Tighter (6 page)

After a few minutes, Isa turned to me with a smile. “Milo’s stomach growled. He just whispered that Connie’s smoothies taste like crap.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I don’t appreciate swear words,” I said loud and primly, giving it my best au pair.

In response, Milo hawed. Eventually, he stood and jogged down to the surf for a swim. I was pretty sure he was keeping it high and tight for my benefit.

Isa watched him, too. Then she took a couple of tabloid magazines from the beach bag. “My addiction,” she said.

I fished out my poetry book.

“Sailing Alone Around the Room,”
Isa read off the jacket. “What’s that about?”

“It’s poetry.
My
addiction,” I answered, and I picked a place in the middle, hoping the spine didn’t look too obviously uncracked.

“Jessie liked junk,” she explained. “Poems are for school, she said. Like Robert Frost.”

“So untrue, and you’re totally missing out.”

“You sound like my friend Clementine. She’s kind of nerderrific.”

“All the best people are.”

Isa smirked. “Jessie didn’t think so. She said it only took a nanosecond to tell dorks from cool kids. And if you were a dork, Jess let you know straightaway.”

“Fine, that’s wonderful, but I’m not Jessie.”

That stopped her. She sank into her junk mag, and I tried reading a few poems. Though I soon realized they were a bit tastier than poems; more like odd, true, human things I liked to imagine Sean Ryan saying in his most brilliant, A-game mood.

But I could feel Isa’s eyes on me. Soon she’d tossed aside her magazine. “I might need veneers,” she said.

“You do not. Your teeth are perfect. And you’re too smart to get sucked in by those awful rags.”

Isa waved me off. “Jessie got me hooked. She’d bring them from her house. Now they make me feel close to her.”

“No offence to Jessie, but they’re still junk. I’ll lend you my book if you promise no more tabloids.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve read it like a hundred times.”

She took it. “Thanks, Jamie. This looks better.”

It was such a small thing, but I could tell she was grateful. Maybe I really did have a purpose being here. Maybe my nerderrific self would be a benefit to Isa, who seemed so lost: old-fashioned and overly mannered one minute, then spinning off in whatever direction you placed her in the next. It was as if she only existed as a manifestation of what other people wanted her to be. It sounded to me as if Jessie had made Isa into her accomplice—whether reading junk mags or ganging up on Connie or driving too fast in the Porsche—and it crossed my mind that Isa was now trying to figure out what I needed from her, and subtly adjusting herself to fit. I’d have to watch out for that.

Meantime, it was hard-boiling hot. Shite. I flipped and tried to float my mind out to sea, into the white noise of surf and gulls. Milo returned, shaking off water like a dog. The swim had worked up his appetite, he announced. Time for Mud Hut.

The word had gotten out. At the bar stools, we were sitting ducks. Whispers moved around us like clouds of gnats. Milo and Isa seemed aware of it. Then I saw Isa’s gaze catch and hold. I followed her stare across the pool to a middle-aged workman who gripped his tackle box like it was his only friend in the world.

“Who’s that?” I asked. “Why’s he staring?”

“Mr. Quint.” Isa took another bite of burger. “Peter’s dad. We’re probably just reminding him … of things.”

Mr. Quint looked tired and defeated. His face scared me; bloated, beery, all hope lost. His red hair and blue eyes had long washed out of their youthful punch, and his freckles made a rough pattern over his skin. He’d been working on an electric panel near the cabanas, but once he’d gotten his stare out, he seemed to give us a hard mental shrug, finishing his work quickly and leaving without another look our way.

The kids had gone still. Isa spoke softly. “Poor Mr. Quint. Connie once said he’d already lost so much in his life, he couldn’t afford to lose Peter, too.”

“Where were Peter and Jessie going in that plane?” I asked.

Isa cast a look at Milo, who glowered. “Milo hates talking about it,” she murmured. “He misses Peter.”

“It’s okay. Go ahead, you can tell me. It’s your story, too.”

“The thing is, I don’t know where they were heading. Peter took Jessie’s dad’s plane. He’d never flown without a copilot, but he faked the paperwork.”

“Was that normal, for him to do stuff like that?”

She nodded. “Him and Jess both. They liked to dare each other into all kinds of stunts.” She regarded me. “You know, it’s funny how your names are both
J
s and how you look like her. Tall, with wavy dark brown hair. I bet Mr. Quint thought he was seeing a ghost. But I guess he’s not the only one.”

Her words made me tingle. So that’s why there was all this extra attention on us. A dizzying thought—had Miles McRae actually chosen me for this specific reason? Since Isa couldn’t have Jessie, she could have someone who looked like her? After all, I was the image of Mom; everyone said so. Maybe McRae figured any tall, cute enough, teenage brunette was as good as another.

“Why’d they end up crashing?” I asked.

Isa’s eyes darted as Milo cut a swift kick her direction. “Owwchie, Miley.”

“Don’t pay him any attention. Whose fault was it? Wait, Milo—” But by this point, he’d had it. He jumped off the stool and whooped to some friends on the boardwalk. Then, with a deliberate shoulder against us, he ran to chase them down. “Guess that’s it for Mr. Milo.” I turned to her. “I don’t think he’s coming back. But maybe that’s better. If you still want to talk.”

Isa bit her bottom lip. “Peter wasn’t in radio contact. It was either engine failure or he might have gotten confused about orientation.” She sat back. “I wish Miley hadn’t run off. How will he get home?”

“I’m sure he’ll grab a ride with friends. Nothing here seems to be too far from anything else.”

“I guess I’m glad,” said Isa after a minute. “I like it being just us, sometimes.”

On the drive home, though, I sort of yearned for Milo’s snarky presence to break up Isa’s going on about who’d win in a fight, a skunk or a hedgehog. A space monster or a sea monster. A brownie or an elf. I figured she relied on babyish games to calm herself. And I sure knew how that worked. I needed some calming myself. The morning had rattled me; I thought longingly of my Ziploc and all of its treats.

“Did Peter come around the house much?” I asked as Skylark lurched into sight.

“All the time. Jessie used to say her folks are snobs,” Isa answered. “Mr. and Mrs. Feathering thought Peter wasn’t good enough for Jess. Peter and Jessie were like Romeo and Juliet. Have you ever seen that old movie? Starring Leonardo DiCaprio? I’ve seen it twelve times. It’s my favorite.”

“
Romeo and Juliet
was a play by William Shakespeare. Written four hundred years before Leonardo DiCaprio was born.” When I cut the ignition, I saw that Isa’s face was downcast. “But I bet it’s a good movie, too.”

“Sometimes I could see them from the lighthouse,” she confessed softly. “I’d go up to spy on them kissing and stuff.”

“It’s creepy to spy on people,” I said. “Especially when they want privacy.”

“Oh, they knew. Well, Jessie knew. It was a game for her.” Isa shrugged. “She thought it was funny. Jess thought everything was funny.”

“And Peter?”

“He went along with her. Once Peter said they had eternal love. Too strong to die.” She turned to me, her face suddenly beseeching me, her hands twisting in her lap. “Do you believe that?”

“If it was a happy love, I do,” I said. “Happy love turns into good energy.” Crossing my fingers that Isa wouldn’t challenge my soft science on that.

Isa thought. “But Peter wasn’t happy. He always said he’d make his mark one day. He wanted everyone to know he was just as smart—even smarter—than any of the summer people. Jess called him Chippy, sometimes, for the chip on his shoulder. She had names for everyone. She called me Flora, because she said I acted olden timey, like a girl from a hundred years ago.”

Ha, I could see that. “Isa, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” But something was. Isa’s face was tight with memory. She studied the house.

“You can tell me.”

“I guess it’s hard to believe every single part of Peter is dead. Especially that most extra-alive part of him that wanted to make his mark.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Did I? Sometimes my visions of Hank and Jim remade death into a vibrant, if muted, awakening. “But I also think maybe you need to switch off your head for a while.”

Inside, I made peanut-butter graham crackers.

Then, down in the family room, I found a dated, reliable romantic comedy. Life set to cute meetings and cuter music. I’d watched enough of them on my own couch at home, and it seemed like the right, mindless antidote to an overactive imagination. Isa’s and mine both.

SEVEN

I’d been at Skylark for about a week when I got my first taste of a Little Bly rain.

I’d been irresponsible the night before. After staying up to watch the Fourth of July fireworks from the porch, Isa and Milo had overruled me on a horror movie that I had no stomach for, and afterward I’d put down an arsenal of meds to take me out: a sedative and then the other half of a sleeping tablet and then a new half of something else. At the rate I was going, I might be finished with the pills in less than a month, but I couldn’t deal with thinking about that. I’d run across that bridge when there was no more bridge behind me. Meantime, I’d limit my intake of gory movies.

Sleep smothered me, and I woke up with a rocks-in-the-brain side effect that seemed somewhat worse than usual. The rain’s fault, for sure. It had put a chill in the house, and a predictable damper on Connie’s mood.

In the kitchen, I made a pot of coffee, and my decline of Connie’s mandatory smoothie made her extra grumbly, as she slammed drawers and muttered about the health benefits of her rejected magical berry tincture.

“The thing is, I’ve got issues with blueberries,” I said, which wasn’t true, and half of me knew I was showing off for Milo, asserting my authority while sidelining hers.

After her breakfast, Isa got out her sketchbook and paint box to create a masterpiece from the kitchen-table fruit, while Milo escaped downstairs to play
Grand Theft Auto
. Connie shifted her complaint to lisping about her bursitis until she’d convinced herself that she’d have to spend the rest of the morning lying down. I pictured her on her back like a sea lion, wheezing and snorting. Since Connie’s living quarters were two small rooms squeezed off the kitchen, at least she’d be out of my way as I tackled the house.

“I bet Skylark is over a hundred years old,” I told Isa, who was blobbing a green pear into shape. “Think there’s any buried treasure in here? Old letters, secret passages? Maybe we should go exploring.” I hadn’t had a chance to do any of that since I’d been here; Isa and Milo both enjoyed the daily predictability of Green Hill Beach, and I liked being away from Connie, and so our days had taken on a slouchy pattern. Beautiful as Skylark was, it was also like living in a museum, without so much as a slobbery dog to cozy it up. We stayed away until “theven” and then, after dinner, we watched movies down in the family room. Nights had been thankfully uneventful, too, since my first—knock wood.

But this morning, the house looked different. The rain cooled and cast shadows through every room, subtly challenging me to become a shadow myself, to flit and dart around Skylark’s corners in search of its secrets.

“The house was built in 1903 by the architect Winslow Hastings Horne.” Isa answered my question with the politeness of an heiress long used to being quizzed on the family estate. “Even though it’s big, there’s nothing very special about it. I never go exploring on the third floor. It’s mostly guest rooms, and it’s kind of scary—the ceilings are too high, and on a day like today, the rain pounds so hard you can’t concentrate on anything else. The most interesting thing up there, supposedly, is the recamier. Dad says that one day we can sell it to pay for college since it belonged to Marie Antoinette.”

“I want to see that.” I had no idea what a
recamier
was. “Come on, Isa. I’ve been here a week and haven’t bothered to check out the whole house. Let’s go together.”

“No, thanks. Peter and Jessie used to go up there,” Isa said, but now she’d lost a touch of her “Hostess of Little Bly” voice. “And once Jessie locked me in the old playroom.”

“Locked you in? What do you mean, locked you in?”

“Just what I said.” But Isa had stopped painting and was twirling her paintbrush like a tiny baton. “I mean, it wasn’t for a long time or anything. And she felt bad after, on account of how I threw a fit. And she gave me her best drawing to say sorry. We both love—
loved
—drawing and painting.” She dunked the brush in water and began to stir. She refused to look at me, and I sensed she wanted us both to stop talking about it.

“Okay, then you keep on painting. I’ll go exploring myself.”

After I left, I assumed Isa’d be peeping around the corner soon enough. She struck me as the kind of girl who didn’t like to miss out on a thing.

I bypassed Isa’s room, a froth of pink and tulle. Appliqué butterflies alighted on several surfaces. Milo’s was locked, though I bet it was identical to Teddy’s inside, reeking of sweat and Old Spice while the floor was an upchuck of clothes and video games and sports equipment.

The master-bedroom suite was grand and dull, and had a deck that overlooked the sea. I imagined Miles McRae reclining in the button-back chair, reading the paper while drinking coffee that Connie’d brought up on a silver tray.

“Excellent job with Isa,” he said, peering over the business section of the
Times.
“You’re just as sophisticated as your mother, even if you’ve never summered anywhere before. I can see why Sean Ryan was attracted to you.”

“Thanks,” I answered. “And since we’re speaking honestly, you might have mentioned that your babysitter died and your house is haunted and cursed, Miles, old pal.”