by Carolyn Hart
Max’s brows drew into a worried line. “She’s upstairs. When I got home, I called for her and there wasn’t any answer. I went upstairs and knocked. She wouldn’t open her door. And her voice was kind of funny.”
Annie took the mixing spoon, dipped into the batter. “Funny?”
Max caught her hand. “Raw eggs.”
“Oh, Max.” She sighed. “When I was a kid that was the best part of making cookies and cakes.”
“Chickens were healthier then. Or something,” he added vaguely.
She reluctantly poked the spoon back into the batter. “What did Rachel say?”
“Not much. I asked her to help me make the cake and she said she wasn’t hungry.” His eyebrows arched. Rachel was little and thin and had the appetite of a longshoreman. “She said she had a headache.”
“I’ll go see.” She hurried across the kitchen, paused in the doorway. “Everything’s okay about the flyers. Except—well, I’ll tell you later.”
Max picked up the mixing bowl, began to pour the rich yellow batter into the pan.
Annie reached the stairs. Sun poured through a floor-to-ceiling window on the stair landing. That was the loveliest aspect of their house—windows that let the sunshine in. Even on a gray, rainy day, the house reached out to the sky.
Annie hurried up the steps and down the hall to Rachel’s room. How nice to think of it as Rachel’s room. It had simply been the pink guest room until Rachel came to live with them this past Christmas. Rachel moved in after her mother’s death, and so had Pudge, Rachel’s stepfather and Annie’s late-come-but-now-cherished father. Annie smiled contentedly. Rachel and Pudge had enriched this house and her life and Max’s. She and Max had urged Pudge to stay with them, but Pudge had grinned his insouciant lilting smile, and said, “You know me. Here a while, then gone. I’d better have my own place. But I’ll always come back.” His look at Annie was sweet and serious. “I promise.” Pudge had moved into Annie’s old tree house when the tenant moved out last month. It had been fun for Annie and Rachel to help Pudge redecorate and to hear his pleased exclamations: “Honest to God, it’s a tree house! All I have to do is step out the door onto the deck and I’m up in a tree.” An island developer had built perhaps a dozen of the sylvan aeries before the town council amended the building code to prohibit construction that encroached on trees. The existing houses, however, were exempt from the new regulation. Rachel adored Pudge’s new home and begged for a thick hawser to be attached to a jutting limb so that she could sweep to the ground, à la Jane of the Jungle. Pudge had grinned and said, “We’ll see.” Rachel suggested twining ivy for new kitchen wallpaper, but Annie pointed out that the sun glancing through leaves already made a lovely shadowy pattern on the cream-colored walls.
Annie was smiling when she knocked on Rachel’s door. “Rachel, it’s me.” She turned the knob. The door was locked. Annie’s smile slipped away. “Rachel?”
“I’m resting.” The words wavered.
Annie lifted her hand, touched the ceramic tile they’d put in place at Christmas: RACHEL’S ROOM. Annie’s fingertip traced the raised letters. What to do? Should she try to persuade Rachel to let her in? Or should she leave Rachel in peace? Everyone needed an inviolate place. Sometimes it is too painful to share unhappiness with someone who cares, but sometimes a word of love could banish sadness as easily as sun spilling into a dark room transforms gloom to brightness.
Across a span of years Annie suddenly remembered a day when she’d huddled in her room after coming home from school to find the letter turning down her application to the college she’d wanted above all others and her mother’s light steps in the hall and the twisting of the locked knob, a pause and her mother calling out in her direct way, “Annie, I need your advice.” Annie had opened the door, and after they’d dealt with her mother’s problem, Annie handed her the rejection letter. Her mother had read it without expression, then said briskly, “Obviously, it is their loss.” It was said with such conviction, such passion, such utter devotion that Annie had laughed in the midst of her tears. Her mother hugged her tightly. “Always remember, honey, when God closes one door, He opens another.”
Annie bent closer to Rachel’s door. “Rachel, I need your help. Do you know Diane Littlefield?” She’d not planned to say this, heard herself with surprise.
Slow footsteps crossed the room. A click and Rachel opened the door. Her dark curly hair was glossy and pretty, but her face was pale, her eyes huge and forlorn. And curious. An extra large blue T-shirt sagged almost to her knees, exposing only a few inches of white capris. She was barefoot. Her toenails glistened a vivid scarlet. The scent of fingernail polish and the pungency of polish remover mingled with a heavy overlay of a musky perfume.
Annie managed not to wrinkle her nose. Okay, even though Rachel was in the midst of the crisis du jour, she had enough spirit to experiment with beauty aids. All was not lost.
“Diane Littlefield’s so freaking boring.” Rachel whirled, the big T-shirt flapping. She marched across the room, flung herself onto a wicker couch, looked up at Annie and began to cry.
“Rachel, honey.” Annie was into the room and holding the slender girl in her arms.
Rachel’s muffled voice ached with pain. “They’re all mad at me. Diane’s never liked me. I’m not pretty enough and I haven’t been here long enough. And she’s one of the senior girls. I can’t ever go back to school.” Rachel pulled away from Annie, sat up straight and still. “Nobody’ll have anything to do with me.”
“They?” Annie smoothed back a tangle of dark hair.
Rachel lifted her head, peered at Annie out of eyes brimming with tears. “The senior girls. They’re mad because of Ben.” She sniffed. “You know. I told you Ben asked me to the prom…”
Oh yes. Rachel had burst into the house Monday afternoon, her dark eyes glowing. And amazed and proud. She’d grabbed Annie’s hand, pulled her into a dance around the kitchen, caroling, “I have a date to the prom and oh, Annie, it’s with Ben Bradford!” Now she massaged her temple. “…but last night, Christy called…”
Annie dredged for a face. Was Christy the tall, sinuous brunette who wore too much lipstick or the tiny bouncy blonde with hair as wiry as a terrier’s?
“…and Christy said the senior girls were passing the word that I was totally nowhere and nobody was going to even speak to me because who did I think I was, getting a date to the big dance with Ben Bradford. I mean, I guess they all think if he isn’t going with Meredith, he should take one of them. I mean”—and Rachel’s thin face was earnest—“I know the date doesn’t mean anything. Ben’s the best-looking guy in school. He’s president of the senior class and editor of the newspaper.” There was awe in her tone. “I got to know him working on the Blade…”
It was only last month that Rachel had proudly shown Annie and Max her byline on a feature story on the third page of the weekly high school newspaper.
“…and I guess he asked me because”—she sat up straight, snuggled her knees beneath her chin, looked directly at Annie—“I know about being sad. Because of Mom.”
Annie took Rachel’s hand, gripped it tightly. Rachel’s mom had been brutally killed, and for a while the police had suspected both Rachel and Pudge. That frightful time was past and done, but the loss would never be done. Annie wished she could erase the droop to Rachel’s mouth, but no one could restore her mother’s life. Annie understood. Her own mother had died when Annie was not much older than Rachel. She knew sadness would always be with Rachel. But along with sadness came kinship with others in trouble.
Annie gave Rachel’s hand a squeeze, let loose her grip. “Why is Ben sad?”
“It was last week. I opened the door to the editor’s office. I didn’t know he was there and I was going to put my story in the in-basket. We still do that,” she explained earnestly, “though I e-mailed the file to him, but he likes to see the copy printed out, too. Anyway, I opened the door and I just stood there for a minute. I could tell he was s
ad. He was looking out the window, but he wasn’t really looking. He was resting his head against the glass. I went up and took his hand and held it. He turned around in a minute and his eyes were bright and he said, ‘Thanks.’ That’s all he said and I put my story in the basket and went out. And this week he asked me to the dance.” Rachel clasped a throw pillow, rested her chin on the end. “You see, Meredith’s dumped him. Meredith Muir. And he’s crazy about her. Maybe he’s really in love.” There was wistfulness and uncertainty in her voice. “And they always seemed so perfect for each other.” Rachel popped to her feet, darted to a bookcase. “Look, I’ll show you.” She flung herself down beside Annie, riffled through the pages of last year’s red yearbook. “See.” Her finger pointed at one of the informal photos on an activity page, a shot in the gym at an assembly. A boy in a letter jacket stood next to a laughing girl in a cheerleader’s uniform. Each held a big trophy. “That was the awards assembly and they got the Outstanding Junior Girl and Outstanding Junior Boy Awards.” Ben was tall and husky with a broad open face. The girl was strikingly lovely, long hair and an oval face with wide-spaced eyes. “Why, everybody knew they were in love. See how he’s looking at her, not at the trophy?”
Annie almost told her that they all were so far from love, from understanding love, from sharing love. “Rachel…” Annie stopped, remembering for an instant what it was like to be that age, when emotions ran fast and hard and deep and how much everything mattered—the hope for love, the pain of slights, the hope for attention, the pain of not belonging. Most of all the pain of not belonging.
“Anyway”—Rachel brushed her dark curls back from her face—“Meredith’s not even going to the dance. She told Ben she didn’t care about kid stuff. And I was so happy when he asked me because I can’t take Mike. You can only go with somebody who’s in school now. I mean, they won’t let me bring Mike, even though he just graduated a year ago. I hadn’t told Mike yet. I think it will be okay with him. But now everything’s ruined. If nobody’ll speak to me…” Her lips trembled.
Annie wished she could wave a magic wand, tell Rachel not to worry. But she knew better than that. This was the kind of episode that could grow like a pus-filled blister, and even if lanced, leave an ugly scar. But Rachel was looking at her with such hope, such confidence.
Maybe, just maybe, there was a means of diversion. “Rachel, the best thing to do is get busy telling everybody—get on the phone tonight, ask Christy to help—that Ben’s like a big brother to you and he asked you because he knew you couldn’t bring Mike.” That might deflect some of the older girls’ spleen. “Also you and Christy need to call a meeting for after school tomorrow.”
Rachel looked shocked.
Annie grinned. “No, this isn’t about you. But let’s see if you can get everybody at school interested in finding out—” She stopped, shocked by the realization that Rachel knew nothing of Annie’s day. “Oh, Rachel. You don’t know! Listen, I’m sure if you’d gone to school, there would have been some of these.” Annie pulled the ever-more-crumpled flyers from her pocket and handed them to Rachel.
“These look like our flyers.” As Rachel scanned the sheets, her narrow face drew into a tight frown. “Oh hey, Lily Caldwell’s mom drives a Range Rover, a big blue one. But that doesn’t mean she’s the one. Gee, this is terrible.”
“Isn’t it, though! Of course, it’s lots worse for the people who end up being suspected of one thing or another, but it’s bad for me, too. It’s obvious the flyers were deliberately made to look like mine. Somebody wanted everyone to think these were part of our contest.” Annie jammed her fingers through her hair. “Or maybe not. Maybe my contest just gave the person who did the flyers the idea and the fact that people would get mad at me didn’t matter. Anyway”—Annie paced up and down—“this morning”—Annie started with the skywriting—“there were huge letters spelling out WHODUNIT”—and recounted Emma’s angry arrival at Death on Demand and Pamela Potts’s frantic call from the cemetery and Annie and Max and Emma’s foray there—“I grabbed the bullhorn from Chief Garrett and told everybody they were being scammed, that it was all an ugly April-fool joke”—and ended with her determination to visit every person accused in the fake flyers. “So that’s where we are.”
Rachel rattled the pink flyer. “Diane Littlefield. That’s why you asked about Diane. Oh, Annie, she does have a red Jeep.”
“I know. I saw her in the Jeep this afternoon.” Annie frowned. “She was working at her mother’s antique store. Why wasn’t she in school?”
“She goes to school half days and works in the afternoons. Lots of kids do that and she doesn’t care about school, not really. I mean, she doesn’t make good grades, just barely passes. Everybody treats her like she’s a big deal because she’s”—Rachel carefully folded the flyers—“different. But not”—and her honesty was painful—“different like me. I mean, I’m too skinny and I don’t talk like the other girls and I’ve only lived here a couple of years. It’s like Diane’s special because she goes to Europe all the time and she’s thin like a model and her clothes are always perfect. She’s better than everybody. She doesn’t have to make good grades. She’s going to go to some school in France after she graduates and all the guys are hot for her. Except Ben, and he’s been in love with Meredith since they were in fourth grade. That’s what Christy told me. Anyway, Diane’s special.” Rachel flipped open the second flyer, pointed to the cryptic sentence: What happened to the Littlefields’ red Jeep? “Is that what you want Christy and me to do, call a meeting and ask everybody about Diane’s Jeep? I don’t think Christy will help me. She won’t want to be left out of everything.” Rachel’s eyes were huge and forlorn. “But I can do it. I’m not going to have any friends anyway.”
“No, no, no.” Annie understood in a flash. Rachel was in despair because she saw her life at school tumbling into the misery of ostracism, and yet to help Annie she was willing to brave the very girls she feared. “Oh, Rachel, absolutely not.” Annie’s eyes shone with love and admiration. “That wouldn’t be fair to Diane. Everything in these flyers may be a lie. That’s not what I have in mind at all. In fact, you can say you want to help Diane by finding out who’s behind the awful flyers. Here’s what I’d like for you to do…”
Annie loved the sounds of night, the who-oo-oo of barred owls hunting for unwary cotton rats, the continual call of the chuck-will’s-widow flying low to devour roaches and moths, the rustle of magnolia leaves. Max gave a shove and the wooden swing creaked. Annie rested her head against the curve of his arm and looked up at the star-spangled sky. The shadows of the palmettos on the deck of the pool were squat and chunky in the moonlight. The charcoal embers still glowed in the grill. Annie gave a contented sigh.
Max gave her a squeeze. “Feeling better?”
“Yes.” How could she not feel better? Max’s outrage at the smashed window made her feel cherished. Moreover, through her own efforts—and it hadn’t been easy or pleasant to make that circuit of those accused in the fake flyers—she’d wrested vindication from, at the least, and perhaps made a good start on vanquishment of, her nemesis, whoever that might be. Annie gave a little chuckle and pointed toward the unshaded window on the second floor that blazed with light. “I checked on Rachel a few minutes ago and she’d only eaten half her hamburger—oh, Max, that was a great hamburger…”
Max gave a modest shrug, but he did consider himself to be a world-class hamburger chef, his ground-chuck patties studded with diced Vidalia onions and mild green chilis.
“…anyway, she was too busy talking on one phone and taking calls on her cell phone and printing out leaflets offering a hundred-dollar reward for the identification of the person who left the fake flyers all over town. Christy told Rachel there were a couple of hundred flyers at the school this morning. And Christy’s telling everybody Rachel skipped school today to help me investigate. Rachel said everybody’s calling and asking all about it—including the senior girls. And a couple of them are helping org
anize the meeting tomorrow after school and it’s turned into a ‘Defend Diane’ rally, which is also a plus for Rachel with the senior girls. So—”
“So all’s well that ends well.” Max bent closer to nuzzle her cheek. His lips were soft and seeking.
“Oh, Max, I hope so.” A cloud slid across the moon and it was suddenly darker. An owl hooted. A rustle sounded in the tangle of growth beneath the towering pines. Perhaps a raccoon, smelling the hamburgers, knowing there might be tasty remnants in the garbage. Or perhaps a fox or a cougar. Annie stared into the shadowy night and felt uneasy, but Max’s lips were warm and suddenly the world beyond them mattered not at all.
Henny was smiling as she unlocked her front door. A wonderful evening. Old friends were best friends. And Bill had been there with her and Maggie, a part of their memories of the heat and dust and wind in Sweetwater, Texas, the roar of the planes, the fatigue and the fear and the fun, the jukebox with the hits by Glenn Miller and Lena Horne and Rudy Vallee, especially Rudy Vallee’s “As Time Goes By.” Odd in a way that she still felt like the Henny of so long ago and yet, should she glance in the mirror as she opened the front door, she would see an old woman past eighty, dark hair streaked with silver, lined face, a woman who had lived almost sixty years longer than her young husband. She wasn’t the same and yet in a way she would always be the same. Would Bill still love her?
Yes.
Had she spoken aloud or was the swift answer simply in her heart? She closed the door, dropped her purse and keys on the small table beneath the mirror. In the daytime, the mirror reflected the world of the marsh through the bank of windows that ran the length of the long room. Now there was the blink of a tiny red light.
