Seconds passed. Kit slapping at a mosquito broke the silence.
“How could she leave?” Lucy said. “When her mother’s sick, and her sister’s supposed to go away for school? She dumped everything on Ellen.”
“I dunno,” Colin said. “She was in kind of a tough situation. Her best friend, my mom, was far away from home with no one. Maybe she really thought my mom needed her more.”
“She had your dad,” Kit pointed out. “My mom was trying to live out her life’s dream.”
“Like I said,” Colin muttered, “tough situation.”
It was what Lucy had been too afraid to even let herself think about. The whole mess with Ellen was her mom’s fault. Her mom was in the wrong, the bad guy.
“Look on the bright side,” Kit said, plucking the first letter from Lucy’s hand and folding it up. “At least you were right. The fight wasn’t about a desk.”
Chapter 19
Lucy and Colin parted ways at the top of Josie’s driveway.
“See you tomorrow?” Colin said.
“Sure.” It was the first word Lucy had spoken since they’d left Kit’s. Colin had kept quiet as well. It was like he knew she didn’t feel like talking.
Walking past Josie’s house, she made a beeline for the lane that led to the beach. Once down the stairs, she didn’t look for beach glass, she didn’t wade out into the water; she just sat on the bottom step with her chin resting in her hands, thinking. I don’t blame Ellen for not speaking to my mom. I’m not sure I would have either.
Lucy gave a little snort. And how convenient it was for Esther to leave all that stuff out of her story, all the stuff about her. Maybe it was to save Lucy’s feelings. Or maybe it was because Esther felt guilty Lucy’s mom left home to help her. Lucy shrugged to herself. Her brain was all jumbled—she didn’t know what to think.
She stayed and watched a dark green fishing boat putt-putt across the horizon and dock at the wharf, then she got up and slowly made her way back to the house. Josie was nowhere in sight. That was good. Lucy still didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Hiding out in her room was the logical choice, but it was so hot, she knew it would be like an oven up there. She lay down on the porch swing and shut her eyes. A minute later, her eyes opened. There was a faint popping sound, like faraway fireworks, but something told her it was coming from inside the house.
Lucy cautiously opened the front screen door and listened. The popping had stopped.
“Would you look at that?” Lucy heard Josie say from upstairs.
“Uh-oh,” Lucy said and ran up to find her.
Josie was standing outside her sewing room, head tilted back, looking up at the ceiling. Lucy looked up too. She felt her eyebrows scrunch together. There was a brownish liquid dripping rather steadily from the attic trap door. Drips were joining with other drips and making their way around the entire perimeter of the door, starting to fall in giant plops onto the red rug.
What is that? Lucy ducked into the bathroom, pulled a towel off the hook, and spread it over the floor.
“Well, I’ll be,” Josie said, still looking up, her hands on her hips. “I forgot all about those.”
The whole upstairs smelled sweet, like candy. Lucy stuck out a hand to catch a drip and hesitantly held it to her nose. Familiar. She rubbed her fingers together. Sticky. She tugged on Josie’s sleeve till she turned and made eye contact. “Forgot about what?” Then pointed at the ceiling. “What is that?”
“Root beer. It was supposed to be a surprise. So, surprise,” she said grimly.
“Root beer?”
“Homemade. You have to keep it someplace warm.” She made a face. “But I guess it got too warm up there. The tops must have popped off.”
“Should we go up and see?” Lucy reached for the string hanging from the door.
“Nah.” Josie made another face. “Too much mess. Let the squirrels and racoons take care of it for us.”
Lucy’s jaw dropped. The thought of small animals scurrying around, licking up the root beer, especially at night, gave her the heebie-jeebies.
“Run down and get a cloth and some paper towel and we’ll clean up the stuff we can see,” Josie ordered.
It didn’t take Lucy long to figure out that when Josie said, “we’ll clean,” she really meant Lucy. Josie sat on her sewing bench, puffing away on a cigarette, directing Lucy and pointing out spots that she’d missed on the ceiling, while Lucy balanced precariously on a stool with a soapy cloth and the roll of paper towel. It took forever, the mixture was super syrupy. She had to admit she was a little disappointed that it hadn’t worked. The goo smelled really good, just like A&W root beer, her favourite.
That night when Lucy went to bed, she tossed and turned for a long time. Should she talk to Josie about Ellen’s letters? Josie was around when it all happened. Maybe she could explain it from another point of view. Maybe there was another side to the story. Lucy got up to go see if Josie was still awake. She only made it halfway across the room. Who was she kidding? There was no other point of view, no other side to the story. The letters weren’t Ellen’s version of what happened. The letters were in her mom’s own words. That was what happened. Plain and simple.
As she was about to finally fall asleep, she thought she heard the pitter-patter of tiny feet on the ceiling above her. Please let that be my imagination. She pulled the pillow over her head, jamming the corners in tight against her ears like giant earplugs.
“The crazy thing was,” Lucy told Colin and Kit the next day, “she didn’t seem that bothered by any of it. She didn’t even seem to care that there’d be raccoons and squirrels running around her attic.”
Lucy had started with the root beer story right away. She wanted to distract them from mentioning Ellen’s letters. She didn’t want to talk about them. She didn’t know how to defend her mom. It worked. Kit and Colin were both doubled over, their hands pressing on their stomachs.
“I’m serious, guys,” Lucy said. “Sometimes I really worry about her. Doesn’t she know the damage raccoons can do? We had one at home and it ripped all the air vents off our roof!”
“Don’t worry about it,” Kit said. “Here in the country, nobody cares about sharing their house with a few raccoons.”
“Not to mention,” Lucy continued, “she totally made me do all the cleanup. My neck is so stiff I can barely turn my head. See?” She grimaced as she slowly tried to look behind her. “And I can only raise my arms up this far.” She grimaced again as she tried to lift her arms, but they wouldn’t go past her shoulders.
“Man, I wish I could have been there.” Colin grinned.
“Me too. I could have used the help,” Lucy said as she massaged her neck. “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been here. Would she have stood on a chair and tried to clean it up herself? I almost lost my balance—twice. What if she fell? Should she even be living alone?”
“Uh.” Kit raised her eyebrows. “You might not want to share those thoughts with Josie. She doesn’t strike me as the type that would take kindly to being told she can’t look after herself.”
“I wasn’t saying that, exactly.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll check in on her after you leave,” Colin offered.
“Okay, I guess.” Lucy sighed. “Thanks.”
Colin looked at his watch. “Listen. I have to go back home for a bit. Mom needs me to babysit. You guys wanna come?”
Lucy and Kit looked at each other and shrugged. “Sure.”
Esther was waiting at the front door. “Hi everyone, bye everyone,” she said as she hurried to the car. “Should be less than an hour. Post office, a couple quick errands. The twins are playing in the backyard.”
Kicking a path through a sea of scattered toys and Lego, Colin led them down the hall into the den. There was a giant smear of what looked to be strawberry jam on the door frame that
Lucy carefully avoided. Kit crouched down and picked up a crushed plastic Spiderman cup and a baby doll with all her hair cut off. “Now I understand why Esther basically peeled out of the driveway,” Kit whispered to Lucy.
“Should we check on the twins?” Lucy asked.
“Why?” Colin turned on the TV and restlessly flipped back and forth between the two channels. “Trust me. If there’s a problem we’ll hear about it.”
Lucy readjusted the rabbit ears to get a clearer picture.
“So, I sort of think I should say sorry,” Kit said.
Colin looked up. “It’s all right. Apology accepted.”
“Not to you, idiot. Lucy.”
Lucy moved the rabbit ears to another position. “Me? Why?”
“The letters. I was so excited to get some answers and solve the mystery, I forgot that, well, that it might not have made your mom look so great.”
“Oh. Um, it’s okay. Not your fault.”
“Yeah. But still,” Kit said.
“Really, it’s fine. It was your mystery too. And at least now you know that your mom was totally in the right. You know, about not talking to my mom.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that. She could have forgiven her—her own sister. Plus, it was like a bazillion years ago.”
Colin sighed and turned off the TV. “Is it really that big a deal? I mean, so your mom made a bad decision when she was a teenager. Is it going to change the way you think about her?”
“I’m not sure,” Lucy answered honestly.
“But wasn’t she a great mom and all that?”
“Yeah.”
“And didn’t you think she was a good person and stuff?”
“Of course.”
“Then what difference does it make what she did in her past, way back whenever? You didn’t even exist then. Why should you even care?”
Lucy opened her mouth to argue, then closed it.
“Everyone deserves a second chance, right?” he said simply.
“Yeah, but,” Kit piped up, “don’t people always say that actions have consequences?”
“Who says?” Colin said. “What people?”
Kit glared at him. “People.”
Colin shook his head and sighed.
“Looks like your mom’s finished unpacking,” Lucy said, attempting to change the subject.
Colin looked around like he was seeing the room for the first time. “Uh. I guess.”
“Your dad must be coming soon.”
He picked up two yo-yos that were tangled together. “Fingers crossed. Sometimes it’s like living at a circus.”
Kit drifted over to examine the photos on the wall. “What’s this ginormous place?”
“It’s where my parents worked out west.”
Kit leaned in closer. “Are your mom and dad in here?”
It was the photo Lucy had seen before, up in Colin’s room. She got up and pointed them out to Kit. “There. And there.”
“Look at your mom’s awesome cat-eye glasses!” Kit cried out. “When was this?”
“Colin,” Lucy said. “Can I look at the date again?”
“Yeah, whatever.” He was still busy with the two yo-yos.
Lucy pulled the bottom edge of the frame away from the wall and shoved her hand up behind, sliding the photo under the glass and revealing the tiny silvery writing: October 1, 1961.
“Wow!” Kit exclaimed. “I need to get me a pair of those glasses!”
Colin turned the TV back on and they ended up watching Sesame Street because they pretty much had no other options.
“You know,” Kit said, “my head almost explodes every time they don’t believe Big Bird about Snuffleupagus.”
Colin and Lucy looked at each other. “Yeah, me too,” they said in unison.
True to her word, Esther returned in under an hour. Lucy and Kit left for home to grab some lunch.
In Josie’s kitchen, Lucy made two peanut butter and jelly fold-overs and carried them out to the porch swing. She picked off pieces of crust and thought about what Colin had said, how he’d said he didn’t see what the big deal was. He seemed to think a lot of things weren’t a big deal.
Was he right? Maybe it wasn’t a big deal. Why did she care so much about what her mom did in the past? Her dad would probably agree with Colin. He’d probably say the same thing he’d said to her before. Something like, “Your mom is the person you’ve known for fourteen years”—thirteen and a quarter—“and that’s what matters,” blah, blah, blah. Assuming he even knew about all this. God. Does he? Lucy rubbed a chunk of crust between her fingers until it was nothing but crumbs. But isn’t your past part of you? Doesn’t it make you who you are? And what if something you did in the past hurt other people? Like Ellen. There needs to be consequences. Kit was kind of right too.
Argh. Too much in my head.
She placed her uneaten fold-overs on the table. One of Josie’s Harlequins was lying there, and she picked it up and glanced at the cover. Shades of Autumn. She snuggled down deeper into the cushions and began to read: October was Diane’s favourite month. When she was little, it was because of Halloween.
Huh, Lucy thought and smiled. Colin’s birthday.
But all that changed. Now it was because it was the month she would marry Luke, the man of her dreams. In only a few hours, Diane was going to be Luke’s wife. This one was going to be good. Diane was obviously headed for disaster; you can’t have a happy ending at the beginning of a book.
But as she read along, she was having a hard time focusing. She wasn’t able to get past page one. Her eyes kept drifting back to the first paragraph. Have I read this before? She took another look at the cover. No. She started again, from the beginning. October was Diane’s favourite month. When she was little, it was because of Halloween. Suddenly Lucy froze, and she stayed that way for what seemed like a long time. Then she slammed the book shut, tore down the stairs, and raced across the lawn.
When Lucy reached Kit’s house, she was bent over, gasping for breath, and digging a fist into the stitch in her side. She pounded impatiently on the screen door, praying it would be Kit who answered.
Kit appeared, a surprised look on her face. “Hi!”
Lucy reached out an arm and pulled her onto the porch.
“Whoa. What the heck?”
“I just need to ask you a couple questions,” Lucy said quickly, still bent over. “Make sure I’m not losing my mind.”
“Okay.”
“Remember when we were sitting around the hole with your magazines and talking about our birthdays and horoscopes and stuff like that?”
“Yup.”
“When did Colin say his birthday was?”
“October thirty-first. Halloween. I’m so jealous.”
“And he told us the year, too. What was it?”
“Nineteen sixty-one.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yup. I’m the one who asked him. I wanted to know for sure how old he was to see if he might be in junior high with me, but he’ll be at the high school.”
“That’s what I thought too,” Lucy whispered.
“Why? You’re freakin’ me out.”
Lucy took a deep breath. “You know that picture of Colin’s parents? The one in the den with them standing in front of the hotel? The one we were just looking at?”
“Yeah.”
“You asked the date it was taken. Do you remember what it was? What was written on the bottom?”
“October. October something?”
“It was October first, nineteen sixty-one. It was in tiny silver writing. You could hardly see it.” Lucy could hear herself speaking faster and faster.
Kit scrunched her eyebrows together. “So?”
“Colin was born on October thirty-first, nineteen sixty-one. That pictu
re was taken on October first, nineteen sixty-one. Notice anything unusual about Esther in the picture?” Lucy held her breath and waited for Kit to put it together.
Slowly Kit’s face began to clear and her eyes got big. “She should be pregnant!”
“And she’s not.”
“Holy crap,” Kit said. “Maybe the date on the picture is wrong.”
Lucy thought for a second. “I don’t think that’s very likely.”
“Maybe Colin’s wrong about his birthday.”
“I think he probably knows when he was born, and how old he is.”
“You’re right,” Kit sighed. Then perked up. “Or. What if his parents lied to him about his birthday? I’ve heard of that before. Maybe they weren’t married when he was born and they were worried people would be all judgey.”
“I suppose….” Lucy let the idea roll around in her head. “It could be something like that.”
“And you’re sure Esther’s not pregnant in that picture?” Kit asked. “Maybe we missed it, or it’s just the angle or something.”
Lucy squished up her nose. “Pretty sure. She’s standing sideways at the end of a row.”
They both fell silent, thinking hard.
“What now?” Kit said.
“Well, first we should probably just double-check that photo. Her stomach might be blocked by a head or something.”
Kit raised her eyebrows. “You said she was standing sideways at the end of a row.”
“We still need to double-check.” Lucy’s tone was firm. “And maybe we just didn’t read the date right,” she added. “Like, the numbers could be smudged or worn.”
“We both read the date wrong?”
“Anything’s possible.” Lucy crossed her fingers. On both hands.
Chapter 20
Josie slid the bottle of syrup across the table to Lucy. “I believe I could rent you out to haunt a house,” she said.
Lucy poked at her waffles with a fork. “I don’t feel that great,” she mumbled. She was really just exhausted. Between Ellen’s letters and the fact that there was now some kind of mystery around Colin’s birthday, she hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep.
The Big Dig Page 17