The Big Dig

by Lisa Harrington

  “Of secrets? Is that what you were going to say? Because, no kidding. I seem to be finding out a new one every day.”

  “Pumpkin.”

  “And are they only secrets to me? Am I the only one? Do you and everybody else know everything about everything?”

  “That’s not how it is at all. Like I said, she was planning to tell you all this. That was what last summer was going to be all about, and then—”

  “Yes, I know, and then she got sick. But why was it something she needed to plan? And why would it take a whole summer? What was the big deal? Was it about Dean? Ellen? Or something else?” Lucy was practically out of breath.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m coming up.”

  “What?” Once again, he caught her off guard.

  “I’m coming up.”

  “Why? Are you going to take me home?” An odd feeling started to churn in her stomach. “But the summer’s not over yet.” Do I actually not want to leave?

  “Why don’t we just play it by ear?”

  “You don’t have to come up. I’m fine.” She backpedalled, afraid she had come off too angry when she was mostly frustrated. “Really, I’m fine.”

  “I know. I just feel like seeing you. Is that okay?”

  “You mean for a visit?”

  “Sure. A visit.”

  “Oh.” Lucy relaxed a little.

  “I’m still up to my eyeballs with this case, but as soon as I can tie up some loose ends, I’ll be on my way.”

  “Honestly, you don’t need to.” She couldn’t explain it, but for some reason she just didn’t feel like rehashing all this face to face. “Everything’s okay here.”

  Again a few seconds of dead air. “Well, if you change your mind let me know and I’ll come. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you, too. Bye,” she said and slowly replaced the receiver.

  Lucy sat down beside Colin at the edge of the hole. He was swearing under his breath as he tried to pick a splinter out of his dirt-encrusted hand.

  “That’s gonna get infected, you know,” she said.

  “Nah. It’s fine.” He stuck his finger in his mouth.

  “Ew. That’s really going to help.”

  She slid herself back onto the grass and, using Colin’s knapsack as a pillow, she stretched out, closed her eyes, and let the sun beat down on her face. “I called my dad last night.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know how you said you didn’t think your mom was telling us the whole story?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I got that same feeling from my dad.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Wow, Colin,” Kit said, kicking off her flip-flops. “Has anyone ever told you you have a real way with words?”

  “When did you get here?” Lucy said, lifting herself up on her elbows.

  “Would you quit sneaking up on us?” Colin said.

  “Only a few seconds ago,” Kit said to Lucy. Then to Colin, “I didn’t.”

  “Don’t mind him,” Lucy said. “He has a splinter.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t.” Kit fished through her bag and pulled out a bottle of Coppertone. “So you both think your parents are lying to you, huh?”

  “I’m not sure if they’re straight-out lying,” Lucy clarified. “Just not telling us everything.” She looked over at Colin. “Right?”

  Colin nodded.

  “Interesting.” Kit pinched her lips together. “You have to remember, though, parents are weird. They act weird, they say weird things.”

  “No. This isn’t the usual weirdness.”

  “Well.” Kit squirted a huge splorch of lotion onto her arm. “If you both feel it, then they probably are.” She held the bottle out to Lucy. “You know, you could talk to Josie about it now. I mean, now that you know your mom was supposed to get married and everything. The cat’s out of the bag. And really, it’s not like it can be that much of a secret. There must be people around here that know.”

  “There probably are. Apparently, it’s just a secret to me.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t know about it,” Kit said.

  Colin shrugged. “Me neither.”

  “Anyhow,” Kit said, “Josie might be able to tell you more of the story. Like, fill in whatever you think is missing.”

  “But how do I ask her without telling her I found the necklaces snooping around in her drawer?”

  “Just tell her you were talking to Esther about your mom and it all came out. You don’t even have to mention the necklaces.” Kit spread her giant splorch of lotion up her arm to her shoulder. “Though I am dying to know why she moved them from your room. I mean, you have to wonder, right?”

  “Probably she didn’t want me to find them and start asking questions. I once tried asking her about what happened between my mom and your mom and she said something like it’s not her story or whatever.”

  “Yeah, that’s possible,” Kit said.

  “And Esther sort of said the same thing,” Lucy went on. “But I don’t know who they think is going to tell me if it’s not them. My mom can’t. And my dad sure hasn’t told me anything.”

  Colin held up his finger. “This is looking pretty grody. Anyone want to go down to the beach? I should soak this in salt water.”

  “Sure,” Lucy said.

  “Sure,” Kit said. “Salt water fixes everything.”

  After getting themselves dunked, Colin flopped on Josie’s air mattress, keeping his injured finger submerged in the water. Lucy decided to do a sweep for beach glass while the tide was low. Kit followed and they walked, bent over, along the water’s edge, watching for a flash of colour.

  When they’d made it to the point, they turned back and met up with Colin, who was stuffing the air mattress under the bottom step. “You guys find anything?” he asked.

  “Yeah, come see,” Lucy said as she and Kit knelt down and emptied their pockets. Kit had accumulated a good-sized pile. Lucy had three pieces of blue, two of them courtesy of Kit, and one piece of solid white, probably from a broken dish.

  Lucy picked up the piece of china and rubbed her thumb against the smooth edges. Even though it technically wasn’t blue, it had a faded blue flower pattern on the top. She could feel the texture of the design under her finger. “This reminds me of a candy bowl Mom had. She’d fill it with Quality Street every Christmas.”

  “Do you think about her a lot?” Kit asked.

  Colin frowned and shot Kit a look.

  Kit frowned back at him but with her nose scrunched up.

  “It’s fine,” Lucy said to Colin. Then, “Sometimes it seems like I think about her a lot, and other times I’ll suddenly realize that it’s been a whole day and I haven’t thought about her once. Then I feel guilty. I feel guilty because life keeps going on without her.”

  “You shouldn’t feel guilty,” Kit said, dividing her pieces into piles according to colour. “It’s not like you’re ever going to forget her for real.”

  “I know. But I worry she’s going to start to fade. Sometimes when I try to remember what she looks like, it’s sort of cloudy.”

  “You have pictures, right?” Kit said.

  Colin rolled his eyes, then said to Lucy, “That’s probably pretty normal, you know, that she’s…cloudy sometimes.”

  “It was so gradual, I hardly noticed. When she first died, I saw her everywhere, all the time. On the street, at the grocery store. At least I’d think it was her for a minute, anyway.”

  Kit and Colin stayed quiet.

  “We went to the hospital right after we found out, like right after Mrs. Gardiner came and told us,” Lucy continued. “But her bed was already empty, the room bare and cleaned out. Just like that.” She still remembered the smell of disinfectant and how her sho
es echoed on the floor when she walked into the stripped-down room. The nurses had packed all her mom’s things into a box and sat it on a chair by the door. The mobile, wrapped in tissue paper, was on top. One yellow butterfly had escaped and dangled over the side. “See, I never saw her,” Lucy said, feeling the need to explain. “Never saw her dead. So how could I be sure? For a long time, I wouldn’t go anywhere except to school, not to friends’ or anything. I was afraid she’d come home and no one would be there.”

  Lucy went back to rubbing the piece of china, afraid to make eye contact in case they were both wearing horrified expressions. “I know that must all sound really crazy. I never told anyone that before.” She swallowed nervously. “You guys must think I’m nuts.”

  “You are nuts,” Colin said. “I mean, not actually nuts. I just mean you’re nuts to think we would think you were nuts.” He coughed to clear his throat. “You know what I mean.”

  Kit scratched her forehead. “Like I said before, Colin, a real way with words.”

  Lucy laughed. She couldn’t help herself.

  “And just so you know,” Kit said, adding another piece of blue to Lucy’s pile, “I would think all those exact same things, so you’re not nuts at all.”

  Crossing the lawn, Lucy could see Josie sitting on the top porch step. She was eating something from a bowl with her fingers. Lucy sat beside her, and hoping it was something normal, leaned sideways to see. Phew. Blueberries.

  Josie shook the bowl in her direction.

  Lucy scooped out a handful, and they both ate in silence.

  “I’d better get off my arse and refill this bowl,” Josie said. “Muriel brought over some mustard pickles. I told her I’d return the favour with a pint of berries.”

  Lucy touched her arm. “Wait.” She turned and made sure Josie could see her mouth clearly. “I found out about my mom, that she almost got married before.”

  “Oh?” Josie said, but she didn’t seem surprised. “How’d that all come about?”

  Lucy could feel her cheeks warming at the thought of explaining the snooping, and actually taking the necklaces—twice.

  Josie was watching her, waiting.

  “I was talking to Esther about my mom, and it just sort of came out.”

  Josie nodded.

  “She told me about how the guy, Dean, died, and how Mom was heartbroken, and how she came out to visit her to kind of recover from it all.”

  “Well, it’s good that you know.”

  Lucy tried to figure how to ask if that was the whole story without really asking. “Is that how you remember it?”

  Josie frowned and stared at her thoughtfully for a moment. “Finally, we’re making some progress,” she said, then got up and went down the steps and around to the blueberry patch behind the house.

  “And you’re sure that’s what she said.” Kit dumped her bag out on the grass and passed Lucy the newest issue of Tiger Beat. “She said, ‘Finally, we’re making some progress.’”

  “Yup,” Lucy said.

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it. She could have read my lips wrong,” Lucy offered. “Misunderstood the question.”

  “Even if she did, what was she talking about? Who’s we?”

  Lucy shrugged.

  “And doesn’t some progress mean there’s more progress to be made, more story to tell?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?” Lucy squinted at her. “I can’t tell anymore. I might just be paranoid.”

  Kit tapped a finger against her lips. “I think it’s time to talk to my mom.”

  “No.” Lucy flipped through the magazine. “I don’t want to do that.”

  “But your mom and my mom must’ve still been on speaking terms when this Dean guy was around,” she pointed out. “She was even a bridesmaid, remember?”

  Lucy didn’t answer. She folded down the corner of a page that had a picture of exactly how she wanted her hair.

  “We’re running out of options here,” Kit huffed. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “Um.” Lucy didn’t know.

  Like a giant gopher, Colin’s head popped up out of the hole. “The worst that can happen is that her story is the same as everybody else’s and she doesn’t tell you anything new.”

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “And aren’t sisters supposed to have a special bond or something?” he added.

  Not these sisters. But Lucy had to admit, Kit and Colin made some good points. Laura and Ellen were sisters. They’d lived in the same house. They may have had a special bond, been good friends before they weren’t.

  “Okay,” Lucy sighed. “Let’s talk to your mom.”

  “Yay.” Kit shot a fist into the air. “The only glitch is she’s gone to Truro today to get her hair done, so come over tomorrow after breakfast. Mom’s always in a good mood and chatty in the morning. I usually haven’t gotten in trouble yet.”

  “You don’t think we’re too early, do you?” Lucy asked. “Kit never said when she eats breakfast.”

  Colin didn’t have a chance to answer before Kit pushed open the door and almost knocked him over. “Okay!” she shouted back over her shoulder. “They’re here! We’re leaving!”

  “Wait.” Lucy was confused. “I thought we were supposed to talk to your mom.”

  Kit nudged her down the steps. “Change of plans. Just go.”

  “But—”

  “Just go!” she hissed.

  Colin shook his head. “I guess we’re going,” he said to no one in particular.

  They followed Kit down the driveway and up the road till they reached a little grassy clearing off to the side.

  Lucy spun around. “What’s going on?!”

  “You’re not going to believe what I found.” Kit fumbled around in her back pocket. “Letters!” She held them up.

  Lucy recognized the handwriting right away—her mom’s. “Where did you get those?”

  “Digging through my mom’s bureau.”

  “You were digging through your mom’s bureau?” Colin asked.

  “Yeah. I do it all the time. Don’t you?”

  “Uh. No.”

  “What about your dad’s, then?”

  “My dad doesn’t have a bureau.”

  “Oh. Well, this time I was actually looking for something. My ‘first day of school’ outfit that I know for a fact arrived yesterday. My granny in Ottawa sends me one every year.”

  “I’m sure that makes it A-okay then,” Colin said dryly.

  Kit waved her hand dismissively. “Might be more of a girl thing.” Then she turned to Lucy. “These letters weren’t there the last time I was poking around; there’s no way I would have missed them. I think Mom just got them out, like maybe you being here made her remember them or something.” She shuffled around the envelopes. “I’ll put them in order.”

  “You read them?” Colin asked.

  “Of course I read them.” Kit sighed.

  “It’s fine, it’s fine,” Lucy said impatiently. “What do they say?”

  Kit looked like the cat that swallowed the canary. “Let me just say, I think a lot of your questions will be answered, that’s for sure. Do you want me to read out loud?”

  “Sure. Just hurry up.”

  They sat on the grass in a circle. Kit cleared her throat dramatically. “Okay, this first one is dated August first, nineteen sixty-one. But there’s no stamp or address, just my mom’s name on the envelope. ‘Dear Ellen, By the time you read this letter I’ll be gone. Esther is not doing well. I have to go help her and stay until the baby is born. But more than that, I have to get out of this place. Since Dean died, I just don’t feel like myself. Every day gets harder. I know the agreement was for me to stay and look after Mom when she got sick, once it was clear I was no longer going to Halifax. I thought I could do it, b
ut I can’t. I know this isn’t fair to you. I know you were planning to leave the end of this month for nursing school. I know how hard you worked to save, and how much you wanted to go. I’m sure if you explain the situation, they will hold a spot for you. I pray Mom’s recovery is fast so you can eventually get there. Please give her my love. I won’t blame you if you never forgive me. I deserve it. But I hope one day you’ll understand and know that I did what I had to do. Love, Laura.’”

  Kit passed the letter to Lucy. “Do you want to look at it?”

  Lucy’s eyes scanned the page. “My mom just took off?”

  “Bolted,” Kit said, nodding. “The rest of the letters are all postmarked Banff, Alberta.” She opened the next one. “This one is dated September sixteenth. ‘Dear Ellen, How is Mom? Josie wrote and told me that you couldn’t get her to leave the farm. I know Josie offered to move out there instead. Do you think maybe you can get Mom to go along with that? I know how stubborn she can be. Tell her it’s for you, that you need the help.’ Then she goes on about getting Muriel and Jerry to pitch in, wanting them to talk to your gran, stuff about the town in Banff where she’s staying, and she ends with, ‘Again, I’m so sorry. Love, Laura.’” She passed the page to Lucy.

  Lucy didn’t take it this time. “What’s the next one say?”

  “The next one wasn’t until November fourth. ‘Dear Ellen, Esther had a boy. She named him Colin.’” Kit paused. She and Lucy glanced over at Colin.

  “That’s me,” he said.

  Kit continued: “‘There were some complications, so I will stay to help out. I hope to be home by the end of November. You haven’t answered my letter. I really didn’t expect you to. Josie’s letter said that Mom finally agreed to let her move to the farm and that they are managing pretty well. I hear she is doing better. Maybe it’s not too late for you to go. You could register for the second term. Fingers crossed. Love, Laura.’”

  “I don’t suppose Ellen’s a nurse,” Lucy said.

  Kit shook her head, “Nope,” then opened the last envelope. “This one is November twelfth. ‘Dear Ellen, I will be arriving in Truro the evening of the thirtieth. Josie has made arrangements for Jerry to come in and get me. I look forward to seeing you, Mom, and Josie again. I’ve missed you all very much. I will do whatever I can to make this up to you. Love, Laura.’”