating leftovers. By ten o’clock, everyone was ready for bed. Ben insisted on going fishing with Dad the next morning, which delayed our departure for Charlottesville. But seeing the excitement on my brother’s face over the citation-sized rockfish he caught was worth the extra time I had to spend with Emma. It was almost two o’clock before we sat down with Mom and Dad at Willaby’s for a burger on our way out of town.

We were just passing the Richmond airport when, in working on my study guide for exams, I realized I’d left my English lit book on the table beside my bed on Wednesday night. Moaning and groaning about having to make a pit stop, Ben exited the interstate onto the downtown expressway toward Cary Street.

“It’s a five-minute detour, asshole. You have no right to complain. I’ve been waiting around for you all day.”

As fast as my short legs would take me, I jumped out of the car and ran up the front steps to the house and then all the way upstairs to my room. On the way back down I stopped in the kitchen to get a snack, a peace offering, for Ben. I grabbed a recycling tote from the pantry and stuffed a bag of Smartfood and three strawberry Nutri-Grain bars inside. When I opened the door to the beverage refrigerator in search of a Diet Coke, I noticed a bottle of my mother’s wine lying flat on the bottom shelf. I ran my finger across the map of Italy on the label, from Venice down and around the boot back up to Rome. I was lining three cans of Diet Coke up on the counter, when it hit me.

“Wait a minute,” I said out loud to myself. Emma told my mother she’d gotten the wine from Charlottesville, but that didn’t make any sense. I’d searched through Emma’s things for my black tank top on Wednesday night, when we were getting dressed to go out, but the wine wasn’t in her bag then. I’m certain I would’ve remembered seeing a loose bottle rolling around in the car. There was only one possible scenario.

I raced to the mudroom and down the uncarpeted steps. Our basement was strictly utilitarian with a small laundry room and a wine closet my father designed and built himself over a decade ago. Three walls were fitted with cubbyholes that held one variety or another of expensive wine—my father’s collections. There were several cases lined up against the wall. I leaned down and flipped back the top on the box closest to me. Every section was full of my mother’s fancy wine. Except one.

“Have you seen Emma’s Facebook page?” Archer asked me. It was two days before Christmas and she lay sprawled out on my bed, surfing the web, while I wrapped presents down on the floor. She swung her legs over the side of my bed and sat up, her strawberry-blonde hair sticking out from her head with static electricity. “Your roommate has over sixteen hundred friends and only a small percentage of them are female. What’s up with that?” she asked, turning the computer around so I could see it.

I shrugged. “She loves men. What can I say?”

Archer’s jaw went slack. “And one of those men is Ben. She all but admitted to you that she’s digging for gold and this house and
your
brother are her mines.”

I ignored her gaze and focused on cutting a length of wrapping paper. “So maybe I overreacted.”

“Since when? All you’ve done since you got home for the break is complain, Emma this and Emma that.”

“I’ll admit I was really angry with her after everything that happened over Thanksgiving, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot the past couple of days. It’s Christmas, Arch, time for forgiveness. Maybe Emma can’t help herself.”

“You mean she can’t
stop
helping herself, helping herself to your stuff. What the heck, Kitty? She stole a bottle of wine from your dad’s stash and gave it to your mother as a gift. How did she even know about the cellar if she wasn’t sneaking around your house when you were otherwise preoccupied? When would that have been, anyway? You were here for less than twenty-four hours. While you were taking a shower or sleeping? Don’t you find that the least bit creepy?”

I finished tying a red satin bow around the present and tossed it aside. “Emma is enamored with all this,” I said, waving my hand in the air. “She doesn’t have the kinds of things you and I have. Maybe she just wanted to know what it was like to soak in a spa tub full of lavender bubbles. And maybe she just wanted to make a good impression on my mother and couldn’t afford to buy her some flowers or a tin of cheese biscuits.”

“OMG, you really are too nice for your own good,” Archer said, kicking her leg out at me. “At least you already have one semester behind you. Only one more of living with psycho-bitch to go.”

I coughed to clear my throat. “Not exactly.”

She lowered her chin and looked at me from beneath her furrowed brow. “I’m afraid to ask what
not exactly
means.” When I didn’t answer her, she nudged my arm. “You’re not seriously considering living with Emma again? Are you nuts?”

I set my scissors down and climbed up on the bed beside Archer. “What was I supposed to do? I had to turn in my residency application in order to get housing. Anyway, it’ll be different having Carla and Phoebe as suitemates.”

Archer continued to glare at me, waiting for an explanation she could accept. I looked away from her. “I have until February to make a change request.”

“Ugh!” She threw herself back on the bed. “Why wait until February?”

“To see what happens when we go back to school after the break. I’m hoping Emma will be bored with Ben by then.”

“And if not?”

I lay back and rolled over on my side, facing Archer. “Then I might have to stick it out, just so I can keep a close eye on Ben.”

“Really? And who’s going to watch out for
you
, Kitty? I have a bad feeling about this. And you know how I am about these feelings.”

“Oh, yeah. I know all about your freaky feelings,” I teased, poking her in the side. It was easier to make light of the situation than to admit that Archer’s intuition, her so-called feelings, were premonitions that almost always came true. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

***

Every year for as long as I could remember, my parents insisted Ben and I go with them to Max and Loraine Robinsons’ house out in Goochland on Christmas Eve. The Robinsons aren’t close friends of my parents. They don’t drop by for drinks or go to the club together for dinner. In fact my parents never socialize with the Robinsons at all except for this one party every year.

Ben and I were probably six and eight the first time we were invited for Christmas Eve. The parties were small affairs back then, with a dozen or so adults crammed around the mahogany table in the dining room for an elaborate dinner that lasted until way past time for Santa to come. The Christmas Eve party had metamorphosed since those early days. The dinner was now a large cocktail buffet with trays of meats and cheeses and seafood spread out on the dining room table for the guests to enjoy at will. A pianist played Christmas carols at the baby grand in the corner of the living room while a gang of children chased each other in and out and around the crowd.

Ben and I were standing off by ourselves in a corner of the dining room, nibbling on beef tenderloin and boiled shrimp. “You better put that away,” I said to him when he pulled his cell phone from his blazer pocket and began texting. “You know how Dad is about us using our cell phones during social functions.”

“Would it make any difference if the text was from George?”

I paused in mid chew. “George Turner?” I asked with a mouthful of turkey.

“No, George Bush,” Ben said, giving me a noogie. “Of course I’m talking about George Turner.”

I swatted his hand away. “In that case, don’t leave me hanging. What’d he say?”

Ben read the text to me. “Abby seems better this week. She even ate a bowl of coffee ice cream this morning.”

Ben and I locked eyes and together we were taken back ten years. Instead of Popsicles or Nutty Buddy cones or Push-Ups, our mother always kept coffee ice cream in the freezer. All of us hated the taste of coffee except Abby who polished off the carton every time.

I grabbed Ben by the arm. “I have an idea. Follow me.” I led him back to the Robinsons’ family room, which was empty except for a kid who was watching
Home Alone
on the gigantic-screen television. “Take a picture of me blowing Abby a kiss and text it to George,” I said, standing in front of the Christmas tree.

“No way you get to do this alone.” Ben surveyed the room. “Hey, kid, can you peel your eyes away from Macaulay Culkin long enough to take our picture?” The boy was so young Ben had to show him how to take the picture with his iPhone. “How old are you, anyway?” Ben asked.

“Six,” he answered, holding the phone up in front of his face.

Ben and I puckered our lips while the boy took the picture. When he handed the camera back to Ben, he crinkled his nose in distaste. “Y’all are weird.”

Ben burst out laughing. “Maybe so, big man, but everyone’s a little weird at Christmastime, aren’t they? I mean, think about it. Don’t you think it’s weird that we will all be waiting up tonight for a fat man in a red suit to come sliding down the chimney?”

“I don’t believe in Santa Claus,” the boy said, sounding very sure of himself for a six-year old.

“You’re kidding? Why not?” Ben asked.

The boy climbed back up on the sofa. “Because my brother said there was no such thing as Santa Claus. And he’s ten, so he ought to know.”

“That old, huh? You know, you shouldn’t believe everything someone tells you just because they say so.” Ben pointed toward the television. “Take Macaulay Culkin, for example. He believes in his heart that his parents will come home and save him from those really bad dudes, right?”

The boy nodded.

“So, what if Macaulay’s brother was there in the house with him? Do you think his brother could convince Macaulay that their parents weren’t coming back?”

The boy stared at Ben, thinking it over. He reached for the remote and turned the volume up. “My parents told me never to talk to strangers,” he shouted over the television sound.

“Leave the poor kid alone, Ben. Let’s go outside.” I turned the bolt on the french doors and stepped out onto the terrace. “The Robinsons put the same colored lights in the trees every year, but I never get tired of looking at them.”

Ben stretched out on the chaise lounge. “Why is it that those big colored lights are so familiar to me when all I can remember us having on our tree are the little white ones.”

I felt the cushion on the chaise next to Ben to make sure it was dry before I sat down. “Because we used to put colored lights on our tree when we were little. Although, now that you mention it, I don’t actually remember the colored lights either. I’ve only seen them in pictures.”

Ben placed his hands behind his head. “I don’t understand this whole anorexia thing. How could someone who used to be so chubby, who used to like to eat so much, end up so thin?”

I shrugged. “It all started when she broke her jaw and lost all that weight. My guess is, she liked being thin and was worried about gaining it back.”

“It doesn’t seem fair for someone so kind to have to suffer. Yabba is such a good girl.”

I nodded. “She has the strongest morals of anyone I know. And she shoots from the hip. Maddie is like that.” I kicked off my heels and leaned back against the cushion. “What happened to y’all, anyway? I thought the two of you were really into one another.”