by Mary Carter
The first time Carrie Ann climbed up, she simply stood at the top of the ladder, surveying the digs. It was a nice platform, at least ten by ten, supported by an old, sturdy oak. Grace’s father had built it for her eighth birthday. Together they had painted it red.
“I would have preferred blue,” Carrie Ann said as she gave it the once-over. And then she was gone.
“Me too,” Grace called after her. “They were out. Totally out. I was so mad. Ask my dad.” She kept her fingers tightly crossed behind her back. But Carrie Ann didn’t appear to be listening; she was already playing with one of the boys. Grace squeezed the two by four she was clutching so hard that she drove a splinter through her palm. She couldn’t lose Carrie Ann to those stinky boys! Not after all these years of wanting a girl. That night, when her father was ensconced in his study, Grace knocked on the door.
“Come in.” Grace approached his desk, trailed her finger along the edge.
“You didn’t come in to dust, so what is it?”
“Do we have any blue paint?”
“Like watercolors?”
“No. For my tree house.”
“Why do you want to paint your tree house blue, Graceful? Are you feeling sad?”
“No. I just realized I like the color blue better.”
“I see.”
“Can I?”
“The tree house is fire-engine red. If you paint it blue, it’s going to turn out purple.”
Grace wondered what Carrie Ann thought of purple. “How do we get it blue?”
“We’d have to prime it, and that’s pretty involved, honey. Why don’t you just bring some other things that are blue up to the tree house? Throw some white in there too. You’ll be patriotic.”
The next time Carrie Ann climbed up the ladder, Grace was ready for her. She had brought everything blue she ever owned up to it. A snow globe with a blue back. Her blue dress. And a bowl full of blue gumballs. It had taken a long time to pick out all the other colors. Brady sat on Grace’s lap, purring. Carrie Ann stared at him. It was as if she didn’t even notice the blue.
“He won’t hurt you,” Grace said. Instead of answering, Carrie Ann spit on the ground like a boy.
“She’s a bit rough,” Grace heard her mother say to her father later on that evening.
“Never in a foster home more than a year,” her father replied. “I wouldn’t expect less.”
“You think she’ll come around?”
“How could she not?”
“Hmm,” her mother said.
“I think Gracie likes her.”
“She just wants another girl. We’re going to have to keep our eye on her.”
On who? Grace wondered. Carrie Ann or me?
From then on, Grace also kept an eye on Carrie Ann, just in case she saw something before her mother did. If it was something she thought her mother wouldn’t like, she would gently bring it up to Carrie Ann, usually after an extra treat, like a ring pop. The first time it happened, Grace’s voice quivered with anticipation and fear. Carrie Ann was admiring her ring pop, and they were lying on their stomachs in the tree house listening to the radio and painting their nails.
“You know when my mom asks you to wash your hands for dinner?” Grace said.
Carrie Ann looked up at her, nail polish brush poised in the air. “What?”
“Yeah. You know how she always asks us that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I think you should do it. You know. Like the first time she asks. You can come with me. I’ll help you.”
“You think I need help washing my hands?”
“No. I just thought—”
“Well, don’t.” She poked the nail polish brush in Grace’s direction, spattering hot pink on the floor planks. “Don’t think.”
Grace fell silent, but inside the wheels were still turning. She looked at her pile of candy, then tossed a bracelet Carrie Ann’s way. Carrie Ann stopped polishing once more and stared at the candy bracelet. Then, she looked at Grace for a long time. Finally, she nodded, put the bracelet on, and then said, “Okay.”
Grace felt a rush of relief. Then she felt triumphant. Carrie Ann had listened to her. And it didn’t cost her too much. That evening, when Grace’s mom yelled out, “Wash your hands for dinner,” Carrie Ann was the first to the bathroom. And although she dried her hands on her pants instead of the towel, Grace still counted it as a victory.
And for about a year it was just the two of them. Against other foster kids, against mean girls at school, and increasingly against her parents. Grace came to love Carrie Ann with the fierceness of a mother bear. And things might have stayed that way forever. If it hadn’t been for the day that Grace was late coming home from school because she had to resew a pillow in home ec. It was an elephant. The teacher scolded her for sewing the trunk shut. Grace hated that teacher to this day. She was forty-five minutes late. She climbed up to the tree house. There, sitting next to Carrie Ann, was a boy. And not just any boy—Stan Gale, the most hated kid in their school. Not that he was a bully; just the opposite. Stan was just so—awkward. Overweight and tall, with braces and greasy hair always hanging in his eyes and, worst of all, big red pimples all over his face. Grace could barely look at him, even from a distance, and here he was sitting in their tree house. He lived nearby, just on the other side of the woods. She’d found him sneaking around her yard a couple of times, but she’d never actually talked to him. She couldn’t. He gave her the creeps. She almost fell backward. That could have been the end of her, splatted on the ground underneath the oak tree.
“There she is,” Carrie Ann said. “Carrie Ann, this is Stan.”
“She knows me,” Stan said.
“Not really,” Grace mumbled. What was he doing here? Grace started to climb down.
“Where are you going?” Carrie Ann said. “Get up here.”
“I have to check on Brady,” Grace said. She didn’t know what Carrie Ann was thinking, but Grace did not want to sit in her tree house with Stan Gale. She’d heard his name paired with “cooties” so many times, she’d rather just play it safe. Besides, if he was up here, then Carrie Ann wanted something from him. And usually, when Carrie Ann wanted something from somebody, it was never good.
“You know who Stan’s mother is?” Carrie Ann said.
“No,” Grace said.
“She’s the art teacher,” Carrie Ann said. “The one you like.”
“Lydia?” Grace said. Carrie Ann just smirked; Stan turned as red as the planks in the tree house. Grace waited for someone to laugh. They had to be joking. Lydia was Stan’s mother?
Lydia Gale was the prettiest woman Grace had ever seen. She had long curly blond hair, and even longer skirts. Always with something on them. Flowers, or patterns, or even paintings. Later, Grace learned that despite having a husband who could afford to buy her clothes, Lydia made the skirts herself. It made Grace love her even more.
Grace was the kid in the farthest corner of the room, the kind who held her breath when any teacher asked a question, praying she wouldn’t be picked to answer. Being called on by the teacher in front of the whole class was like standing in front of a firing squad. But in art class, Lydia, as she whispered the kids could call her, never asked any questions. Another reason Grace loved her. On free days, if you wanted to draw, you could draw. Or work with clay. Or paint. Even finger paint. Even cut out pictures from magazines and stick them on paper. Lydia didn’t care. As long as you were creating. Lydia, quite frankly, was Grace’s favorite person in the whole world outside of Carrie Ann and her mother.
Carrie Ann patted the planks next to her. “So he can’t be all that bad, right?”
Grace still wanted to know what Carrie Ann was up to. But Carrie Ann was right about one thing. If Lydia was Stan’s mother, then he couldn’t be that bad at all.
“Lydia,” Grace called out in the present. She reached for her phone.
“Lydia?” Jean Sebastian said.
“I think she’s the answer to
the puzzle—her name fits.” Grace didn’t have a pen, but she pretended to write the letters in the spaces. “Lydia.”
“Why would she be the answer?” Jean Sebastian said.
“She made her own skirts.”
“The true victim—does that fit?”
It was her husband who was accused of being a degenerate, a pervert, a Peeping Tom. Her husband hanging from the rafters of their barn. She lost everything after that. “It fits,” Grace said.
“You can’t stop the story there.”
Grace took out her phone. She texted Jake.
Lydia.
“Seriously. Can you keep going with the story?”
Grace’s phone dinged. “Brava,” she read aloud.
“You got it right?”
“I got it right.” She was right; they had been on a wild-goose chase. She hadn’t needed to go to the Picasso museum to figure out the clue was Lydia. Grace was being toyed with.
“So what does Lydia have to do with any of this?”
“She went downhill after Lionel’s death.”
“Lionel?”
“Stan’s father. Lydia’s husband.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. I’m lost.”
“Please. Please don’t make me relive all this tonight.”
“Okay, okay. It’s okay. Don’t cry.”
“It was such a mess. The whole thing turned into such a mess. And I think Stan partly blames me for making the mess.” Grace looked at Jean Sebastian. “He’s not wrong. I am partly to blame.” Jean Sebastian still looked confused. “Please. I can’t get into all of it tonight.”
“I said it’s okay. I meant it. You don’t have to talk about it.”
“So I guess he blames me for ruining Lydia’s life too.” And Grace didn’t exactly disagree. She was the one who had cried to Lydia about Carrie Ann’s not having a place to go.
“Brava? That’s all he said?”
“That’s all.”
“Is that also a clue?”
“Beats me.”
What now? Grace texted. Her phone remained silent.
“Let’s go back to the hotel and get some sleep,” Jean Sebastian said. Grace wanted to argue, but just then realized how tired she was. It was better to conserve their energy while they could. God only knew what little puzzle they were going to have to deal with next. Nightmare. This day had felt like a never-ending nightmare.
CHAPTER 32
Sleep did not come easily to Grace with what was left of the night, and she was up before the sun. She watched the video of Jake and Carrie Ann over and over. Grace cried. She pounded her fists on Jean Sebastian’s bed. Several times when he cried out—“Just who the hell are you?” Grace yelled back, “It’s me; you know me.”
Finally, when she couldn’t take another second of feeling this bad and this alone, she called her mother. There was no answer. Someone was always in her mother’s room. Where was her father? Or a nurse? She’d certainly let it ring long enough. She called the front desk of the hospice. A girl answered and admonished her. No wonder no one was answering; it was after eleven p.m. in the States. She almost woke the entire floor. Grace apologized profusely and hung up. Then she cried some more. She called Jake’s number. Got voice mail. Jean Sebastian walked in when she had just started crying again. Without hesitation he crawled onto the bed next to her and held her.
“I can’t take any more,” she said. “I’m going to tell my father.”
“I’m sure he’ll be on the next plane out here,” Jean Sebastian said.
Oh, God. Of course he would. She couldn’t have that. She couldn’t leave her mother all alone.
“I have some sedatives,” Jean Sebastian said. “They are very light, but you would definitely sleep.”
“I can’t, I can’t,” Grace said. “What do you think is coming next?”
“That’s just it. We don’t know. And you’re not going to be able to do anything if you don’t get some sleep.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll take one too.”
Grace was completely exhausted. “Give it to me,” she said.
She awoke, a few hours later, to the sound of her phone dinging. Jean Sebastian was lightly snoring beside her. They’d slept on the same bed, but on top of the covers and both fully clothed. He’d been a perfect gentleman even though she knew he had feelings for her. She owed him so much. She opened her text.
It was a picture of a couple standing by the sea. It looked like a small inlet, scattered with rowboats. Behind them was a multi-leveled white-stone farmhouse. Grace enlarged the picture and gasped. It was Jake. With Carrie Ann. Except she had brunette hair, just like Grace, and she had even styled it in waves like Grace, and to top it off she was wearing faded jeans with a cowboy belt, and a tight, colorful blouse. Grace’s signature outfit for shows. With Carrie Ann wearing sunglasses and flat sandals, not to mention the distance at which the picture was taken, nobody would have guessed it wasn’t Grace. In the photo Jake and Carrie Ann were arm in arm. Most disturbing of all was Jake’s lip. Even from a distance Grace could tell it was grotesquely swollen. Somebody had punched him in the mouth. The caption read: Jake and I at the Salvador Dalí House in Port Lligat. Wish you were here!
Grace waited twenty minutes, then gently shook Jean Sebastian awake. As soon as he sat up she showed him the picture and the text. “Port Lligat,” Jean Sebastian said. “That’s a couple of hours’ drive from here.”
“I know,” Grace said. “A small fishing village in Cadaqués, Spain.”
“And I thought I was the travel blogger,” Jean Sebastian said. “How in the world did you know that?”
“Lydia. She used to teach us about the lives of the artists she was introducing.”
“She introduced Salvador Dalí to kids?”
“Oh, yes. She showed us slides of the house and even the village. She was so in love with it. She said Dalí and his wife split their time between New York, Paris, and Cadaqués. But it was in Cadaqués that he did his best work. For some reason that stuck with me. I had never been out of Tennessee. I remember rolling the name Cadaqués around in my mouth. I know that sounds stupid.”
“It doesn’t. I like the image of you rolling words around in your mouth.”
Grace stared at Jean Sebastian for a moment. It was the first blatantly sexual thing he had ever said to her. Was he going to break his streak of not crossing any lines?
A small smile played across his lips. “Sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I’m bad.” He held his arms out in a shrug.
Grace reached out to touch the picture. “Look at her,” she said. “And look at him. He’s hurt.”
“What?” Jean Sebastian leaned in. “His lip?”
“Yes,” Grace said. Tears welled up in her eyes. “I’m going to kill her.”
“Carrie Ann seems tough, but I doubt she could do that.”
“She had Rafael do it. I’m sure of it. Jake probably tried to get away.”
“So what does this place have to do with you?”
“I guess Stan wanted to pick a place I’d remember from my connection to his mother,” Grace said.
Jean Sebastian’s phone rang, startling them both. He answered it, and they locked eyes for a few seconds before she heard him tell the caller to hold on. Grace took the cue and slipped out of bed. She nodded at Jean Sebastian and headed out to the living room. He tucked the phone under his armpit, followed her to the doorway, and looked at her. “Grace?” he whispered.
“Yes?”
“I want to say something really inappropriate.”
Grace hesitated. She should tell him she didn’t want to hear it. Whatever it was. Then again, he’d stuck with her so far—maybe he’d earned it. “Go ahead.”
“I wish to hell I remembered that kiss.” He left her standing dumfounded and slipped into his bedroom. She could hear him speaking in soft tones as if he was talking to a girl. Why did he have to tell her that? And why did she feel a shot of desire when he did? I’m sorry,
Jake. It doesn’t mean anything. I love you. She wondered whom Jean Sebastian was talking to. She’d been so wrapped up in her own drama that she hadn’t even thought about the fact that Jean Sebastian had friends, and family, and a life outside Barcelona and her.
Grace wandered out onto the balcony and leaned against the railing, gazing out onto the ocean. It had always calmed her in the past to lose herself in the waves; it always made her problems seem so small. But not this time. She just couldn’t shake the dread, and guilt, and desire. Desire for Jake, desire to be selfish enough to kiss Jean Sebastian again, desire to erase every trace of Carrie Ann and Stan from her life. She had too many wishes. Wished her mom were healthy, wished she were back home with Jake and Stella.
Before you dredged up any deep, dark secrets. Is that what her past was? An abandoned well of deep, dark secrets? She’d spent most of her life trying to cover it up. Now she wished more than anything that Stan and Carrie Ann were here so they could get it all out into the open. Because one thing was becoming very clear. This situation wasn’t going to just go away. If Grace wanted out of this, she’d have to go through it. Grace took a deep breath and dove headfirst into the past.
Stan started to bring them “goodies” from his home. That was Carrie Ann’s word for it. It started with a can of Budweiser. After all, they were teenagers now, and the kid stuff was behind them. Carrie Ann had him open it inside his backpack. Grace would never forget the snap and fizz of it opening, slightly muffled inside his pack. Carrie Ann lifted it out and brazenly poured it into cups that originally had had homemade lemonade in them. Grace watched the lemonade trickle through the boards and drip below. Her mother was so proud of her lemonade, and actually spent quite a bit of time making it. Betrayal and guilt crawled up her spine. “Maybe we should drink our lemonade first,” she said.
