Shadowed Summer

by Mitchell, Saundra

  Collette turned the chair and sat above me, then handed over the book with a flourish. “Look at that.”

  Marveling at the neat handwriting on the inside, I took a shuddering breath. The fan’s drone filled my ears, so my voice sounded far away, even to me. “This was my mama’s.”

  “I know. How come Uncle Lee had it?”

  It was a good question, but I was grateful that she didn’t expect me to answer. It seemed like something I should have known, and I didn’t.

  Collette flipped past photos—my parents when they were young, posed on front steps and car trunks, their eyes squinting in the sun. We stopped at a grainy shot of them in front of a Ferris wheel. Daddy and Mama took up the middle, though Mama wasn’t looking at the camera. She had her head tilted back and was smiling at Daddy, her arms around his waist.

  Elijah hadn’t been facing the camera, either. Though he had his arms wrapped around a younger, softer-looking Miss Nan, he gazed toward something in the distance.

  I murmured in surprise when I realized he was wearing the same jersey he’d worn in my dream. That little sliver of truth felt like ice on the back of my neck.

  “What else is there?”

  Sliding to the floor to sit shoulder to shoulder with me, Collette spread the book so that half lay on my leg, the other half on hers, and she turned the pages with vicious efficiency. If the pictures didn’t have Elijah in them, she didn’t stop.

  There were notes under some of the pictures. One was Valentine Lake, Summer 1987—Elijah and Daddy trying to start a campfire. Another showed Mama crossing her eyes while Elijah put bunny ears up behind her head—that read simply Summer 1988.

  I wanted to trace my fingers over her words, in ink like blood, some living part of my mama suddenly unearthed. And there she was with the boy who was haunting me. Making faces with him. Laughing with him and Daddy.

  The last picture in the book had all three of them in it—Daddy and Mama and Elijah, dressed up in church clothes and hats. Underneath it, Mama had written Easter 1989.

  Leaning my head against Collette’s shoulder, I turned the last page back and forth, gazing at them in their Easter best.

  That was the last of them, the end of their saved memories. There were a few blank pages still in the book; Mama must have quit filling it when Elijah disappeared.

  An unexpected touch of grief settled on me, and for a minute, I was afraid I might cry, afraid I wouldn’t be able to explain why, either. I sat up too fast and got a deep breath of paint fumes.

  Feeling dizzy, I slid to my feet and held my hand back to haul Collette up. “I’m gonna die in here. Let’s go.”

  In the shade and quiet by the creek, we ran into Ben. Me on one bank, Collette on the other, we went around the old downed oak and there he was. His bare toes touched the edge of the water; streaked sunlight danced on his golden hair. He had his fishing pole propped between his knees, his dirty fingers working at a tangled lure. Lost in his own thoughts, he didn’t look up.

  Collette lit up when she saw him. She ducked around the tree, coming up with a smile on the other side. “What do you think you’re catching down here?”

  “Nothing but flies,” he said. His smile dimmed when he looked past her and saw me.

  My last words to him rattled in my head, echoing until they got so loud I wanted to shake them right out. I felt stuck, because I really needed to say something, but I didn’t want to do it in front of Collette and give her the wrong impression.

  Fortunately, Collette had plenty to talk about. I nodded along while she explained the memory book and how we had to court Elijah back, only carefully this time. In my opinion, she was hinting about the witchboard again, but Ben didn’t volunteer it.

  “Anyway,” Collette said, breezing right past Ben’s missed chance to be a hero, “we ought to look at the stuff in your attic, Ben. Maybe he’ll show himself if we find something good.”

  I had to talk then. “We don’t need anything. We just need me.” I peeked up and nearly hit Ben’s gaze.

  “How do you figure?” Squinting one eye at me, Collette waited for me to squirm, but I didn’t.

  “He’s following me.” I stood on certain ground, my heart almost still with the truth of it. “He showed himself when I was out with Uncle Lee. And after y’all left my house last time, he put a handprint on my mirror while I took a shower.”

  From the corner of my eye, I could see Ben’s expression turn amazed. He leaned in, shadows from the tree boughs rubbing his skin in restless patterns. “He did?”

  I crossed my chest with my fingers, and Collette let out a held breath. At first, I couldn’t tell if she was glad or annoyed.

  “And this is all real?” she asked. “You swear?”

  I nodded.

  “Then I guess we have three questions we have to answer,” she said, counting them off on her fingers. “Why was he in the hospital? How did he get out of his room? And where is he now?”

  Smiling curiously at her organization, I reached out and pulled up her fourth finger, because she’d left out the most important question. “And what happened to him?”

  Scraping sand from my shoes, I started up the path. “Why don’t we start in Ben’s attic?”

  “Hey, look, he signed my daddy’s yearbook,” Ben said, twisting the red volume in his hands to show it to us, then turning it back to read aloud. “ ‘Stay cool, Eli.’ ”

  Collette swiped a curl from her eyes, marveling at this message from the past. “He called himself Eli.”

  “That’s what Uncle Lee called him, too,” I said with a shrug.

  Searching there felt like a waste of time once I found out that Ben’s daddy barely knew Elijah and, worse yet, hadn’t saved anything personal.

  We’d found a couple of pictures and an old letterman jacket that smelled like mothballs, but most of the treasure consisted of old trophies and report cards. Collette had fun teasing Ben about his daddy’s D in economics, but that was about it.

  I was ready to call it off, and not just because we hadn’t found anything. The only way that attic could have been hotter was if it caught fire. In secret, I wished I would faint, first, because I’d never done it before and wondered what it would be like, and second, because I thought passing out would be a real good way to end the attic search.

  It didn’t happen, though. I got hotter and sweatier, but my brain stayed awake, like it was determined to thwart me. I dumped a pile of English papers back in the box and stood up. “There’s nothing up here.”

  “We still have four more boxes,” Collette said with a whine. She gestured at a collection of milk crates that anybody could see had nothing in them but a bunch more papers.

  Since I couldn’t convince myself to faint, I said the first thing I thought. “Well, then you stay here. I’m going to Old Mrs. Landry’s.”

  I sounded so sure that Ben and Collette both scrambled to their feet and followed me like rats after a piper. Of course, I got halfway down the street and wanted to change my mind. It would be a horrible thing to mess with an old lady, especially one who wasn’t right in the head. My heart beat fast, then slowly, mixing up dread with shame, but I forced myself to walk. I’d made my first big move toward being the boss, or at least not being bossed anymore, and backing down would have ruined that.

  My stomach got tight when we turned the corner. Old Mrs. Landry’s house stood off from the others, its white paint peeling down to gray, the front screen pocked with holes.

  The yard might have been tidy once. There was evidence of that, because flowers still grew along the paths, but they’d gone wild. Orange freckled tiger lilies nodded their heavy heads, and their green sword leaves scratched at the front steps, spilling into grass that needed mowing.

  I rubbed my dirty hands on my jeans as I approached the front step. On a nail next to the door, a crucifix swayed, the pained, bleeding Jesus looking at me with sadness even though his eyes were closed.

  Guilt rose up to choke me, and for a brief, hy
sterical minute, I thought I might faint after all. I could hear the tiger lilies sanding the porch, Ben and Collette breathing behind me, and my own heartbeat.

  Somehow I made myself knock, but I was so wound up listening to the tiniest things that I nearly screamed when Old Mrs. Landry appeared in the door.

  Her face was pale, round as the moon, and she looked out at us as if she didn’t understand something. Instead of opening the door, she grabbed the handle and held it closed. She blinked slowly, then asked in a dry, powdery voice, “What do you want?”

  Somebody, most likely Collette, jabbed me in the back. I’d turned into some kind of puppet, because that nudge woke my tongue, and I heard myself talking from far away. “We wanted to ask you about Elijah, ma’am, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  Old Mrs. Landry narrowed her eyes. “Who sent you over here?”

  That wasn’t what I expected her to say, so I looked back at Ben and Collette for guidance. Ben just shrugged, and Collette made a face like she was sorry. Before I turned back, I saw Collette reach for Ben’s hand. He didn’t push it away, and my heart sank. They were useless.

  Facing Old Mrs. Landry again, I tried to meet her gaze, but the screen played tricks on my eyes. She looked close, then far away; then all I could see was a net of tiny gray squares.

  Shaking my head to get my focus to behave, I shoved my hands in my pockets and said, “Nobody, ma’am. We’re just interested.”

  “Oh, are you, now?”

  I didn’t recognize this Old Mrs. Landry; she was hard—not like the woman who traded candies for prayers on the church steps. Her teeth flashed when she talked, and her head twitched with each word, like it took her whole body just to say something.

  Flattening herself against the screen, she raised her voice to a shout. “I guess you want a tour of his room, too? And if I wouldn’t mind, could you have a drink out of his favorite cup? And if I’d be so kind as to give you something that belonged to him? That kind of interested?”

  “No, ma’am, no. I just—”

  “I know what you just!” Old Mrs. Landry swung the door open. Its rusted hinges screamed, and the frame hit my shoulder, knocking me down.

  Struggling to my feet, I cringed when Old Mrs. Landry came down on me. Her fingers dug hard into my chin; she forced me to meet her eyes. Even in the heat of summer, her touch was cold.

  “Jackie didn’t take enough of my boy? Now he’s sending his brat after a piece, too?”

  I felt hands on my shoulders—Ben and Collette trying to drag me back. Ben kept whispering, “Come on,” urgent and strained. My feet were stuck in place, though, and I think I would have stood there all day and all night if Old Mrs. Landry hadn’t shoved me.

  She didn’t push hard, but it was enough to knock me off balance. I fell past Ben and slid against the walk, scraping my hands on the concrete. Collette hauled me to my feet again.

  With her eyes open so wide that white showed all the way around the brown irises, Old Mrs. Landry raised a hand high over her head and screamed, “You get the hell away from my house!”

  Collette yanked my wrist, dragging me down the walk. She didn’t even look both ways as she shoved me across the street; she was too busy looking back to make sure Old Mrs. Landry wasn’t following us. If walking up to the house had been in slow motion, running away from it was in fast-forward.

  Everything blurred; I knew we’d started running, but we moved so fast I couldn’t think or talk. I didn’t feel sick until we collapsed at Collette’s.

  Angry, embarrassed tears stung my eyes, and I trembled when Ben and Collette crowded around me. Ben turned my hands over in his own, his touch soft as butterflies. That distracted me; it seemed wrong. His hands should have been rough and bandaged like my daddy’s.

  He slipped away from me, and I heard him say something about asking Mrs. Lanoux for some peroxide before the door wheezed shut. Rubbing my back, Collette leaned her head against mine and whispered comfort to me. She smelled like honey. “She’s crazy, Iris. She’s crazy.”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything. I could still see Old Mrs. Landry’s eyes, her hand rising to hit me, and that stole all the sound from my throat.

  She wasn’t just a little funny in the head. She was crazy, and still, I almost wanted to go back—almost—just to ask what pieces my daddy still had.

  Collette sat beside me on the front porch. A brown bottle of peroxide was tucked between her knees. Pulling paper towels from her pocket, she snapped her fingers lightly at me, and I held out my hands.

  “Told Mrs. Lanoux you got a splinter,” Ben said.

  Rooster ran circles around us. “That don’t look like a splinter to me.” He stuck his head down to peer at my hands, then bounced away when Collette shoved him. “I’m gonna have to tell Mama you lied.”

  “He didn’t either,” Collette said, indignant. “There’s some splinters in there.” Threatening Rooster with a half-raised hand, she glowered until he pinballed as far from me as he could go without leaving.

  He picked a board in the porch and pretended to balance on it, putting one foot in front of the other with careful concentration. “I’m probably gonna have to tell.”

  Frowning, Ben caught him by the belt to hold him still. “How about you go inside and get us a soda? I’ll give you a dollar.”

  “Dollar fifty,” Rooster countered, swinging his arms in circles so wide he nearly hit Collette in the nose. “Plus tax.”

  Ben dug into his pocket and shoved crumpled green into Rooster’s hand. “That’s two. Now go on.”

  “You better not do that again,” Collette said, though it didn’t sound like she disapproved. “I can’t afford to pay him every time I want him to go away.”

  I picked flecks of dirt out of my hand, then gritted my teeth as Collette poured peroxide over the scrapes again. White froth bubbled up instantly and stung. “Maybe we could save up and send him away for good.”

  Collette nodded. “I like that plan.”

  “I bet he’d walk to Sorrento for ten dollars.” Ben grinned, then reached in to pat my hand with a paper towel.

  Suddenly, Rooster came running back, tripping over his own feet. “The police are at your house, Iris!”

  “That’s not funny,” Collette snapped.

  “I’m serious!” Rooster jabbed a finger in the direction of my house. “There’s two cars out front, with the lights on and everything!”

  “Are you sure it’s mine and not the Delancies’?”

  When Rooster nodded, my insides ground to a halt. I stood and got my feet moving, though I wasn’t sure how. Almost everywhere, I was numb, and where I wasn’t numb, I was afraid. A single, awful thought repeated over and over again:

  What have you done now, Elijah?

  chapter eleven

  Almost in tears, I burst into the house and nearly fell to my knees when I saw Daddy whole and healthy standing in the living room. Deputy Wood was there, with the same trooper who’d come when I called about the rocks. When they saw me, their smiles dimmed.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Where have you been?” Daddy asked, his mouth a flat white line as he waited for an answer.

  I could tell he wanted to fly up on me, his temper kept in check only because the police were there. Swallowing, I shrank. My voice cracked and I said, “Collette’s.”

  Daddy’s eyes turned darker. “Don’t you lie to me, Iris.”

  “I’m not!” I exploded with a little more righteous indignation than I was due, but I hadn’t lied. I had just come from Collette’s. Pointing at the door I said, “Ask her!”

  “Babette Landry says you were trespassing in her yard.” Deputy Wood raised a brow, waiting for me to deny it. Then he added, “And throwing rocks at her windows.”

  “I did not! All I did was knock on her door! I didn’t throw anything!”

  Daddy got harder by the second. “You’re not helping yourself.”

  “I didn’t throw any rocks!” Crossing my arms, I gl
ared at all three of them and churned with hatred for Old Mrs. Landry. I wanted to throw up every cinnamon she’d ever given me. “Me and Ben and Collette walked up on her porch to ask her about Elijah! She’s the one who went crazy!”

  Instead of getting me out of trouble, that got me into more. Daddy looked at me in disbelief. “Now, why would you go and do something like that? What on earth is wrong with you?”

  I thrust my hands up for him to see the scrapes, waiting for him to realize I was the victim, not Old Mrs. Landry. “I just wanted to ask what he was like, and she pushed me off her porch!”

  Daddy turned cold. “Go to your room.”

  “But I didn’t do anything!”

  “I said go to your room!” Daddy roared so loud I could have sworn the pictures rattled on the walls.

  I ran for the stairs, red-faced and furious, and stomped up them as loud as I could. Daddy could be mad all he wanted; I was madder, and I wasn’t about to apologize.

  From my window, I watched the police leave. I made faces at the back of Deputy Wood’s head. If he was the best the sheriff’s department had had to offer back then, no wonder they hadn’t found Elijah.

  Our neighbors trickled inside again, casting glances at our house just in case something else interesting happened. I climbed back onto my bed and stewed; they were all too nosy for their own good.

  Rolling over to stare at my canopy, I decided I would tell Daddy exactly what Old Mrs. Landry said to me and about him. I heard him coming up the stairs and steeled myself.

  “You all done pouting?” Daddy asked as he let himself in. He looked tired, with dark circles under his eyes and upset etched into the lines around his mouth.

  I wrapped my arms around my knees faced the window so I wouldn’t have to see him. “I wasn’t.”

  After a quiet moment, Daddy sighed. “I want to know what’s going on.”

  From his tone of voice, I knew I was getting grounded no matter what I said.