“Hey,” Jim acknowledged them. “How’s it going?”
Trevor barely glanced in their direction. “Be with you in a sec,” he said.
“This looks amazing,” Graham said, still standing near the door. His gaze was on Amalia, who stood by one of the two small windows, opening a can of paint on the sill. A beam of sunlight somehow managed to cut through the forest and the film on the window to settle in her shimmery light brown hair. She set down the screwdriver she was using to pry open the lid and crossed the room to get to Molly.
“Hello, baby,” she said, wrapping Molly in a hug.
“It’s all different in here!” Molly said once Amalia had released her. She pointed toward one of the bed platforms. “What are these little stages for?”
Graham laughed. She’d been in her kindergarten play a month ago and the stage that had been set up in the school auditorium had indeed been no higher than these small platforms.
“I think they’re for us to dance on,” Amalia said. She picked up Trevor’s paint-spattered radio from the small counter next to the sink and changed the station from news to music. From beneath the sink, Trevor gave her a withering look that she pretended not to notice. “Jessie’s Girl” was playing, and Amalia grabbed Molly’s hand and the two of them hopped onto one of the platforms and began to dance. Watching them hold hands as they danced, Graham remembered his dream. He suddenly felt haunted by it. He could still feel Molly’s feet on his own. Her hands in his. That light sensation of gliding with her around the room.
Trevor stood up from beneath the sink and watched Amalia and Molly for a couple of seconds before reaching into the toolbox on the counter. “You’re supposed to be painting the windows, Amalia,” he said.
Amalia didn’t seem to hear him or, if she did, she chose to ignore him. Instead, she continued dancing with Molly, who was singing nearly all the words to “Jessie’s Girl,” some of which Graham wished she didn’t know.
“I can do the windows,” Graham said, happy there was a way he could contribute. He wasn’t sure he could stand for as long as it would take to paint one of the small window frames, much less two, but he planned to try. He walked with his cane over to the window where Amalia had been opening the can of paint.
“The generator’s hooked up,” Trevor said. “And check this out.” Graham watched him turn the handle on the faucet above the sink. Water sputtered, then poured from the tap. “I diverted it from the stream,” he said.
“Amazing.” Graham was truly impressed. He wouldn’t have had a clue how to do that. He’d always been the bookish, cerebral one in the family while Trevor was the brawny builder, good with his hands, and Claudia, Jim’s wife, was such a good baker that people paid her to make their wedding cakes. Graham was the only one of the three of them to finish college, much less graduate school, but he barely knew one end of a hammer from the other and, in the kitchen, he could make toast but that was about it. If one of them had to get multiple sclerosis, he supposed it was better it was the one who needed his brain more than his body.
Jim got to his feet and looked over at Amalia and Molly, who were standing stock-still on the other platform, heads tilted as they waited to hear what song would come next on the radio. “Are you going to help me with the mattresses or what?” Jim asked Amalia.
Graham hated the way he and Trevor talked to her, but he didn’t know how to change it. Amalia had lived on Morrison Ridge for four years and it had not gotten any better. In the beginning, he’d apologized for his relatives’ coolness, but she’d shrugged it off. “Ignore it,” she’d said. “I’ve heard so much worse.” She had a gift for tuning out things she didn’t want to hear. It wasn’t a realistic way to live, but he sometimes envied the peace that ability seemed to give her.
“At your service,” Amalia said to Jim, stepping down from the platform.
“But the music’s coming on!” Molly said as “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” blared from the radio.
“You can keep dancing, baby,” Amalia said. “I need to help Jim. We’re going to turn the little stages into beds.”
“What?” Molly giggled.
“Seriously,” Amalia said. “You’ll see.”
“Molly.” Graham pried the lid off the can of paint on the window sill. “Why don’t you sit and read for a while?”
“Where’s the place for my treasures?” she asked.
“I’ll show you a little later when things settle down,” he said.
“A place for her treasures, huh?” Trevor laughed. His gaze traveled to the fieldstone wall above the bed platform where Molly still stood, looking bereft at losing her dance partner. One of the stones looked a little different from the rest, but only a little. When they were kids,
Graham and Trevor had chipped out one of the stones to create a deep cavity and Claudia crafted a fake stone façade from plaster of Paris to keep the hole hidden from the rest of the world. “Wonder if anything is still in there,” Trevor said.
“Guess we’ll find out,” Graham said.
Trevor washed his hands at the sink and dried them on a rag hanging from the belt loop of his jeans. “Well,” he said, closing the lid on his tool chest. “I’ve got some things to do. You all can finish up.”
“You’re taking off?” Graham asked, surprised. He’d expected everyone to work on the springhouse today until the transformation was complete.
“I do have a job, you know,” Trevor said. “I’ll leave my tools here in case you need them.”
“Thanks for everything,” Graham said, but he couldn’t help it. It bothered him that Trevor was leaving when there was still work to do.
Molly sat at the table with one of her books as Graham taped off the windowpanes and began to paint. Jim and Amalia made a few trips from Jim’s van. They brought in two mattresses, each so thin and floppy that a single person could easily carry one of them with ease. Amalia brought in a small microwave and Jim, a three-tiered bookcase along with a bag of linens and blankets for the beds. Claudia worked for the local blanket-manufacturing company and one thing they had plenty of on Morrison Ridge was blankets.
By the time they’d carted everything in, Graham had painted only one side of the window and he knew he’d have to sit down soon. His legs were beginning to get that electric buzzing sensation he hated. “Isn’t it cool you’ll have a microwave out here, Molly?” he asked. “You can have tea parties and we can make that cheese dip we love.”
“Tonight?” she asked.
“Maybe next weekend, okay?”
This place was going to be a posh paradise. When he and Trevor and Claudia used to hang out in the springhouse, they slept in sleeping bags on the hard stone floor, ate cold sandwiches, and told each other ghost stories by lantern light.
Amalia took the paintbrush from his hand. “Sit,” she said, almost under her breath. “You rest a bit and I’ll do the painting.” Sometimes she seemed to know what he needed even before he knew it himself.
He sat across the table from Molly and helped her with the bigger words in the book she was reading. After Amalia finished the window, she came over to the table and bent down to speak to him.
“Training wheels?” she whispered.
He nodded. “Go for it,” he said.
“Molly.” Amalia opened Trevor’s toolkit and pulled out a couple of screwdrivers. “How would you like to get your training wheels off your bike?”
Molly looked up. “Really?” She looked hesitant and he knew she was a bit nervous about taking the wheels off her bike.
“Only if you want to,” Amalia said.
Molly stood up. “I do,” she said firmly.
“Okay!” Amalia said. “Let’s go!”
Molly ran out the door and Amalia followed close behind. Graham stacked up her books on the table, picturing Molly and Amalia out on the loop road, Molly trying to balance on the two-wheeler. The road near the path to the springhouse had a gentle incline but it wasn’t far from the Hill from Hell and that suddenly worried
him.
“Amalia can make up these beds,” Jim said. “I’m taking off. You doing okay?” Jim had grown up with a disabled sister and he was more sympathetic toward Graham than Trevor.
“Fine,” he said. “But I think I’m going to see how Amalia and Molly are doing with the bike.”
“Need any help?” Jim said as Graham got to his feet, picking up his cane.
“No, and thanks for all the work you did here, Jim,” he said.
“See you later,” Jim said.
Graham left the springhouse door open and walked to his scooter. He’d ridden halfway down the path when he heard Jim start his van and drive away. In another minute, he was close enough to the road himself that he could see Amalia running alongside Molly on her bike. They were headed up the gentle incline that ran south from the springhouse path and his heart began beating hard at the thought of Molly turning the bike around and heading down that same hill. He hadn’t been lying to Nora about learning to ride his bike without training wheels on these hilly roads, but he couldn’t remember much about it. It suddenly seemed impossible.
He turned onto the road and steered the scooter all the way up the incline until he reached Molly and Amalia. Molly had stopped pedaling and she straddled her bike in the middle of the road. “Daddy!” she yelled when she spotted him. “Did you see me? I rode all by myself! I thought Amalia was still holding on, but she wasn’t!”
Amalia bent over to catch her breath, her long hair nearly sweeping the dirt road.
“I saw you.” Graham maneuvered the scooter until he was right in front of her. “You were amazing,” he said, “but I have some important instructions for you.”
“What?” She looked suspicious, as though she expected him to say something that would sap all the fun out of her adventure. Amalia was standing upright now, and she, too, wore a wary expression.
“You just rode uphill,” Graham said, “but when you go downhill, you’ll be going much faster so you need to practice using your brakes. And you know what’s down there?” She turned her head to look down the road behind them and seemed to catch on.
“The Hill from H-E-double-matchsticks,” she said.
“Right. And you do not want to go down that hill on a bike. So when you go down the loop road from here, turn onto the path to the springhouse, okay? I don’t want you to ever go past that point on the road unless you’re walking your bike. Not till you’re much older and maybe not even then.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Show me you can do it,” he said. “Show me how you turn onto the springhouse path.”
“Okay,” she said again. She used her feet to turn around, concentrating hard, taking so many careful little steps to get the bike into perfect position that his heart cracked in two with love for her.
“Ready?” he asked her, and she nodded.
“Don’t go fast now. You don’t need to go fast. Just remember what I said.”
She gave a little nod, then took off without another word, working the brakes, riding with such ease that she surprised him. Yet his heart was pumping hard.
“She has perfect balance,” Amalia said, but he barely heard her. He held his breath, watching Molly begin to wobble a little as she neared the path.
“Turn in!” he shouted, but she was already beginning to make the turn and she took it smoothly, riding a few feet into the woods before coming to a stop. “Nailed it!” He grinned at Amalia as they started toward the path, his heartbeat settling down.
Molly hopped off the bike and ran to them. “I did it perfect!” she shouted. Her cheeks were flushed, her glasses a tiny bit crooked on her nose.
“That was really brave, Molly,” he said. He wished he could bottle some of her courage to give to his patients.
She fished around in her shorts pocket and held her fist out to him, opening the fingers so he could see the amethyst palm stone that rested on her hand.
“Aha,” Amalia said. “You have your palm stone with you.”
He’d given her the palm stone the year before when she’d been afraid to get on the bus for the first day of school. His own father had given it to him when he was a child, telling him the stone had magical powers that would give him courage. He’d skipped the hocus-pocus when he gave it to Molly, though. “It’s just a reminder that you have bravery inside you no matter how frightened you feel,” he’d told her. She’d carried that stone around with her for weeks afterward. He hadn’t realized she still did.
Molly closed her hand around the smooth purple stone and slipped it back into her shorts pocket.
“Do you want some more practice, Moll?” he asked. “We could ride up near Nanny’s house where the road levels out.”
“Okay,” Molly said, running back to her bike.
“I’m going to make the beds in the springhouse before I take off,” Amalia said.
“You don’t have to do that.” He hated asking her to do anything that seemed like housework. He and Nora were the only people on Morrison Ridge who didn’t have Amalia clean for them. She cleaned Trevor and Toni’s house, and Jim and Claudia’s and his mother’s. That was enough.
“I know I don’t, but I’d like to,” she said. She picked up the training wheels where she’d left them at the side of the road and put them in the rear basket of his scooter. “You have fun with Molly,” she said.
* * *
He rode his scooter while Molly rode her bike and once they hit the level ground at the southern end of the loop road, he relaxed and let her ride as fast as she wanted. They sailed past his mother’s house and he thought of stopping in so Molly could show her grandmother that she could ride without training wheels, but he didn’t want to get into an inevitably long visit, so they kept on going. Soon the tall platform for the zip line came into view on their right.
“There’s Uncle Trevor,” Molly said, slowing her bike. She pointed toward the tower.
Graham could see his brother at the top of the tower, no doubt getting the zip line ready for the summer when his high school age kids would want to ride it. It irked him that Trevor was messing around up there when there were still some things left to be done at the springhouse. The truth was, many things Trevor did irked Graham, and he knew his brother felt the same way about him. They’d been in competition all their lives.
He turned his head away from the platform. It hurt to think about the zip line and know there was no way he could ever go on it again. In a few years, Molly would be able to ride it. He’d have to settle for experiencing it vicariously through her.
“Let’s go back to the springhouse,” he said. “I want to show you where you can put your treasures.”
“If I decide I want to,” she reminded him.
“Right,” he said.
They rode back down the loop road and Graham forced himself to keep his mouth shut as they neared the path to the springhouse, waiting to see what Molly would do. She turned the bike smoothly onto the path. She was going to be fine out here. He couldn’t wait to tell Nora how well she was doing on the bike.
Inside the springhouse, Amalia had nearly finished painting the second window.
“I was going to do that,” Graham said as he leaned on his cane in the doorway.
“Beat you to it,” she said, capping the paint can, and he knew she’d done it intentionally to spare him. She put the paintbrush into a plastic bag and wrapped a rubber band around the handle. “It still needs one more coat, but I can come over tomorrow and do it.”
“Amalia,” he said, “did you know there’s a secret hiding place in this springhouse?”
“For real?” Amalia asked.
“Where is it?” Molly picked up her white paper bag from the table. “I might put my treasures in it,” she said to Amalia. “But I might not. I haven’t decided.”
“It’s in plain sight,” Graham said. He leaned against the wall near the door. His legs were beginning to buzz again.
“Hmm,” Amalia said, looking around the room. “Can you sp
ot it, Molly?”
Molly walked around the room. She opened the microwave. Peered beneath the sink.
“It’s a little higher than my head,” Graham said.
She frowned at the fieldstone walls. “There’s only rocks as high as your head,” she said.
“Do any of them look a little different from the others?” he asked.
Molly tipped her head back as she studied the walls. She sucked in her breath when she spotted the rock that was a couple of shades lighter than those around it. She pointed. “That one!” she said.
“You’ve got it,” he said. He looked apologetically at Amalia. “I hate to mess up the bed you just made but can we move the mattress aside so I can get onto the platform?”
“No problem.” She slid the mattress halfway off the frame and Graham carefully took a step onto the wooden platform and walked over to the rock. “Can you help me lift Molly up?” he asked.
“I’ll lift her,” Amalia said, taking Molly’s hand and stepping onto the platform. “She’s a lightweight.”
She lifted Molly with apparent ease, holding her around the waist so that Molly’s eyes were in line with the fake rock. Graham felt Amalia next to him. Her bare arm touched his. He could smell her hair. A floral scent. Nothing cloying. Just sweet enough to cloud his thinking and make his legs feel softer and weaker than they already did. He leaned hard on his cane. He would not touch her. He would never touch her. But sometimes he understood why his family disliked her. He understood their fear.
Reaching forward with one hand, he carefully pried the plaster façade from the wall and Molly gasped.
“A hidey-hole!” she said.
He laughed. Where did she ever learn that term? “That’s right,” he said. “And I don’t think it’s seen the light of day since I was a teenager. Can you see what’s in there?”
Molly clutched her paper bag with her left hand and reached into the dark space with her right. She pulled out a half full bottle of bourbon.
“Sweet tea,” she said matter-of-factly, and he and Amalia laughed.
“It’s booze, darling,” he said.
The Dance Begins Page 2
