“Hey, I didn’t say it was good, friend. Look out,” he says, dropping his shirt from high up on the ladder. “It’s hot as hell up here.”
He moves down a rung to check the second-floor windows, the muscles in his tanned shoulders and arms tightening as he grabs the sides of the ladder. I watch the way his bare back twists as his hands move along the wood frames searching for flaws and fractures. I’m just spotting him, of course, in case he slips. I need to assess his approximate weight so I can best position myself to catch him if he falls, so he’ll land on top of me and…
I force my eyes back to the notebook. “Find anything?” I ask, head down.
“Windows in good shape. Glass solid. Looks fairly new. Write that down.”
“Good. Solid. New. Got it. What about you? What do you do when you’re not fixing stuff or breaking hearts onstage?”
“Write this,” he says. “Exterior and shutters need work. Get estimates for paint or siding.”
“Got it. So?”
“Breaking hearts? Not exactly. I do what everyone around here does,” he says, climbing down to grab his Nalgene bottle. “Swim. Hike. Water stuff. Kayaking on the lake is fun—I’ll take you sometime.”
I close my notebook, my eyes involuntarily tracking the tiny rivulet of water trailing down his chin… his neck… his collarbone…
He steps closer and offers me the water bottle. “You’d like it, I think.”
“Water?”
“Kayaking.” He’s right near me now, officially past my “just friends” space, smiling with his amber-honey eyes and those dimples, and I’m so hot standing out here on the hot grass in the hot sun next to the hot house…
“Patrick?” Jack. Patrick takes a step back, still smiling as I grab the water bottle from his outstretched hand.
“Man, it’s funny to see you two like this,” Jack says, a grin plastered all the way across his broad, tanned face. “You were inseparable as kids. Even after all day playing, you wouldn’t leave each other’s houses. Half the time we’d let you sleep over just to avoid the fight.”
“Um, Dad?” Patrick shades his eyes from the sun and looks at his father. “Did you need something?”
“I gotta make another hardware store run. Those nails I got aren’t the right size—wood’s thicker’n I thought.”
Patrick hands over the keys from his pocket and smirks. “You know it wouldn’t kill you to walk, right, old man?”
“Maybe not. Wouldn’t kill you to keep your clothes on, either.” Jack’s still laughing as he heads next door toward the green-and-white Reese & Son Contracting truck.
I look to Patrick’s reddened face. “It’s nice to know my mother doesn’t have a monopoly on embarrassing her offspring.”
“Oh, you think that’s funny?” Patrick sticks his arms through the holes in his shirt and grins at me, a little bit of devil in his otherwise perfect smile. I drop my notebook and run, Patrick close behind, both of us laughing like the kids we used to be, laughing harder than I’ve laughed in months. I’m squealing and sprinting and dodging Patrick all around the house, nothing but happy and sun and warm all over me, and I feel a release, a free fall of carefree summer days with no end in sight. But on our second trip around, when we near the back corner of the house, I look up and notice them—the curved panes of the bay windows reflecting the lake, the windows Little Ricky and I used to curl up against to read when the rain kept us inside. Like a new movie starting in my head, I see a red cardinal and I stop, remembering the bird trapped in the enclosed sunroom, confused by all the windows. Papa was in his wheelchair and couldn’t do much to chase it out, so he called Jack. Ricky and I stayed close behind Mom, watching from the height of her elbows. When Jack finally coaxed the bird to the open door, it shot out and sped away toward the lake, sailing over the trees beyond. All of us cheered and clapped and retold the story a hundred million times, so happy were we that the bird could reunite with his family.
Except for Nana.
I don’t remember thinking my grandmother was miserable or bitter when I used to visit her, but those words, cruel and sad, come to me now as I remember the red cardinal. She was so flustered by it, so unimpressed that Jack set it free, so tired of hearing the story and how it made us all smile.
Papa always laughed. He taught Ricky and me how to play checkers and backgammon, told us adventure stories about his travels through Asia during the Vietnam War, and read the comics with me every Sunday over breakfast. I remember feeling cared for by Nana—she cooked for us, gave me a bedroom with toys and a lace canopy princess bed, sent Christmas presents, drank tea late at night with Mom and Rachel—but now that I think about it, she didn’t smile. Her laugh? If she had one, I don’t recall the music of it. And some days she’d go to her room after breakfast and stay there for two or three days, coming out only for the bathroom and to get the food Papa left on a tray outside the door.
Did I know she was hurting, even if I couldn’t name it? Did I feel it, like when you can tell it’s going to rain because the leaves get all shaky and silvery and your bones creak and you just know it’s coming? Patrick said that Nana died of a heart attack, but I wonder how much of her life she could have saved—how much of our family history could’ve been rerouted—if only she’d been happy. If only she could’ve laughed the way Papa did when I told him my made-up stories, even after the death of their youngest daughter.
And just like my recollection in the bedroom yesterday, I realize now that the shock of losing Stephanie must have done that to her. It took away her laugh. Her joy. Her ability to know happiness.
“You okay?” Patrick stops the chase, his hand on my shoulder as he catches his breath.
“I don’t know why she didn’t try to get in touch with me. I hadn’t really thought of it that way until just this second. If your only grandchild is taken away from you because of some family fight, wouldn’t you at least try to call her? Or send birthday cards or letters or something?”
“I wish I knew, Del. I have no idea.”
As my aunt sorts through her mother’s food and my mother buzzes around her desk inside, I remember the sad things about my grandmother and sit down in the grass to catch my breath with a boy with whom I’ve only just reunited. He was once my very best summer friend, and in the space between our lives, he’s grown and changed as I have—separate, away, strangers who are still connected by some weird cosmic rubber band, stretched apart for nearly a decade only to be snapped back together in this moment on Red Falls Lake.
“Hey, baby. Don’t be sad.” Patrick puts his arm around me and pulls me close to him, my mouth near the skin of his neck. I feel like I should resist, but he’s so warm and solid and real, like a memory that hasn’t yet faded—one that I visit over and over when I’m scared or alone. It’s the first time since Finn that I’ve been this close to a guy. It’s funny to smell someone different. Different soap, different shampoo, different skin. His hand brushes my ear as he moves to squeeze my shoulder, and a shiver rattles its way on through. “She’s still here with you, Delilah.”
“Do you know what happened that day?” I ask him. “I mean, after Papa’s funeral? Did your parents ever say anything about the fight after we left?”
Patrick shakes his head. “No one talked about it in front of me. I asked them when you were coming back. They said they didn’t know. My mom tried to call your mom and Rachel, but they wouldn’t tell anyone what happened, and of course your grandmother wasn’t talking about it. Eventually, my mom stopped calling. I asked about you every summer for years after. They kept telling me it was a family situation. That it wasn’t our business.”
“But your dad’s been here the whole time. He worked for her. She must have said something about it.”
“Nope. And when she died and I knew you’d be coming back, I asked him again. He told me that Liz never talked about it. Maybe the whole thing was all her fault. Who knows?”
I look out over Red Falls Lake below. From here, it’s just
a giant blue hole, still and peaceful and immune to the constant flux of sailboats and people and babies below.
“I was thinking about the time the bird got trapped in there.” I nod toward the windows of the sunroom. “Remember?”
“Yeah. My dad built that tunnel out of sheets to get him out—I totally remember! It was a cardinal, right? I haven’t seen one in forever. Sometimes I see blue jays, but never cardinals.”
“Same.” I stand to brush the grass from my shorts.
Patrick turns his backside to me. “Get mine, too, all right?”
“That costs extra.”
“How much?” he asks.
“I’ll have to get back to you on that. My rates went up since eight years ago.”
Patrick shakes his head, looking at me in his just-a-second-too-long way. “I think you’re okay now, Hannaford,” he says. “My work here is done.”
Chapter ten
“All right, girls, where do we start?” Emily stands in the middle of the kitchen in her overalls, a red bandanna tied loose around her head. After a week of figuring out the house stuff and managing the constant stream of droppers-in, it’s finally time to plan the estate sales. Mom had to run errands in town, so Em and Megan, self-proclaimed garage-sale queens, offered to help us with the first wave.
Rachel and Megan head for the basement, leaving me and Emily to sort the contents of the kitchen cupboards and drawers into piles: use while we’re here, sell, donate, or trash. So far, trash is winning. Tupperware with no lids. Mugs with missing handles. Torn old picnic tablecloths that haven’t seen the outdoors in years.
“Check this out.” Emily holds up a pair of beige ceramic mugs printed with tic-tac-toe boards. “They’re from Chances, the café before it became Luna’s. Your grandma must’ve swiped ’em. Saucy old gal, huh?”
I shrug. “I don’t really remember that much about her.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, Delilah.”
I take the mugs from her and set them in the sell pile. “This is actually the first time I’ve been back here since I was a kid.”
“Yeah, Patrick told me. Hey, I hope this doesn’t sound weird, but he really missed you. Don’t tell him I said that.”
That butterfly keeps banging around inside at the mention of his name. Stupid insect. “He did?”
“You should’ve seen his face when he first told me about you last week. Man, you guys must’ve been really close.”
“We were,” I say. “But it’s been a long time. It feels so strange to be back here. I’m still trying to sort out some of the memories.” I don’t know why I’m so comfortable talking to Em. Maybe it’s her smile, or the way she says everything so straight. No buildup or fanfare. No awkward pauses. Maybe it’s her eyes, full and honest. Or maybe it’s the three-act puppet show she performs with the oven mitts and pantry boxes.
“Oreo, Oreo, wherefore art thou Oreo?”
We spend hours sorting through the kitchen, chatting about life and books and movies, about all the things that matter and all the things that don’t. My sides hurt from laughing, and when Rachel and Megan finally emerge from the basement with their bags of trash, ready to call it a day, I look at the clock on the oven and wish we had a few more hours.
“You’re going to Patrick’s show tomorrow night, right?” Em asks.
“Yes.” If I can’t convince Mom to let me go out, there’s always the window.
“Awesome. I finish work at six. See you there.” She hugs me good-bye, and it’s been so long since a girlfriend hugged me that it takes me a second to figure out what’s happening and to remember how to do it back.
“You two seemed to hit it off,” Rachel says when they’re gone. “I’m glad. She’s a sweet kid.”
After dinner, I bring down the coats and boots from my bedroom closet for the use/sell/donate/trash evaluation. Cleared of everything but the cobwebs, the closet is roomy enough for me to hang up my summer jacket, my long dress, and a few of my sleep shirts that got crunched in the dresser. Even after I line up my shoes along the closet floor, there’s still a spot for my empty suitcases. I try to shove the biggest one in the back, but it slips from my hands and lands hard on the floor, kicking up one of the floorboards.
Perfect. Hopefully Jack can fix it before Mom finds out I broke something. After the car damage last month, there’s not much room left on my tab.
I yank the chain for the light and pull my suitcase back out. As I crouch down to replace the board, I see it—a patch of white illuminating the otherwise black hole in the floor. It’s covered in dust, but I stick my hand in to retrieve it anyway, breath shallow in my lungs.
Here beneath the floorboards and cobwebs and spiders lies the formerly missing diary of Stephanie Delilah Hannaford.
I pull it gently from the hole, feeling the weight of it against my fingers. It’s bound in cracked white leather, yellowed with age and etched with a single gold rose. The flimsy brass latch once locking the pages no longer holds them shut, and as I take it into my lap, the front cover falls open, loosing a cascade of crushed flowers and faded red maple leaves pressed between pieces of waxed paper. My heart pounds, unable to outrun the feeling that I was meant to find this diary, that Stephanie herself meant for me to find it, here, tonight, tucked safely under the floorboards of the bedroom closet since before her death, hidden through all of my childhood summers as I slept just five feet from its secret place.
I open the diary to the first page. It’s covered with black letters, small and perfect. I trace the opening words until my fingers memorize their old grooves, the tiny loops of her handwriting bringing Stephanie closer to me than any passed-down story or photograph ever could.
“Thank you,” I whisper into the dark space of the closet.
Dear Diary,
I’m sixteen today. Claire sent you to me and I know that I’m supposed to fill the pages with all of my collected wisdom, but I’m not sure how. I should feel more wise, right? More confident? Instead, eight hours into this new age, I feel neither. Am I alone in this? My sisters seem immune, as if together they are in on some secret that they just don’t want to share. Were they ever as lost or alone? As unsure? Claire is already finishing up her second year of college, and Rachel, well… we’re as close as ever, but I know that nothing lasts. She’ll be gone soon enough, too. And though I know they love me, I can’t help but feel as though they’re leaving me here unprepared, alone to deal with Mom and her moods and Dad in his all-consuming quiet, shadowed by my mother’s raging outbursts. I just don’t have the armor for it.
But hope is not as lost as this dismal letter would have you believe! When I stretch my hands and reach into the faraway place of tomorrow, there’s Casey Conroy.
Please don’t tell my sisters. He’s a bit insane, in the best kind of way. I don’t think they’d understand what I see in him—they’re much too practical!
Ah, well. Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to me.
XOXO,
Steph
Casey Conroy—CC. There it is, in perfect black print, the name belonging to the initials carved under the bed. Now that I see it, now that my lips can form it, his full name hangs in my throat, stuck to the lump rising in the wake of reading Stephanie’s words. The letter is so usual, so unsurprising, so much like something any girl my age would write, that for a moment I forget that she’s dead. That this diary was hidden here before I was even born. That between the entry on her sixteenth birthday and the final page, so many of the stories for which I’ve been searching may be written.
And my mother and Rachel have no idea that it’s here. That it wasn’t lost or taken with Stephanie to the great beyond. That I have it, and that through her words, I’ve stepped into a piece of my family’s elusive history.
I slip the diary beneath my clothes in the bottom dresser drawer and head downstairs for a late-night snack, heart racing, mind racing, the air around me crackling with the electric fear and hope that comes with the discovery of something new.
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* * *
“You’re up late,” Mom says. She’s in the kitchen reading the Red Falls’ Bee. She doesn’t look at me at first, and as she turns the pages of the town’s weekly, the edges of my heart ache for her, wanting so much to tell her about the diary. To let her know that upstairs, tucked into the folds of my summer shirts, a part of her sister lives on—a part that she and Rachel can still know, even though she’s not here. But as I watch my mother flip through the Bee, late at night in the kitchen of her childhood home, I lose all the words for it.
“Can’t sleep?” she asks as I dig through the freezer.
“Not really. Are there any fudgesicles left?”
“Check behind the ice trays. Rachel’s trying to hide them so she’s not tempted.”
I dig out the box. “Where is she?” I ask. “Sleeping?”
“She went out for a drink with Megan. She should be back soon.”
“Oh. How was your day?” I ask.
“Fine. Met with Bob Shane again at the funeral home. Picked up the cremains.”
“Cremains?” It’s weird to think that someone can live a whole life—falling in love, getting married, having babies and grandkids and family feuds—just to end up “cremained” in a little box at the end of it all.
“That’s what they’re called,” Mom says as if she’s reading an article from Funeral Directors Monthly. “The cremated remains.”
“I don’t like that word. Cremains. Sounds like Craisins or something.”
“Delilah, please.”
“Sorry. Where is the… I mean, the… where is she?”
“There’s an urn,” Mom says, making the shape of a cube with her hands. “It’s on the dresser in her bedroom. I guess we’ll just keep it there until we get the permits cleared for the lake ceremony.”
“You mean, she’s here? In the house? Upstairs?” A layer of goose bumps rises on my skin.
“It’s fine. It’s put away in the bedroom. You don’t need to go in there. Anyway, since you’re here, let’s talk briefly about tomorrow. I have a DKI call first thing, so I’ll need you to be ready when Patrick gets here to clean the gutters at eight. Jack said there are tools in the shed and other supplies in the garage. You’ll also need to—”