Second Child

by John Saul

  Teri said nothing, but started once more across the street, still clad in the bathrobe she’d worn when she escaped the inferno. An eerie silence fell over the block, the murmurs of the bystanders dying away as she moved steadily through the crowd, which parted silently to let her pass.

  At last Teri came to the front yard of what had been her home. She stood still, staring at the charred wood of the house’s framework and the blackened bricks of its still-standing chimney. She took a tentative step toward the remains of the front porch, then felt a firm hand on her arm.

  “You can’t go in there, miss.”

  Teri’s breath caught, but she turned to look into the kindly gray eyes of one of the firemen. “M-My father—” she began.

  “We’re going in now,” the fireman said. “If he’s in there, we’ll find him.”

  Without a word, Teri watched as two firefighters, clad in heavily padded overcoats, their hands protected by thick gloves, worked their way carefully into the wreckage. The front door had been chopped away, and inside, the base of the stairway was clearly visible. The men started up, testing each step before trusting it to hold their weight. After what seemed an eternity, they finally reached the second floor. They moved through the house, visible first through one window, then another. From one of the rooms an entire wall, along with most of the floor, had burned away. As the firemen gingerly moved from beam to beam, they appeared to be balanced on some kind of blackened scaffolding. At last they moved out of Teri’s sight as they carefully worked their way toward her room at the back of the house.

  Ten minutes later the fireman with the kind, gray eyes emerged from the front door and approached Teri, who stood waiting, her eyes fixed on him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice made gruff by the memory of the charred remains of Tom MacIver, which he had found in front of the still-closed door to Teri’s bedroom at the back of the house. “He was trying to get you out. He didn’t know you’d already gotten away.” His large hand rested reassuringly on Teri’s shoulder for a moment, but then he turned away and began issuing the orders for Tom MacIver’s body to be removed from the ruins.

  Teri stood where she was for a few more seconds. Her eyes remained fixed on the house as if she were still uncertain of the truth of what she had just been told. Finally Lucy Barrow’s voice penetrated her thoughts.

  “We have to call someone for you,” Lucy said. “We have to call your family.”

  Teri turned away from the smoldering rubble. She stared blankly at Lucy. For a moment Lucy wasn’t certain Teri had heard her, but then Teri spoke.

  “My father,” she breathed. “Will someone please call my father?”

  Dear Lord, Lucy thought. She doesn’t understand. She hasn’t grasped what happened. She slipped her arms around Teri and held her close. “Oh, darling,” she whispered. “He didn’t get out. That’s what the fireman was telling you. I—I’m sorry,” she finished, wondering at the helpless inadequacy of the words. “I’m just so sorry.”

  Teri was motionless in her arms for a second, then pulled away, shaking her head.

  “N-Not him,” she said. “We need to call my real father.” She wrenched away from Lucy’s protective embrace, her gaze returning to the house, where three men were already working to retrieve Tom MacIver’s body. “He was my stepfather,” Teri said. “He adopted me when I was only four. Now we have to call my real father.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Bright sunlight flooded the room. As Melissa Holloway’s eyes opened, she instantly felt a pang of guilt—she’d overslept yet again. She started to fling the thin sheet aside, then remembered. It was all right to oversleep today. Today, this and all the other tiny sins she fell victim to every day of her life would be forgiven.

  For today was her birthday.

  And not just any birthday, either. Today was her thirteenth birthday, the first day of a whole new era. Finally, the eternity of being a child was over. She was a teenager.

  She flopped back on the pillow, stretched luxuriantly, and tried to feel the difference between the Melissa who existed today and the Melissa who had endured all the other days of her life.

  She felt nothing. No different at all.

  Her feeling of well-being dimmed slightly, but then she decided it didn’t matter that she didn’t feel different. That would come later. The point was that she was different.

  She sat up and glanced around the big room in which she’d spent every summer of her life. It would have to change now, she decided. It wasn’t a teenager’s room at all. It was a little girl’s room, the shelves that lined its walls overflowing with her collection of dolls and stuffed animals, and a few favorite toys from her toddler years still tucked away in the corners. Next to the fireplace was her enormous Victorian dollhouse, which would certainly have to go. After all, dollhouses were for babies.

  She frowned, already wondering if perhaps she should compromise on the dollhouse. After all, it wasn’t as if it was just any dollhouse. It was big—so big that when she was very small she’d actually been able to crawl inside it—and it was furnished with perfect miniatures of Victorian furniture.

  “What do you think, D’Arcy?” she asked out loud. “Don’t you think we should keep it at least for a while?” Suddenly she clamped her hands over her mouth, remembering her promise to her father. Only last week Melissa had vowed that she would give up D’Arcy today.

  After all, friends who existed in your imagination were only for children, too. When you grew up, you gave up the imaginary friends for real ones. Except that in Melissa’s mind, D’Arcy wasn’t really imaginary at all—she was almost as real as she herself was. She lived up in the attic here in Secret Cove, and never traveled to the city when they were in the apartment in Manhattan the rest of the time. Of course, besides Melissa, there weren’t many people for D’Arcy to talk to—only Cora Peterson, the housekeeper—but that had never bothered D’Arcy at all.

  Melissa thought that D’Arcy must be lonely when the house in Secret Cove was closed up for the winter, but years ago, during one of their long talks in the middle of the night when Melissa couldn’t sleep, D’Arcy had told Melissa that she liked being all by herself. In fact, when Melissa had confessed to D’Arcy yesterday that she’d promised to stop talking to her, D’Arcy had agreed immediately. “But I won’t stop thinking about you,” Melissa had reassured her friend.

  D’Arcy had said nothing, but Melissa had been certain that her friend knew exactly what she meant—that was the wonderful thing about D’Arcy. Even when no one else understood Melissa, D’Arcy always did.

  Melissa sighed. It was going to be hard giving D’Arcy up, even harder than giving up the dollhouse. Well, maybe she’d sort of cheat. Maybe she’d keep the dollhouse and pretend when she was talking to D’Arcy that she was really talking to the tiny wooden figures that populated the house. Except that even if it fooled her parents and Cora, she herself would still know she’d been cheating.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she said, unconsciously speaking out loud once again. “You can have the dollhouse. I’ll move it up to the attic, and then come and visit it sometimes. And if you’re there when I come, that’s not my fault, is it?”

  From far away, in the depths of her imagination, she was certain she heard D’Arcy laughing softly.

  She turned away from the dollhouse and went to the window. It was a warm morning—even in Maine, July wasn’t really cool—and the sky was clear and cloudless. Tag, Cora’s fourteen-year-old grandson, had already mowed the broad lawn earlier that morning, and Melissa breathed in the green scent of fresh-cut grass. The lawn swept down toward the beach fifty yards away, where the waves that came into the cove from the open sea were gentle this morning. They broke with a soft whooshing sound, then threw a white coverlet of foam onto the sand, smoothing out the tracks of the birds that skittered in front of the advancing water.

  Melissa’s eyes wandered over the beach. It was just the way she liked it—all but deserted, with only a few p
eople far off to the south, sunning themselves on the sand that fronted the Cove Club. Between here and the club, which perched on the southern point of the cove itself, there were only five other cottages, none of them quite as large as the Holloways’, but all of them surrounded by equally well-manicured gardens and lawns. And since most of the other kids hung out at the club all the time, Melissa thought of the beach as belonging almost exclusively to herself.

  She dressed quickly, pulling on a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt she’d talked Tag into giving her last week, then went downstairs to find her father. The first thing they’d do today, she decided, was go for a long walk on the beach. They’d go north, away from the club, and maybe climb around the rocky point that cut Secret Cove off from the beach beyond. As she started down the stairs a few minutes later, she’d already made more plans for the day than she and her father could possibly carry out. Still, whatever they did would be fine with her. The important thing was that it was her birthday, and no matter how important his business was, her daddy would spend the day with her, even if her mother thought it was childish.

  Melissa smiled as she remembered the conversation she’d overheard last Sunday, before her father had gone back to New York for the three days before her birthday.

  “She’s going to be thirteen this year, Charles,” her mother had said. “She’s not a baby anymore, and it certainly isn’t going to hurt her if you don’t get back till Friday night.”

  Melissa had held her breath, waiting for her father’s reply, and hadn’t let it out until she heard the words. “It’s her birthday, and it doesn’t matter which one it is. I’ll be here for her. She counts on it.”

  The conversation had gone on, but Melissa hadn’t paid further attention, for she knew that once her father committed himself to something, even her mother couldn’t change his mind. Which meant that today was all hers, and Daddy would do whatever she wanted, even if it were no more than flopping on the beach and making up stories about what the clouds looked like. That was just what they’d done last year, in fact, and her mother had stared at her at dinner that night as if she were crazy. Indeed, even after a whole year, she could still hear her mother’s angry voice: “Well, you certainly managed to waste your father’s valuable time today, didn’t you? It was very inconsiderate of you to make him come all the way out here just to do the same nothing you do every day.”

  Melissa, stung, had felt tears well up in her eyes, but then Daddy had come to her defense. “I thought having nothing to do was the whole point of coming here,” he’d said. “And if Melissa had as good a time as I did, I’d say the day was pretty damned close to perfect.”

  Out of the corner of her eye Melissa had watched her mother’s lips tighten, but she’d said nothing. Still, the next day, after her father had gone back to the city …

  She resolutely put the memory out of her mind. This year it was going to be different.

  She found her father in the kitchen with Cora, and he grinned at her as she came in. “Ready for one of my special chocolate-blueberry waffles?”

  Cora frowned her disapproval. “I swear to God, I don’t know where you got the idea for those things. I certainly never fed them to you when you were a boy—”

  “Want one?” Charles interrupted, cocking an eye at the elderly housekeeper, who pursed her lips, surveyed the counter full of dirty dishes her employer had created, then sighed in resigned defeat.

  “Well, I suppose just one wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Go get Tag,” Charles told Melissa, winking. “Tell him he’s not allowed to do anything on your birthday except goof off.”

  Melissa started toward the back door, but the phone jangled loudly and she paused as Cora picked it up. A moment later, her face pale and her hand trembling, Cora handed the receiver to Charles.

  “It’s Polly,” Cora said, her voice quavering as her eyes filled with sudden tears. “She’s—She and her husband … There was a fire …” She sank down onto a stool next to the sink as Charles snatched the phone from her hand.

  Melissa stood next to the back door, trying to sort out the fragments of sentences she heard her father speak. When he finally hung up, his face was as pale as Cora’s. “I’m afraid something’s happened, baby,” he said, his voice gentle, but choked with emotion. “I’m going to have to fly to Los Angeles this morning.”

  Melissa stared at him, her eyes wide.

  “Polly and Tom MacIver have died,” he went on. “There was a fire in their house this morning.”

  “Teri,” Cora breathed, her eyes fixing on Charles. “What about Teri?”

  Charles’s own eyes closed for a second, and his right hand went to his forehead as if he’d been seized by a sudden headache. Then he managed a nod. “She’s all right,” he said. “She got out. From what they said, Tom didn’t know she’d escaped. He was trying to rescue her. Polly tried to go out a window, but fell.”

  “Dear God,” Cora whispered.

  Melissa heard the words, even understood their meaning, but still she shook her head. “But … But it’s my birthday—”

  Charles came to her, put his arms around her and hugged her tight. “I know, baby,” he whispered into her ear. “And I know what I promised. But it can’t be helped. I’m Teri’s father, too, and I have to go to her. She doesn’t have anyone else. Can’t you understand that?”

  Melissa stood perfectly still for a moment, then nodded. As Charles released her, she managed an uncertain smile. “When you come back, will you bring Teri to live with us?”

  Charles hesitated, not certain what Melissa might be thinking. “I guess I’ll have to, won’t I?” he asked. “She’s my daughter, and there isn’t any other place for her to live. And even if there were, don’t you think she belongs here?”

  Melissa hesitated, trying to sort out the mix of emotions inside her. Of course she was sorry about what had happened to Teri’s mother and stepfather, but she’d never met them and didn’t really know anything about them at all. And she didn’t really know anything about Teri, either, except for two things.

  Teri had been born right here in this house.

  And Teri was her half sister.

  A half sister was almost the same thing as a full sister, and for as long as she could remember, Melissa had wanted a sister more than anything in the world.

  An older sister, someone who would be her friend and answer all the questions she couldn’t ever ask her mother.

  That, really, was what she’d always wanted D’Arcy to be. Except that D’Arcy wasn’t real.

  Teri MacIver was real.

  Melissa’s uncertain smile widened slightly. “It’s all right, Daddy,” she said. “I mean, I’m awfully sorry about what happened, but I’m finally getting something I always wanted. I’m going to have a sister, aren’t I?”

  Charles bit his lip sharply as his eyes flooded with tears. “Yes,” he said, “I guess you are.”

  Melissa floated on her back, kicking her feet just enough to keep them from sinking, feeling the heat of the sun on her face. Her eyes were closed and all she could see was a faint pinkish haze through her lids. She concentrated hard, trying futilely to focus on the colors that swirled behind her eyelids, but then gave it up as a shadow passed over the sun. She opened her eyes and gazed up at the bank of clouds coming in from the sea, then rolled over in the water. A few feet away Tag was floating on his back, his eyes still closed. As silently as she could, Melissa drew an arm back, preparing to shoot a cascade of water over Tag’s freckled face, but just as she was ready to make the splash, Tag suddenly came to life, flipping over and at the same time flailing his own arm so that it was Melissa’s eyes that stung with salt.

  “Got you!” he shouted, then began swimming toward shore as Melissa hurled herself after him.

  A moment later she caught up and her hand closed around his left ankle. She pulled hard, felt him slide beneath her, then planted both her hands in the center of his back and shoved him farther under while maneuvering and ki
cking to escape his reach as he tried to grab hold of her, pulling her down with him.

  The fight went on, each of them ducking the other, until at last they both gave up at once, swimming toward the beach, riding the gentle surf the last few yards. Laughing and gasping, Melissa dropped onto the sand, wrapping her arms protectively around her face as Blackie, the huge Labrador that only technically belonged to Tag, hurled himself upon her, his big tongue slurping affectionately at her. “Down!” she yelled at last. Obediently, Blackie dropped down onto the sand beside her, resting his large head on her lap. Melissa scratched at the dog’s ears, then glanced over at Tag, sprawled a few feet away.

  “What do you suppose she’s like?”

  Tag understood the question immediately. “You mean you wonder if she’ll like you?”

  Melissa flushed. “Maybe,” she admitted. “But I mean, I wonder what she looks like?”

  Tag grinned slyly at her. “Want to see some pictures of her?”

  Melissa stared at him. Most of the day, ever since her father had left for the airport, she and Tag had been talking about Teri. Until now he’d never mentioned any pictures. “You mean you have some?” she demanded.

  Tag’s grin broadened. “Sure. Her mom sent one to Grandma every year. Grandma’s got ’em all in a drawer.”

  Melissa scrambled to her feet. “How come you didn’t tell me?”

  “How come you didn’t ask?” Tag teased, picking up his beach towel and slinging it around his neck. “Am I supposed to be able to read your mind or something?”

  With Blackie trailing along behind, they crossed the beach, then started across the lawn toward the small cottage behind the pool house in which Cora Peterson had lived every summer for the last half century. They had almost reached the front door when Melissa heard her mother’s voice calling from the master suite on the second floor of the main house. “Melissa! Where are you going?”

  Melissa froze, her mind working quickly. “The pool!” she called back. “We’re all covered with salt.”