Some Kind of Happiness (7 page)

“I promise.”

“Okay. Good.” Dad's voice relaxes. “I'm going to let you go now, all right? You should go downstairs, spend time with your grandparents. Or with Avery.”

“Avery's scary, Dad.”

“I know you think so, but I'm sure she's not once you get to know her.”

“You don't know her. You don't know any of them, and neither do I. They're like strangers, and you left me here with them like it was no big deal.”

There is an awful silence. I wish I could take it all back.

Dad says, “Finley, it was a big deal. Don't think it wasn't. It was hard for us to leave you, okay?”

“Then why did you?” I get up, start pacing. Maybe I'm glad I said something. Maybe I don't want to take it back after all.

“We've talked about this. Because your mom and I—”

“Need space to work things out. I know.”

“Finley . . .”

I wait for him to say something that will make this better. “What?”

He sighs. “You know, I talk to your grandpa a lot, actually. On the phone.”

I don't say anything.

“He's been asking me to come by for years, to bring you to visit. When I told him about—when I mentioned that your mom and I needed some time together, he was the one who suggested I bring you down for the summer. He's been saying that for a while now, and he was right. As much as I hate to admit it when he's right . . .”

“How come you never let me talk to him?” My eyes are hot.

Avery walks by on her way to the bathroom. She's typing
on her phone, but she glances over anyway. I run over and shut the door.

“I don't have a good answer for you, Finley,” Dad says. “I should have let you talk to him. I should have done a lot of things. I've been selfish and stubborn. But I'm trying now, okay? We're all trying. You're getting older, and I don't want you growing up and leaving for college and heading out into the world without knowing your cousins.”

“
Dad.
College is a million years away.”

“Time's a slippery little jerk, Fin.” Dad sounds tired. “Things happen more quickly than you think. One minute you're a kid, and the next minute you're grown up and wondering what the heck happened when you weren't looking.”

“You're being so dramatic.”

“Seriously, Fin.”

I stare at the closed door, breathing in and out. “Okay.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

“I'm fine.”

Silence. He doesn't believe me. I don't care.

“Your mom's going to try to call you tomorrow, all right? She's busy prepping for a big meeting with the Robertsons.”

“That's okay. She can call me whenever. Tell her it's okay.”

It's not okay.

I don't care about the Bailey boys and whatever it is their stupid dad did.

I don't care about the Everwood, or the shoe and the knife tucked under my bed.

I throw my notebook against my pillows. I consider asking Dad not to hang up, but that would mean I'd have to keep talking to him.

“Okay, sweetie.” Dad blows me a kiss through the phone. I can almost feel it hit my cheek. “I love you. I love you so much. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Go talk to your grandma. Ask her about her favorite Ray Charles song. She'll talk your ear off. We used to listen to him all the time when we were kids.”

When they were kids.

And
then
what happened?

“Okay.” I feel like my voice is not my own. I have too many questions and I can't figure out how to ask any of them.

After Dad hangs up, I climb into bed and try to read one of my old Everwood stories, one I wrote before coming to Hart House. But it seems all wrong, now that I've seen the real Everwood. It seems like I didn't know what I was doing, like I was just a silly kid playing make-believe.

Before long these thoughts are so loud they start to feel true:

I am just a silly kid playing make-believe.

I don't know what I am doing.

I am all wrong.

•  •  •

When Grandma comes up to say it's time for bed, I pretend I am already asleep.

I am too close to blurting out my secret to her:

How I didn't get up to brush my teeth or wash my face, not because I am lazy but because I couldn't. It was physically impossible. My body was too heavy to move.

How I am sinking into cold, blue water, a blue nothing like the warm music filling the house downstairs.

How I am finding it difficult to breathe. How my skin is crawling with something like fear.

I cannot say these things to anyone, especially not to Grandma.

So I lie there with my eyes closed while Grandma turns off the light.

It is easier this way.

O
N THE MORNING OF MY
second Friday at Hart House, everyone returns for the weekend. Grandma immediately puts us to work cleaning.

“How else will you learn to respect what you have?” Grandma points out when Dex and Ruth start whining.

Gretchen shoots me a look around Grandma's back.
See?

“Or we can let everything sit and rot and turn into some overgrown pigsty,” Grandma adds.

She doesn't say anything about the Bailey house directly, but I'm sure that's what she means. I glance out the kitchen window, through the woods, and find the Baileys' vine-swamped porch.

Grandma catches me looking. Our eyes lock.

“What do we have to do
this
time?” Ruth moans, draping herself theatrically over the back of a chair.

“Ruth, you and Kennedy have the downstairs bathrooms. Gretchen and Dex will take the upstairs bathrooms. Avery's dusting. And Finley?”

I swallow hard. “Yes?”

“You'll help me in the kitchen.”

As I reluctantly follow Grandma down the hall, Gretchen
grabs my arm and whispers, “I told everyone we'd meet tonight. Outside, in the pit, after the adults have gone to sleep.”

“Even Avery?” Please not Avery.

“Are you kidding? She'd tell on us, and she wouldn't want to come anyway.
Be there
, okay? No chickening out.”

“Chicken out? I was the one who got you to cross the river in the first place, you know.”

“I'm just saying, the Everwood is a whole other world after dark.” Gretchen grins and waggles her fingers at me.

“Finley?” Grandma calls out. Her heels click on the kitchen floor. “Quickly, we have a lot to do.”

“Be. There.” Gretchen pokes my shoulder twice and hurries off to find Dex.

In the kitchen Grandma is taking plates, pots, and pans out of the cabinets. Stick just got back from one of her runs and is making a protein shake.

When she sees me, she attacks me with a hug. She does not look much like her daughter; Stick is long and golden, like Avery. Gretchen must have gotten her frizzy dark hair from her father. Dad told me Gretchen's father died when Gretchen was very young. Stick kept his name and never remarried.

(If anyone around here should feel sad, and heavy, and unable to get up and brush her teeth before bed, it should be Gretchen, or Stick.)

(Not me.)

(So get it together, Finley.)

“Here, Finley.” Grandma hands me an old cloth. “Start wiping down those bottom cabinets, please. I'd like to get this done quickly so I can be at the clinic by one o'clock.”

“Clinic?”

Grandma waves a hand. “Just something I do when I have the time.”

“Your grandma's being modest.” Stick loops her arm through Grandma's. “She volunteers at the clinic, works the front desk. Whenever they need her, she drops everything and goes.
And
she organizes this back-to-school program at the Y, where they stuff backpacks full of school supplies for kids who need them. You know, so their parents don't have to worry about spending money on notebooks and pens and such. Your grandma, Fin.” Stick beams at me. “She's the best, in case you didn't know.”

Stick plants a sweaty kiss on Grandma's cheek, and Grandma's nose wrinkles. I try not to laugh.

“It keeps me from getting bored around here in this old house, is all,” Grandma says crisply. “Now get to cleaning, you two.”

Stick flips on the radio. “Gretchen has been talking about you nonstop all week, Finley,” she tells me while she sweeps. She stops to gulp down some of her shake. “She couldn't wait to come back—and for once it had nothing to do with Grandma's cooking.”

I wait for Grandma to laugh, but she's elbow deep in a
soapy sink, scrubbing hard at a pan that looks perfectly clean to me.

“I'm just so excited you two have hit it off,” Stick continues. “It's been a long time since I've seen Gretchen so excited about playing outside. Trees? And mud? Come on. Usually it's nothing but video games and texting her friends. I should never have gotten her a phone so young. But all her friends had them, so if I didn't get her one, she'd be constantly whining about it. Here.” Stick holds out her shake. “Wanna try?”

Stick looks so hopeful that I take a sip. It tastes like a combination of gritty cake and liquid metal. I fight not to make a face.

Stick bursts out laughing. “Not for you, huh, babycakes?” She kisses my forehead and ruffles my hair. “Don't worry, I still like you.”

I smile up at Stick. Her short hair pokes up behind her headband. “You do?”

“Of course! You're my coolest niece by far.”

“Even cooler than Avery?”

Stick winks at me. “Don't tell her I said that.”

“You were playing outside?” Grandma has stopped scrubbing to look at me.

It takes me a minute to remember what we were talking about—the Everwood. Playing outside with Gretchen.

I wait for Stick to say something, but suddenly she seems to be very interested in sweeping.

“Um. Yeah?”

“Yes,”
Grandma says.

“I mean . . . yes. It's no big deal. We were just messing around.”

“Doing what, exactly? And where?”

Stick stops sweeping. “Mom, come on. They're just having fun.”

“Amelia, I asked Finley, not you.”

“We talked. Hung out in the pit.” My mind ping-pongs around, searching for a reason why Grandma would be acting this way. Playing outside seems like a normal thing to do, but I get the sense that isn't true at Hart House.

Then it hits me:

Maybe Grandma knows about what Gretchen and I found: the child's shoe, the twisted bicycle. The knife.

Maybe she knows about something that happened in the Everwood.

“I don't want you girls playing around back there,” Grandma says.

“Not even in the pit?”

Her lips purse. “If you must. But not beyond that, Finley. It isn't safe.”

My shoulders tense. She dares to forbid me to enter my Everwood? “What do you mean? It's fine out there. It's just woods.”

“I know you aren't used to how things work around here, Finley, but in this house, when I give you instructions, I expect them to be obeyed. Is that clear?”

Her words are quiet, clear, polished. They slice right through me. I could cry; I could scream. It isn't fair, being here. It isn't fair, having to pretend to fit in and understand these rules that make no sense.

Avery comes down the back stairs into the kitchen, one earbud in, her arms full of sketch pads. She wears what I have come to know as her painter's uniform—a ratty oversized T-shirt and orange shorts splattered with color.

“Grandpa told me to tell you he's leaving,” she says to Grandma.

“Thank you, Avery. Finley, I asked you a question: Is that clear?”

Stick is staring out a window, holding her shake tightly in one hand, her back to us.

Avery watches, paused by the door to the garage.

Grandma's smile is polite, but her eyes are sharp.

I know you aren't used to how things work around here, Finley.

Grandma knows the truth: I am not one of them.

“Yes, Grandma,” I say quietly. “I understand.”

Grandma's face relaxes. “Good. I'm glad we're clear. I'll be back shortly. I need to ask your grandfather something before he leaves.” Then she tugs off her soapy gloves, brushes a paper-dry kiss on my cheek, and leaves us. Her earrings glitter in the sunlight.

Without another word Avery slips into the garage.

Stick resumes sweeping. “Your grandfather and his drives,”
she says cheerfully, rolling her eyes. “Ever since he retired and Uncle Reed took over the company, it's become his quiet time. He's always liked long drives. It's his way of meditating, but don't ever tell him I said that. He'd disown me if he knew. He thinks meditation is a bunch of new age hokum.”

I stare at the refrigerator, at the pictures of my cousins stuck on with magnets. All my cousins, all the aunts.

Not me. And not Dad.