weed the flower garden
weed the vegetable garden
rake the front yard
wash all the windows on the first floor
bring in a stack of wood for Cook
wash the Dodge Intrepid
clean the grease and dirt off the tractor
bring down ten bales of hay from the hayloft
do your evening chores
“And now I want an apology.” Penelope folded her arms across her chest and turned her Death Ray glare on me once again.
“I’m sorry, Miss Ross,” I mumbled robotically. I know it didn’t sound sincere. Wasn’t meant to.
~ ~ ~
Halfway through my list of chores, a dust-choked FedEx truck groaned to a stop in front of the house. A harried man jumped down and opened the back of the truck removing two large boxes. They were addressed to me. Simon helped me carry them inside and open them. My clothes! All my belongings from the house down in Pasadena had been sent up by the lawyers.
“What’re you doing here inside the house?” barked Great-grandmother. “If you’ve run out of chores outside, I can always think of more to keep you busy.”
“I’m not done yet, Grandmother. It’s just that my clothes have arrived from down South.”
The Troll harrumphed. “Not that you’ll ever have any use for that garbage, girl. Simon, get them out of this house.”
“Where should I put ‘em, Miss Ross?”
Grandmother turned on her heel and headed for the kitchen. “Burn them,” she called over her shoulder.
~ ~ ~
I ran out of time and energy before I got to the last five items on the list even though I continued to work after dinner. Penelope finally called me in and sent me to bed, saying I could finish the rest tomorrow.
All day as I’d worked I thought about Charlotte’s diary and her misery. Maybe she had found a way to handle her mother. Maybe she had found a way out of here. Maybe she had gotten pregnant thinking the father, whoever he was, would marry her and get her out from under her mother’s poisonous thumb. An older man, maybe. One with money.
It wasn’t until I’d collapsed into bed as the light drained from the sky that I had a chance to reach under the mattress and feel the diary hidden there. I had wondered if my great-grandmother had taken advantage of my being outside all day to search my room. The thought made the little hairs prickle at the base of my neck. Looking under a mattress was Place Number One in all the prison movies I’d seen where the warden took apart a cell looking for drugs, contraband, and weapons. If the witch found her daughter’s diary, I’d never see it again. Tomorrow I’d have to return it to the crawlspace where it had rested undiscovered for almost fifty years.
I was too tired to keep my eyes open, though I desperately wanted to read more. This time I would wait until the lack of sounds in the house told me all were finally in bed. I closed my eyes just to rest them while I waited.
~ ~ ~
When my eyes flicked open, the first pale light of dawn seeping through my window disoriented me. I had just closed my eyes for a minute and the night was already gone? Nobody in this house ever stirred at dawn’s version of twilight. It was early enough that I would need my flashlight, but there was time now to read more in the diary.
I drew it out from beneath the mattress, opened it to the second page and flicked on the flashlight.
December 25, 1968
Dear Diary:
Maybe a miracle has happened. Maybe. It’s officially Christmas Day even though it’s just after two in the morning, but I wanted to get the words down on paper before they left my memory.
We went to the Midnight Christmas Service at church tonight. Church, as I’ve mentioned before, has become a super-uncomfortable place for me. I mean, it’s bad enough at school when I hear nasty remarks thrown my way when I’m trying my best to be invisible walking down the hall or when the Top Secret notes passed in class are never passed to me. I think a lot of them are about me. It’s bad enough to be called up to the front of the room in my pioneer getup to read a passage or work a math problem on the board and hear the snickering and see the finger-pointing from the other kids. It’s miserable to sit by myself day after day to eat lunch. If I try to sit with other kids, they either hold their noses and act like they’ll barf, or they just get up and split. Church should be a safe place where everyone practices the pastor’s Christian teachings about loving your neighbor and welcoming everyone. Really? I am as big a pariah at church as I am at school. It just hurts more at church seeing as how I’m the only one singled out for this treatment in the house of the Lord. When Mother and I sat in a pew with three girls from my Sunday school class tonight, they pretended to gag and got up and left. Mother seemed not to notice.
But that part has nothing to do with the miracle. The miracle has to do with what the preacher said. I’m going to try and get it down as close to word-for-word as I can.
The preacher turned his Bible to Mathew and read, “‘If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others on the hills and go out to search for the one that is lost? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he will rejoice over it more than over the ninety-nine that didn’t wander away. In the same way, is it not my heavenly Father’s will that not even one of these little ones should perish?’
“Remember these words this blessed morning when Christ the Savior was born in a humble manger. Does not the Father, our Lord, leave His flock and search out the one who is lost, hearing his prayers, fulfilling His promises? Do not feel abandoned of hope, shunned and alone, for God will seek you, the lost sheep, out and answer your prayers. This God promises. This is your Christmas gift from our Father in remembrance of His Son.”
Don’t you understand, Diary? He was speaking straight to me with words meant only for my ears. God has heard my prayers. He knows I am shunned and alone. My Christmas gift from God will be a friend! My friend. Is that cool? Finally I’ll have someone to talk to and confide in. I am so jazzed, Diary, I couldn’t wait to tell you.
I wondered why Penelope had never taken me to church. Or even to town, for that matter. She knew the whole town was talking about me. Maybe she didn’t want to raise any more ruckus. Sooner or later, I will have to go to town. I’ll have to go to school in September if nothing else.
Dawn’s light intensified. I had time for one more entry before dragging the bookcase away from the wall and hiding the diary in the crawlspace.
December 26, 1968
Dear Diary:
I haven’t found my promised friend yet. It’s a good thing God will be bringing my Christmas present. It’s the only one I shall receive. Beneath the small fir tree Simon had cut for us and decorated in the parlor, were gifts for Cook, Mr. Brawley the foreman, Simon, Cook’s nephew Willie who is visiting from Eugene, and Mother. I had made something for each one of them. Yet there wasn’t even one gift for me.
“That’s no accident, Missy,” Mother said. “Disobedient children get nothing for Christmas. Now go fetch more wood for the fire.”
It’s okay, Diary. I’m not going to sweat it. I’d rather have a friend than all the presents in the world. I just have to be patient until God gets around to bringing her to me.
~ ~ ~
Saturday afternoon I made sure all my chores were done early. I was a storm of fear and excitement as I took a bath before dinner and washed my hair, combing out my blond hair as I sat in the late afternoon sun. In my room, I dressed in my jeans and a pink short-sleeved blouse with a scooped neck and embroidered designs on the bodice. Over it all I wore one of Charlotte’s long-sleeved dresses and tried not to perspire. Penelope let me wear my hair long and loose because it hadn’t completely dried by dinner time and she didn’t want me going to bed with damp hair. Every time I tho
ught of Brad and the river party, a jillion butterflies took flight in my stomach.
The hours before eight o’clock seemed never-ending. With my hair held back with a butterfly clip, I did my makeup in the small cracked mirror Cook had hung on my bedroom wall. Even if my courage failed me and I couldn’t get down that oak tree, it would be worth the try to feel normal again, if only for an hour.
My nerves were stretched tight as harp strings, making it all but impossible to sit on my bed and wait. I wanted to pass the time reading the diary, but the noise the bookcase would have caused didn’t seem worth the risk. I kept sticking my head out the window, straining to hear any noise from the barn or east of the house that would tell me if Simon was still poking around. The prospect of Simon catching me sneaking out was a tummy-tightening fear more terrible than having the Troll catch me.
And then a horrible thought hatched in my brain. What if this was all a sick joke? Why would a hunk like Brad even think twice about inviting out the town weirdo? With his movie-star looks he would certainly already have a steady girlfriend. What if he was taking me to a party just so everyone could laugh at me and call me a jinxed Devil child? What if I was going to be the evening’s entertainment?
At last, I shed the dress and hung it up. I owed Brad at least a chance to prove me wrong. The sun wouldn’t be gone for another forty-five minutes. It was now or never.
My scrutinizing of the oak tree and planning my route down it over the last few days made my escape a tiny bit less scary. My Nikes gripped the bark on the wide branches below my feet as my hands gripped the ones above. In minutes I was on the ground. If nobody caught me now, the prison break would be a success. The dirt road leading away from the house glowed in the peach-colored light of the lowering sun. Once out of earshot, I raced down the road, a bit late for my eight o’clock rendezvous.
Brad was already there. My heart did a wobbly thing as I caught sight of him. He was even cuter than I remembered. Brad had already turned the truck around in the wide spot by the fir log. He was sitting in his truck listening to a CD. Catching sight of me in the rearview mirror, he leaned out the window with a wide grin.
“Hey, gorgeous!” He jumped down from the truck and swept his gaze up and down my body. There went my hot cheeks again. I dropped my gaze to the dirt road. Brad circled me three times. “I like you in jeans,” he whispered, “especially with your hair down. You’re quite the babe. You know that don’t you?”
The fire in my cheeks blazed hotter. No boy had ever called me pretty before, and I wasn’t sure I believed him. Maybe this was all part of the act to lure me to the river.
He held out his hand for mine, stifling a chuckle. “Your chariot awaits, my queen.”
Leading me around the nose of his truck, he opened the passenger door and bowed with a flourish that gestured me inside.
It was . . . I don’t know, so male inside; a rifle racked above the back window, Mickey D wrappers on the floor, a tackle box overflowing with leader and hooks, two wrenches and a flashlight. It even smelled male, but in a good way.
Brad watched me taking inventory. “Sorry. Guess I shoulda cleaned it out a little.”
I smiled at him and we were off, bouncing over the ruts, spraying rooster tails of dust over the blackberry bushes and Queen Anne’s lace that grew alongside the road. We skirted the town of Sweet Creek on a back road and then hit the dirt roads again, this time winding through massive stands of fir trees and a pasture, down to a wide beach bordering Sweet Creek itself. Trucks and cars had been parked catawampus in the grass, and a major bonfire blazed on the beach. Kids milled around drinking beer and soft drinks, carrying food, folding chairs, and blankets down to the area near the fire and dancing to somebody’s CD player.
Brad held my hand as we wandered down to the fire. He introduced me as Emma to guys who couldn’t hide the hope in their eyes that I wasn’t exclusively with Brad and to girls who looked at me with open suspicion. One of the girls took a step back and eyeballed me maliciously.
“Emma?” she asked. It was a rhetorical question. “I know who you are. You’re that Emma Ross, aren’t you? That great-great-granddaughter of Miss Penelope Ross, crazy owner of Ross Ranch.”
“Just great-granddaughter,” I murmured, a little stunned by the hostility.
“Yeah,” her friend said. “Aren’t you like the daughter of the Second Coming or something?”
I looked up at Brad.
“Knock it off, Sarah,” he said. “Repeating stupid old wives’ tales and ignorant gossip doesn’t suit you. Emma’s from Southern California and has nothing to do with all that stuff from years back.”
“Her grandmother did,” said a dark-haired girl. “My mother knew that Charlotte girl. I heard your grandmother went and—"
“Shut up, Beckie!” another girl cut in. “You don’t know a thing for sure about her grandmother, so keep your rumors to yourself. Just ignore Beckie, Emma,” she said, smiling at me. “Some people in this town forget what manners are. Come with me. I’ll introduce you to some nice girls.”
Brad let me go and by the time the fire had burned down enough to roast hotdogs over it, I had met eight or ten girls who either didn’t know I was the product of mystery and scandal or were too polite to mention it.
I ate hotdogs and potato salad sitting on a log with Brad, who one of the girls had told me was a wide receiver on the Sweet Creek High School football team. When another asked how long we’d known each other and wondered how we’d met, I began to get just how popular Brad was. Apparently he had recently broken it off with Melinda, a longtime girlfriend who had not come to the party. She was the daughter of the banker in town, one of those rich and beautiful types who believe she’s the envy of everyone in town. At least that’s what I was told.
“Want a beer?” Brad asked, draining the last swallow from a Coors bottle.
I felt self-conscious. “I don’t drink.”
Brad gazed into my eyes and smiled. He tilted up my chin and kissed me softly on the mouth. Tingles buzzed through my body and for a second I felt lightheaded. “I like that you don’t,” he said. “Come on. I’ll get you a soft drink and we can take a walk along the river.”
The sun had dropped behind a western ridge of mountains, leaving behind its afterglow streamers of gold, tangerine, and hazy pink while we strolled along the shore. Stars were already waking up in the dark eastern sky above the Cascades and a last Willow Flycatcher swooped low across the water harvesting bugs. I shivered in the night breeze. Brad put his arm around me.
“Did you have fun tonight, Emma?”
“Yes. You have no idea what a gift getting away from the ranch house is. And I’m glad I’ve met some of the other kids tonight. Thanks for asking me.”
“You kidding? Thanks for coming. I know you’re risking a ton of trouble if someone catches you coming home. Not many girls would have agreed to squeeze out of a third story window and climb down an oak tree just to go out with me.” He turned his head to kiss my hair as we walked. “You’re courageous, a little crazy, and totally special. I knew it the second I laid eyes on you.” He chuckled. “You’re also cute when you blush.”
“I am not,” I declared. “I hate it when I blush.”
“You’re totally different from the girl I used to date. We had gone together for the last two years and it feels now like I wasted precious time with her.”
“Oh. The prom queen?”
Brad laughed. “You girls sure do talk, don’t you?”
“Not me,” I protested. “I just listen.”
“It’s getting late,” Brad observed. “Wish we had another couple of hours to spend, but I should probably get you home.”
“Already?” I whined. “Seems like we just got here.”
Brad stopped and turned me toward him. Crickets chirped in the grass. Gently, he took
my face in both hands and leaned down. “You’re an innocent little flower, aren’t you, Em?” He kissed me long and slow and deep.
The effect was dazzling. I admit to having no experience with boys, but I never guessed a kiss could be like that. I melted into him and tried to deny all the new sensations roaring through my innards. It stole my breath and pushed my heart into overdrive. He groaned a little as he pushed me gently away. “You don’t know what you do to me, little girl. If I don’t take you home now, we’ll both be sorry.”
Chapter 7
I shoved the two wrenches and the tackle box over by the passenger door so I could sit thigh-to-thigh next to Brad on the way home. Some people might think it was a little indecent as I had to straddle the gear box and Brad had to reach between my legs to shift. I think he probably shifted more often than was strictly necessary. He drove slowly, keeping his right hand on my leg when he wasn’t shifting. Every once in a while, he’d lean toward me and kiss my hair.
Way too soon we reached the wide spot in the dirt road leading back to prison. I didn’t budge when he stopped the truck and turned off the ignition.
“Don’t suppose you’d like to catch a movie with me next Friday night?” he asked.
I shrugged as if such a thing was beneath my interest level. “I might possibly be persuaded,” I said in my best bored voice.
“Come here, you.” Brad pulled me onto his lap and brushed my hair back from my face. I giggled and pretended to struggle, right up to the moment he planted another one of those killer kisses on me.
My body dissolved into delicious tremors of pleasure. My bones melted. I couldn’t have moved away from him if the truck cab had burst into flames.
Slowly, he opened his eyes as the kiss ended, and stared at every inch of my face as if memorizing it. I wanted to stay like this in his arms forever. He winced and made that little groan again as he moved his left arm back to the door handle.
A Certain Twist in Time Page 6