Sacred (4 page)

We used to have family dinners most nights, even after Ronny had gone away to college, but since his death his chair at the table seemed even more vacant than it had been
when he had been at school; the promise of his return was gone.

Now we ate together on Sunday nights and again on Wednesdays; twice a week was about all we could manage to fake it as a family. I could tell it was as painful for my parents to sit together at the dinner table as it was for me, but we all shared an unspoken understanding that we had to at least try.

Today was a Saturday, so I was free. I knew some of the kids from my class would be meeting down at the mini-golf course in the center of town. I hated mini-golf, but when school started up I’d be seeing a lot of these kids, and though I’d been avoiding them all summer, it would be a lot more uncomfortable avoiding them at close range. It was in my best interest to start trying a little harder to act normal. I wondered if Andy would be there tonight; the idea of seeing him seemed strange, but not in a bad way.

Then, like a vision, I recalled Will Cohen’s green eyes, his intense stare, the curl of his dark hair across his forehead. I wondered if he would be hanging out with the crowd at the mini-golf, but the proposition seemed somehow ridiculous.

I looked down at my dusty jeans and dirt-encrusted riding boots. If I was really going to reenter the world of the living, I was going to need a shower.

Steam filled the bathroom as I soaked, shampooed, buffed, and scrubbed. I treated my body as if it were a machine, something that needed regular servicing to keep running. I barely registered the temperature of the water on my skin,
only noticed that it was too hot when my thighs turned bright red. I had to focus for a moment before I could decide if I felt pain … yes.

I turned up the cold water and watched as the red skin faded to a more normal-looking pink. Then I scrubbed my head, hard, and worked the shampoo into a thick lather before rinsing.

My hair fell like a veil, reaching past my shoulder blades, halfway down my back. I tugged out the tangles in it, trying to remember the last time I’d really brushed it.… I must have looked pretty interesting that afternoon on the trail.

As I thought of Will Cohen and the strange encounter we’d shared, a flush of warmth spread across my cheeks. Suddenly I was all too aware of the sensation of the water on my skin, working out the tension in my shoulders, streaming down my back, rivulets caressing the backs of my thighs …

My body felt as if it might be waking from a long, deep sleep. On the one hand, this might be a good thing. The numbness I’d strived to maintain throughout the summer couldn’t go on forever, after all. On the other hand, the thought of my pain overwhelming me as it had those first few weeks after Ronny’s death … Perhaps numbness had its advantages.

I didn’t want to think about it anymore, not now anyway. So I cranked the water off and clambered out of the bathtub, fighting my way through the plastic shower liner and wrapping myself in a towel.

It was easy to avoid my reflection in the bathroom; the
mirror was steamed up. And as I entered my room at the end of the narrow hallway, passing the closed door to Ronny’s room, there was no danger that my full-length mirror would reflect my image; I’d turned it toward the wall.

I don’t know why, exactly, but lately the idea of looking in the mirror had seemed repulsive to me. Not that I was repulsive to look at; Andy had never complained, that was for sure, and I knew I’d inherited my mom’s easy prettiness, with my straight flaxen hair and light blue eyes. But I didn’t want to see myself anymore. I bet the school shrink would have had a field day with that little piece of information.

The jeans I’d worn to the stable today were my smallest pair, a detail I hadn’t chosen to share with Alice when she’d started in on how loose they looked. My other three pairs were stuffed in the back of my closet. They all swam on me.

So jeans were out for the night. That left me with the option of shorts, a dress, or a skirt. The evenings were beginning to get cold, so I settled on my favorite skirt, a heavy hemp wrap that skimmed my ankles, and pulled on a blue long-sleeved tee.

I didn’t feel like blow-drying my hair, so instead I wove it into a loose braid and fastened it with a thin band of leather. I slipped on my favorite Rainbow sandals and called it an outfit.

My wallet had twenty dollars in fives and ones, tips left in the bedrooms of our B&B by the guests. I earned extra money by helping my mom clean the rooms, so I usually had a small fold of cash to spend around town.

This summer, my take was definitely smaller, due in equal
parts, I thought, to the faltering national economy and my family’s private grief. Still, twenty dollars would be more than enough for mini-golf and sodas.

Then I couldn’t avoid it any longer. The pull was too great, like a deep treacherous undertow.

I knelt by my bed and reached underneath it, extracting a slender yellow notebook. Before I sat with it by the window, I closed my bedroom door silently.

There was a ritual to maintain. Before I could open the notebook, I had to turn on my overhead light, then turn it off, then turn it on again. It didn’t matter if light still streamed through the window; I had to flip the light switch exactly three times.

Then I had to straighten the pillows on my bed. It was an old white iron bed, a double, with a white chenille spread and throw pillows in pastel colors. The yellow pillow had to sit closest to the headboard, then the mint-green one, then the two robin’s-egg-blue ones.

After this, I gazed out the window and scanned the back garden. There was Daddy, sitting in his favorite spot near the water feature he’d installed with Ronny two summers ago, just beyond the gazebo. Even from here, I could see the glint of the koi fish as they swam in the miniature pond.

Each time I held the notebook, I would sit in the rocking chair that had been a fixture in my room as long as it had been my room—all my life. It was white too, and it was angled toward the large bay window that spanned one whole wall of my room. I would sit, rock for a bit, and then open the notebook.

But this time, before I opened the notebook, before I even sat in my rocking chair, I heard loud footsteps bounce up the stairs of the front porch. I froze at the sound, as if I’d been caught doing something wrong. Then I waited, perfectly still, for a knock at the front door.

THREE

I
t was a loud, uneven rap. I waited to see if someone else was going to answer it, but silence resonated through the house. A moment passed, and then another knock came, this one beating out a rhythm on the wooden panel of the door.

I cursed quietly and shoved my yellow notebook back under my bed. The door to my parents’ room was closed; I pictured my mother in there, as she’d been so often lately, flat on her back on her bed, a pillow covering her face.

I half ran down the steps, wanting to get to the door before whoever it was knocked a third time. Twisting the brass handle and yanking open the door, I caught Andy, knuckles raised, about to rap the door again.

He grinned his friendly lopsided smile that used to thrill me and drawled, “Hey, there, Scarlett.”

“Andy.” I remembered my manners and twisted my mouth into a fairly good imitation of a smile.

“Hey,” he said again, craning his neck past me to look into the house. “Can I come in?”

“Umm … sure.” I pulled the door open and gestured for Andy to come inside. As he passed me, his arm snaked around my waist and I felt his breath against my ear.

“Mmm,” he whispered. “You smell good.”

My stomach tightened. “It’s the shampoo,” I muttered.

“I don’t think so,” he said, his lips inches from my ear, his breath warm and moist. “I think it’s just Scarlett.”

I twisted away to close the door, turning my face so that I could arrange my expression. When I spun back around, Andy was sauntering into the main kitchen, pulling open the refrigerator with easy familiarity.

“Always hungry,” I chided, following him into the kitchen.

“Gotta bulk up for the season.” He grabbed an apple from the crisper and then took a bite, his strong, white teeth cutting into the apple’s flesh.

He took a chair from the kitchen table and spun it around, then sat, his arms crossed against the chair’s back. His eyes traveled over me, appraising me frankly.

“You look good, Scarlett. Are you feeling … better?”

I looked away. “Mmm-hmm,” I said. I traced the lines of the tile floor with the toe of my shoe. “It’s getting a little easier, I guess.”

Andy took another bite. “I’m glad,” he said. “We’ve missed you, Scarlett. I’ve missed you.”

When I looked up, Andy’s blue eyes were earnest. I admired his tanned arms, the hair on them as golden as if it had been woven by Rumpelstiltskin. He looked like he’d
been lifting weights; his broad shoulders were more muscled, and his neck was maybe a size bigger too. His hair was shorter than it had been the last time I’d seen him, out at the stable … it wasn’t quite a military cut, but the sides and back were cut close, and a sweep of hair in the front was brushed upward.

My appraisal must have been obvious, because Andy asked, “You like what you see?” in between bites.

“Yes,” I answered, feeling bold, and when I met his eyes I was relieved to find that it felt almost normal.

There was that grin again, and this time, when I returned his smile, it felt natural.

“That’s my girl,” he said, standing, the feet of the chair scraping across the tile floor as he spun it back around and pushed it into place. I noticed he was wearing a button-down shirt with a collar, light blue to go with his eyes, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. “So what do you say?” he asked. “Come with me to the mini-golf? I know it’s your favorite,” he teased.

I hesitated. I’d planned on going anyway, but showing up with Andy felt awfully like a date. I knew that was how the other kids would see it, and news travels fast in a school with only two hundred students. By Monday, Andy and I would be practically engaged according to the island rumor mill.

Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. The thought of crossing campus with Andy at my side seemed easier than flying solo. His strong hand at the small of my back, maneuvering me down the hallway, a guaranteed seat at lunch
at a table full of athletes and cheerleaders, outgoing people who’d carry the conversation …

“Yeah,” I said. “Why not?”

Andy smiled again. It seemed so easy for him—smiling, making conversation. Yes, mini-golf would be remarkably more tolerable with Andy close by.

“Just let me tell my mom.” I left Andy standing in the kitchen, finishing off his apple. Upstairs, my mother’s door was still closed. I hesitated before opening it, listening quietly for any movement. There was nothing.

The door swung open silently, and I found my mother just as I had envisioned her—on her back in the bed, a pillow over her eyes.

For one terrifying moment, I was certain she was dead. But then she breathed, and the pillow shifted, and I let out the breath I’d been holding.

On her bedside table sat the bottle of sleeping pills our family doctor had prescribed. The lid was off.

I pulled the door closed and headed back downstairs, more slowly.

Andy looked at me expectantly. “That was fast.”

“Yeah … she was sleeping. Let me just leave a note.” I took a pad of paper and a pen from the junk drawer and scrawled,
Out with Andy. Home later. Love, S
.

I left it on the counter. I had no idea if my mother would even come downstairs tonight; we didn’t have any guests, so there really wouldn’t be any reason for her to, but Daddy would probably see the note when he came in from the garden.

One of the good things about living on an island is that you can walk pretty much anywhere in town. From our B&B, it was a short five blocks to the mini-golf, and as we headed over, Andy took my hand, as if we had tacitly agreed to pick up right where we’d left off last spring.

I knew all the neighbors, of course, and I collected a half-dozen smiles and as many waves from eager-looking islanders who seemed relieved to see me back among the living. Andy returned their greetings, waving broadly, as if he were the grand marshal of the Rose Parade.