The Sisters of Blue Mountain

by Karen Katchur

  “The signal has been sketchy for me, too,” he said, and stepped closer to her.

  She gave up on the phone. She glanced at Pop in the front passenger seat, wondering what she should do. He rolled down his window. “We have to go,” he said, sounding anxious.

  “Look,” she said to the guy. “We have to get to the university. I’m sure once we get over the mountain I can get a signal, and then I’ll call the repair shop for you and let them know about your car.”

  “You’re going to leave me here?”

  Well, no, she couldn’t do that. Could she? What if the next vehicle that came barreling around the bend hit him?

  “I’m Jake, by the way.”

  “Myna,” she said, and shook his hand. “This is my father, Dr. Jenkins.”

  “Myna,” Pop said, growing more impatient.

  “Right. Well.” She hesitated, remembering the promise she’d made to herself, hearing Ben’s accusations about her taking in strays. She looked at the windy stretch of road, the looming mountain. She couldn’t leave the guy stranded. Not here. She checked the bars on her phone. Still no signal. “Okay,” she said to Jake, reluctantly. “Get in.” She slid behind the wheel. Jake climbed into the backseat. “We’re taking the snow geese to the lab for tests. You did hear about the dead geese, didn’t you?” She couldn’t imagine anyone who hadn’t heard by now. She pulled back onto the road.

  Jake leaned forward. “I did,” he said. “What do you specialize in, Doc?”

  “Ornithology,” she said, answering for him.

  “Is that right?” Jake pulled himself up so he could get a better look into the front seat. “What do you think killed the birds?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Pop said. He sounded weary. She wondered if he was tired of people asking him the same question over and over again.

  “We’re hoping to get some answers soon,” she said. She met Jake’s eyes in the rearview mirror. There was something about him she thought she recognized, but she couldn’t say what it was. “Where are you from?” she asked.

  “Allentown,” he said. “I’m a journalist for the Lehigh Valley newspaper.” He passed her his business card.

  “Ah,” she said, and stuffed it into her back pocket without taking her eyes off the road. “Well, this must be your lucky day.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Do you know how many journalists are trying to get to my father right now? And here you are riding with him and the birds.”

  “I don’t know anything yet,” Pop said.

  “But you will,” she said, reassuring him.

  Jake sat back in the seat. She kept glancing at him in the mirror. It was his face that seemed familiar, but why? For the first time since she’d picked him up, she felt uneasy.

  “I noticed this is a rental,” Jake said. “I’m gathering you don’t live around here either.”

  “I’m home visiting,” she said, thinking of Ben once again. She hadn’t been able to talk with him that morning before he’d taken his clients out to sea. His boat was chartered for the weekend. She had so much she wanted to say, so much she wanted to tell him about the condition she’d found Pop in, the young professor dying, but she still couldn’t tell him the one thing he wanted to hear. It shouldn’t be this hard, she thought. And yet, it was.

  “So you grew up in Mountain Springs?” Jake asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I can see why you moved,” he muttered.

  “What was that?”

  “Where do you live now?”

  “Florida,” she said.

  “Aren’t you kind of young to live in Florida?”

  “Ha ha. You’d be surprised how many young people live there now. And families with kids. It’s not all senior citizens, you know.”

  Pop was quiet, staring out the passenger-side window. She expected Jake to direct more questions at him about the geese and their trip to the lab, but Jake had fallen silent, too.

  They crested the last hill. After driving a few more minutes through town, they reached the university. Myna knew the way to the lab, having visited with Pop enough times when she’d been a kid and later when she’d been a student here. She parked in front of the brick building where two other professors, a handful of students, and several reporters—two with television cameras—were waiting.

  “What are they doing here?” she asked, referring to the news media.

  Jake pulled himself up and stuck his head between the two front seats. “I’m sure the school called them to draw attention to their program. And you know what they say about publicity. The school probably views this as good publicity.”

  Pop nodded. “He’s right.”

  One of the professors, the one wearing a white lab coat, opened the passenger side door. She couldn’t tell if her father knew him or not. He seemed confused about so many things lately.

  She popped the trunk, and she and Jake hopped out of the car. She exchanged handshakes with the university professors and they made a quick round of introductions, but she hadn’t been able to catch their names. The reporters surrounded them, firing off questions. They tried their best to ignore them.

  “Where’s James?” the lab-coated professor asked. “When you called, I assumed he would be coming with you.”

  “Who’s James?” Pop looked to her to explain, as she’d noticed he’d done with Linnet frequently since she’d arrived.

  “Professor Coyle,” the lab-coated professor added.

  Charlie hadn’t wanted the news of the professor’s death to get out to the media yet. She imagined the professor’s family had to be notified first as well. She pointed to the trunk of the car, avoiding the question. “We have the birds in the coolers.”

  Jake remained quiet as he was being jostled by the other reporters. He didn’t seem bothered by it. He went as far as calling one of them by their first name. They’re his peers, she reminded herself.

  The lab-coated professor walked around to the back of the car and lifted one of the boxes from the trunk. The students began taking out the other boxes and the two coolers with the birds. The cameras were turned on, and the reporters were talking, filming the kids carrying some of the evidence inside the building.

  “We’ll take it from here,” the professor said, and put his hand on Pop’s shoulder. She understood they were dismissing him. They weren’t going to let him inside the lab.

  “I have a theory,” Pop said, pleading, sounding like a child. “I need to run some tests.” He started following the students toward the building and doors.

  “Dr. Jenkins, please,” the professor said, and grabbed his arm.

  “Get your hands off of me.” Pop tried pulling his arm away.

  “I can’t let you in. The university has rules.”

  “Why aren’t you allowed inside, Doctor?” one of the reporters asked, motioning to his cameraman to keep rolling.

  “Get off me,” Pop said again, flapping his arm, struggling to get free.

  They argued. The reporters started pushing and shoving. Myna didn’t know what to do. Everything was happening so quickly. Jake stepped in front of the camera, trying to cover the lens with his hand. When that didn’t work, he pried the lab-coated professor off Pop. Then he slipped his arm around Pop, shielding him from the throng of reporters and directed him to where she was standing, stunned.

  She draped her arm around Pop’s other shoulder, embarrassed she’d allowed the situation to get out of control and sure that Linnet would’ve handled it better.

  “I’ll take some questions,” the lab-coated professor said, straightening his collar, drawing the reporters’ attention, commenting about when they could expect the results.

  “Why won’t they let me in?” Pop asked.

  She frowned. “Let’s get you home.”

  Jake helped her put Pop in the car. He acted as though he were a friend. She had to remind herself that she didn’t know anything about him. His car broke down. That was all. The uneasy feeling she’d
had earlier had disappeared, and then it reversed, turned the corner, and came back again.

  The lab-coated professor continued talking with the television reporters live on camera, and then he followed his colleague into the brick building, disappearing inside along with the students and coolers full of frozen geese. The reporters hung around the doors before they turned and caught sight of Myna and Jake still lingering by the car.

  Myna immediately jumped in the driver’s side and started the engine, knowing she had to get Pop out of there before the press got to him again. She figured Jake could get a ride with one of his colleagues. But instead, Jake dove into the backseat as she started to pull away, the flock of reporters chasing after them.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Linnet tried to focus on the baseball game. Twice she’d clapped and hollered encouraging words to the opposing team when they’d been up to bat. Ian had gently lowered her hands and held them in her lap.

  “I know it’s hard to concentrate,” he said. “But Hank keeps looking toward the bleachers. We need to be strong for him, let him know everything is going to be fine.” He kept his eyes on the field as he spoke.

  He was right. Poor Hank had struck out twice, and then he’d dropped a ball in center field. It wasn’t like him. Her son was distracted, too. Maybe it had been a mistake to ask him to play today, but they were here now, and it wasn’t like she could march onto the field and drag him home.

  “Do you think he had some kind of medical condition we don’t know about?” she asked, her mind on Professor Coyle. The professor was so young, but it wasn’t unheard of for even young people to drop dead over from a heart attack or some kind of epileptic seizure. She might’ve been stretching a bit here, but she didn’t want to accept the other possibility.

  “Maybe, but not likely,” Ian said. “Do you think Pop could have…?” He broke off. “I wish he could remember something. Anything.”

  Ian almost said what she’d been thinking all along.

  And then there was Myna, the complicated look on her face when she’d left to take Pop to the dam for more samples. Her sister had accused her of withholding information about his mental state, and she’d done it without ever having to utter a word.

  But Linnet had refused to feel guilty about it. If Myna had wanted to know how he was doing, then she shouldn’t have left home in the first place.

  She flinched at the sound of the ball striking the bat. She stood with the crowd, watching it fly deep into left field, adding to another home run for the other team. She plopped back down on the bleachers. Ian laced his fingers through hers, squeezing her hand, a reassuring gesture, she knew, that had nothing to do with baseball. His patience had been tested these last few months where Pop was concerned, yet still he was trying hard to help with his care without complaint. But how much more could she ask of him, or of Hank, if Pop were involved somehow in the professor’s death?

  She knew inside her heart he was still the father she’d always known. The one who’d left his study to cook dinner for her and Myna when he’d learned their mother hadn’t been able to leave her room and that they’d been eating stale crackers and bread. Or the time she’d caught him sewing buttons on Myna’s princess costume so she’d have something to wear to the school’s Halloween party when he should’ve been at the university teaching a class. He’d taken them hiking where they’d pretended to be explorers, playing the I Spy game. And once when she’d twisted her ankle, he’d carried her the half mile down the mountain to home, where they’d spent the rest of the weekend eating popcorn and watching old movies while she’d kept her leg elevated.

  Ian let go of her hand. They both clapped and yelled encouraging words as Hank’s team came up to bat. And somewhere in the back of her mind, the child inside of her whispered, Pop had never failed her before. Not like her mother had.

  * * *

  “Are we having company?” a sixteen-year-old Linnet asked.

  Her mother was standing at the kitchen sink peeling potatoes, which wasn’t unusual. Linnet often found her at the sink cutting or chopping fruits and vegetables, preparing breakfasts for the guests her father had insisted would come, but hadn’t.

  “If you’re too afraid to leave the house,” Pop had said one night when he’d come home from the university and found his wife locked inside their bedroom for the seventh day in a row, “then we’ll bring the people to you.” He’d had it in his head that whatever had plagued her mother could be cured if she had someone or something to take care of other than herself. He’d concocted a plan to turn their big, colonial home into a bed-and-breakfast.

  Linnet had loved the idea of entertaining guests, sharing the beauty of the dam and snow geese with visitors. Any doubts she’d had about Pop’s plan—and the gnawing questions around how in the world her mother, who had become incapable of caring for her own daughters, would take care of houseguests—she’d kept to herself. She’d been too excited about the prospect of parties.

  “This will give her a reason to get out of bed,” he’d said to Linnet. And once Pop had made up his mind this would cure her mother, construction on The Snow Goose had begun.

  Now, while her mother prepared food for the nonexistent guests, she paused, the knife gripped in her hand, and stared out the garden window through the array of potted plants she’d never got around to planting outside. Linnet peeked out the window to glimpse at whatever had captured her mother’s attention, but all she could see was their backyard, the same old cherry blossoms and shrubs, the stone trail that led to the guesthouse and Pop’s study, the winding path through the woods that led to the dam.

  But the most remarkable thing about finding her mother at the kitchen sink this morning was that she was showered and dressed. She’d replaced the ratty old nightgown, worn robe, and slippers with a pair of khakis and a button-down shirt.

  “Yes, we’re getting company today,” her mother said. “A salesman.”

  “Really?” Linnet said. The B&B had been vacant for so long, it was strange to think of someone actually staying in their house. For the first few years, Pop had been right, and her mother had really tried to make a go of it. But as time passed, her enthusiasm had waned, and she’d started distancing herself from the family and the business, giving in more and more to whatever had tormented her mind. Eventually, the guests had stopped coming. A room had been rented here and there for an off weekend. Twice a couple of businessmen had stayed when the hotel in town had been booked to capacity during the height of the snow geese migration. The B&B could’ve been successful if only her mother had put her heart into it, but she had put her heart into so little, it was no wonder it was failing.

  Myna walked into the kitchen, nudging Linnet in the arm. “Go on,” she said. “Ask her.”

  Linnet had started driving two months ago, although Myna had acted like she was the one with the driver’s permit. “If you ask to take the car out, then we won’t be stuck here all day,” Myna had said not five minutes ago.

  Linnet cleared her throat. “I thought we could take the car out today, and I could practice driving around town.” But now that she’d asked her mother, she wondered if she’d made a mistake. The woman couldn’t even focus on peeling the potato in front of her. She was staring out the window again.

  “What is it, Mom?” Myna asked. She looked over their mother’s shoulder. “Oh!” she said. “The snow geese are in the yard.”

  Linnet peered over their mother’s other shoulder, spying a pair of geese, a male and a female. Unlike ducks, the males have the same coloring as females, but she could tell the males apart by their larger size.

  “I really do hate them,” their mother said.

  The sisters exchanged a glance behind her back. Linnet silently begged Myna not to ask why. There were some questions a child shouldn’t ask a parent, some answers a child shouldn’t know. Once you knew the answer then it was out there, and you could never take it back.

  “Why?” Myna asked. “Why do you hate them
so much?”

  Linnet balled her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palms, trying to hold on to something that was much too slippery. The tighter she squeezed, the more it slid through her fingers. Why couldn’t Myna keep her mouth shut? But that was why her father had named her Myna. She behaved like the small talking bird, unable to keep her trap shut since she’d been born; reproducing sounds in her environment by the time she’d slid from the birth canal. Linnet was named after a common linnet in a poem by Yeats, her father’s favorite poet.

  “I didn’t always hate them,” she said, giving them a sad smile. “I don’t know when it changed. Or even why. I guess there are some things you just can’t explain.” She looked down at the knife and went back to peeling.

  Try explaining it, Linnet wanted to say to her, but the words wouldn’t come out.

  It seemed the sisters’ roles had reversed, and Myna was the one urging Linnet to let it go. She took Linnet’s hand, opening her fist, entwining their fingers together. She pulled her toward the side door and out to the yard. They didn’t speak as they walked hand in hand. The two geese they’d been watching from the window waddled away as they approached the path through the woods. Squirrels scattered up trees. The wind nipped at their ears.

  Myna climbed into the row boat. “Maybe we can take the car tomorrow,” she said.

  Linnet nodded and untied the rope from the dock’s post before joining her in the boat. She rowed to the middle of the dam. The snow geese milled around, ducking their heads underwater and pulling up the plant life from the shallow, murky bottom.

  Linnet dangled her legs over the side, her sneakers nearly getting wet. She propped the life jacket behind her head like a pillow and tilted her face toward the late March sun. Myna sprawled out beside her. She was so used to having her sister’s body next to her, touching her, overlapping with her own that sometimes she didn’t know where her sister’s body ended and hers began.

  The dam smelled cold, holding on to the last days of winter. Not far from where they were floating a bull frog croaked on a lily pad. Ducks toddled on the dock, keeping their distance from the larger geese.