A Family of Strangers

by Emilie Richards

  “Give them some credit.”

  “Thanks for loaning us your dog, Teo.”

  “Renting. I’m keeping track of the minutes you have him. The cost goes up and up and up...”

  We hung up. I switched off the light and turned on my side. Even with Bismarck snoring beside me, I fell asleep quickly.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  On Saturday afternoon I learned something else about my nieces. Holly and Noelle were not fans of cauliflower, including the smell of it roasting in the oven for dinner. Forcing children to eat anything that wasn’t necessary for their health was not in the Good Aunt handbook. So I promised I would buy Happy Meals on the way to my parents’ house if they helped me put together the main dish.

  With cauliflower cooling on the counter, I held up the next part of the recipe. “This is quinoa, and we’ll cook it in coconut milk with yummy spices. It’s white, your favorite color.”

  Both of them made gagging noises. I wondered what Wendy normally fed them, other than pizza. Still, since neither of them had run from the room, I opened the quinoa and got out the measuring cup for Holly.

  “Does Gram know we have a dog?” Noelle asked.

  “I thought we’d surprise her.” I planned to bring Bismarck along tonight so Mom could see we were well protected, but I didn’t plan to warn her. Inside every adult lurks a crafty teenager.

  “My daddy likes dogs,” Holly said.

  Bryce seemed like the kind of man who might, one who hugged his family and friends without fanfare, a man who could command a nuclear sub and still have tea parties with his daughters and their favorite stuffed animals.

  “Do you know I was so little when I first met your dad that he used to read me storybooks?”

  Noelle scrunched up her face, as if the idea that I, too, had once been a child, might take getting used to.

  “He reads to us whenever he’s home,” Holly said. “But he’s not home a lot.”

  “I know you miss him.”

  “He listens when I talk, but I can’t talk to him about everything.”

  That seemed like a strange thing for an eight-year-old to say, but maybe even at her tender age, Holly had realized that men didn’t always want to talk about things that matter to girls.

  “Some things are hard to talk about,” I said, reflecting her words back with my best interview technique.

  “I could get in trouble.”

  This was the most she had revealed in all the years I’d known Holly. I took a few seconds to come up with a response. “I think your daddy would understand whatever you had to say.”

  Holly shook her head. “But he’s not home most of the time.”

  She’d made that point twice now. I knew this must feel important to her. “He misses you, too. So does your mom.”

  Watching her expression, I was reminded of the instant when all the lights snap off during a power failure. Holly was comfortable talking about her father, but her mother, their primary caregiver, was off-limits. Since I had a strong suspicion her sleeplessness was connected to Wendy’s disappearance, I made one more attempt to help her open up.

  “Missing people is natural. And you weren’t expecting your mom to be gone, so that’s especially hard to get used to.”

  Holly met my eyes. “You don’t get used to some things, even if they happen a lot.”

  We underestimate children, assuming their inability to express feelings means they don’t have them. I’d just seen a demonstration.

  “You’re right.” I reached out and ruffled her hair. “I bet the times when your daddy is home are the very best times for you.” When I waited and nothing else was forthcoming, we launched into measuring the spices we needed for the quinoa.

  An hour later we let ourselves into the house in Gulf Sands, casserole dish in hands, along with more vegan cookies, this time chocolate chip to go with raspberry ice I’d picked up at the natural foods store.

  My father eyed the dinner suspiciously, but snatched a cookie and told the girls he’d supervise them in the pool if they wanted to swim. I’d insisted they wear their bathing suits to the house, and surprisingly, they agreed.

  My mother watched as the three went out to the pool.

  “You’re good for them.” She turned, hands on hips. “When they were staying here, I tried everything to get them in the water.”

  I was startled by the compliment. “They’re loosening up. They helped make dinner and did the cookies almost by themselves.”

  “Did I just hear a dog bark?”

  I had left Bismarck in the car for the moments it had taken to bring the food into the house. “We have a surprise for you.” Before she could respond I left and came back a few minutes later with Bismarck on a leash.

  “Remember this guy?”

  My mother slapped her hands on her hips again. “Is that the same dog? Teo’s police dog?”

  I motioned for Biz to sit beside me. “Bismarck, remember my mother?”

  “You and Teo...?”

  “Spoke just long enough for him to agree to rent me Bismarck.”

  “Rent?”

  “I wasn’t really in a position to ask for a favor, was I? But I like the idea of having a dog in the house. It makes me feel safe.”

  I waited for her to tell me to get the dog out of her house.

  “This is the same dog who...”

  “He and Teo retired together. Teo’s leg was amputated.”

  My mother closed her eyes a moment. “Dear God.”

  “I know, but he’s doing great.” I heard myself adding, “It should have been me.”

  “Stop that. All of you, including this dog, were just doing your jobs. And the man who caused all this pain got what he deserved.”

  With that, she held out her hand to Bismarck. And when his tail began to wag, she told me to take him off the leash. I watched as she called him, and the two headed for the kitchen.

  I wandered outside to watch my nieces splashing in the water. My father smiled as I approached. “Has Mom had brain surgery?” I asked.

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “I guess you would know.” I told him about Bismarck. “And now she’s got him in the kitchen while she puts the finishing touches on dinner. And she’s talking to him like he’s human.”

  “There are many things about your mom that you don’t understand.”

  “Am I supposed to?”

  “Absolutely not.” He put his arm around me and pulled me closer. “That’s the dog who probably saved your life. And there’s no way she’s ever going to forget that. He can shed every bit of his fur while he’s here, and she’ll stuff a commemorative pillow with it.”

  Touched, I cleared my throat. “The girls love him.”

  “Have you heard from your sister?”

  I shook my head and he didn’t pursue it. I thought he probably knew that once we started to discuss Wendy’s whereabouts, the conversation would rapidly deplete his already limited energy and strength.

  “Holly and Noelle have brightened up since you took over. Thank you.”

  I was spared having to reply through the lump in my throat, because at that moment the girls got out of the pool.

  Dinner was surprisingly well received by both parents, and afterward my father took the girls and Bismarck into the media room to set up The Muppet Christmas Carol, which had been a favorite of mine as a little girl. I was pretty sure that, in their hearts, I was still seven years old.

  My mother and I cleared counters and put food away. She asked the question I’d been waiting for as we dished up the raspberry ice to take into the media room.

  “Have you heard from your sister?”

  “Dad asked, too. I haven’t. She should be calling soon.”

  “Will she be home for Christmas?”

  “I can’t predi
ct, Mom. I wish I could.”

  “This whole thing is beyond comprehension.”

  I could hardly argue. “The girls and I made a few Christmas things together this afternoon. But I think I need to buy a tree and decorations for the town house.”

  “Wendy may reappear, and Bryce is usually on shore over the holiday.”

  “Be that as it may, it’s sneaking up. They can use a little Christmas spirit right now, even if they head back to Connecticut later.”

  “I have all our old decorations. All the things you and Wendy made in school, the flickering lights you loved. Remember those?”

  I pretended I did, because clearly, Mom had saved them with me in mind. “They still work?”

  “Your father bought a million replacement bulbs in case they were ever discontinued. But you can have anything in those boxes. I haven’t put up a tree in years.”

  “Well, I think we both need to this year. The girls will expect it.”

  “I guess we’re all the family they have at the moment.”

  I wondered when, if ever, the girls would head north for a family Christmas with Bryce and Wendy. This year? Next? Never? I remembered the first one Bryce had spent with our family. It was the same visit when Wendy had given me the alligator night-light. My mother had pulled out all the stops. To a four-year-old the house had looked like a fairyland. Tinsel, colored lights, a tree in the entryway as tall as a castle. I’d helped my mother decorate at least a million cookies. And she’d helped me make paper chains to hang in my room, one link for each day before Christmas, so I could remove one at a time and keep track of the coming holiday.

  “Do you remember the first Christmas Bryce spent with us? It was the best ever.”

  “You weren’t even in school yet. You can’t possibly remember that Christmas.”

  “How’s this? You had a cookie cutter of Santa’s sleigh. And we made so many sleigh cookies, we bent it completely out of shape.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “See, even then, I knew I had to pay attention to details.”

  “What else do you remember?”

  In my heart I thought of that year as the Christmas-of-Wendy. After they married, Wendy and Bryce had traveled far and wide for his career and couldn’t travel home. Other years they visited his parents in California for the holiday, because he was an only child. Until his parents died, Wendy and Bryce hadn’t made it back to Florida for Christmas. And by the time they owned a home in Connecticut that was large and welcoming enough for all of us, I was in college or grad school, and busy with my own set of friends.

  “Wendy took me Christmas shopping,” I said. “She bought me a sparkly red dress and shiny gold shoes. And we had candy cane milkshakes.”

  I was feeling entirely too sentimental tonight. But now I remembered how my sister had dressed me up in my new finery and let me twirl around the living room with my skirts flying and Christmas music playing on the family stereo, while our guests for the evening applauded.

  “By the time that night was over, you were tired and very cranky.”

  “Trust you to remember that.”

  She actually smiled. “Wendy and Bryce went out, and you wanted to go, too. Instead I tucked you in and read you The Night Before Christmas.”

  “Not that horrifying story about the emperor who imprisoned St. Nicholas until he died?”

  She was quiet a moment. “I guess I was worried about your soul.” Then, as if on cue, we both began to laugh.

  “Wendy thinks you should have been a nun,” I said as I sobered. “She’s said it more than once. Usually if we’re alone having a few drinks.” I thought about the few times we’d let down our hair without our parents. They were only memorable because they’d been so rare. But I treasured each one.

  “I miss her,” I said.

  “Because you wish she’d take over again? Or because she’s your friend?”

  Wendy wasn’t a friend. She wasn’t someone I’d go to in a crisis, and I would never confess my deepest feelings to her. But she’d been in my life since the beginning, and while we’d never spent the years together that most sisters do, each moment we had spent together glowed in my memory.

  “Because she’s my sister.” I saw an opening to ask about Wendy’s scrapbook. “Wendy had a lot of friends, though, didn’t she?”

  “She had her share.” My mother put the raspberry ice back in the freezer and unwrapped the plate of cookies.

  “I was looking at some of her old school photos. Are any of her friends still in town? Did she get together with them when she came back?”

  She hesitated long enough to make me curious. Had Wendy had a falling out with a classmate that Mom didn’t want to get into with me? From years of doing interviews I could tell when somebody was trying to hide something from me. Now I really was curious.

  She shrugged, as if to say none of this was important. “One of her friends from the drama club is now the assistant principal of Seabank High. I can’t remember her name. I don’t know that they ever got together after Wendy moved into the town house, though. Your sister was never a best friend kind of girl. She was nice to everyone. She was popular, but she wasn’t in any cliques, never one of the mean girls. Of course you never were, either.”

  “But I had best friends. Just a few. That was all I needed.”

  “Wendy had a wide circle. Friends in drama, the band, the church youth group. It seemed like she brought new friends here as often as old.”

  “Well, there was one girl who kept showing up in the photos.” I’d remembered to bring the snapshot I’d taken from the scrapbook, and now I pulled it out of my pocket and held it for her to see. “Is this the principal?”

  Mom took and studied it. Her expression changed, and she shook her head. “No, that’s Greta. Greta Harold.”

  I was impressed with her memory. “There are a lot of photos of her.”

  “I was wrong to say Wendy never had best friends. She and Greta were best friends all through middle school. But Greta’s probably the reason Wendy didn’t have best friends in high school.”

  “A nasty fight?”

  “No. She died just before Wendy went into ninth grade. Your sister was distraught for months.”

  Before I could ask more, my father came into the room. “Need help carrying dishes?”

  Mom’s expression lightened, as if she was glad to leave that particular piece of history behind. “You just want your dessert.” She handed him a bowl with two cookies along the side, and picked up two more.

  “Ready?” she asked me. “You loved this movie.”

  I followed behind with the remaining bowls, but as I settled into a leather chair and balanced mine on my lap, I thought about my sister and the trauma of losing a best friend at such a pivotal moment in her development.

  I’d never thought of Wendy as someone who had been wounded. But surely Greta Harold’s death had changed her. Maybe she didn’t trust a world where bad things happened for no reason, and that was, at least in some small part, the reason she was afraid to trust the authorities now.

  Whatever part Greta’s death had played in making her the woman she was, I felt closer to her. My sister’s childhood and adolescence had never been as trouble-free as I had imagined. More than ever, I wanted to help her set her world back to rights. Wendy deserved a happy ending. I just hoped I could help her find one.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  My life was falling into a pattern. Where once I’d pondered sound engineering and how much of our story to reveal in episodes of Out in the Cold, now I thought about ways to keep my nieces busy and how to sneak vegetables into whatever I cooked for dinner.

  Some unseen hand had flicked a switch, and suddenly my career train had been mysteriously routed to the Mommy track, with an unknown destination ahead.

  On Monday, as I stood in my local Pub
lix grocery store evaluating the relative cost of tomatoes, I had to admit I was enjoying parts of my odd new life. Now that Holly and Noelle were slowly warming up to me, life in the town house was actually fun at times.

  On Saturday night after leaving my parents’ house, the girls and I had taken Bismarck for an evening walk and admired the Christmas decorations on neighbors’ houses. Tropicana was coming alive, and to prove it, the residents flocking here for the winter were trying to outdo each other with elaborate Florida-themed light displays. Mrs. Santa in a bikini. Reindeer frolicking with dolphins. Today I’d promised we would visit the local discount store so they could pick out decorations for the front door and lights for the podocarpus at the front of the house.

  Secretly I hoped if my mysterious wrestling partner returned, he would trip over our electric cords and sprawl helplessly until I could sic Bismarck on him.

  I chose my tomatoes and went to put them in my cart when I spotted a familiar face. An attractive silver-haired woman in a navy shift and jacket was coming toward me. She stopped when she recognized me, and I beamed a welcome.

  For most of the years of my life, Ella Cramer had been my father’s right hand. As a preschooler, I’d perched on her lap, swinging my legs while she taught me to type my name on her computer keyboard. Ella had helped my mother plan every staff Christmas party, and she’d always baked special cookies, just for me. Now I could almost taste them, buttery turtles with pecan legs and chocolate shells, and I wondered if she’d share the recipe.

  I moved around the cart to intercept her. “It’s so good to see you!”

  Her smile was tight, and strangely unwelcoming. “Ryan.” She nodded.

  Something about her posture said that I shouldn’t move closer. “It’s been a long time.”

  Her expression said not long enough. “Your father’s recovering?”

  This was an odd question, since Ella should know how he was doing. In fact, if I knew Dad, he was probably sneaking phone calls to her every morning to check on things at Gracey Group.

  “He’s not happy about the diet or the cardiac rehab ahead, but he’s gritting his teeth. He looks a little better every day.”