Amber House (19 page)

“What you’re wearing is perfect. Just get some tennis shoes. We gotta get moving.”

“Fine,” I said. “Just don’t ask me to get out of the car.”

“Come on, Sam,” Jackson said. “But — maybe Heavy Bear better stay home. Okay?”

“Okay, Jackson,” Sammy responded cheerfully. I was surprised by his easy agreement. Evidently my little brother had some hero worship going.

We slipped on some tennis shoes and went out the swinging door. Instead of turning toward the front of the house, though, Jackson headed for the rear.

“Hey,” I said, trotting after him. “Aren’t we driving?”

He shook his head. “I don’t drive.”

“Where we going?”

“To get dinner.” He grinned.

We followed him down the stone stairs. Tied up at the dock was an ancient flat-bottomed rowboat, with peeling paint and an inch of water in the bottom. A pile of line and equipment lay in front of the middle bench, and a rectangle of rusty wire hung off the stern. The boat looked like it would start shipping water as soon as we climbed in.

“You going to drown us, Jackson?” I said.

“Just get in,” he said, smiling. “She’ll float.”

Sammy jumped in to claim the forward bench. I waded through the water and sat aft. Jackson took the center bench,
facing me. He grabbed the oars, braced his feet on the ribs, and started to row.

He clearly knew what he was doing. The boat went exactly where he wanted it to with no overshooting. The muscles in his arms and shoulders bunched and lengthened as he leaned back into his strokes. In short order we were speeding along.

I was right about the boat leaking, however. After five minutes, we were up to two inches of water around our feet. I must have looked a little worried. Without stopping, Jackson nodded cheerfully at a coffee can and told me, “You’re on bailing duty.”

I took the assignment very seriously. Every dozen yards or so, I poured some of the Severn back into its bed. I think it entertained him.

“You going to tell us where we’re going now?” I asked.

“Crabbing. We’re catching dinner.”

“Crabbing!” Sammy squealed, as if this were the absolute pinnacle of adventure. “What’s that?”

“You’ll see,” Jackson promised. “We’re almost there.”

We slowed up in a little cove in the river, where the trees dropped long shadows over the water. He pulled in the oars and lowered the cement anchor over the side.

“This is my spot,” he said. “We’re going to do this the old-fashioned way, with a line and a dip net.” He took out his tackle and showed us. “Here’s our lines — two apiece. We tie bait on ’em and drop them over, and wait for a crab to latch on. When you feel a crab feeding, you pull it up, and someone gets under the line with the dip net before the crab drops off. Then you use the tongs to move the crab from the net to the wire creel hanging off the stern. You got it?”

I was dubious, but Sammy nodded vigorously.

“Here’s the bait,” Jackson said, opening a bag. The contents’ stench hit me in a wave.

“Oh, my God, what is that?” I said.

“Chicken necks. The more it stinks, the more we’ll catch.”

“I am
not
touching that,” I said.

“I’ll do it,” he laughed. In gentlemanly fashion, he tied chicken necks to two lines. “Drop them over,” he said, while he baited the others. “Keep a good hold.”

When he had all six lines baited, he fished a bar of soap out from under the bench and scrubbed the rancid chicken off his hands. He tossed his own line overboard, and then we waited.

“What are we waiting for?” Sammy asked.

“You got to whisper, Sam. Don’t want to scare off the crabs.”

“What are we waiting for?” he hissed, barely less audible.

“You want to pay attention to any little tugs on your line. If you feel that, it means a crab has come to eat.”

“I FEEL THAT! I FEEL THAT!” Sammy informed us.

Jackson laughed.
“Whisper, buddy. Whisper.”

“I feel that!” Sammy whispered.

“Okay,” Jackson whispered back, grinning. “You wanna pull in your line real slow, see if the crab comes with you. Don’t jerk it, or the crab will let go.”

Sam reeled in his line, millimeter by millimeter, a crafty look on his face.

“He still on there?” Jackson asked.

“Yesss,” Sammy whispered.

“Okay. Sarah,” he said.

I
was supposed to get involved? I stood reluctantly.

“Take the dip net,” Jackson said. “Watch over the side to see when the crab comes near the surface. When you can get under him with the net, scoop him up.”

I crept to Sammy’s side and peered through the water intently. For a
long
time. “Pull a little faster, Sam,” I said.

“Noooope,” he whispered. Sammy the crabbing expert.

The chicken neck at last came into view, a greedy crab busy ripping chunks from it. I thought to myself, as I eased the net into
the water, that crabs are like overgrown spiders that you can’t squish or drown. The ugly thing was just beginning to look around and get suspicious when I scooped underneath it and got it trapped. I hoisted it up out of the water and held it dripping over the deck.

“I DID IT, I DID IT!” Sammy shouted loud enough for all the rest of the crabs to hear.

Jackson took the net from me. “If you could get the tongs, Sarah —”

“He’s my crab,” Sammy objected. “I want to do the tongs.”

“Okay, Sam,” Jackson agreed. “You can do the tongs.”

I handed them to Sammy quite willingly.

“So we’re going to grab this guy with the tongs, right, Sam? And put him in the wire creel. If you could pull in the creel, Sarah.” I turned to get it. “No, Sam, wait for Sarah to bring the creel. No, wait, buddy!”

I turned around with the wire rectangle. Sammy hadn’t waited. He was coming aft with the crab gripped in the tongs. I just had time to think,
This isn’t good
, when Sammy’s foot caught in one of the boat’s ribs, and he pitched forward. He caught himself before he fell, but the crab went airborne. It landed square on my chest and snagged into my long hair with a claw and two or three of those spider legs.

“OH, MY GOD!” I said, reasonably calmly, I thought, given the circumstances. “OH, MY GOD!” I repeated for emphasis, and instinctively leaned forward, swinging the crab away from my body.

Jackson was trying to help me. I know this because he staggered toward me over the seat. His problem was, he was laughing so hard, he almost fell overboard. “Stop moving,” he wheezed between gut-wrenching spasms of laughter. “S-stop moving.”

I heard a high pitched noise that sounded something like
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeee,”
and realized that it was me, squealing like a little girl.

“Stop,” Jackson gasped. “Stop swinging your ha-
ha-ha-ha-ha
.”

I forced myself to stand still. Jackson’s hand shot in and caught the crab’s free claw. He pulled it away from my face and, mercifully, the thing released me. Jackson opened the creel at my feet and popped the crab inside.

“Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo,”
he said, winding down, sitting weakly on his bench, wiping tears from his eyes.

“You catched it, Sarah,” Sam said with genuine admiration, and he jumped a little in the air, pumping his fist. “All
riiight
!”

So, then, I started to laugh. And Jackson started in again. And Sammy joined us. And after a little while, we moved to another fishing spot, where we hadn’t scared all the crabs.

When we got back to the dock at home, Jackson told us he’d deal with the crabs — that it might be better for me not to risk another close encounter. Which sounded good to me. Sam and I skipped off the boat with nothing to carry and nothing to do. We climbed up the steps, singing a little crabbing song Sammy had just invented. The tune was the same six-note one Sam always hummed. I had to fake the words, but Sam was a very forgiving singing partner.

We burst through the kitchen door into the shadows of an unlit room. The woman who lifted her head to face me was my grandmother, the way she’d been forty years before. She had a glass with golden liquor in it. Her shoulders were rounded and hunched. Her face was bleak.

“Where have you been?”

I was confused for a moment. Why was this vision talking to me? Then Ida’s face became my mother’s, equally cold. “Where have you been?” she repeated.

“Jeez, I’m sorry,” I said. “We thought we were going on a quick errand with Jackson, but then it turned into this crabbing expedition —”

“Why are you spending so much time with that boy?”

Sammy slipped out the door to the rear hall. I wished I could go with him.

“Jackson’s a really nice guy, Mom, and really great with Sammy —”

“Why? You never stop to ponder that question, Sarah. What’s in it for the other guy? What does he want from you?”

“I didn’t think it was that big of a d —”

“You didn’t think at all. That’s your problem. You just don’t think. What do you suppose Jackson is thinking? Haven’t you noticed how he looks at you? Is it
fair
for you to be encouraging him?”

Encouraging him?
Oh, God, she thought he had a crush on me.
Did
he have a crush on me?

“Look!” I blurted. “There is
nothing
going on between me and Jackson. Richard is coming by tomorrow morning and we’re going to spend the day together at his school. Okay? Everything is fine. Everybody’s using everyone else for their own nefarious purposes, exactly the way they’re supposed to, all right, Mom? Jackson is just a friend. God! He’s not even that — we’re leaving in ten days. He’s just someone to kill time with, okay?”

I heard the smallest noise. I turned and saw the exterior door was barely ajar. I opened it. The pot of crabs had been left on the step. Jackson was nowhere to be seen.

When I turned back into the kitchen, I saw my grandmother again. She was bleary-eyed and unsteady on her feet. The drink in her hand sloshed as she waved her arm, gesturing. “It’s
your
fault,” she shouted. “
You
did this. I told you and told you that you had to be more careful. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t been so
stupid
and
cold
and
careless
.”

The auburn-haired girl she was shouting at sat stone-still in her chair, staring at the table. She was my mother, younger than I, and tears rolled silently down her cheeks.

I slammed out the back door, wrenching myself loose from that vision. Gramma had been right. Everything came apart because of my mother. Because she didn’t care how she hurt people.

I had been stupid. I had let my fear of her make me say stupid things. I didn’t know if there was any way to unsay them. But I was going to try. “Jackson,” I called. I walked around to the stone stairs. “Jackson?”

There was no answer.

I started walking on the path that ran west along the bluff. I wasn’t sure where I was going, and the sky was darkening. But Rose’s house had to be somewhere up ahead.

I would find him and apologize. Tell him I didn’t mean it — that I was just trying to get Mom off my back. That we
were
friends. We
were
— what? I definitely didn’t want to lead him on, if he
did
like me. But he knew I was kind of seeing Richard.

I walked past the graveyard, with its single plot of bare earth covering the grandmother I had hardly known. She’d been closer to Jackson than she had to me. He had been fond of her. And she had told him about her family, about us. So maybe Ida’s family felt like part of his family. Maybe that’s what I sensed when he talked to me like we had known each other forever. And why Mom thought he paid too much attention to me.

I entered the woods at the end of the field. The darkness gathering in the air huddled more thickly under the trees. The ground rose to my right, but the path continued mostly on a level. Trees and bushes walled me in on both sides, blackness on dark gray.

Where was their house? It was getting hard to see my way. I kept veering off into branches, and stumbled each time the path descended unexpectedly. I thought about turning back, but figured I must be close now, closer to Rose’s than to the house. I could ask them to loan me a light for the walk back.

I heard something up ahead. The sound of someone running. Hard, fast.

“Jackson?” I called, and walked a little quicker. “Jackson? Ca —”

I had wandered too far left, into the bushes, and my foot found a place where the trail wasn’t — where the bluff dropped off toward the river below. I teetered there, grabbing at the air, trying to find some purchase with my sliding left foot. Dislodged stones bounced down the slope, hitting dirt and wood and rock and water. Small branches bent and slid through my fingers, shedding leaves in my hands. I realized with sickening clarity that I was going over, and down.

Then a hand caught my arm.

I was pulled back onto someone’s chest, and an arm went around me and steadied me. I grabbed hold compulsively, vertigo still rushing in my head.

“You okay?” Jackson asked. He was gasping for breath; his heart pounded beneath my cheek. I felt absurdly like bursting into tears.

“I almost fell.”

“You’re all right now,” he said into my hair. “You’re okay.” He sounded shaken.

“You caught me. How’d you do that? How’d you know?” I was babbling. I needed to breathe more slowly. But how had he done that? How had he been there, just in time, just in the right place?

“I heard you crashing along. The trail gets really close to the edge right here. I was worried.”

So he’d come running up the trail and got here at just the right moment. He’d caught me at just the right moment. That was so — Jackson. Always catching things.

I must have spoken aloud, because he said, “What?”

“You’re always catching things,” I repeated stupidly.

He started to laugh. Really hard. He had to back off and bend over and lean against his own knees. “Oh, jeez,” he gasped, catching his breath, “you don’t even know. Maybe if
you’d
stop dropping things.”

He chuckled again. And I knew I was forgiven for the ugly things I had shouted in the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” I said anyway. “I didn’t mean what I said to my mother. She makes me crazy sometimes. You and I
are
friends.”

“No,” he said solemnly, “we’re more than friends.”

“What?”

He smiled. “We’re related, remember?”

“That’s right.” I returned his smile. “We’re cousins.”

“I’ll walk you back,” he said. He took my hand and guided me along the path. I let myself enjoy the feel of his hand, a solid thing, a safe thing after my near fall. It was not quite full dark
when we emerged from the woods. “Think you can get there from here without breaking your neck, coz?”

“No promises,” I said, “but I’ll try.”

“Yeah, you try,” he said, smiling. “We going treasure hunting tonight?”

“Tomorrow,” I said. “I think I’m going to need to lie down.”

“Make sure you eat some of those crabs first.” His voice came back to me from the darkness under the trees. “Good night, Sarah.”

My father had come to dinner again. “Sammy called. Said he’d caught some crabs for me to cook,” Dad explained.

Way to go, Sammy.
I’d been a little worried about the cooking part, which, fortunately, Dad had already mostly taken care of. I was not fond of the cooking part of crabs.

Inside twenty minutes, the four of us sat down and began the serious work of extracting meat. Mom cracked the shell for Sam, but he did his own picking. He and I both had been eating crab from the time we started chewing.

Afterward Dad tucked Sam into bed while I got started cleaning up. Mom went into the dining room to work on party stuff she had spread all over the table.

Dad was going to come back and help me, but he only got as far as the dining room. His muffled voice filtered through to me.

“I don’t know why you had to use Sarah as an excuse to throw this party, Anne.”

I couldn’t hear the words of my mother’s response, but her tone was curt and defensive. I turned off the water and went to stand closer to the dining-room door.

“You are going to make a hell of a lot of money off of this place one way or the other,” Dad went on. “You didn’t have to embarrass your daughter for a few thousand more.”

“How about several hundred thousand? Or a couple million, when you add in the auction. But let’s not even plug money into the equation, Tom. Maybe I just think it’ll be important to Sarah, someday, to look back on this party in her family’s house. How come it
never
occurs to you that I might be thinking of someone besides myself?”

“Maybe because that’s how I experienced our life together.”

“Oh, great,” my mom came back at him. “Let’s just open up all the old wounds, shall we? Rehash it all. Because
I’m
not the one who betrayed our marriage.”

I had heard enough of this argument. I went out the door to the rear hallway.

A man I didn’t recognize came through the arch from the east wing. My grandmother followed after him, her face twisted in anger. “If you leave, don’t come back here,” she snarled. “Don’t call or write or ever come back here again.”

The man kept walking through the farther arch to the front hall. “I’ll tell the girl you died,” Ida yelled after him. “I don’t ever want to see your face —” She disappeared through the archway behind him, and her voice turned off like a light.

I ran the same route after them. I had to get to the stairs before my parents’ argument broke up, before my father made his escape through the front hall. I didn’t want them to know there had been a witness. Somehow it was worse if there had been a witness.

I shut the door to my room and piled some clothes behind it. That would stop the light and make it harder to open the door from the outside.

But I wanted company. I wanted to be with someone who’d gone through some of the same things I was going through. I wanted the feeling of not being alone.

I got out the box of journals and photos hidden under the bed. I took up Fiona’s handwritten record:

Persephone again. This lost girl. I wondered if anyone had ever come along to save her. Who knew? Who in fact knew if she ever even existed? After all, Fiona had spent time in an asylum. I went back to her entry, which was not quite finished:

A trapdoor in the middle of the maze? Oh, my God.

I hugged the book to me, genuinely excited. A tunnel. And an entire buried house. And maybe — the Captain’s lost diamonds? The thrill of the treasure hunt snagged me again. I couldn’t wait to tell Jackson.

Perhaps there was more.

I looked at the next entry, but it was dated 1761, years later. With no sequence to the journal’s contents, there was no way to find a continuation of the story, if there even was one.

I shuddered involuntarily. The same words. She’d thought of the exact same words. Could you inherit a way of thinking — no, a
thought
— from your crazy great-grandmother?

I hunted for the amber around my neck. It seemed improbable that it was the same as the one Deirdre had worn. And yet, why not? This was Amber House, after all, where the past was never really over and done with.

I hid the journals back in their spot. I unblocked the door and peeked out. The house was dark. Dad must have left and Mom must have gone to bed. I closed the door and shut the darkness out again. And went to sleep with the light on.