“The older she gets, the more Holland reminds me of Elizabeth,” Brett says after the table is cleared and Geneva and I are excused. His voice is low, but still audible from where I am, in the kitchen.
“Yes, she has something of Elizabeth’s spirit,” Mom agrees.
If I do, it was given to me at a time when I needed an older sister most, and holding onto her spirit is as close as I can come to safeguarding real memories of the sister I used to have. But it’s enough for me.
If I want other stories, I go to Pia, who loves to talk about her high school days. Plus, she reads my fortune, a different one each time, and if I don’t bring Geneva, she includes lots of good, Ick details about my love life. Pia also tells me about Elizabeth’s boyfriend.
“Such a doll,” she remembers. “William Jacowski, but we all called him Jack. Four grades under me, but even us seniors thought he was cute. And now he’s an actor, I heard, mostly in television commercials. Actually, I thought I saw him in a heartburn ad. Might not have been him, though. I’m not good with faces.”
I can’t help occasionally tempting myself, clicking through channels, hoping to see his commercial, and one afternoon after school I search out his pictures in Kevin’s senior year Bishop Brown yearbook. There he is, a smear of dark and light in the third row on the basketball team, there again in a crowded cafeteria shot, and again on page seventy-two, my favorite, above the caption WILLIAM JACOWSKI ADDS A TOUCH OF CLASS TO BBHS’S NINTH GRADE VALENTINE’S DAY SEMIFORMAL. He wears a painted tuxedo T-shirt and holds out his plastic champagne glass in a toast to the photographer. I know Elizabeth is next to him; although she stands just outside the frame, I can almost see her standing beside him in her tap shoes and chenille-covered tutu.
I replace the yearbook in its place with all the others in the den, then I walk into the kitchen, where I retrieve a small paring knife from one of the drawers.
“You got a phone call on call waiting, but I was on with Sophie,” Geneva says. She is seated at the banquette, sketching a still life from a bowl of grapes and apples arranged in front of her. “It was Litterbug. He said to call back.”
“Okay.”
“And I set the table without you.”
“Thanks, Neeve.”
“Do you like my apples?”
“Your grapes are better.” I plant a big noisy kiss on her cheek.
“Yuck,” she says.
I walk up the stairs to the Korean chest room, where I sit at Elizabeth’s desk and trace over the letters E. S. + W. J. with my fingernail. I slide the knife from my pocket and carve my own set of initials, H. S. + L. L., next to hers. My cut is fresher, but the two hearts could be twins, beating together inside the piney wood. I swipe the lacy crumbles of blue-painted wood chips to the floor and slip the knife back in my pocket. The fading sun filters through the curtains, and for the first time I think the cream-of-tomato rug and asparagus wallpaper do not look so bad. Maybe I will have a sleep-over here sometime. It might be kind of fun.
Faintly, very faintly, I think I catch a scent through the room of vanilla nutmeg coffee.
Then I get up to call Louis.
A Personal History by Adele Griffin
I was born in 1970 in my mother’s hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was the oldest of three children, and spent my early childhood as a “military brat,” moving between bases in North Carolina, California, Panama, and Rhode Island. I returned to Pennsylvania for high school, and then attended college at the University of Pennsylvania. After earning a bachelor of arts and sciences degree in 1993, I eagerly answered a “help wanted” ad in the New York Times and an “apartment rentals” ad in the Village Voice. That same week, I secured both my first job and my first apartment. I began working for Macmillan Children’s Books as an editorial assistant; living two blocks away from the office ensured that I didn’t get lost on my commute.
While balancing days working in the editorial department with nights writing fiction, I discovered my abiding love of New York City, and knew that I would want to live there for the long haul. At Macmillan, and later Hyperion Books for Children, I read old favorites and new favorite fiction for younger readers, and in doing so rediscovered classic stories that had been so riveting in my youth. I was particularly enthralled to connect with Robert Cormier, an author whose work I idolized when I was a child—years later, I got to spend a day with him at Simmons College. It wasn’t long before I completed my first novel, Rainy Season (1996), which was accepted by Houghton Mifflin & Co. A semi-autobiographical account of family life on an army base in Panama, the book was recommended by Publishers Weekly as a “Flying Start” notable debut. My second book, Split Just Right (1997), told the story of a bohemian single mother raising her daughter. My third book, Sons of Liberty, a drama set in New England that addressed child abuse, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1997. I followed this novel with a contemporary supernatural story, The Other Shepards (1998), and then Dive (1999), a novel that grappled with the real-life unexpected death of my stepbrother, Jason.
Turning to more lighthearted fare, I created a middle-grade series, Witch Twins, about identical twins living in Philadelphia (based on my nieces) who work to become “five-star” witches—with some help from their eccentric, spell-casting grandmother. The four-book series includes Witch Twins, Witch Twins at Camp Bliss, Witch Twins and Melody Malady, and Witch Twins and the Ghost of Glenn Bly. I also completed Amandine (2001), a novel loosely based on Lillian Hellman’s chilling play The Children’s Hour. Themes of friendship, deceit, and betrayal surfaced again in my next book, Overnight (2003), about a sleepover that goes horribly wrong.
In Hannah, Divided (2002), I tried my hand at historical fiction, crafting a story of a young math prodigy living in 1930s rural Pennsylvania, who then wins a scholarship to study in Philadelphia. In 2010, I returned to the genre with Picture the Dead, collaborating with my friend Lisa Brown, an author and illustrator, on an illustrated novel about Spiritualist photographers in the Civil War era.
In 2005, I received another National Book Award nomination for Where I Want to Be, a family-centered psychological drama with paranormal elements. The following year, I published a light, young adult romance titled My Almost Epic Summer. I also launched another middle grade series; this one, Vampire Island Stories, is about a family of vegan vampires living in New York City.
Family plays an important role in my fiction, and while I don’t consider myself a fantasy writer, I do enjoy adding a measure of the supernatural to otherwise realistic fiction. This blend runs through a number of my books, namely The Other Shepards, Where I Want to Be, Picture the Dead, and Tighter. I write stories that emphasize our lasting connections to those we have lost, and how our families—past and present—inform our everyday life in ways that can be both startling and steadfast.
In 2007, my husband, Erich, and I traded Manhattan for Brooklyn, where we live very happily with our two young children—a daughter, Priscilla, and a son, Hastings—as well as a ten-pound shih tzu named Edith. Parenthood has inspired me to write for a younger audience, and to that end, I teamed up with the author Courtney Sheinmel to create an early-reader series called Agnes and Clarabelle, forthcoming from Bloomsbury Press, about a pair of two differently anxious friends.
My husband and I both avidly support nonprofit organizations such as the MacDowell Colony, Prep for Prep, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, buildOn, and 826NYC, an after-school tutoring and creative writing center for high school youth, where I sit on the board of directors. I am also a member of the PEN American Center and the Writers Guild of America. Visit me at www.adelegriffin.com and on Twitter at @adelegriffin.
My brother Robert and me in Maine in 1976, when I was six years old. Our mother was born in Maine and our grandparents returned there, to the Rangeley Lakes, most summers.
Me in Rhode Island with my brother Geoff in 1981. I was eleven years old and in my Agatha Christie phase. I would read Christie or nothing.
My cont
ribution to my high school arts magazine. I loved to make collages, considering them the highest form of art. I also emulated Victorian gothic romance, and loved historical costumes. Many of my illustrations were wacky, inadvertent mash-ups of period clothing spanning multiple centuries.
My two best friends and me at our high school graduation in 1989. From left to right: Holly, Stephanie, and me.
Even as an adult, I was interested in princess costumes. I made crowns to celebrate Princess Diana’s televised BBC interview in 1995, which my family watched after taking this photo. From left to right: me, my grandmother, my aunt Elena, my niece Kate, my mother, and my aunt Barbara.
A photograph of me with my soon-to-be husband, Erich, on the morning of our wedding, August 16, 1997.
Me with Robert Cormier in 1998. Cormier was my childhood idol, and his novel I Am the Cheese is one of my favorite books of all time.
My first author visit, for Rainy Season, in 1996 at my alma mater, the Agnes Irwin School in Rosemont, Pennsylvania.
Me with my daughter, Priscilla, wearing our glasses at my parents’ home in Pennsylvania.
Me with my husband and our children, Priscilla and Hastings, on the ferry to Fire Island, where we go every summer. This photo was taken in summer 2012, when Hastings was just one month old.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1998 by Adele Griffin
cover design by Connie Gabbert
978-1-4532-9736-0
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
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Other Shepards Page 14
