Blue Diary (28 page)

“My God. You're more of an idiot than I would have guessed.” Although the sun was strong, I had goose bumps on my arms and legs. For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for my sister.

“It's not the way you think.” Rosarie's cheeks were pink with the heat. “He doesn't look at me the way other men do. He respects me.”

If Ethan Ford didn't want her, then he was the only man in town who didn‘t, and maybe that's what interested Rosarie most. “It's because he kissed your feet. It made you crazy.”

“Oh, shut up,” Rosarie said, but she was smiling. She was thinking all sorts of things, but I was pretty sure the one thing she wasn't thinking about was how Ethan Ford had taken the life of some girl in Maryland.

“I'll bet he used his tongue.”

“I said, shut up!” Rosarie pulled my hair, but she didn't deny it. “You think you're so smart,” she went on, “but you don't know anything. You think Dad was so high and mighty because he killed himself and supposedly spared us so much pain, but he was just taking the easy way out. Ethan Ford has lived a perfect life, he's actually saved people. And he's not the only one in this world who ever made a mistake.”

I looked at my sister and thought of how she must have felt the night she found our father. She had begged my mother to take her to the mall in Hamilton, she'd had a fit if you really want to know, and because of that our father had gotten the chance to be alone when my grandmother and I went up to unpack in the attic. I supposed you could see that as a mistake if you looked at it in a certain way You might think you have to pay for such an oversight for the rest of your life.

That night, when everyone was asleep, I went into the garage and lit a candle and begged my father to forgive Rosarie for her unkind words.
She knows not what she says,
I told him.
Or what she does, either, when it comes right down to it.
Our father was the sort of man who thought things over carefully and weighed his words before he spoke. He must have measured the length of the days he had left against the sorrow he would have caused us with each of those days. It didn't really matter what Rosarie thought. Everything our father did, he did out of love. I'm sure of that. I didn't need anyone to tell me that he would have showed true conviction if he'd forced himself to go on living. That might be true for somebody else, but it wasn't true for him.

Some people needed saving, and I was beginning to realize that Rosarie was among them. That night I stayed awake, thinking of how I could set things right. Before I fell asleep I made a vow that I would complete three good deeds. I would choose the tasks that were the hardest for me, the way people always do before setting off on a quest. If it was easy, it was worthless, even I knew that. There were so many things that were hard for me, I could have had a ten-page list, but it came down to this: I would return the stolen books to the library; I would see to it that a stone was put up at my father's grave: and I would make certain to protect Rosarie, even if that meant protecting her from herself

There was no law against taking care of the easiest task first, so I brought the books out to the garage, a few at a time, and piled them into an old wagon. I waited until dark before going down to the library, dragging the wagon behind me. It was the time in August when the crickets start going crazy, and in spite of the heat and how many sprinklers were switched on, anyone could tell it was the end of the summer. I started thinking about the things Collie and I had done together, and how I'd never felt like I needed another friend when he was around, and how Rosarie had said it would all change. I'd probably gone ahead and brought that change on myself when I kissed him out at the old house. He looked at me in a different way now, like he was trying to figure me out and having no luck whatsoever.

As I walked through town, I was worried about what excuse I could give if somebody stopped me and questioned me about the wagon of books, but a bomb might as well have dropped for all the people I ran into. Even though I've lived in Monroe my whole life long, I started thinking maybe someday I should move somewhere where there are people on the street after nine o'clock. It was so quiet you could hear the air make a pinging sound, and the linden leaves rustled like paper.

I went past Hannah's without anyone seeing me; even Brendan Derry, who was at a window seat, sorrowfully drinking coffee and writing some sappy poetry for Rosarie, failed to notice when I went by. Kite's Bakery was closing early these days, and there were no rallies going on at the firehouse, and the stores on Front Street were shut down for the night. I figured I was in luck. I felt so sure of myself I started to whistle, or maybe it was fear that made me do that, I don't know. All I know is that when I turned onto Liberty and saw the library. I got a shaky feeling. Maybe I was thinking about my father, and how nice Grace Henley had been to let him take out so many books when he was sick, or maybe I just didn't like the dark. I left the wagon beside some honeysuckle vines, but when I took the first bunch of books up to the library. I felt kind of exposed without the old apple tree to hide behind.

I slipped every book through the return slot, even though the edition of
King Arthur
was so thick I had to push, hard, until it fell with a clump on top of the others, just inside the door. That was when I glanced up and saw Miss Henley watching through the window. We looked at each other, and I felt like crying because instead of opening the door and screaming at me, she smiled. She'd known all along that I was stealing those books, she just never said anything.

I turned and ran. I grabbed the wagon and pulled it behind me so that it banged into my legs and left bruises. I ran so fast I thought my lungs would break apart, but I kept going long after I was past Front Street. I thought about the people in my life who were good, people who weren't the least bit like me, the kind of individuals who never accused you of anything, even when they were well aware of all you'd done. I had overheard Grace Henley talking to Margaret Peck, who volunteered at the library, when Mrs. Peck brought up the subject of the books that seemed to be disappearing from the shelves. As it turned out, Grace Henley hadn't been worried. I heard her say that in her experience, missing books often returned, sometimes after weeks or months, occasionally, after years; sooner or later, they usually came back, as if they'd returned of their own accord, drawn back to the library like sheep to the barn.

When I got home, I stood outside, trying to catch my breath. At this hour, everyone I loved was sleeping or already gone. I stood there for a long time and thought about my father and how no matter where I lived or how far I went. I would always think about him. I hadn't known that before, not really, but I knew it now, It would be harder to get to sleep tonight without all those books hidden around my room, but as far as I could tell, it wouldn't be impossible.

THE LAST WEEKS OF AUGUST ARE ALways a time for family reunions and blueberry pie, the season when goldenrod appears along roadsides and the lilies that bloom in daylight lose their short-lived petals as soon as moonlight begins to spill from the sky. The process is so rapid that by morning there is often nothing left of these flowers but green stalks and the yellowing tendrils of leaves, as though summer were already ending while most people were safely in bed. Charlotte Kite, however, notices what happens to the lilies at night, because she can't sleep. She is victim to her own racing thoughts, incessant, surging terrors that keep her up at odd hours, at two and at four, so that she is awake to hear the fluttering of the sparrows when they first stir in the bushes: she listens to the quiet cooing of doves. She is already at her window when the first radiant bands of light break open the leaden blue sky of morning, a witness to the hour when the fallen petals of the lilies are curling up in the grass like bits of paper, too thin and delicate to last.

For five years or more, unbeknownst to her, renegade cells have been finding a place in Charlotte's body. Now that she's had the tumor removed, along with several lymph nodes, her treatment will devour the next ten months of her life. Already, she knows that win, lose, or draw, nothing will ever be the same. There is a scar under her arm that aches, and her left breast is half the size of her right, but what keeps her up at night is the realization that everything she has at this moment can be lost in an instant. She doesn't want to waste precious time with something as prosaic as sleep. Every second is a second that belongs to her, one she understands could well be her last.

The illness and the intricacies of dealing with treatment are actually far easier to handle without Jay around. Everyone knows Jay has never been the sort of man to see anyone through hard times, though he has the best intentions. He's called several times, which is sweet of him, always with the tentative greeting of someone who can't stand to be around illness. Charlotte remembers that Jay often found excuses not to visit his own father at the nursing home; he has always turned away from the scene of an accident. He wants to hear good news, or nothing at all. She can't picture Jay walking through the doors of the hospital in Hamilton, let alone being there waiting for her to snap out of the anesthesia or holding her hand while she suffers through treatment.

Charlotte has no second thoughts when she hires Barney Stark to act on her behalf in her divorce proceedings. Although she's more than willing to give Jay whatever he asks for, Barney gently lets her know it will most probably take the best part of a year to complete the divorce, considering the complicated financial arrangements of the bakery. Well, what does that matter to Charlotte? Her treatment will take nearly as long, with radiation sandwiched between the cruel months of chemotherapy: she might as well throw in the divorce proceedings along with the rest of the mess.

“I know this is bad timing,” Barney said before she left his office. Clearly, there wasn't a soul in the village who hadn't learned of her illness, Barney among them. He had an apologetic look, as though he was the one who had failed her.

“The marriage was bad timing,” Charlotte informed him. “The breakup is perfect. I hear you're in a similar marital situation,” she'd added then, which was perhaps less than thoughtful. But how could she not know? People tend to talk in a town the size of Monroe: it's impossible to make a move without everyone being apprised of an individual's new address weeks before the furniture is delivered. In Barney's case, the new address is the conference room of his office, where he's set up a cot, and a hot plate, and one of those little refrigerators kids in college dorms fill with cans of soda and beer.

“It should have happened a while ago.” Charlotte had gotten into her car and Barney was leaning down to talk to her through the open window. He could feel his heart pounding, or maybe it was just the heat of the day that was affecting him so, and all the stress and exertion of packing up and leaving home, no matter how right the decision might be. “We just kept pretending everything was okay.”

He backed off and waved to Charlotte as she drove away. His marriage would have failed sooner or later, and he would have moved out of his house even if Charlotte Kite had never existed. True, he might have waited a while longer, but that would have been a disservice to everyone involved. When it came right down to it, the worst part about the whole thing was having to tell his girls. It was a measure of how well they loved him that all three of his daughters ran off to their rooms, slamming their doors behind them, even Kelly, who was usually so even-tempered and understanding. Barney went to speak to each one individually, and assured Kelly, and then Josie, and lastly and most difficult his dear Sophie, that his love would remain constant. Though none of the girls was speaking to him, they adored him in return, and so they did him the service of listening to him as they tried to hold back their tears.

On the day he packed up his car with his belongings, Barney kissed his wife good-bye and thanked her for all that they'd been to each other, then went off to coach Little League, as he always did on Saturdays. Sophie still wasn't speaking to him, but she accepted a ride to the field beyond the high school with an angry nod. It was a bright day, and the early evening promised to be perfect. In the distance, sunlight threaded through cumulus clouds, and the windows of the high school flashed with streaks of iridescence, now blue, now pink, now lavender. Barney's suitcases and boxes rattled around in the back of the car, and Sophie looked over her shoulder.

“You're not a very good packer,” she observed. “You're disorganized.”

“Maybe you can help me unpack later.” They pulled into the lot at the edge of the field to park. Barney had the team's equipment in his overstuffed trunk, and while Sophie helped him unload the bases, he said as lightly as he could, “No matter what changes, my feelings for you never will. You'll always be my daughter, and I'll always love you.”

Sophie grimaced as though she'd heard it before. “I thought you loved Mom, too.”

“Well, I do, but this is something different.”

“She told us there's probably another woman, that's why you're leaving so suddenly.”

Horns honked as parents dropped off their children—the game was against the team from Essex, their fiercest opponents, and many of the parents would be staying to watch. Frankly the Bluebirds didn't stand a chance of winning, especially now that Collie Ford had quit the team; he had such a fine, strong arm, they could always depend on him to be consistent.

“To be honest, there is someone I've always cared about, but I don't think she knows I'm alive, so she can't really count as another woman.”

“Puppy love,” Sophie said. “That's what that is.”