by Marie Hall
Elisa didn’t know what she would ever do without Julian Wright in her life.
~*~
Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years.
Elisa was almost ten years old the day she learned the devastating news.
The day had started out like any other day. She was happy because now she was a fifth grader.
Mum had also told her she could finally go to a school dance. Next week was that dance and last week Mum had found her a pale pink dress that fell to her knees in soft waves. It looked super pretty on her. But even better, Mum had gotten her her first stick of lip-gloss. Elisa couldn’t wait to wear it. Janet was gonna be so jealous too, because her mom still wouldn’t let her wear makeup.
Of course her date was Christian, which totally didn’t count as a date, but she was still excited, even if he was a third grader.
Elisa had been held back a year because of her father. Well, because of his training in Europe, that was. Her parents had decided to hold Elisa back so that he could concentrate on his training, without forcing her mother to stay back home because of Elisa being in school. Because of that, even though they were almost three years apart, they were only two grades apart. Which was still sort of young, but she liked Christian and, unlike most boys in school, he could actually dance.
Of course, it would have made it even better if she could have gone with Joey Crawford; he was only the cutest boy in fifth grade. But Joey had a stupid girlfriend and probably wouldn’t have asked her anyway.
Brushing out her hair one final time, she slipped it into a ponytail, pulled on her prettiest purple bathing suit, and tried to ignore the nervous flutters in the pit of her stomach.
Today was the biggest day of her life. Qualifications to get to be a part of the club team—Mid-Maine Seals.
Roman and Christian told her she had it in the bag. Which she totally thought she might, and even though she was fast, she was scared she might not be as fast as some of the other swimmers trying out.
What if she didn’t make it?
Or, worse yet, what if she did?
She grimaced.
There was a heavy knock at the door. “Elisa, you dressed?” Her father’s deep baritone was a muffled sound.
“Yes.” She nodded, still hanging on tight to her stomach.
He opened the door and she smiled when she saw him. Daddy was still the most handsome guy she’d ever seen.
There was some gray now at the corners of his dark brown hair, but she thought it made him look very distinguished.
He grinned, but the smile never really touched his eyes. “You look nervous, little bit.”
She plopped onto her vanity stool and nodded. “I’m terrified. I’m not sure I’m good enough for this.”
Snorting, he sat on the edge of her day bed and nodded. “Oh, I understand that feeling. I’m always nervous before a big race—”
Daddy was a professional triathlete. Mum said that was where Elisa got her athleticism from, which was probably true; the most Mum ever did for exercise was gardening. She claimed to be allergic to running, which Elisa had totally believed until she turned eight and realized “allergic” was just another word for lazy. It had made her laugh when she realized how gullible she’d been.
“—but that’s how you face your fears.”
“How? By failing and coming in last?” She made a sound between a whimper and a whine.
Crossing his legs, he ran a hand through his hair. “If you try your best and come in last, there’s no shame in that. The only shame is if you defeat yourself by not giving it your all. No matter the outcome, we’ll be proud of you.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
Getting up, he came to her and wrapped her up in a big, soapy-scented hug. His hug lasted a long time, longer than normal, and he kept clearing his throat. It was starting to make her nervous, but she thought maybe she was just imagining things when a second later he took a step back and smiled down at her. And this time his smile did reach his eyes. Eyes that looked a little more wet than usual. “Ditto. Now let’s go.”
Blowing out a deep breath, Elisa got up, slipped on her shorts and shirt, and nodded. “Okay. The guys are coming too, right?”
The grimace had happened so fast that Elisa almost couldn’t be sure she’d seen it happen at all.
“Yep. Sure, they’ll be there. Where else would those rugrats be? They only worship the ground you walk on.”
She laughed. “They do not.”
But she knew they totally did. That was okay, though, she pretty much adored them herself. Being an only child may have been a sad life for her if it hadn’t been for her three friends that were more like brothers.
She leaned her head out the car window and waved just as the Wrights came tromping out of their house ten minutes later. Daddy was taking her ahead of the crowd so she’d have time to warm up before the competition.
But she frowned when not one of the boys waved back at her. In fact, Mrs. Wright didn’t look well, either.
Her nose was a bright cherry red.
Elisa jumped to her knees and stared out the back window of her family’s SUV as they drove off, watching as Mum walked out her home and over to Mrs. Wright before pulling her in for a tight hug.
“Daddy, is something wrong with Mrs. Wright?”
But instead of answering he clicked on the car radio and the nerves that’d been simmering in her belly now flared back to life.
All of that was forgotten the moment she arrived at the swim meet.
~*~
Elisa shouldn’t have been worried—her form was top-notch, her strokes sure. She’d slid into first across the finish line, even beating out two boys from her class who’d sworn up and down they were faster than her. Blinking water droplets out of her eyes, she scanned the bleachers for Mum and the Wright boys when she stepped out of the pool.
But the only face she recognized was her dad’s.
He was clapping and gazing down at her proudly. “Good job, little bit.” He scooped her up and twirled her around, but his voice seemed to lack some of the joy he normally enthused when she won a competition.
With a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach, she wiggled out of his arms. “Dad, where is everybody?”
It was rare that the Wrights ever missed any of her meets. In fact, it’d only happened once before and that was because Roman had gotten a sudden case of appendicitis.
Suddenly the smile was gone. His face turned very serious and grave as he held on to her hand. “Lisa,” he sighed, “baby girl, we need to talk.”
She couldn’t do anything other than grab her stomach. People kept coming up and clapping her on the back and congratulating her, but she couldn’t respond because she knew something was really, really wrong.
She let her father guide her over to the bleachers and he sat her down and waved off her coach as he made his way over. Her father was never rude, and now she was even more scared.
With a mouth grown dry, she swallowed hard. “Daddy?” Her voice trembled.
Tipping his chin up toward the sun, Elisa knew she would never forget that moment. Never forget the way his face suddenly looked so shattered, or the way he inhaled three deep breaths, or how rough his palms felt when he grabbed her pruny ones.
“There’s no way to put this that won’t hurt you, Elisa. Mr. Wright died last night. It was very sudden and unexpected. Mrs. Wright is taking the boys to her family for a couple of weeks and—”
She couldn’t take a proper breath. It was like her lungs had suddenly stopped working correctly. “But…but…” She shook her head, because there were too many thoughts.
Mr. Wright is dead.
The dance.
Mr. Wright is dead.
Christian.
Mr. Wright is dead.
Roman.
Mr. Wright is dead.
Julian…
He shook his head.
What did that mean, exactly?
“Daddy, hav
e they left already?”
“I’m afraid so.”
She screamed, hugging her arms to her middle. “But they’re coming back, right?”
He didn’t answer her, and even though she could feel the press of eyes all over her, she couldn’t seem to stop the tears from falling fat and heavy down her face.
“Daddy, please tell me they’re coming back.”
“I’m sorry, baby girl.”
He tried to wrap her up in his arms again, but she wouldn’t let him. She ran for the car. Maybe if they were fast enough they could get back. Maybe they could…
“Elisa, stop!” Her father ran after her, his footsteps pounding the pavement.
“Why did you bring me here?” Twirling on him, she balled her hands into fists. “Why would you do that to me?” She swiped at the tears dripping off her nose, angry with her father, with herself for caring so much about a stupid swim meet. “I should have been there for them. Daddy, why?”
His brown eyes were sincere and shimmering with wetness. They had attracted a large crowd, but none of it mattered.
She needed to see them one more time. Needed to say goodbye at least. They may not have been blood, but they were her brothers. They’d grown up together, she’d tended to their scrapes, played hide and go seek, listened to them talk all about their stupid cartoons because she loved them. From the very first minute she’d seen the triplets, she’d fallen in love. They were her family.
“How could you do this to me?” she hiccupped.
“Because your mother and I thought it would be best, Elisa. We know how you feel about them. What finding that out would do to you. You couldn’t stop them from leaving; they’re already gone. All you can do now is live, baby girl. That’s what this is about. Living. Remembering that no matter how sad, or tough, or hard things get, sometimes there’s nothing you can do to change it.”
Her lower lip quivered. “I hate you.”
“I know you don’t, sweetheart.” And this time when he pulled her in for a hug, she let him. Crying for Mr. Wright, crying for Mrs. Wright, but especially crying for the loss of her boys.
The Wrights returned back to Sunny Cove, Maine three weeks later to hold Mr. Wright’s funeral.
On the one hand, it was wonderful getting to see them. But on the other, Elisa felt terrible. All three boys had been quiet and sullen as they’d entered the church for Mr. Wright’s memorial, Julian even more so than normal.
His eyes as he’d stood beside Mrs. Wright on the stoop after the service accepting condolences had seemed lost and empty.
Dressed in bright yellow shorts, a black and green pinstriped shirt, one blue sock and one red sock, Julian looked like a kaleidoscope of color.
Elisa frowned at the snickers some of the kids made when they saw him. It was obvious Mrs. Wright hadn’t been in her right frame of mind when she’d allowed him to walk out the house as he was.
Julian was not only deaf, he was colorblind, too. Two conditions which had caused him to be picked on in school.
Her lower chin jutted out when she spied both Roman and Christian standing on the lawn out in front of the church surrounded by a couple of kids from their old class. They were chuckling and pointing at their brother.
Furious that Julian’s own brothers would be so cruel, she marched over to Jules’s side, and, tossing the boys an evil glare over her shoulder, stood directly behind Julian to shield him as best she could from their eyes.
“Jules,” she whispered and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her touch caused him to look at her.
Tears slipped soundlessly from the corners of his eyes.
Julian was tall for his age. Almost to her height. With a messy shock of black hair and those bold eyes, her heart gave a tiny pang. He looked so much like his father.
Her sign language wasn’t the best—she and Julian had learned to speak to one another in their own private language of finger taps and gestures—but she’d taken the time to practice a little while they’d been gone. It suddenly bothered her that in all the years she’d known Jules she’d never tried to learn it.
Tapping her pointer finger so that he’d glance at her hands, she spoke to him for the first time.
She didn’t actually know phrases—that’d been trickier to learn so quickly. But she’d learned the alphabet. Painstakingly she twisted her fingers into letters.
“I’m sorry.”
It took her close to a minute to spell it out. And he shuddered when she finished. His thin shoulders visibly trembled beneath his shirt.
Biting onto the corner of his lip, he nodded and did something back with his fingers. But he moved them so quickly it was a blur she couldn’t hope to understand.
Shaking her head, she gave him a helpless shrug. Hating all over again that she’d never learned to talk to him properly. Julian’s hearing was so bad, the doctors hadn’t even given him hearing aides, for him—they’d said—the aides would be totally useless.
He relied almost solely on sign language.
He wiggled his fingers at her again, but again, she couldn’t make out more than a couple of L’s and maybe an A. She wasn’t sure.
Shaking his head, as if to say nevermind, he then stepped into her and wrapped her tightly into his arms.
She held him tight, knowing it would be the last time she’d ever get to do it.
“I love you, Jules,” she whispered and then kissed the top of his head.
Three hours later the Wrights had gone back to New York State and Elisa’s world seemed suddenly grayer.
Chapter 3
9 years later
“I totally think Joey’s gonna ask you to the dance,” Chastity giggled over the phone line.
Elisa rolled her eyes. Of course Joey was going to ask her. It wasn’t like it was the best-kept secret: he was a jock, she was a jock, it was a match made in jocky heaven. She snorted and crunched into the red apple. Rubbing her pink and black-striped socked feet together as she lay on the piles of pillows her father always teased were more than any one girl should need for a bed.
“I’m not sure I’m going to say yes. I have a swim meet that morning.”
“Ugh.” Elisa could practically see her goth friend rolling her heavily mascaraed eyes. “You are so frustrating, do you know that? You always have meets. When don’t you have meets? All year you’ve been saying you wanted to go to homecoming with Joey, and now he’s gonna ask and you’re not sure! I mean, hello!”
She chuckled. “Whatever. Ms. dark, black, and deadly, shouldn’t you be getting ready to do some voodoo alter chant or something?”
“Grr. I don’t even know why we’re friends anymore.”
“Whatever, freakazoid.” She laughed, swallowing her bite of apple, and then took another. “I think secretly you’re tired of playing goth so you live through me.”
“I am not a goth, I just like dark clothes, and you are just ridiculous.”
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that and I’ll just pretend that you don’t actually have a voodoo doll hanging up in your locker.”
“I will stick a pin in you,” she growled, “just bet me.”
“Yeah, you go ahead and do that.” She shook her head. Her friend might be weird, but Elisa pretty much thought Chastity hung the moon anyway.
“Whatever,” Chastity snickered. “Anyway, homecoming. You going or what?”
Chastity and her family had moved from Trinidad and Tobago to Sunny Cove three years ago. At first everyone had avoided the dark-skinned girl with dreds that fell long and heavy down to her butt. She’d been like a bird of paradise stuck inside a monochromatic garden of white roses. She just stuck out. But Elisa had seen beneath the unique exterior to the intelligent, cool girl beneath and in no time the two of them had developed a tight bond.
Eventually Chastity had won almost everyone over; with her hint of an island accent and her silky, dark skin the boys had fallen prey to her charms and she’d gone from being the outcast to the girl everyone wanted on the
ir speed dial.
“I don’t know, probably, I guess. If he asks.”
“Jeez, could it have taken you any longer to get that out?”
She stuck out her tongue, curling her fingers through the worn threads of the one and only afghan blanket she’d ever attempted to crotchet. The colors were a mix of black, green, and blue. Colors she’d always loved. “Well, if I’m going, you’re going too.”
“Nah, I don’t do dresses.”
Which was entirely true. Chastity had one outfit. Tight black jeans, tight white tops, and a crucifix. Always the crucifix. She was the strangest pseudo goth/voodoo priestess Elisa had ever seen.
Of course, she was the only one Elisa had ever seen, but that was just semantics.
“Elisa!” Her mother’s shrill yell came up the stairs. “Please come here!”
“Oops.” She jerked. “Coming, Mom. Chas, I gotta go. Dinnertime. Maybe we can go shopping for some gowns tomorrow.”
“Keep dreaming, girlfriend.”
With a cheery laugh and another goodbye, Elisa hung up. Slipping the cell into her pocket and holding the apple between her teeth, she flew down the stairs and skidded to a complete stop at the sight that met her eyes.
It wasn’t dinner sitting on the kitchen table but the group sitting in the living room that’d made her mother call her down. Four people who’d become merely a memory to her.
Mrs. Wright was no longer as tall as Elisa had once recalled her being. Her skin was pale, attesting to the fact that they no longer lived next to a coastline. Her once shiny sandy blonde hair was cut to bob length and now had thick strands of gray between the blonde.
But she wasn’t the reason why Elisa suddenly felt like running back upstairs to her bedroom and locking the door.
Three extremely tall males surrounded their diminutive mother. Realizing that she still had the stupid apple stuck in her mouth, she spat it out and rubbed it on her shirt. Which was kind of weird and dumb, but yeah, Elisa was completely taken aback.
Mom smiled. “Okay, I’ll leave you guys to have your reunion.” She took Mrs. Wright’s hand and led her back into the kitchen where the banging of pots and pans resumed.