"Aunt Hetty--"
"Do it," Hetty sat up and pushed off her covers. "Tell her I said I want her to come with us."
CeCe shook her head, without saying anything. She pulled a sweatshirt over her head, grabbed a windbreaker, and left.
"Do you really want her to come with us?" Charlene said. "She'll ruin it for the rest of us."
"Let's give her a chance. This is her first Gathering too, you know. And her mother isn't anything like yours. I doubt if she knows what a family is."
"I wonder why we never knew Aunt Frances had a child." Annie yawned and reached for her jeans. Now that she was awake, a hike actually sounded like fun.
"I think Gran knew," Hetty said. "She wasn't surprised when Frances showed up with Serhilda."
"I think Gran knows where every Blankenship and Armstrong body is buried. She just doesn't gossip."
Hetty grinned. "Which is really too bad. How are we to know all the dirt if she doesn't share it?"
CeCe and Charlene had water bottles and apples waiting for them in the kitchen. To Annie's surprise, Serhilda was with them and looking almost eager. Kristi staggered in last, wiping sleep from her eyes. "I don't believe this. There's just no excuse for getting up so early on vacation."
"It's good for you," Annie told her. "Builds character." She pushed her younger sister toward the door. "Let's go."
They all piled into Annie's car for the drive down to the park. CeCe, who was the smallest, perched on the console between the seats. "Somebody else gets to dent her butt going home," she said as she climbed out and rubbed her bottom. "Mine's terminally bruised."
"We're going to walk out there?" Serhilda said as they stood by the interpretive sign marking the Silver Lake trail. "In the woods?"
"Sure. It's only about three miles. Let's go!" Charlene struck off through the trees, CeCe right behind her. The others followed, Annie making sure Serhilda was ahead of her. Poor kid. She doesn't sound as if she's ever hiked in anything wilder than a city park. Kristi brought up the rear.
The trail led them through stands of lodgepole pine where pink, yellow, and white wildflowers brightened the dappled understory. The first time Charlene asked if anyone knew what they were, Hetty replied, "Flowers. Pinks and yellows and whites."
"Aunt Hetty! That's not an answer."
"She's the botanist. Trust her," Kristi said, laughing.
"Well, I know that's a lupine," CeCe said, pointing into a sunny glade. "And those are sunflowers."
"Close, but no cigar. They're balsamroot," Hetty said. She refused to tell the girls what the flowers along the trail were. "Look them up. There's a picture book in the Big House."
Annie remembered how Hetty had done the same to her, and how she'd learned all the Latin names just to spite her cousin. She had to smile at the memory.
A boardwalk bridge crossed Thurman Creek where it entered Silver Lake. They came to a sudden stop at the sight of several trumpeter swans.
"So beautiful," Annie breathed, afraid of disturbing their serenity.
"They are magnificent, aren't they?" Hetty agreed.
The swans were not at all shy. They approached to within fifty feet of the bridge." See the gray feathers?" Annie told the others. "Those mean these birds are immature. They're probably a year old. Next summer they'll be all white." She was pleased she'd remembered. Bird watching was one more activity she'd put aside the past few years.
They continued along the trail, following the edge of a wet meadow. Once a mule deer bounded into the trees just ahead of them. Annie breathed deeply of the cool, moist air, listened to the silence. The empty meadow, bright green in the slanting morning light, showed glints of silver where streamlets meandered through it. In the lead, CeCe and Charlene chattered, but kept their voices low. Annie noticed that several times they tried to draw Serhilda into their conversation. She usually answered with a shrug, or in monosyllables.
Annie caught up with her. "Do you run?"
"Sometimes. I used to run with my...with Les." Her quick withdrawal told Annie not to ask who Les was.
"Oh, gosh, I was going to ask you to run with me, but you won't want to. I'm really out of shape."
"I guess I could. It's been a while."
"Maybe we could run back to the ranch. I tried the other morning and got about halfway. Maybe with someone to run with, I could make it all the way today."
"Maybe. And we wouldn't have to listen to CeCe bitchin' about her sore butt."
"There is that. Oh, look! Is that a--"
"Moose. It's a moose," Hetty said, her voice low. "Keep quiet. Don't alarm it."
The moose was perhaps a hundred yards away, lying at the base of a big pine. As they watched, it got to its feet and turned to face them.
"Shit, that's one big mother," Serhilda whispered. "Will it attack?"
"Probably not, but we're taking no chances. Let's go. Walk slowly and quietly. If it does charge, scatter. Get off the trail."
Annie kept looking over her shoulder as they walked away. The moose stood immobile, watching them. They'd nearly doubled their distance from it when she saw motion behind it. She gasped. Was some unsuspecting hiker walking into danger? She stopped walking. "Wait," she whispered. "Stop."
They all halted and turned. "Babies," CeCe said, in awe. "Baby mooses."
"Two of them," Charlene whispered. "Twins."
"Oh, my God!" Serhilda said, not a trace of the usual ennui or sarcasm in her tone. "They're adorable."
When the other girls turned to stare at her, she shrugged. "Well, sometimes ugly is cute."
Danger forgotten, they stood and watched as the two calves came to stand beside their mother. The cow stood where she was for a moment longer, then tossed her head and herded her babies into the woods.
After that, everything else was anticlimactic. They finished the hike in high spirits, even Serhilda. When they reached Annie's car, she tossed her keys to CeCe. "Serhilda and I are going to run back. We'll see you at the cookshack."
Kristi opened her mouth, but closed it again at Annie's slight headshake. "Don't be too long, or we'll have eaten everything."
"We won't. I could eat a horse."
"Or a moose," Serhilda said. "Race you?" She was off like a shot.
Annie didn't catch up with her until the highway crossing. They walked a while after they'd crossed, then, having caught their breath, they ran some more. The last quarter mile was uphill, and again they both slowed to a walk, panting.
"Keep this up and I'll be up all night with leg cramps," Annie said, as they reached the road around the compound. "I remember when I could run the whole distance at top speed."
"You're really lucky, having a place like this. Did you live here when you were a kid?"
"Oh, no, I grew up in Portland. We came here every summer, though, as far back as I can remember. Sometime I came with Gran and Gramps, when my folks couldn't get away. Hetty always came with them. I really resented that she got to spend all summer with Gran. I hated her every summer until I was about sixteen."
"How come you stopped?" Serhilda sat on the grass and reached for her toes, touching her nose to her knee.
"I think it was when I realized she was with Gran because her folks were too busy for her. Her dad used to work all the time. I don't think he ever came here when I was a kid."
They stretched in silence then, until Annie saw her car approaching. "They took long enough. I wonder why." She stood. "Let's go meet them. If we all descend on the kitchen at once, Gran's not likely to chase us out."
"I thought you could get food any time. That's what she told me."
Annie wrapped her windbreaker around her waist and tied it. "Theoretically, you can. But when Gran's cooking breakfast, she doesn't like interruptions. Let's go."
They met the others as they crossed the road from the Pink House. "We stopped to talk to Ejay," CeCe explained. "He's guiding a walk around Golden Lake this afternoon, so we told him we'd go."
"Some of us," Hetty corrected. "P
ersonally, I intend to stake out the hammock and read until my book falls in my face."
As they approached the cookshack, Annie heard a chittering from above. She stopped, looked for its source.
"There." Serhilda pointed into the tall pine just ahead. "It looks like it's giving us hell."
"Not us," Hetty said, from behind Annie. "Look over there." She pointed to a stump about twenty feet away. On top of it a chipmunk was stuffing its cheeks with the sunflower seeds someone had scattered.
They watched while the squirrel made threatening runs down the trunk of the tree, none of which fazed the chipmunk. It continued stuffing until its cheek pouches were enormous, then it sat up on its haunches, looked up at the squirrel as if to sneer, and scampered off. The squirrel dashed down the tree and across the lawn. Once on the stump, it eyed the humans suspiciously, but held its ground.
"Cool." Once again Serhilda's tone was full of wonder. "Way cool."
* * * *
The door burst open and six girls tumbled in, all laughing fit to be tied.
"What's for breakfast, Gran? I'm starved!"
"Coffee, coffee, where's the coffee?"
"...the way he just sat there and scolded. I've never seen..."
"A ground squirrel, not a chipmunk..."
"Can I have some of this cheese?"
Cecile struck a big stockpot with a wooden spoon. The resulting clang cut through the noise. "Quiet! One at a time, please." She cast a quick glance at Thea, who was standing in the doorway smiling widely. She wanted to smile too, but was almost afraid to. Some situations were too delicate to take open notice of. "Charlene, get out of the refrigerator. Cheese is not breakfast food. Hetty, drink some orange juice before you rot your stomach with coffee."
Serhilda was the only one who hadn't come in. She stood in the doorway, almost as if she wasn't sure she was welcome. When she saw Cecile watching her, she raised her chin a couple of notches and swaggered forward. "I'll take some of the coffee," she said to Hetty.
Annie was rooting in the snack cupboard. "Cookies? I know I saw some..."
Cecile smacked her hand with the spoon. "Not before breakfast. Go sit down, all of you. I'll cook some eggs."
Serhilda poured cream into her coffee. "I don't eat eggs."
"Yes, you do. I'll scramble them with cream cheese and jelly." Reaching past her, Cecile pulled out a jar of grape jelly. "Go. Out of the kitchen."
Thea watched them as they trooped into the dining room. "I don't believe it," she breathed.
"I'm not sure I do either. Keep your fingers crossed it lasts."
Annie was clad in a royal blue parka, faded jeans and scuffed sneakers. She looked about sixteen as she laughed with her cousins. Although she still had a fragile air about her, this morning her face was blooming with health, glowing with the cold of early morning at six thousand feet above sea level.
Before she'd married Walter, Annie had tended to chubbiness. She'd never been fat, just well-padded. Cecile had always thought of her as voluptuous, even if it wasn't a grandmotherly choice of words. After her marriage, she had dieted to the point of emaciation, trying to please her husband's demands for an ultra-slim, chic wife. Cecile had never thought she looked as good in her size eights as she had when she'd worn size twelve. Nor had she found the slight hollowness in Annie's cheeks attractive.
Since Calvin's death, she had lost even more weight. Now translucent skin stretched too tightly over her cheekbones and hipbones protruded even under her baggy jeans. Cecile bit her lower lip and prayed that her appetite would stay good.
"We saw some pelicans!" Annie exclaimed, pausing in the doorway, "and a whole herd of swans. Oh, it was so wonderful!" She snatched an orange from the basket on the counter. "A moose and twin calves. They were humongous! We weren't more than a hundred yards from them."
"Where were you?"
"We hiked around Silver Lake," Annie said, gesturing vaguely. She followed the others into the dining room, peeling her orange. The six of them sat in a noisy, laughing group at the far table.
Cecile turned to look at Thea, who had tears in her eyes. "Keep your fingers crossed," she said, "and pray."
Chapter Fourteen
True to her word, Hetty laid claim to the hammock after lunch. Annie had always detested the Adirondack chairs, so she dug into the storage cupboard at the Big House and unearthed a ratty old sleeping bag. She spread it in a shady spot nearby and piled several pillows at one end. Armed with the newest thriller by her favorite author, a bottle of water, and a pocketful of jelly beans, she settled in for a totally self-indulgent afternoon.
The next thing she knew, someone was calling her name. She pushed the book off her face and looked up. "Serhilda. Hi." A jaw-cracking yawn. "Gosh, I didn't mean to fall asleep."
"I shouldn't have woke you up, but I wanted to talk to you while nobody was around."
Annie glanced over at the hammock. Empty. She checked the sun's angle and realized she must have been sleeping for a couple of hours. "Time for me to wake anyhow. Let's go find someplace more private. That hammock attracts people like a candle does moths."
They walked down to the north end of the compound, where Douglas-firs grew thick and the ground was covered with a thick layer of duff--needles, cone scales, dust. Someone long ago had rolled several log sections down here and stood them on end to serve as seats.
Once they were seated, Annie dug out the rest of her jelly beans. "Want one?"
Serhilda picked out the pink, orange and yellow ones. "Thanks." She sat chewing one after another, looking off toward the east.
Annie waited patiently, remembering how she'd hated to have adults demand that she get to the point when she was trying to make up her mind how to put something.
Finally Serhilda said, "How come everyone treats you like you're going to break? Are you sick or something?"
"No, I--" A child's laughter rippled through the warm air, sliced through her soul. "My baby drowned"
"Fuck!" Serhilda dug her toe into the duff, piled it up. Smoothed it out and dug again. "I guess that's rough if you really cared about him."
"I loved him."
"Why?" She raised her chin And looked straight at Annie, expression earnest. "I mean, why did you love him? Babies are messy and smelly and noisy and they tie you down. You get a baby, you lose your life." Shoulders hunched, she turned to look out across the valley. "I'd hate a baby if I had one."
Annie opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. Serhilda's statement had been from the heart. She said nothing. Wished she could get up and walk away. Felt guilty for wishing it.
Felt the lightness of spirit slip away like a forgotten dream. Damn the girl! "Is that all you wanted to talk about?"
The busy toe was digging another hole in the duff. "Uh-uh. I wanted to ask you about the old lady. You know. Gran." Her lip curled over the last word. "Is she for real?"
"What do you mean? Of course Gran is for real. She's your grandmother as much as she is mine."
"Oh, yeah, right. Like she ever gave a damn about me. I bet she didn't even know I existed until Frances brought me here."
"I'm not sure she did," Annie admitted. "Why don't you ask her?"
"Ask her! Are you out of your fucking mind? What should I say? Hey, Granny, didn't you know your own daughter had herself a kid down in L.A.? Right!"
"Serhilda, I don't know what happened between your mother and Gran. She never talks about it, not to me or Kristi or Hetty, anyhow. I do know that she's wished Aunt Frances would get over it, whatever it was."
"Don't call her my mother, okay?"
"Okay." Annie waited for her to say more, all the while wishing she could just get up and walk away. She was the last person to be giving this angry child advice.
"I've seen how she's all huggy-body, kissy-face with the others, but she acts like she's afraid to touch me. She doesn't even talk to me." Serhilda paused, and when she went on her voice was steady again. "Like this morning. She gave you all hell for getting
into the food, but all she said to me was that I had to eat breakfast."
"She fixed it, too, didn't she? She gave the rest of us plain scrambled eggs, but you got jelly with yours."
"Yeah, like that's something special."
"It is, actually. The only time Gran ever made me scrambled eggs with jelly was when I was sick." There had been nothing like scrambled eggs with jelly to make her feel better, when she was a child.
"Gran always made mine with orange marmalade," she mused. "Hetty liked strawberry jam."
"The grape jelly was okay, I guess. Les always made me grape jelly and banana sandwiches when I had a cold."
For once Serhilda sounded like a child, not the hardened woman of the world she tried so hard to be. Annie decided to take advantage of it. "You mentioned Les before. Who is he?"
For a moment she thought Serhilda wasn't going to answer. The girl dug another hole and filled it in with a swift sideways motion, then ground her whole foot into the duff. "He was sort of my dad, but he didn't want me any more."
"Sort of your dad? Your stepfather, you mean?"
"I don't know. Maybe. And maybe he was my real dad. I just don't know." The last words came out in a shriek, as Serhilda leapt to her feet. She loomed over Annie, fists clenched at her sides, face red with rage, and screamed, "I don't know who my dad is, and I hate that bitch who won't admit she's my mother. I hate her!"
Annie reached out with both hands, wanting to soothe, to comfort, but before she could gather the girl into her arms, Serhilda had spun around and gone dashing off into the woods beyond the circle road.
* * * *
When Annie caught Ward as he was going into the Blue House, he almost brushed her off.
"No, I haven't seen Serhilda," he said, in answer to her question. "I've been out riding."
"Damn. Okay, I'll keep looking."
"Wait a minute." He tossed his hat and boots inside. "Did something happen to make you worry about her?"
She wouldn't meet his eye. "Sort of. We were talking and I asked about her stepfather. She got really upset and ran off. I haven't seen her since."
"Which way?" Any direction but east would bring the girl to a road, eventually.
A Strange Little Band Page 15