Don't Tell ds-2 Read online

  After changing out of my grass-stained clothes, I took a paperback from the bedroom shelf and joined the others in the dining room. Aunt Jule was working on her embroidery.

  Nick and Holly had cleared space on the table and laid out piles of photos. They were going through them, laughing and arguing, as they did years back when playing board games.

  I threw some pillows in the corner of the room and curled up to read the battered Agatha Christie the way I used to read Aunt Jule’s Nancy Drews. It was almost like old times.

  After a while Rocky was admitted as far as the hallway door. Stretching out next to him, I continued to read. Once, when I looked up, I found Nick staring at Rocky and me, smiling.

  Holly glanced up. “Phew!” she exclaimed, waving a folder in front of her nose.

  “Shh!” Nick said in a stage whisper. “You’ll embarrass Lauren. Just make sure she showers tonight.”

  “I was referring to Rocky.”

  Aunt Jule laughed. I saw the same content look on her face as she’d get when we gathered around her as children.

  Nora came in twice and stayed no longer than five minutes each time. She would eye me warily, then sit by Nick. He was gentle with her, showing her a handful of pictures and asking which ones she’d choose for the yearbook supplement. Now that I thought about it, she had always sat near him when we played board games and defended his claims against Holly’s.

  Nick stayed through dinnertime, not that there was an event called dinner at Aunt Jule’s. We simply helped ourselves to what we wanted, when we wanted it. About ten o’clock Holly walked Nick to his car. I couldn’t help wondering if they were outside kissing. Since tonight wasn’t an official date but a yearbook meeting, I figured his policy conveniently allowed for as many of these nights as he wanted.

  “Lauren,” Aunt Jule said when we were alone, “I was hoping we’d have time together tomorrow after Holly leaves for school — to chat and all. But I have a shopkeeper breathing down my neck for overdue work and have to pick up craft supplies. I’ll be gone till noon.”

  “No problem,” I assured her.

  “I could meet you at twelve,” she offered, “and go with you to Sondra’s grave. We could take flowers. If you like, we could plant some.”

  I knew she was trying to make up for what she had said before.

  “Thanks, Aunt Jule, thanks a lot, but I need to go by myself.” I walked over and sat on the chair next to hers. “But there is something I want to talk to you about.”

  She paused, holding her silver needle above the fabric she was embroidering. “Yes, love?”

  “Nora.”

  She quickly pushed the needle through. “What about her?”

  “I’m really worried about her. I think she needs helppsychiatric help.”

  “Do you,” Aunt Jule replied coolly.

  “This afternoon Nora—”

  “Nick told us about the boathouse,” my godmother interrupted. “It was a childish prank. Certainly you weren’t frightened by such a silly thing?”

  “I was bothered by the way she talked about my mother.

  She said—”

  “Ignore her,” Aunt Jule advised, making a knot and snipping the thread. “Nora is confused and easily frightened, especially when there are changes here at home. Your visit has upset her a little, that’s all. She’ll get past it. In the meantime, don’t take her seriously.”

  “But what if she wants to be taken seriously?” I asked.

  “What if her behavior is a cry for help?”

  Aunt Jule shook her head, dismissing the possibility.

  “You’re tired, Lauren, and so am I. This isn’t the time to discuss Nora. Get a good night’s rest and let things settle for a few days.”

  “Is Nora the reason you asked me to come here?” I persisted. “Is she what you wanted to talk about?”

  “There is much for us to talk about, after you’ve rested up,” Aunt Jule replied firmly.

  I knew that once my godmother tabled a discussion, it was useless to say more. I kissed her good night.

  When I got upstairs, Nora’s bedroom door was closed.

  Before entering my own room, I glanced at the door across the hall, next to Nora’s. The summer my mother came, she had slept in that room. I was glad the door to it was also shut.

  In my room I turned on a small lamp and lay back on my bed for a moment, listening to the familiar night sounds. A breeze wafted in through the screen door, pushing back the light curtains. I reached lazily into my shorts pocket to remove my car keys. My fingers felt something else — the chain I’d found in the boathouse.

  I had forgotten all about it. I sat up quickly and opened my hand. The necklace was so black that for a moment I didn’t recognize the small tarnished heart. When I did, I couldn’t believe it. I had thought it was gone forever!

  The silver necklace was a gift from Aunt Jule when I was born. I had loved it and worn it at the shore every summer, though on a sturdier chain than the original. The summer my mother had come, she had taken it from me after a fight with Aunt Jule. The next day I had sneaked into her room and searched for the necklace everywhere — her jewelry case and purse, her bureau drawers and suitcase. I didn’t find it and feared she had done as she’d threatened — thrown it in the river.

  So how had it ended up in the loft? Though the boathouse was in better shape seven years ago, I couldn’t imagine my mother going in, much less hiding something there. But if Aunt Jule, Nora, or Holly had found the necklace, why wasn’t it returned to me? Maybe they meant to, but forgot. A lot of things went undone and forgotten around here. Still, why keep it in the boathouse loft?

  I hung the necklace on the wood post of my mirror stand, puzzling over the events of the day. I had come here to tie up my memories like a box of old photos, so I could put them away once and for all. But the memories would not be neatly bound up; questions kept unraveling.

  I didn’t know what time it was or where I was, except far beneath the surface of a river. The river bottom was thick with sea grass and I swam in near darkness. Someone called my name, Laur-en, Laur-en, the voice rising and falling over the syllables as my mother’s once had. I followed the voice, swimming through the long weed, feeling it flow over my skin like cold tentacles.

  “Lauren! Lauren!” It was my mother. She was panicking.

  I swam harder, trying to find her. I needed air, but somehow I continued scouring the bottom. The sea grass wrapped itself around my arms and legs, entangling me.

  “Lauren, come quickly!”

  I broke free and kept swimming. I could feel her fear as if it were my own. I knew she was sinking into a place where I couldn’t reach her, an endless night.

  The banks of the river narrowed. Both sides were walls of tree roots, roots like long, arthritic fingers reaching out to catch me. I fought my way through them. But as her voice grew near, the river walls pressed closer together, threatening to swallow me alive.

  “Where are you?” I cried out.

  “Here.”

  Ahead of me was a deep crack where the two banks joined, a long and jagged fissure.

  “Here, Lauren,” she called out from the fissure. “Lauren, dearest, come to Mother.”

  But I didn’t want to go where she was. I hesitated, and the crack closed, sealing her in forever.

  I woke up sweating. My heart pounded and I gulped air as if I were emerging from deep water.

  Laur-en.

  I turned my head toward the hall, thinking I heard the same voice. Silence.

  I climbed out of bed and tiptoed to the door. When I opened it, the door to my mother’s old room creaked.

  Someone had left it ajar.

  I crossed the hall and laid my palms against the door, listening a moment, then pushed it open. At the other end of the room a glass door to the porch suddenly closed. I started toward it and the door behind me slammed shut.

  I screamed, then muffled it. A draft, I told myself, a draft running through my room and th
is one blew the doors shut. I wondered if it had been caused by someone making a hasty exit through the porch door.

  I strode across the room, opened the doors to the porch, and leaned out. No one was there. Of course, if it had been Nora, she could have easily slipped into her room, the next door down.

  Inside, I turned on the floor lamp and glanced around. It looked as I remembered it, with oak furniture similar to my own and a red-and-green quilt on the bed. Spiders had made themselves cozy here and dust coated the bureau top, but the dresser had streaks on its surface, as if someone had been using it recently. One of its drawers wasn’t closed all the way.

  I walked over and opened it. Inside were several old newspapers, tabloids that were badly yellowed. I spread them out on the dresser top. I guessed what was in them; still, the pictures of my mother shocked me — those horrible flashbulb photos that could make the prettiest woman look like a witch.

  Had she put them here? Not unless she wanted to torture herself, I thought. The only other thing in the drawer was an empty packet of marigold seeds.

  I opened the next drawer. My mother’s favorite pair of earrings lay on top of a scarf she had loved. I touched them gently. At the town house in Washington, my mother’s personal things had been put in safe storage or thrown out soon after she died. I still had her jewelry box in my room at school, but it seemed like mine now more than hers. These items were different — barely touched by anyone else. I halfexpected to smell her perfume on them.

  In the corner of the drawer were snippets of photographs.

  For a moment I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at, then I saw they were pictures from that last summer, with my mother cut out. Not exactly subtle symbolism, I thought. In the third drawer there were more empty seed packets and a pile of plant catalogs that had been mailed to Nora.

  Were all these things Nora’s? Some of the garden catalogs were dated the summer of the current year, which meant Nora had opened the bureau recently; it wasn’t as if she had forgotten these things were here. I found it unsettling to think that anyone would keep the rag-paper photos of my mother seven years after her death. Equally disturbing was the possibility that, after all this time, Nora could have mimicked perfectly the intonation of my mother’s voice. This was the behavior of someone obsessed with a person, obsessed with a dead woman.

  I left everything as I’d found it, planning to show it to Aunt Jule, then turned out the light and left.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Holly!” I hadn’t expected her to be in the hall.

  Nora stood behind Holly, her dark eyes glittering in the soft light. I was too tired to confront her now and wasn’t sure I’d get anywhere if I did. The person to talk to was Aunt Jule.

  “Everything’s fine,” I answered Holly.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I had a bad dream and got up to walk around — to shake it off — that’s all.”

  Holly turned her head, glancing sideways at her sister, as if suspicious of something more, then said, “Nora, go to bed.”

  Nora moved past her sister and peeked into the room from which I had just come.

  “Nora,” Holly said quietly but firmly. Nora returned to her bedroom.

  Holly guided me into mine. “You look upset,” she observed as she turned on the lamp. “Do you want to talk?”

  “Thanks, but it’s awfully late,” I replied.

  “I’m wide awake,” she assured me, sitting on my bed.

  She must have wondered what was going on, especially if she heard my muffled scream.

  “Nick told us Nora locked you in the boathouse,” Holly continued. “I don’t know what to say, Lauren, except I’m sorry it happened. Please don’t take it personally.”

  “What if it was meant personally?”

  “Just do your best to avoid her,” Holly advised. “And next time Nora starts making trouble for you, tell me. Someone has to keep tabs on her. Since Mom doesn’t, I’m the warden of this asylum.”

  “Holly, what’s going to happen to Nora when you go away to college?”

  “I don’t even want to think about it,” she said. “But Nora is a long-term problem. Right now I’m more concerned about you. It has to be hard coming back and seeing things you associate with your mother’s death.”

  I glanced away. “I thought that by now it would be easier, but I was wrong.”

  She rested her hand lightly on my shoulder. “Then tell me what I can do to help, okay? I’m not in your shoes, so I can’t guess.”

  “Okay.”

  She stood up. “Well, get some sleep. Tomorrow will be better.”

  “Right. G’night.”

  After Holly left, I locked my door to the hall and latched the screen doors to the porch. It felt strange, for I had never worried about my own safety at Aunt Jule’s.

  Reaching for the switch on my bureau lamp, I noticed that my newfound necklace was twisted up. I touched it with one finger, expecting it to swing free from the mirror stand, bit it didn’t. Like my mother’s necklaces, it had been tied in impossible knots.

  seven

  I didn’t fall back asleep until dawn. Waking late on Monday morning, I found myself alone in the house. Two notes had been left on the fridge for me, one from Aunt Jule reminding me that she’d be out till twelve, and the other from Holly. She invited me to stop by the yearbook office so she could introduce me to her friends. The underclassmen were on a half-day schedule, so she suggested I come at noon.

  A list of needed grocery and household items was also on the refrigerator door. When I tucked it in my purse I discovered a second note from Holly that contained a log of bills due and overdue, adding up to a cool $4,000.1 knew that dropping a big check wouldn’t solve the problem — Aunt Jule would continue to be Aunt Jule. But it would relieve the pressure for the time being and give Holly an easier summer before college.

  When I left the house Nora was in the knot garden snipping a boxwood hedge with hand clippers. The square garden, started in the 1800s, was once an intricate green design of shrubs, herbs, and colored gravel. When I was a child it had grown into one large mass of green. But Nora must have been cutting back the shrubs little by little each year. Now they looked like lumpy green caterpillars and were starting to trace out a pattern.

  “Good morning,” I called to her.

  She looked across the outer hedge but said nothing.

  “I’m doing some errands,” I told her. “Do you need anything?”

  “No.”

  I watched her work for a moment. “Nora, why did you lock me in the boathouse yesterday?”

  She raked the top of the boxwood with her fingers, brushing off the fresh clippings. “I don’t remember.”

  “Why did you run from it? What did you see?”

  “I don’t remember,” she insisted.

  “The water was stirred up,” I reminded her, “as if a boat were passing by. Did you notice a powerboat?”

  Nora shook her head. “It was her. She was making the river angry. She wants to make the river come up.”

  “Who?” I asked, though I could guess the answer.

  “Sondra. She wants it to go over our heads.”

  “No, Nora, it was just—”

  “She wants to pull us down with her,” Nora said, her eyes wide, as if she were seeing something I couldn’t “She wants her little girl.”

  I gripped my car keys hard. “Listen to me. There is no one sleeping in there, dead or alive.”

  Nora’s eyelids twitched violently.

  “Wind, tides, boats,” I said, “those are the things that make the water rise and fall.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Nora, while I’m out I’m going to visit my mother’s grave.

  She was buried in the cemetery at Grace Church — by the high school. My mother is not in the river. She’s not in the boathouse. She’s in a grave in the churchyard. The stone has her name on it to tell you that’s where she is. Do you understand? Do you
hear me?”

  She turned away and resumed clipping the hedge.

  There was no reaching her, no way I knew of. She needed professional help.

  I continued on to my car, stopping at the big oak to look at the swing’s rope, which I had left coiled beneath. I studied the knot, then touched it timidly. There was nothing unusual about it. It must have been there all along and I just hadn’t noticed.

  It was a quick drive to the bank. High Street had been swept clean after the festival and basked quietly in the morning sunshine. Its main bank was a smalltown miniature of the kind you see in East Coast cities, with bronze doors and Greek columns. I think the teller I got must have been there since it was built. Her fluffy white hair flew in the breeze made by a little desk fan. Pursing her lips, she read my check and driver’s license, then lifted her head to study me, pushing her heavy glasses up her nose, so she could get a clearer view.

  “Sondra’s daughter.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You’re depositing this in the Ingram account.”

  I realized that teens didn’t usually write a check as large as mine. “Here’s my bankbook,” I told her, sliding it under the glass. “It has phone numbers and an e-mail address if you want to verify the availability of the money.”

  “No. Your mama’s checks were always good,” she said.

  I nodded, though I didn’t know what she was talking about. My mother didn’t bank here.

  “And always on time,” she added as she started the transaction. “The first of each month Jule would come in to deposit them.”

  I looked at the teller with surprise.

  “I always wondered why,” the woman continued. “Of course, I figured your mama was being blackmailed, but I wondered what for.”

  Blackmailed? I stared at the woman.