Shadowed Summer (18 page)

“Uncle Lee gave me Mama’s memory book,” I said. I turned in my chair and stared at him, trying to look into him. “How come you didn’t have it? How come I had to get it from him?”

Daddy slumped slightly, drying his hands on an old towel. “Because he’s the only one with any sense.”

“Daddy, what are you talking about?”

“I wanted to throw everything away,” he said. “After her funeral, it was just too hard. Lee took the important things home instead. He thought you might want them someday.”

I looked toward the living room. “Then how come you kept the couch?”

“Sofa’s too heavy to throw away in a fit,” Daddy said.

His shamed smile softened my heart. Already heading for the stairs, I said, “You should look.”

“Iris, I . . .”

“I’ll be right back.” I tore up to my room and nearly broke my neck coming back down. Pushing my plate to the middle of the table, I spread the book out. I wanted him to look at it with me. I needed him to.

He hesitated, then leaned in, framing the book with his arm. “It’s been a long time.”

“You went a lot of places,” I said, stopping at the camping pictures.

Daddy worked a nail under the plastic sleeve to pull out a photograph of Mama sitting on his lap by a tent. “Actually, that was Eddie Lanoux’s backyard. They lived a ways out and had a good piece of land. We never brought enough matches. Half the time we ended up sneaking into the house to make supper.”

I turned the book a little to get the glare of the lights off the plastic. “Did Mama take this one?”

“Yes, ma’am, and all the ones with her in them, too. She had a timer. She wouldn’t let anybody else mess with her camera, not even a little.” Daddy shook his head at himself and sighed. “I never told you about Katie and her pictures.”

That hit a hollow place, one I wanted filled up so badly it ached. “Huh-uh.”

“She said she’d have a gallery someday. Me and Eli planned to build her a darkroom. . . .” Daddy trailed off thoughtfully. “Damned if we knew what belonged in one.”

Thumbing over another page, Daddy frowned at the empty spot he found, his eyes darting over the handwriting left behind in the margin. “The parish fair should have been right here.”

For a moment, I kept my silence, then admitted, “I’ve got it up in my room. I like it.”

He gazed at the empty page as if he could see the picture that belonged there, his lips twitching with an odd smile. “We all started off together, but by midnight, Nan threw Eli over for some carnie, and I’d asked your mama to marry me.” A pleased glimmer colored his eyes again, and he glanced at me. “She told me no.”

Clasping the edge of the table, I twisted in my chair to look up at him. “She changed her mind, though!”

“Only after she spent spring break in New Orleans.” Flicking to the next page, he glanced at it briefly, then closed the memory book softly. “She’d been planning on moving there after high school. She wanted her gallery to be right on the water, and I liked Ondine just fine.

“She went for two weeks, and when she came back, she marched up to my front door and said, ‘All right, Jack, what did you do to ruin my city?’ And I just looked at her and said, ‘I stayed here.’ ”

Daddy leaned his chair back, smoothing a hand over his hair. “She didn’t plan on taking me back, but I think it scared her when Eli died.”

I forced myself to stay still, but God, it was hard. My daddy had just told on himself.

Trying to be all nonchalant, I picked up the memory book and held it to my chest. “How do you know he’s dead?”

Daddy clamped down on his memories and started to clear the table. “I guess I don’t. Why don’t you put that book away before it gets ruined?”

How could he mourn Elijah if he killed him? He should have looked guilty or scared or maybe both or something, but not heartbroken.

“Do you miss him?”

He looked right into me; he crackled with possibility. And then he nudged me gently. “I said go on.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and stole upstairs with my thoughts.

After a couple of lonely days, Daddy tapped on my door and told me to get my shoes on. I did as I was told, but I asked, “Where are we going?”

Holding up a covered plate, Daddy said, “I’m going to play cards with Eddie, and you’re making up with Collette.”

In the dusk, we walked over to the Lanouxs’ with an offering of thick brownies, all with nuts because that was how Daddy liked them and he wouldn’t bend on that, even for me.

Shoving my hands in my pockets, I smiled up at Mr. Lanoux when he opened the door, and I asked, “Is Collette home?”

“Upstairs, peaches.” Winking at me, he plucked an exposed walnut from the brownies to pop into his mouth.

Music rolled out of Collette’s room, just loud enough that it was pointless to knock. Opening the door a crack, I snuck inside and closed the door by leaning on it.

She’d made a couple of changes since the last time I’d been in: she’d replaced her pink covers with wine red ones and had grown a collection of overstuffed pillows in shades of gold and bronze. The colors matched a new robe I’d never seen her wear before. She lounged on her belly in the middle of the bed, her bare feet waving in the air, stilling when she realized she wasn’t alone. Looking up from a magazine, Collette let me see a brief, scathing frown, then turned back to her article. “What do you want?”

“I found out some more stuff,” I said, my feet pinned in place. Sliding down to sit, I squeezed the rock in my pocket, willing Collette to look at me again. “My daddy messed up when he was talking to me about Mama.”

“What, did he tell you he personally cut off Elijah’s head?”

Strangled by big gulps of pride, I shrugged. “I think I was wrong about that part.”

Thin magazine pages crinkled, then the bed groaned as Collette shifted to look back at me. “You think?”

I tugged my knees to my chest. “You don’t have to be ugly.”

Collette grabbed the edge of the bed and pulled herself down to sit on the end. Leaning forward, she curved her mouth into an icy smile, one that didn’t have any humor to it at all. “You went too far, Iris. He was already your ghost. You didn’t have to make your daddy kill him, too.”

A flare of heat rose in my chest, threatening to become a blush. “I said I was sorry.”

“No, you said you were wrong.”

“Fine, I’m sorry, all right? I thought it made sense!” Then I cut myself off. “Why am I apologizing to you, anyway? You’re the one who got nasty with me!”

Collette stood up, her crimson robe falling like waves all around her. “I didn’t, either. You
did
lie about the witchboard! Probably none of it’s true. Ben told me he threw the rock at the séance.”

“He did not.”

“Yeah, he did.” She graced me with another cold smile.

Unsteady, I wavered. “Did he do the knocking, too?”

“I figured you made up everything else.”

“I didn’t, though!”

Showing off another flash of the whites of her eyes, Collette sank down to ignore me some more.

My lower lip trembled, and I bit it hard to keep it still.

“Facts are facts. Elijah really did go missing, and Daddy said he’d died like he knew it for sure. If everybody else thinks he disappeared, and my daddy knows he died, then—”

“Don’t you get it? I don’t care!”

I grabbed the doorknob and hauled myself up. I’d had just about enough of her, and I was starting to get mad that I was the one apologizing. Maybe Collette did think she was right, but I thought I was, too, and that hadn’t stopped
me
from saying sorry. “You used to before you went all boy-crazy!”

“At least the boys I like aren’t dead!”

“At least the boys I like like me back,” I snapped.

Before Collette could figure that one out, the door shoved open enough to knock me in the head.

Rooster flung himself into the room, dancing like a rodeo clown. “Y’all in trouble—we could hear you yelling downstairs!”

Grabbing Rooster by the shoulders, Collette pushed him into the hall and slammed the door. “I told you to stay out of my room!”

Instead of going away like a sensible person would have, Rooster stood in the hall and knocked on the door. He knocked loud and soft; he knocked “Twinkle, Twinkle” and belched out every
star
before starting over again.

Cutting a glance at me, Collette set her jaw. “See what you did?”

I gritted my teeth and whispered through them. I knew if I started with Collette, we’d never make up again. “I wasn’t the only one yelling.”

“You started it,” Collette hissed, bracing her shoulder against the door when Rooster realized knocking wasn’t annoying enough and decided to bounce off it instead.

Forcing myself to give up just a little, I helped her lean against the door. “We both started it. I’m just trying to finish it.”

“I see London, I see—”

Rooster cut off with a yelp when heavy footsteps came down the hall. The doorknob jiggled again, and me and Collette jumped back to let her mama in.

Already shaking her head, Mrs. Lanoux crossed her arms over her chest. “Do I even want to know?”

I didn’t say anything. Collette looked me over, then spread her hands out helplessly. “We were just doing a play, and dummy Rooster wouldn’t leave us alone.”

Weary, Mrs. Lanoux craned down the hall, ignoring us for a minute to yell out a warning. “Boy, get in there and take your bath like I told you to!” Answered by a thump, then the sound of running water, Mrs. Lanoux turned to us again. “Try to keep it down to a dull roar.”

“We will,” Collette said, all but pushing her mama into the hall and closing the door on her. Whipping around to face me, she lifted her chin. “You owe me.”

Considering she had kept us both out of trouble, not just me, I didn’t see how. But I wasn’t gonna argue with the offering of a peace branch.

Pulling my hands from my pockets, I looked at her. “Do you really not care anymore?”

Collette rolled her shoulders in a great shrug, her robe shimmering all the way down her arms. “I don’t know. What did you find out?”

“Well, for one, Miss Nan lied to us.”

The dark sparkle came back to Collette’s eyes, both brows rising until they disappeared beneath her curls. “About what?”

I opened the door for a minute, listening for voices around the house. Rooster warbled from the bathroom, and after a minute, I heard my daddy laughing downstairs. Comfortable that they wouldn’t notice us again, I locked the door and nodded at Collette’s radio.

“Turn that up.”

Drowned out by the music, I told her my plan.

chapter thirteen

W
e jimmied the screen loose and jumped off the sloped roof, carrying our shoes to keep from making too much noise. The trees attacked us, their gnarled twig fingers reaching out to snatch our hair, and we tripped more than once on the uneven ground.

I felt giddy and Collette must have, too, because she couldn’t stop giggling. It was our best escape ever. When we poured into Ben’s backyard, she turned to me with a drunken smile. “I can’t believe we just snuck out like that.”

“Me either,” I said, trying to keep myself from bouncing.