White Picket Fences (5 page)

Reddish brown hair now hung in damp curls around Tally’s face. Streaks of purplish pink peeked out from the wet strands. Two earrings glittered on one ear, five on the other.

The shimmering rectangle was a cigarette lighter, and it had been removed from the bag only a second earlier.

“You smoke?” Chase asked.

Tally jumped. She obviously hadn’t seen him standing there. “What?”

Chase nodded toward the silver lighter gleaming in a patch of moonlight on the counter. “That yours?”

Tally followed his gaze and then her shoulders seemed to relax. No, not relax. They drooped. “It’s my dad’s. He asked me to hold on to it for him.” She went back to her task.

“Looks old. Is it real silver?”

Tally shrugged.

“My mom won’t let you keep it in your bedroom.”

Tally looked at the slim case again and then at Chase. “I’m not going to be using it.”

He shrugged. “I’m just saying she won’t let you keep it upstairs.”

“Why not?”

“Because you might start a fire.”

“But I’m not going to be using it.”

“So do you smoke?” he asked.

Tally reached over to the counter, enclosed the lighter in her hand, and slipped it into the back pocket of her cutoffs. “Do you?”

“No.”

His cousin bent over the duffel and lifted out a pink halter dress. She hesitated and then dropped it on the pile of dark clothes.

“Why didn’t your dad take it with him?” Chase leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms.

“I don’t know.” A pair of green socks. Darks.

He didn’t believe her. He bet she knew why her father had left the lighter with her. It was probably to be a talisman of some sort. To remind her of him while he was away. To assure her he
would return. To comfort her if he didn’t. Chase suddenly wanted to film the scene he’d just witnessed. The girl digging through the rumpled clothes, finding the lighter, placing it on a streak of moonlight, the sudden challenge of a bystander, and then quietly slipping the lighter into a pocket, hiding it from sight.

If he ran up to his room to get his camera and came back, she’d be done, probably not even in the laundry room anymore. The best moment had already passed anyway: the second she looked at the lighter and her shoulders sagged.

It was a moment lost to him.

“I’ll keep your secret,” he said.

“It’s not a secret.” She didn’t look up.

It most certainly was a secret. And he thoroughly intended to keep it. But he raised his voice a few decibels and grinned at her. “So you want me to tell my mom you have a lighter?”

“I don’t want you to do anything.” Again, she didn’t look up. She dropped a pale yellow tank top onto the pile of lights.

“I could tell her, you know.”

She raised her eyes. They revealed nothing.

For a moment, their eyes were locked. “I’m not going to tell her,” Chase finally said.

Tally bent down and plunged her hand back into the duffel bag. He waited for her to thank him. She didn’t. She lifted a lacy orange bra out of the duffel, and Chase looked away.

A mix of irritation and fascination swelled within him. “You’re welcome,” he said, turning his eyes back on his cousin.

Tally reached into the bag and pulled out another bra. This one was purple. Chase forced himself not to turn his eyes away.
“You want me to thank you for minding your own business?” she mumbled, oblivious to his efforts to avoid staring at her underwear.

Chase laughed. “I heard you.”

“I wasn’t whispering.” The purple bra landed on the pink dress.

He couldn’t decide if he was fascinated or annoyed by her boldness. He itched to have his camera in his hands. “This is how it’s going to be?”

Tally sighed. “I’m only going to be here a few weeks. I promise not to burn your house down.”

Again their eyes were locked. Chase sensed Tally was like him somehow—no, that he was like her. She was waiting to break free, just like he was. “What if your dad doesn’t come back?” he said softly.

“He’ll come back.” She said it easily, without looking up at him.

Chase moved away from the door frame and took a step inside. “Look, you won’t be able to keep that lighter a secret from Delcey. She’s going to go through your stuff. She’ll find it.”

Tally blinked. Her eyes seemed to widen a bit. “Your parents let your sister go through things that don’t belong to her?”

“They don’t know her like I do. I’m telling you, she’ll find it. She’ll say something.”

“Why don’t they know her like you do?”

Was she serious? “Because they’re parents. Let me keep it for you. I promise I won’t say a word.”

A few seconds ticked by before Tally answered him. “Why would you do that?”

Chase took another step inside. “You probably think we don’t have a thing in common. But you’re wrong.”

His cousin opened her mouth as if to say something and then shut it.

“Let me keep it for you.”

For a long moment Tally stared at him. Then without a word she reached into her pocket and pulled out the lighter. Chase took a step toward her and opened his hand. She pressed the lighter into it.

“It was my grandfather’s. Our grandfather’s. It’s the only thing my dad has of his.” She didn’t look up.

Chase closed his palm around it. “I’ll keep it safe.”

“How do you know Delcey won’t find it in your room?” Tally raised her eyes to him. They had lost their sheen of defiance.

“I know how to keep things hidden from Delcey. And I’m not sharing a room with her.”

“What do you have to keep hidden from Delcey?”

He slipped the lighter in the front pocket of his jeans. She watched it disappear.

“I have secrets, same as you.” He turned and walked out of the laundry room.

seven

T
he bedspread, freshly laundered and smelling of lemon verbena dryer sheets, had headlined the year Delcey was addicted to purple.

“Brittany Bolton’s favorite color was purple, so everybody’s favorite color in second grade was purple.” Delcey lay on her stomach on her own bed with her bent legs crossed behind her. Tally stood across from her, pulling folded clothes out of a laundry basket and placing them on the vast lavender expanse that covered a rollaway bed. “That bedspread’s from when I was, like, seven.”

Tally nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“Well, it’s not like it’s mine. I don’t even really like purple anymore.” Delcey swished her legs behind her. “I wonder where the butterfly pillows are.”

Tally looked up from fishing out a pair of socks. “What?”

“There used to be butterfly pillows. Pink and purple and turquoise. Guess my mom didn’t keep those.”

“I’ll be okay without them.”

“I liked them then, but they’d be so ugly now. I am so over purple. I like melon. This is melon.” Delcey spread her hands out over the coral-hued comforter underneath her and smiled.

Tally wanted to close her eyes and wish herself back to San
Antonio. To the trailer with no air conditioning. To her own bed. To a pantry of six cans of Hormel chili and not much else. To Twinkies for breakfast. To the sound of her father playing his guitar outside on a fruit crate and singing with urban crickets as his chorus. To the life she had before Dad read the letter.

If he knew where she was, he’d come for her. If he’d wanted her to stay with Aunt Amanda, he never would’ve brought her to her grandmother’s. He would’ve brought her here instead.

But he hadn’t wanted Amanda to know he was going to Europe. Amanda would’ve either tried to talk him out of going or would’ve wanted her half of the treasure. The buried jewels belonged to her father’s and Amanda’s grandparents. Neil would probably insist Amanda get her half. Her father hadn’t wanted to deal with that.

“Yeah. Melon’s a nice color,” Tally replied.

Delcey grabbed her cell phone off a bedside table, glanced at the tiny screen, and sighed. “I sent Mallory a text ten minutes ago! Where is she?” She tossed the phone back onto the table. “Who’s your best friend?”

Tally opened her mouth, unsure what to say. Her circle of friends in San Antonio was small. Marcella and Julio. PJ. Dan. Chelsea. Her friends didn’t even know where she was. Dad had insisted they leave in the middle of the night. She was used to quick exits, but she wasn’t used to leaving without saying goodbye. Bart thought it would be best if no one—not even friends—knew where they had gone, and he asked her not to talk to anyone in San Antonio until he came back and things had cooled down. That’s usually the way it was when they left in a hurry.

Amanda walked by the open bedroom door at that moment and poked her head in. “Do you need another drawer, Tally? I’m sure Delcey can make some room in her dresser if you need more space.”

Tally lifted her head. “No thanks.”

“Do you need anything else? anything at all?”

“I’m good.”

“You’ll let me know if you think of something?”

“Sure.”

Amanda walked away. Tally opened a drawer on a small bedside dresser and placed socks and underwear inside, the question about who her best friend was apparently forgotten. Delcey reached again for her cell phone and looked at it. A second later she tossed it back onto the table.

In the corner of the drawer, Tally saw a shimmer of metal. A gold heart-shaped locket on a chain. She picked it up and held it toward Delcey. “I think this might be yours.”

Delcey crinkled her eyebrows, doubtful.

“It was in the top drawer.” Tally extended the necklace to her.

Her cousin peered at the chain in Tally’s hands. “Oh. I don’t wear that one anymore.”

Tally’s arm stayed aloft.

“You want it?” Delcey’s eyes brightened with what appeared to be a sudden burst of generosity.

Tally shook her head gently. “No. Thanks anyway. It’s yours.”

“But I don’t wear it anymore. You can have it.”

Tally slowly turned and put the necklace back in the drawer
where she found it. She laid a short stack of folded T-shirts and tank tops on top.

“So you don’t have any brothers or sisters or nothing?” Delcey sounded bored.

“No.”

“Yeah, I just have Chase. He’s so weird. I used to want a sister.”

Tally placed a pair of jeans in the drawer and said nothing.

“You are
so
lucky you don’t have a brother,” Delcey continued.

A pair of capris went into the drawer.

“It’s so weird that my mother has a brother and he’s your dad and that your dad is Uncle Bart.”

Tally looked up from the basket.

Delcey continued. “That means my mom is like me and your dad is like Chase. Uncle Bart is like Chase. That’s just so weird.”

“Why is that weird?”

Delcey shrugged. Then she sat up on the bed, and her gaze traveled down to Tally’s foot. “My parents would so freak out if I got a tattoo.”

Tally glanced at her ankle. “Really? My dad picked this one out.”

“I’m so sure!”

Tally lifted her head. “He did.”

“Your dad
made
you get a tattoo?”

“I never said he made me. He asked me if I wanted one. I said yes. This is the one he liked best.”

Tally turned back to the diminishing pile of clothes. Another pair of jeans. A gray hoodie. Her bright pink dress.

“Why did your dad want you to have one?”

Tally shrugged. “I guess ’cause he was getting one. A new one. He already had a couple.”

“Didn’t it hurt?” Delcey rubbed her own ankle lightly.

Tally’s eyes drifted back down to the bird in flight. “Yeah. A little. But he told me it would. And he told me it would stop hurting.”

Delcey swung her legs around and tilted her head. “You really don’t know where your dad is?”

“He’s in Europe.”

“But you don’t know where.”

Tally hesitated before answering. “Not today.”

Delcey got up from the bed and flopped onto a beanbag chair by a window. The foam beads squealed. “What’s he doing there?”

“We’ve got relatives there. He’s looking them up.”

“So they’re, like, my relatives too. Right?”

“Yeah.”

Delcey leaned back and toyed with an earring. “But it’s not like they’re going to know him, right? I mean, does your dad know any language besides English? How’s he going to talk to them?”

Tally inhaled and let her breath out slowly. “The relatives he’s looking for aren’t, they aren’t…”

Delcey sat up straight. “They aren’t what?”

Tally hesitated. She was saying too much. Her dad was actually hoping he wouldn’t talk to anyone he could call family. The treasure was a secret. “They aren’t alive anymore. He’s gone to see where they’re buried.”

“How come?” Delcey breathed.

A voice startled them. Chase was at the doorway, leaning on the frame as if he’d been there for several seconds. Had he heard Delcey compare him to her father? “Mom says her brownies are out of the oven,” he said. “She wants us to come downstairs and have one.”

“All right.” Tally grabbed the empty laundry basket and followed Chase out.

“Brownies? At ten o’clock at night?” Delcey exclaimed, still inside the room. “Cool!”

“My mother’s messy sewing room must be looking pretty good, eh?” Chase said as they headed for the staircase.

She didn’t have time to come up with a reply. Delcey was behind them in seconds.

eight

A
manda sat back in her canvas chair and sipped lukewarm lemonade from a plastic cup. Neil stood several yards away, protected from the late afternoon sun by the splotchy shade of a eucalyptus. He was talking investments with another churchgoer. She could hear snippets of their conversation.

The man was probing Neil for insights on a carefree retirement. Oh, the irony. She noticed a physician friend of theirs leaning against a picnic table across the lawn, deep in conversation with a woman who was rubbing her neck, then rubbing her forearm, and then pointing to her toes. Why did people think they could get free advice from professionals at social events? It didn’t matter what kind of party or picnic or sporting event they went to; as soon as word got out that Neil the financial planner was there, he’d be cornered by some hapless, inquiring soul, never to emerge until it was time to eat or time to go.