Secret Brother (9 page)

“I think I know.”

“Yes, because of you. She thought her problem was . . .”

“Meaningless compared to it,” I finished. “It is.”

“Anyway . . . these cookies are fantastic. Anyway, her mother must have had a spy or something in her father's law offices. Somehow she knew to be at this motel outside of Prescott at lunchtime. She was waiting right outside the motel-room door when he came out with his secretary. How's that for being caught with your pants down?”

“They'll all live,” I said dryly. I turned over to lie on my stomach and braced myself on my elbows. I couldn't keep it in any longer. I was thinking about it even when she was revealing her hot gossip. “He's coming here,” I said after a few moments.

“Who's coming here?”

I turned over and looked up at the ceiling. “The poisoned boy.”

“Why?”

“My grandfather has decided he should stay here to recuperate. He's hired a private-duty nurse for him, and she'll move in to live with us, too.”

“Oh.”

I looked at her.
She thinks Grandpa Arnold is
simply being charitable
, I thought.
She doesn't get it
. “He's putting him in Willie's room.”

Now her eyes widened. “Why? You have guest rooms. This house is bigger than ours.”

“And giving him Willie's things, Willie's clothes, Willie's toys, everything.”

She was silent, her mouth slightly open. Lila was far from beautiful. However, she had what Myra called a comely face, a face that could be called pretty but not extraordinarily so. To me, that sounded unflattering, and I hoped nobody ever thought of me that way. If there was one word I had learned to hate, it was “average.” It sounded like everything you enjoyed that was exciting would be through someone else or because you tagged along with someone who truly enjoyed it, someone beyond average.

Did that make me snobby?

“Can he fit into Willie's clothes?” she asked.

“That's not the point! I don't care if he can or can't. Those are Willie's things.”

She nodded, trying to look as outraged and disturbed as I was but so obvious about it that I had to turn away.

“Well,” she offered, “if he's just borrowing them for a while . . .”

“Oh, Lila,” I moaned, “once he uses any of it, it's his forever.”

“That's terrible. I have an idea,” she said after a moment.

“What?”

“If there are some things you don't want him to
have, why don't you go in there now and get them and keep them hidden in your room?”

I thought for a moment. There were many things of Willie's that I wouldn't want anyone else to have, but going in there to retrieve them suddenly seemed intimidating. Would I just start crying uncontrollably? Would I feel guilty taking them? Would it be another way to convince myself of Willie's death, not that I needed much more to do that? What would Grandpa think? How angry would he get?

“I suppose if I chose carefully, I wouldn't need to take that much,” I said, working on convincing myself.

“Were you in there . . . since . . . ?”

“Just the first night.”

She nodded. “I'll go in there with you,” she said. I could see she was a little scared of the idea but was willing to do it for me. She was a good friend after all.

“Thanks. Let's do it,” I said firmly, and got up. She nodded, and we walked out together, suddenly moving slyly, like burglars or something. I certainly didn't want Myra or My Faith catching me doing this.

At Willie's doorway, I paused to make a list of what I would retrieve. It began with the windup train set that our parents had given him when he was only five. Even though Grandpa had replaced it with an electric train set we would bring out every Christmas and set up around the tree, Willie cherished his simple train set.

There was his favorite winter hat, the one with the built-in earmuffs. It was hard to think of him on
a sled or playing in the snow without it on. He never seemed to outgrow it. He wasn't the sort of boy who would ever play with dolls, but he had a Superman doll that he kept on the shelf built into his bed headboard. Although I hadn't heard him doing it lately, I could clearly recall overhearing him talk to Superman about some imaginary villain they were both going to get. And, of course, there was his copy of
The Complete Fairy Tales
by Hans Christian Andersen that our mother read to him and that I read to him after she was gone.

I feared that once I was in his room, however, I would be like someone told to evacuate their home because a terrible fire was bearing down on it. In a panic, what would they grab to save? Surely, I was in a very similar place. I looked at Lila, nodded, and went in. I went directly to the things I had listed in my mind, piled them on his bed, and paused to look around. There were other toys and books that I knew he treasured. Of course, the Slinky, I thought, and went for it. And what about the paddle ball with the target on it? Yes, and his bag of marbles. There was his baseball bat and the glove Grandpa had bought him last Christmas. He and I had played with it in the snow, which made everyone laugh. I knew I could go on and on, but I didn't have room in my closet for much more.

“Okay,” I said. “For now.”

Lila and I gathered it all and brought it to my room. I put as much as I could in my closet but decided to keep the Superman doll on my desk with his winter hat beside it.

“If you want to go get more, I'll go back with you,” Lila said.

“No, this is enough for now. There's a lot downstairs that belongs to him, but I can't imagine the poisoned boy ever getting his hands on any of it.”

“Sure. He'll probably be out of here once he gets well enough, anyway,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said.

“His family has to be looking for him, right?”

“His family?” I laughed. “All this time, no one calling the police or getting it into the papers?”

“You told me there was the possibility that he was kidnapped and the ransom wasn't paid.”

“So? Wouldn't you still be looking for him?” I asked.

She nodded. “Weird.”

“Let's not talk about it anymore,” I said, as if that was the secret to making it all go away. “Homework.”

“Right,” she said, relieved. “Math first.”

When we went at it, I realized just how much I hadn't absorbed. I must have been in a daze all day, I thought, and quietly told myself that I would do better tomorrow. We worked for hours and didn't talk about anything else. After Lila left, I looked at all of Willie's things that we had gathered. It gave me some satisfaction. I had told Lila not to talk about it, any of it. She took an oath. I had wanted to invite her to stay for dinner, but I could see she thought she should go home to be with her parents. What was happening to Ellie Patterson, the destruction of her family, frightened Lila. Who could blame her for wanting to cling
harder to her loved ones? She knew I had lost most of my family in tragedies.

When you're young, even a teenager, you just don't believe in the possible end of some things. Divorces weren't as common as they would become. Sickness and tragedy always seemed to happen to someone else. We were gliding on naivete, seemingly just a few days away from the innocence and gullibility we left behind in preadolescence. You didn't have to live in our privileged world to drift about in a refusal to accept reality. There would be time for that years from now, right?

Go home, Lila,
I thought enviously.
Cherish every moment as if it will be your last. Somewhere above or around us, God is turning a page, and you might not like what is written on it.

Grandpa didn't come to see me as soon as he arrived. I was half-hoping he would, but he went to his room and then to his office before I went down to dinner.

When Willie was at the dinner table, Grandpa always seemed to have a lot to say. Whatever Willie said about his day or something special he had done, Grandpa had a story to tell about himself when he was Willie's age. He told it as if he was telling it to both of us, but I knew he was really telling it to Willie. Boys needed fathers and grandfathers; girls needed mothers and grandmothers. I had become more and more of an orphan as I grew older and needed them more.

Of course, Grandpa asked me about school. I tried to make it seem as if it had gone all right. I assured him
that I had caught up with my work. I kept waiting for him to say something about the poisoned boy, but he didn't talk about him. Instead, he told me things about his business, things he never really talked about. I thought he was just trying to fill the silence. I tried to pay attention and be interested, but it was like listening to someone speaking in another language.

The following evening, he talked about his business less, and the evening after that, he stopped altogether. Our meals grew quieter and shorter. Myra and My Faith did their best to make them festive, but as that first week drew to a close, Grandpa missed the last two dinners entirely. Myra sat with me, and one night, Lila did come to dinner. We worked on homework and talked about boys again.

The grip that sadness had on me weakened. I could feel myself moving with more energy in school, and I was paying attention to the work again. I did well on my first tests and quizzes since returning. However, I still refused to do anything social on the weekend, and I regretted it. I insisted that Lila go to a party without me, promising her I would do something with her the following weekend. But in the middle of the following week, Grandpa introduced me to the private-duty nurse, Dorian Camden, and I couldn't think about much else.

He had finally decided to tell me directly of his specific plans to bring the boy to our house, how he would accommodate him and provide what was necessary for his recuperation. He went on and on about his medical treatments, the diagnosis, the horrible impact
the slow arsenic poisoning had on his body, filling his descriptions with terms the doctors had used. He emphasized how important it still was for him to have private nursing care.

I sat and listened, sullen and quiet, but if he noticed, he either didn't care or thought that the more he talked, the better the chance would be that I would relent and be more cooperative, even happy about it.

“I introduced her to him at the hospital,” he said.

“Did he talk to her?” I asked sharply.

“No. He still hasn't said anything to anyone.”

“Then maybe she's not a good nurse,” I said petulantly. “Nurses are supposed to be trained for that, aren't they?”

“Oh, no, no. Dr. Friedman recommended her. She was the first one who came to his mind.”

I didn't say anything more. There was no way I could discourage him.

When he brought Dorian Camden to our house and introduced her to everyone, I saw that she was an attractive woman, with intelligent light blue eyes and short but stylish hair the color of a ripe lemon. I wondered if my grandfather had gone searching for a nurse who bore some resemblance to the poisoned boy, with his cerulean-blue eyes and flaxen hair. Nothing seemed too ridiculous when I thought of how determined my grandpa was to provide for this boy's needs. Although he didn't tell me how old she was, I concluded from her description of places she had worked that she was easily in her mid-forties.

“I hope I can count on you for some help,” Dorian
Camden told me. I didn't answer. She held her smile. It was a soft, warm smile. I wished it wasn't. I wanted her to be ugly and mean so I could have an easier time hating her being here, but she had a pleasant voice and a kind way about her. I supposed a nurse had to have all that in order to provide tender loving care.

Grandpa asked Myra to show her where her room would be. She was going to take the room upstairs that had always been my parents' room when we visited. It was close to Willie's room. Of course, it bothered me that she would stay in that room. No one had since the day we learned of their deaths, but Myra always made sure it was kept clean and polished, as if she expected their miraculous return.

I assumed that because she was moving in now, it wouldn't be too much longer before the boy was brought here. My grandpa still didn't come right out and say he would be here tomorrow or the next day or anything. I could see from the way My Faith and Myra were moving about that things were being rearranged in anticipation. I wasn't going to give anyone the satisfaction of asking about him. I wanted them all to believe I had little or no interest. I expected Myra at least would force me to know things, but suddenly, every mention of him was behind closed doors or well out of my hearing. To me, it felt like the house was full of whispers, new secrets that made me feel like more of a stranger than the boy who would be here.

Of course, Lila was asking me about him whenever we spoke. My answers were short and simple. “I don't know. I don't care. No one has said.”

“Well, maybe he's not coming after all,” she said the day after Dorian Camden moved in.

“Why would the nurse be there, then, Lila?”

“Maybe only just in case,” she offered weakly.

“I don't want to talk about it,” I told her, and she stopped. Meanwhile, despite my sour face, our friends tried to include me in everything when I was in school. But thoughts about the poisoned boy and my grandpa distracted me again, and on the ride home, I was no better emotionally than I was on the ride back the first day. My heart was beating faster as we approached the front gates. I could feel every muscle in my body getting tense. All eyes would be on me if that boy was here. Everyone would be waiting for my reactions, for sure.

The moment I saw that Grandpa was already home, I knew he was there. He was in Willie's room.

It was beginning. I had to face up to it.
Right now
, I thought. I would pretend that nothing was different, that he wasn't there. I wouldn't see him or hear anyone talking about him. The moment I entered the house, however, Grandpa turned from speaking with Dorian Camden and nodded at me.