I pulled an apple core, a banana peel and—ugh—a used Kleenex out of the trash. The furniture ad and the rest of the mail appeared to have vanished into thin air. Or—no, there were tiny shreds of paper at the bottom of the trash bag.
Bran had torn the mail into bits. At some point after he mowed, he’d taken the ads out of the trash can just so he could tear them up.
I picked the pieces out of the trash, studied each shred carefully. There were plenty of partial words: Occupa—, Biggest sale of the sea—, Sundia—.
But the tiny square that should have said Marcus was missing.
Mom did come home for dinner that night, breezing in just as Bran and I were heating up fried clams and French fries left over from the Shrimp Shack. I was getting a little sick of seafood, and reheated French fries are pretty disgusting. But I ate dinner that night without tasting any of it. In my mind I kept rehearsing what I wanted to say to Mom. I just didn’t want to talk in front of Bran, because he’d change the subject or make me seem like a silly, snoopy little kid.
He kept looking over at me anyhow, watching me while I watched him.
No wonder we left it to Mom to do most of the talking.
“Would you believe I have my first set of exams next week?” she asked. She gathered her hair away from her face, holding it tight at the back of her head. Then she let it fall back down, as if she were too exhausted even to lift hair. “The counselors warned me that taking such a heavy load for summer school would be intense, but I didn’t think it’d be this bad.”
“You’ll do fine,” Bran said comfortingly. “And you can study all weekend. Britt and I will give you total silence.”
He shot me a warning look, as if to say, “Don’t talk to her about anything.”
I’m not sure what kind of look I gave back to him, but I wanted so badly for Mom to say, “No, no, I don’t need that. I want to hear what’s on your minds. I’ve missed you. Tell me everything that’s happened the past few days while I was gone.” And then I could spill out all my worries and suspicions, even with Bran listening.
Instead Mom just said, “Thanks. You guys are the best.”
After dinner Mom spread out her books and papers on the table once again.
“Hey, Britt,” Bran said. “I’m going to walk over to the library to use their computers. Why don’t you come with me and give Mom some peace?” He was motioning toward the door with his head, as if that were enough to make me go with him. As if I were a puppet that he could control.
Normally he could have.
But when would I get another chance to talk to Mom alone?
“No, thanks,” I told Bran.
“No, really,” Bran said. “You don’t want to disturb Mom.”
“I won’t ‘disturb’ her,” I said. “I just want to stay home.”
“But—,” Bran said.
“It’s okay,” Mom said, looking up from her books. “If Britt’s at least in the same house with me, I won’t feel like such a neglectful mother.”
Bran looked from Mom to me in desperation. Mom didn’t see his expression because she was already staring down at her books again. But I did. He looked frantic. Devastated. Appalled. All those other vocabulary words Ms. Rogers had taught me back in Pennsylvania that I never thought I’d need.
“Well, all right,” Bran said weakly. “But, honestly, Britt, if you bother Mom in any way . . .”
He let his words trail off, which made them seem even more threatening.
I wished Mom would say, “Now, Bran, who’s the parent here? Since when are you in charge of Brittany?” But Mom would never say that, because Bran had always been in charge of me. Ever since Dad left when Bran was only four years old, Bran had acted like he was my father.
It had just never bothered me before.
Bran slipped out the back door with one last, desperate warning look directed my way.
And then Mom and I were alone.
Mom turned a page, and I sat down on the couch. I’d give her fifteen minutes, I decided. Then I’d ask her to take a study break and I’d tell her everything. I couldn’t wait any more than fifteen minutes, because Bran might come back quickly. But I couldn’t talk to her right away because she’d just started studying.
The digital clock on the VCR seemed frozen at 7:49. After an eternity, it changed to 7:50. And I was supposed to wait fourteen more minutes?
“Brittany, would you stop that!” Mom snapped.
“Stop what?” I asked. Then I realized I’d been nervously tapping my foot. “Oh, sorry,” I said.
I got up and walked over to the table. I’d already interrupted her, so I might as well plunge in.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked.
“Weren’t we just talking at dinner?” she asked. She didn’t look up from a diagram of a skeleton she was studying.
“Well, this is something else,” I said.
“What?” Mom said impatiently. She looked up. “What?”
And then with her frowning at me, I chickened out.
“Why do you want to be a doctor so bad?” I blurted out, because it was all related. If Mom hadn’t wanted to be a doctor, we wouldn’t have moved to Florida, we wouldn’t have moved into the Marquises’ house, and Bran wouldn’t be acting so weird. Would he?
“Didn’t you read my college admissions essay?” Mom asked.
“No, you just had Bran proofread it for you,” I said.
Mom sighed.
“Well, I like all the science. I think it’s interesting how the human body works. And I want to help people.”
“And?” I said, because she didn’t seem to be done.
“Well, those are the good reasons, the ones I stressed on my admissions essay. But . . . I can’t say I don’t think about the money, too. Can you imagine being able to walk into McDonald’s and not have to worry that we don’t have enough money for a Big Mac? Or thinking that if we buy a Big Mac, we won’t be able to afford something else?” She sounded wistful.
“You always say you don’t like Big Macs,” I pointed out.
“Chicken nuggets are cheaper,” Mom said.
This was interesting, though it didn’t tell me anything about Bran.
“Doctors aren’t the only ones who make lots of money,” I said. I’d heard Mom’s friend Carlene back in Pennsylvania make that point lots of times. “There wouldn’t be enough money in the whole world to pay me to go to school for an extra seven years,” she always said. Of course, Carlene also bragged about dropping out of high school.
“It’s not just the money. People respect doctors,” Mom said. “Nobody respects waitresses whose husbands leave them. Nobody respects single mothers.”
I should have said, “I respect you, Mom. Bran respects you.” But Mom was looking at her book again. It was like she’d already forgotten I was there.
“Mom,” I said, and took a deep breath. “Don’t you think there’s something wrong with Bran? Don’t you think he’s been acting weird ever since we moved into the Marquises’ house?”
“No,” she said without looking back up. She began checking off the names of bones on a chart.
“But—,” I said.
“Look, Brittany, I’d love to have a nice long chat with you, but I really don’t have time for this,” Mom said.
“But it’s important!” I wailed. “Bran’s been acting sneaky! He was sneaking around this afternoon looking at the electric meter! He—” I wanted to tell her about the missing name from the furniture ad, but I didn’t want to admit I’d been picking through the trash, not with her looking so doubtfully at me. I searched for my strongest argument. “He waited until you and I were both supposed to be asleep Monday night before he moved the boxes out of the storage shed. He’s hiding something! He even put a lock on his closet!”
Mom started laughing.
“Really? A lock? Bran?” she said.
“Yes,” I said, practically pouting. I hadn’t expected Mom to laugh. “You should make him ope
n the closet and show you everything that’s inside there.”
I felt like I’d thrown down a challenge. Finally I’d managed to say something right. Finally Mom would be able to help me solve this.
But Mom was shaking her head grimly.
“No,” Mom said. “That’s exactly the kind of thing my parents would have done.”
“But what if he’s got—I don’t know—drugs in there? What if he’s hiding evidence for the Marquises or something?” I couldn’t exactly see Mr. and Mrs. Marquis as a pair of drug dealers, but I had to get Mom to see how serious this was.
Mom kept shaking her head.
“Brittany, it’s—Bran’s a teenager. I’m surprised he’s waited this long to start wanting some privacy. Maybe he’s got a picture in his closet of some girl he thinks is really cute, but he’s too shy to ask out. Maybe he’s got acne medicine in there and he doesn’t want us to know he’s using it. Maybe . . . I don’t know. There are dozens of perfectly legitimate reasons he might want to keep you and me out of his closet.”
“But if you made him show you, you’d know for sure—
“Look,” Mom said, putting down her pencil. “I’ll tell you a little story I’ve never told anyone. When I was fifteen my parents stole my diary from beneath my mattress, where I’d hidden it. They read it out loud, to each other, right in front of me. They criticized everything I’d written, told me how stupid I was, then threw the diary away. And when they got done, I felt horrible. I cried for days. And they criticized me for that, too. That’s why I would never force Bran to show me what’s in his closet. Because I don’t want to humiliate him. And I trust him.”
Mom reached for one of her other books to study.
“Maybe they were right to do that,” I said sulkily. “You were probably just writing about how much you wanted to run away with Dad.”
Mom froze, her arm still outstretched.
“Actually,” she said icily, “what I wrote in my diary was how much I wanted to be a doctor. And they did everything they could to kill that dream. That was one of the reasons I did run off with your father, because I didn’t think I had any better choices.”
Mom picked up her textbook and clutched it like it was all she had. She looked like it hurt just to say the words my parents and your father. If I’d wanted to win Mom over to my point of view, I’d done everything wrong. There was such a chill between us now, we wouldn’t need air-conditioning the rest of the summer.
I kept talking anyway.
“But—it’s like I said before, Bran was moving boxes out of the shed after midnight Monday. Why would he do that?”
“Maybe that was the only time he had,” Mom muttered distractedly. “He’s working full-time, you know.”
She picked her pencil up again. I saw her check off tibia and femur on her list of bones.
“And—” I felt like I was grasping at straws. “On Tuesday he didn’t want me to be seen out on the front porch because he said the Marquises thought that made a house look ‘trashy’ Isn’t that crazy?”
“It’s not his fault if the Marquises have some bizarre ideas,” Mom said, still staring at her bone chart. “They probably asked him to check the electric meter, too.”
“But—”
Mom pressed her pencil down so hard the lead point broke.
“Brittany, that’s enough!” she snapped. “This is driving me crazy. Bran has done nothing wrong! You’re just bored and you’re imagining things, and I’ve got three tests next week and I’m not going to be ready for any of them if you don’t leave me alone!”
“Okay, fine! I’ll leave!” I huffed. I stalked out the front door and let it slam behind me.
I wanted Mom to come after me, to apologize, but she didn’t. I stood there on the front porch, breathing hard and looking out on a beautiful scene of palm trees and tropical flowers and the tidy houses across the street. And I hated them all. The beauty seemed fake. At least back at Sunset Terrace, with its ugly mold and overflowing Dumpsters and broken doors, Mom and Bran and I had been united, a team—the three of us against the whole rest of the world. Now Bran was acting strange and secretive and guilty, and Mom was mad at me. And I was all alone.
“Hi, Britt,” someone said.
I looked around—it was Mrs. Stuldy. She and Mr. Stuldy were sitting out on their porch, enjoying the cool evening. (See? I wanted to say to Bran, to Mom, to the Marquises. They don’t think it’s trashy to sit on their porch.)
“Hi,” I said back.
“Want to join us?” Mrs. Stuldy said. “It’s a nice night.”
Okay, so maybe Mrs. Stuldy liked me. But I didn’t feel like talking just then.
“No, thanks,” I said, kind of choking on the words. “I’ve got to go . . . around back.”
I went around to the backyard because it was darker there. I crouched down against the side of the house and I cried a little. I realized I’d never said anything to Mom about the Marcus/Marquis confusion and the missing scrap of paper. But I didn’t think it mattered. I didn’t think Mom would have listened to me about that, either.
I knew just how Mom must have felt when her parents threw out her diary and made fun of her dream of being a doctor.
It wasn’t fair, because she’d been right to want to be a doctor.
And I was right about Bran.
Mom did apologize later, when I finally dried my tears and walked back into the house, blinking in the unfamiliar light. But the apology was all about how she was sorry she was so stressed out and “I know this isn’t a very enjoyable summer for you” and “I do appreciate everything you’re doing to help—thanks for doing laundry today” and “Why don’t you call up some friends and arrange to meet them at the beach or the park or something?”
She didn’t seem to remember that I didn’t have any friends in Florida. And she didn’t say anything about Bran.
It was like she hadn’t heard a single word I’d said.
I held back a tide of angry words and just muttered, “That’s okay. I think I’ll go to bed now.”
“Get some sleep for me,” Mom said a little wistfully.
And I almost felt sorry for her then, almost turned around and said, Look, I’m not making all this up. I know studying is important, but don’t you want to know that Bran lied about how the Marquises spell their name? But I wasn’t sure that he’d lied, and I was still mad at Mom. I just nodded stiffly and went to my room.
Figuring out Bran was going to be entirely up to me.
For the next few weeks, though, he seemed to be acting almost normal. Nothing else happened. Bran worked, Mom went to school, and I ran errands for all the old people in our neighborhood.
And Bran always got to the mail before I did.
Then one afternoon when I was standing in the hot Laundromat tossing clothes into the washer, I felt a hard lump in the pocket of a pair of Bran’s shorts. I’d already dropped a whole pile of clothes in before the sensation registered. But I quickly leaned into the gaping washer and yanked the shorts back out.
They were the threadbare, ragged shorts Bran usually wore when he mowed the yard. Holding my breath, I reached into the pocket. The lump wasn’t just a lump. It had sharp points.
I pulled my hand back out, holding a round circle of metal.
A key ring.
A key ring with three keys dangling from it.
I fingered each key in turn, whispering, “House key. Shed key. Closet.” I must have looked as loony as some of the old people I occasionally saw shuffling around Gulfstone talking to themselves. I threw the rest of the clothes into the washer, slammed the door, jammed the quarters into the machine to start it. And then, clutching the keys, I sank into one of the plastic chairs across from the washer.
Bran must have put the keys in his pocket when he’d mowed the day before. Then he’d forgotten to take them out when he came into the house and took a shower. And, miraculously, he hadn’t even remembered them when he got up and went to work that morning.
&nb
sp; I stared at the clothes spinning round and round in the washer, and my thoughts seemed to churn just as violently.
Bran had gone in to work at eleven. He probably wouldn’t be home until four or five—maybe not until eight or nine. And Mom wouldn’t be home any sooner than that. I was holding the keys to the shed and Bran’s closet. I’d have plenty of time to look at everything in all of the Marquises’ boxes.
I did hesitate. I remembered Mom speculating about why Bran might want some privacy. Maybe he’s got a picture in his closet of some girl he thinks is really cute, but he’s too shy to ask out. Maybe he’s got acne medicine in there and he doesn’t want us to know he’s using it
I wouldn’t make fun of him if he was hiding acne medicine in his closet. If everything he was hiding was perfectly innocent, I’d never let on that I’d seen the inside of the shed and his closet.
But if he was hiding something awful. . .
I looked at the keys again, and they seemed to have a sinister gleam to them. I remembered a story that one of our baby-sitters had told me when I was little, which had given me nightmares for weeks—Blackbeard? Bluebeard? Something like that. It was about a young girl who married a man with a strange-looking beard. And he was perfectly nice and wonderful to her and gave her the keys to every room in his mansion, except he told her she must never, ever open the closet under their stairs. And of course that made her curious, so she opened the closet and found the bodies of all his former wives, whom he’d killed. And then he found out that she’d looked in the closet and he tried to kill her, too.
I knew Bran wasn’t hiding dead bodies in his closet.
But that made me even more determined to look in the closet and the shed, to prove to myself that he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
The buzzer on the washer went off, and I jumped guiltily. Then I scrambled up and hurriedly dumped all the clothes back into our laundry bag, even though they were all soaking wet.
The House on the Gulf Page 8