Summer Of Fear (2 page)

“Hey, Red,” he said. “You’re not ready.”

“I can’t go,” I told him. “We’ve had a tragedy. My aunt and uncle were killed in a car wreck.”

“Oh—tough.” The smile left his face and his blue eyes lost their sparkle. “I’m sorry, Rae.”

“Aunt Marge was my mother’s only sister,” I said. “My folks are leaving this afternoon. It happened in Missouri.”

“Tough,” Mike said again. “Your mom must be all broken up.”

“She is,” I said. “She and Dad are going to go there to take care of things or—well, whatever you do at a time like this. They’re going to bring my cousin back with them. Her name’s Julia.”

“Julia,” Mike repeated. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about her. Is she going to live with you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “For a while, I guess. She’s seventeen; that’s too young to be off on her own.” Until he asked this I had not thought about Julia’s living with us in a permanent fashion, only visiting for a while until other plans could be made for her. But what other plans might there be for a teenage girl with no other living relatives?

“It’ll be like getting a sister, won’t it?” Mike said. “It’s crazy, isn’t it, thinking you’ll never have anything but two brothers and then finally, at your age, getting a sister.”

“Crazy,” I echoed with a faint stirring of uneasiness. What would it be like to share my home and my family with a ready-made sister whom I didn’t even know?

Julia. How many times I was to repeat that name to myself in the days that followed before my parents’ return from their sad errand to the Ozark Mountains. Julia. It would come into my head at the oddest times—when I was ironing a blouse—scrubbing potatoes to put in the oven—sitting with a book in the lawn chair in the backyard. Who is Julia, really? What does she look like? What kind of person is she, this girl who is going to be my almost-sister?

Peter thought he could remember her a little. I could not remember her at all. Since her mother and mine had been sisters, I wondered if she would have some sort of resemblance to Mother. Mother was little and freckled with an animated face and curly, carrot-colored hair that would never go the way she wanted it. Peter and I had inherited that hair. Bobby, on the other hand, though he was slightly built, had the smooth blond hair and handsomely featured face of our father.

Julia. It was a pretty name. I tried to remember the things I had heard about Julia over the years. I knew, of course, that she went to a boarding school in New England because there were no good public schools in the area of her mountain home. I had a feeling that she was supposed to have a talent of some kind. What was it she did—sing? Paint? Write poetry? To tell the truth, I had never been interested enough to make note of it or of anything else much in the way of dull, family chitchat in Aunt Marge’s annual Christmas letters.

But now I did want to know. I wanted to prepare myself.

“Why do you have to be prepared?” Mike asked logically. “She’ll be what she is, period. You’ll find out soon enough.”

We were sitting in the backyard, eating ham sandwiches and playing with Trickle. Somehow eating out in back with the sunlight falling in patches between the branches of the elm tree made it seem more definite that vacation was here. Trickle was rolling around on his back, asking to have his stomach tickled, but actually waiting to see if a piece of ham might fall out of one of the sandwiches.

“I’ll have to share my room with her,” I said. “I’ve always had my own room, you know. It will seem funny, having a stranger living there with me.”

“She won’t be a stranger long,” Mike said. “I should think you’d like it, having another girl around. It’ll make one more voice to add to the racket when the gaggle gets together.”

By “the gaggle” he meant me and my best friend Carolyn Baker. He liked to tell us that when we started chattering we made as much noise as a gaggle of geese.

“I hate that word,” I told him irritably. “There’s nothing goosey about us. Carolyn and I are friends because we picked each other. We have things in common. It’s different just to have somebody thrust upon you. What if she giggles all the time and spits through her teeth when she talks and likes to go to bed at nine o’clock?”

“I hardly think she’ll have much to giggle about,” Mike reminded me, and I felt my face grow hot as I realized the stupidity of my statement.

“Of course not,” I said. “That was a dumb thing to say. I’m being horrid.”

Mike didn’t contradict me. He broke off a piece of his sandwich and gave it to Trickle who slurped it down as though he hadn’t been fed for a week.

“I’ve got to get going,” he said. “I promised Professor Jarvis I’d cut his grass for him this afternoon. You want to go to a show or something tonight? There’s a Dustin Hoffman film at the Lobo.”

“I guess so,” I said. “But I hate to leave Bobby rattling around by himself. Pete’s usually got a rehearsal or something in the evening and with the folks gone—”

“Bring him along,” Mike said. “I’ll pick you both up at seven-thirty.”

He went home, not bothering to go around to the front but putting both hands on the top of the fence and vaulting over. A moment later I heard the creak of his garage door as he opened it to get out the lawn mower. Professor Jarvis’s house was next door to the Gallaghers’ on the other side, so cutting that lawn was a simple process.

Suddenly the yard was empty and the world was very still. I picked up the pop cans and carried them across the yard and into the kitchen. The house was so quiet I could hear the clock ticking on the kitchen wall.

It occurred to me how seldom it was that I was alone in the house even for a few hours, much less a whole afternoon. Mother was almost always there cooking or sewing or printing pictures in the little darkroom Dad had rigged up for her out of the storeroom in the garage.

I set the cans down on the counter and went to the telephone and dialed Carolyn’s number. The phone was answered on the second ring.

“Hi,” I said. “Want to do something? Pete’s at work and Bobby’s out on his bike somewhere and I’m about to go stir crazy.”

“Great,” Carolyn said. “Come on over.”

“What are you doing?” I asked suspiciously. I had heard that tone in her voice before.

“Washing walls,” Carolyn said brightly. “You can sit and talk to me.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.” I knew Mrs. Baker. When she went on a cleaning spree nobody in the house was spared. All you had to do was walk in the door and you found yourself with a sponge in one hand and a can of wall cleaner in the other.

“When are your folks coming home?” Carolyn asked. “Have you heard anything from them?”

“Not a word. They said they’d call when they knew what was happening. They drove the T-Bird to the airport and left it there, so they won’t have to be picked up.”

“They’ll probably call tonight then. Look, I’ve got to hang up. The wall’s drying in streaks and Mom’ll kill me. No—worse than that—she’ll make me do it over. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “Have fun. So long.”

I put the phone back on the hook and then just stood there, wondering what to do with myself. I was so used to having people around me that I hardly knew where to begin with self-entertaining. I wondered if Julia was a sociable person, somebody you could really talk to. I wondered what her interests were.

If only I could remember the things Aunt Marge had written in that Christmas letter. I should have read it more carefully, but at the time it arrived I had not thought it important. Where was it now, I wondered. Long gone with the Christmas wrappings and dried pine needles, or was it possible that it was still around somewhere? Mother often kept Christmas cards, especially the ones that contained photographs or personal messages. Perhaps Aunt Marge’s letter was among them.

With a feeling of relief at having found an afternoon activity, I went upstairs and opened the door of the linen closet. We had the sort of house where things were not always where they should be. Our sheets were kept in a spare chest in Bobby’s room, and the linen closet was used to store things we didn’t know what to do with. Mother kept her negative file there and Dad his National Geographies, and there were boxes of things that didn’t work any longer, like broken hair dryers and flashlights without switches and games with parts missing.

On the second shelf I found a cardboard box labeled “Christmas Cards.” When I opened it, the card from Aunt Marge and Uncle Ryan was right on top.

It was a homemade card, not a glossy, commercial one, and the painting on the front was one that Aunt Marge had done herself. It was a picture of an angel singing on a mountain top. I had seen it when it had arrived, but had not paid much attention. Aunt Marge had always made the family cards. Now, because I knew it was the last card we would ever receive from her, I sat down on the floor at the base of the closet and really studied it.

Aunt Marge had talent, that was apparent. The sweet face of the angel glowed with a special sort of joy; her hair fluffed out about her head in a dark brown halo and the blue eyes seemed an echo of the sky. Even I, who knew little about art, could tell that the hand that had held the paint brush had moved with love.

I opened the card. There was no printed greeting. Aunt Marge had filled the space with a handwritten message:

Dearest family—

Christmas again and joy abounds! Our angel Julie is home for the holidays and the house is filled with singing! What a contrast to the last few months with Ryan deep in the rewrite of his novel and no one to talk to most of the day except Sarah Blane. Sarah’s a local who has been working for us since last fall—pleasant to have another female in the house but hardly a replacement for J. Hopefully things will be different next spring. Once Ryan’s book is finished he has agreed to come back to civilization so that we may have Julie with us for her senior year. And the first thing on the agenda will be a visit with you! I can’t believe that Peter has graduated and Rachel is in high school, and I have never even seen Bobby. How life does manage to get away from us! Have a beautiful Christmas. The photo of the children is gorgeous, Leslie. You must take some of J when we are together again.

Much, much love—Merge.

The line that stopped me was, “How life does manage to get away from us.” In view of what came after, it seemed so ironic. But I forced myself past it to the final loving words, and when I finished them I found myself with tears in my eyes and a tight feeling in my throat. How could a person one minute be this vitally alive—writing, painting, making joyful plans—and be gone the next? The love and closeness that must have existed between mother and daughter showed plainly in every line. How lost Julia must feel now, how dreadfully lonely!

She’ll need us, I thought, more than anybody’s ever needed anyone before. What a horrid person I must be, worrying about something as small as sharing my room. I’ll like Julia—in fact, I’ll love her. I’ll be a real sister to her, not just a cousin. I’ll do everything I can to see that she’s happy here. If only I—

I was startled from my thoughts by the sound of a door opening in the hall below. It must be Bobby, I thought—and then, through the emptiness of the house, a familiar voice called, “Hello! Is anybody home?”

“Mother!” I scrambled to my feet, the Christmas note still clutched in my hand. “I’m here—up here!”

I went down the stairs two at a time. Mother was standing in the downstairs hallway, and Dad was coming through the door with two suitcases in his hands. My eyes took in the weariness of my mother’s face, and I threw my arms around her in a hard hug.

“I didn’t think you’d be back so soon!”

“There was no funeral,” Mother said. “There—wasn’t need for one. We decided to have a memorial service here instead. And there weren’t very many things to be packed. Marge and Ryan hadn’t collected a lot of material things.”

There was a tremor in her voice and she hugged me back with an intensity that showed the strain the past few days had put upon her.

“How are things here?” she asked. “Has everything gone along all right? Where are the boys?”

“Pete’s working,” I said, “and Bob’s off biking. Everything’s been fine, but we’ve missed you. I’m so glad you’re home.”

“We’re glad, too,” Mother said. She loosened her arms from around me and stepped back to reach out a hand to the girl who was standing behind her, a girl I had not even seen, shadowed as she was by my father’s form in the doorway.

She was a plain, thin girl with long, black hair that hung halfway to her waist. Her brows were heavy, her face narrow and sallow, but her eyes—even now, thinking back upon that moment, I cannot begin to describe my first impression of her eyes. They were deep and dark and filled with secrets. Haunted eyes. Haunting eyes. They were the strangest eyes I had ever seen.

“Rachel,” Mother said with a special gentleness in her voice, “this is Julia.”

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Rachel.” And I thrust out my hand.

It was not the way I had meant to greet her. Instantly I wished I could go back and redo the greeting and at the very least turn it into a hug. It was just that she was so far from what I had expected.

“Hello,” Julia said and, after an instant’s hesitation, put her hand in mine. It was a thin hand but surprisingly strong.

“Call me Rae,” I said awkwardly. “That’s what my friends call me. I’m so sorry about your family. It’s so awful. We’re all so sorry.”

“I know,” Julia said. “Thank you.”

“You’re going to be sharing Rachel’s room,” my father said, setting one suitcase on the floor and putting his free arm around Julia’s shoulders. “Let me take your bag up and you can start getting settled.”

“I’d like that,” Julia said. “I am a mite tired.” Her voice was low-pitched, more like a woman’s voice than a young girl’s. When she said “like” it sounded more like “lack,” and “tired” like “tarred.”

“Of course you are, dear,” Mother said warmly. “It would be a miracle if you weren’t. Why don’t you go up and lie down for a while? There’s no rush about unpacking.”

“That’s a good idea,” Dad said. “A little rest never hurt anybody. Come on, honey, I’ll show you the way.” With Julia’s suitcase in one hand and with the other arm still protectively around her, he steered her up the stairs.