Summer Shadows

by Killarney Traynor

  “String beans?”

  “I was more thinking flowers in the pots. The string beans need more space and we’ll be tying them to stakes when they’re big enough. Actually, we’ll probably just plant them near the fence in the back garden and tie them to it.”

  Dana was looking at her in astonishment. “They need to be tied up?”

  “Yep. Otherwise, they’ll lie in the dirt and rot.”

  She looked over the array of seeds with a furrowed brow. “Do they all have to be tied up?”

  “Oh, no. Only the string beans, the peas, the sweet peas, and the tomatoes. Everything else either is strong enough to stand on its own, or it’s a vine that prefers to be on the ground.” She put the packet of string beans to one side. “We’ll save those for when it stops raining. How about we start with the pansies?”

  Dana nodded and they ripped open the packet.

  Dana insisted that they plant at least two of everything, so that Amelia could have one of each. Julia showed her how to dig the proper sized hole, where to place the seeds, and how to add the plant food to the water. Using some old Popsicle sticks that they had found in a dusty box in the storage room, they made two little signs for ‘Pansies’ in colorful marker and put the date on it. Then they placed the two pots on the wide window sills in the living room where they would catch the first rays of morning sunlight.

  “When will they start to grow?” Dana asked as they headed back into the kitchen.

  “It’ll take about a week before you see something. We’ll have to make sure that they get just enough sunlight and water so that they grow good and strong.”

  “And plant food!”

  “That we only have to do once a week. If you do more, they’ll be poisoned.” Julia poked through the remaining packets. “It’s kind of like taking care of a baby – you can’t give them too much milk or they’ll be sick.”

  “I remember when Jack was a baby.”

  “Do you? That was a long time ago and you were very little.”

  Dana nodded. “I remember he was sick and Mom said that it was because the girl hadn’t warmed up his formula right. She was really mad because he was throwing up over everything. She told Dad that she would never let the girl come and watch us again. Can we do the Prince Williams next?”

  “Sure.”

  Julia slid the packet over and watched as Dana’s little fingers worked to open it. The children didn’t talk about their parents much, and every time that they did, Dana ended up in tears. Now, she was so busy trying to open the slick packaging without spilling the contents that she didn’t have time for tears.

  After a few fruitless attempts, she looked at Julia in frustration. “Can I use the scissors, please?”

  “Very good idea,” Julia said.

  Julia was enjoying herself immensely. It wasn’t often that she and Dana had time alone together. The rain pounded outside, the boys were happily working together, and Dana was calm and peaceful. It was so nice that Julia decided that she must take steps to make sure that this happened again. Surely there were other projects that they could start doing. Maybe cooking or baking. They could bake cookies for Christmas presents this year, maybe, and then there was Easter…

  Dana cut into her thoughts. “Aunt Julia?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are all spices seeds?”

  Julia handed her the little watering can. “Some are. Others are leaves or bark, like basil and oregano.”

  They carefully carried the prepared pots into the living room. These were too big to put on the sills, so Julia cleared a place on the floor, where the sun was sure to find them.

  “Aunt Julia, did you ever work on a farm?”

  “What? I mean, no, why?”

  “You know everything about plants, don’t you?”

  The admiration was genuine. Dana was looking up at her with something like awe, her big brown eyes with their delicate lashes so much like Amanda’s.

  Julia ruffled Dana’s hair with a relatively clean hand. “No, I didn’t work on a farm, but I used to have a garden of my own when I was a little girl and my mom worked with me all the time on it. She’s the one who knows everything about gardens. She used to grow prize-winning roses.”

  “Really? That’s cool.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  Afterward, Dana fell silent and serious. Julia noticed but decided not to say anything about it. The sunflowers were planted, watered, and placed in the living room, and then they cleaned the kitchen table and put away the supplies. Some dirt had fallen on the floor, so Dana got the broom out of the dining room.

  While she was sweeping, she broke the silence.

  “Aunt Julia?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Um… Never mind.”

  She continued to sweep the rest of the room, her brow puckered in concentration. Julia washed the scissors and placed them back in the proper drawer, then wiped down the counter. After that, there was nothing left to do; but as Dana obviously had something to ask, she couldn’t leave. She put on the kettle, found two mugs, and put tea bags in them. She located the little plastic bear of honey and poured about a teaspoon of it into each cup.

  Finally, Dana stopped sweeping and spoke.

  “Did my mom work in the garden?”

  It seemed a lot of effort for such a simple question. Julia answered it simply: “No, she wasn’t much of an outdoors girl. She liked the flowers, though, and Mom and I would always give her a vase full for her room.”

  “Which were her favorites?”

  The kettle whistled, and Julia took an oven mitt and filled the two mugs. “Oh, the pink roses, definitely. But she also liked the hyacinth and the tulips, especially the pink ones. She tried to get Mom – Grandmother Rachael, I mean – to plant magnolias one year. But magnolias grow on trees and we didn’t have room in the yard.” She put the mugs on the table and sat down. “Have some tea.”

  Dana left her neat little pile of dirt and wrapped her hand around the steamy brew. In Julia’s opinion, a cup of tea was always welcome, even in the middle of summer’s worst humidity. She took a sip, but Dana contented herself with dunking the bag in the water over and over again.

  “So, you never had magnolias?” she asked.

  “No, I’m afraid not. Your mother was very disappointed, of course, but then she discovered boys and she forgot all about it.”

  Julia took a sip, remembering her sister. Amanda had been only about fifteen when she started dating, against their parents’ wishes, but you couldn’t change Amanda’s mind once she had made it up. Once she started, she was never without a boyfriend or a group of admirers.

  “I remember,” Julia said, “the first prom your mother was invited to. It was at another school and the boy who had asked her only knew her from the pizza place where they both worked. Mom and Dad weren’t happy about it, but he was a nice boy and they knew his parents, so they couldn’t say no. She let me sit in her room and watch her get ready. She wore this gorgeous green dress, the prettiest dress I had ever seen. I asked her if I could wear it when I got older, but she said that it would be out of style by then. I was so disappointed.” She laughed at the memory.

  Dana leaned closer. “Mom was beautiful,” she whispered.

  “Yes, she was.”

  Julia thought about Amanda’s golden hair and how she had envied the natural color when she was a child. Amanda never understood that – she always said that brown was just the right color for Julia’s eyes. She remembered dress shopping and watching movies together, arguing over shoes, giggling in the back seat, daydreaming about their futures, and all the things that sisters did, and a stab of pain struck Julia so hard that she winced.

  “Grandmother Rachael told me that she was the prettiest girl in high school,” Dana said. She stared at her mug, her huge, dewy eyes ready to overflow.

  Ju
lia nodded slowly. “She was very pretty, but better than that, she was very loving and kind. She was smart, too, just like you.”

  Dana shook her head. “I’m not very smart,” she said.

  “Who says?”

  “People in my class. Even Tonia is smarter than me.”

  Julia frowned. “Nonsense.”

  “It’s true. She gets all A’s.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I know that you’re smart. I’ve seen how your mind works and it’s very quick.”

  Dana sighed. “Aunt Julia, will I ever be pretty like Mom?”

  Julia was taken aback. Of all the things for Dana to be worried about, this wasn’t what she had expected. “What are you talking about, Dana?”

  “Mom was so beautiful but I’m just – well, I’m just… me. And I don’t have blonde hair like she does. Mine’s like…”

  She stopped, embarrassed. She was going to say, “Like yours, Aunt Julia,” and realized that it was insulting. Julia had to give her points for recognizing that, in the middle of her obvious distress.

  Julia didn’t care about the implied insult. She took Dana’s hand and the little girl gulped and looked down.

  “Dana,” she said, gently, “Your mother thought that you and the boys were the best thing that had ever happened to her. Do you know what she told me the day she had you in the hospital, the first time I ever saw you?”

  The chin was trembling. “No.”

  “You and she were alone when I came in, and the first thing she did was to hold you up so that I could see. She said, ‘Isn’t she the most beautiful little girl you’ve ever seen in your life?’ Do you know what I said?”

  “No.”

  “I said that she was right. Your mother was beautiful, but she couldn’t believe that anyone could be as beautiful as you. She was awed by you. She never, ever thought that you were not good enough. She didn’t think she was good enough for you.”

  Dana’s eyes were overflowing now and the little hand squeezed tightly.

  Julia handed her a tissue. “Your mother was right, you know,” she said. “And you look so much like her – it’s like seeing her young again.”

  “Do you – do you think she misses us?”

  Suddenly tearful herself, Julia said, “Oh, Dana!”

  She pulled the little girl into her lap and held her while she sobbed quietly. She rocked back and forth, stroking her niece’s hair and whispering things that neither one of them remembered later. Dana curled up in a tight little ball, one arm wrapped tightly around Julia’s neck.

  This was a different crying than Julia was used to from her niece. Before, the sobbing spurts were spontaneous, harsh, and overwhelming, almost furious in their intensity. This was soft, more heartrending. There was something about it that made Julia think that this was a healing. There was a long road ahead, still, but this was definitely a huge step.

  19

  Eventually, Dana went to the bathroom to wash her face. Julia was in the kitchen, cleaning the mugs and thinking, when the boys came in. Ron was carrying empty drawers that Julia recognized as being from the bureaus that were to go in the boys’ room.

  “What are you guys doing with those?” she asked.

  “We’re getting ready for when Robert brings them upstairs!” Jack said happily.

  Ron had to keep shifting his stance to keep the drawers balanced. “We thought we’d get a head start. We’re going to bring up some for Dana, too.”

  “That’s a very good idea, guys. Thank you.”

  Jack beamed and they went upstairs. She could hear Jack asking Ron whether socks had to be folded together or if they couldn’t just be tossed in.

  She was just about to leave the kitchen to go into the living room when there was a pounding at the door, so loud that Julia would have been startled by half the intensity. She heard voices and hurried to answer it.

  Looking up from under an enormous rain hat, Mrs. Jurta brushed past Julia, saying something so fast and so high pitched that Julia didn’t understand a word. She was followed by what appeared to be a midget in rain gear holding two leashes with puppies attached. Mystified, Julia followed them into the kitchen.

  Amelia Wilde sat in a growing puddle of water on one of the kitchen chairs, watching Mrs. Jurta fuss over the puppies with one of Julia’s few remaining clean dish towels.

  “Mrs. Jurta!” Julia said. “What’s going on?”

  “Look, I hate to ask you, but it’s an emergency and I’m out of options.”

  One of the puppies escaped her and went running down the hallway. A second later, they heard Dana’s delighted voice: “Oh, Horatio! What are you doing here?”

  The other puppy dashed off after him and Mrs. Jurta wearily let him go. Julia hoped that the dog was house trained.

  Amelia slipped out of her seat and ran into the hall. The barking alerted the boys upstairs, and they came crashing down the steps. They raced through the kitchen and into the hallway.

  Mrs. Jurta raised her voice above the chaos.

  “It’s Dexter – he’s taken a funny turn and I have to rush him to the vet’s right away. I’ve got Amelia and normally I’d take her with me, but the vet is all the way in Concord. I’ve explained it all to Robert, of course, and he was fine with me leaving her here and said he’d be around at the normal hour to pick her up and…”

  Jack ran screeching around the corner and jumped into Julia’s arms. The tiger-striped puppy raced into the room after him and slipped on the slick floor, colliding with the table leg.

  Amelia ran in and gathered the puppy in her arms while Ron stood in the doorway, watching them.

  Julia hushed Jack and turned to Mrs. Jurta. “You need to leave Amelia with us?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “What about the puppies?”

  “They need to have their medications, but Amelia knows what to do.”

  Amelia reached into her pocket, pulled out a little reddish bottle, and waved it about. Dana, with the other dog close at her feet, appeared in the doorway.

  Julia frowned. “You’re leaving the puppies here with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mrs. Jurta, I don’t have any experience with dogs and I don’t have any food for them. Amelia can stay with us, if her father is all right with it, but the puppies…”

  But Mrs. Jurta brushed off Julia’s concerns with a wave of her hand.

  “They’ll be no trouble. I’ve brought their chow and they’ll go with Amelia tonight when Robert picks them up. They need their pill at six sharp and a walk before bed. Thank you, Julia. This is why I love living in a neighborhood – we’re always here to help one another. I’ll keep you all informed on Dexter’s progress. Good night – keep dry!”

  She darted back out into the rainy afternoon before Julia could regain herself enough to say anything.

  There was brief silence, then Amelia yelped as Tigger slipped out of her arms. Ron jumped back as the little fellow scrambled across the floor towards Horatio.

  The children waited for Julia’s reaction. Ron looked annoyed, Dana was apprehensive, and Amelia’s face was white.

  Jack relaxed his grip on Julia’s neck a little, but he tightened up the moment she shifted.

  “I don’t like dogs,” he whispered.

  Julia thought that he was in for a very long afternoon. She shifted him on her hip and brushed a stray hair out of her eyes. The sound of the dogs at play grew more intense in the background, but no one moved. They were all waiting for her.

  “Well,” she said with a sigh, “Mrs. Jurta certainly knows how to make a grand entrance, doesn’t she?”

  They didn’t respond, and Julia tried again. “I hope you like macaroni and cheese, Amelia. That’s what we’re having tonight.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Amelia said solemnly.

  For heaven’s sake,
Julia thought. This isn’t a Charles Dickens moment!

  “Awesome,” she said. “Now, you’re sure your father knows where you are?”

  Amelia pulled a cell phone out of her pocket. “Oh, yes, ma’am. He texted me to tell you thank you. You can see it right here, want to see?”

  She nodded. “Dana, Ron, just go make sure those dogs aren’t ruining anything, will you?”

  “Yes, Aunt Julia,” Ron said obediently.

  Dana sprang for the living room, calling for Horatio.

  Amelia was still holding up the phone as Julia placed the trembling Jack on the table and reached for it.

  “May I see the message?” she asked.

  Suddenly hesitant, Amelia withdrew the phone; then she reluctantly gave it to Julia.

  There were several messages on the screen:

  Amelia: Hey dad mrs jurta has to go to the vets dana’s mom says I can stay with them until you pick me up ok?

  Dad: everything ok with m. jurta?

  Amelia: yes her dogs sick ok to stay with mrs Lamontaigne?

  Dad: Yes. I’ll be home at 7. Thank mrs Lamontaigne for me, give her my number and ask her to send me hers. Be a good girl.

  Amelia: thanks I will see you home.

  It was a suspicious amount of typing for the short amount of time that Amelia had been in the house. Julia checked the time on the messages and her hunch was right: the first one was sent ten minutes before Amelia and Mrs. Jurta arrived at the house.

  She looked up at the wide-eyed Amelia.

  “Well,” she said, handing it back. “You’d better give me your Dad’s phone number.”

  Amelia rattled it off. Julia typed it into her phone and sent a text:

  This is Julia L. Just wanted you to have my phone number and to let you know that Amelia is with us.

  After a moment, the reply arrived: I owe you big time. I’ll cut out early tonight, if I can manage it.

  Julia grinned: No problem. You can pay me back in furniture lugging. See you tonight.

  As she sent it, she wondered about how free and easy talking with Robert felt. It was almost as if they’d known each other for ages.