In All Deep Places (17 page)

Ten minutes later we stood outside Nell’s ghastly green house while my dad climbed an extension ladder and handed me the
storm windows one by one.

“Does she even know we’re doing this?” I asked my dad as
we stacked the panes in Nell’s garage.

“Mom called her,” Dad replied. “She knows. And though she won’t say it, I know she’s grateful, Luke. If she hadn’t wanted us to do it, she would have said so. You know she always makes clear
what she
doesn’t
want.”

“You got that right,” I mumbled.

“Luke,” my father said gently, but with authority.

I turned to look at him.

“Even Nell needs to be reminded, from time to time, how wonderful a roasting turkey smells.” Then he turned to go back
outside.

On the last day of school, a Friday and the thirtieth day of
May, I turned sixteen. That afternoon Dad took me to
Carrow, where I passed my driving test with a near-perfect score.
Two weeks later I flew to South Dakota to spend a month with my grandparents. Then my parents and Ethan drove to South Dakota to pick me up and spend the traditional seven days’ vacation.

I was lying in my grandfather’s hammock when my family arrived on a hot, early July day. My grandmother had just brought me a glass of lemonade, and I was making notes for a story I
was concocting about an undercover agent for the government
who could see into the future. I saw the family Buick pull into the driveway, and I sat up as Ethan and my parents got out. I stretched and lazily got to my feet, pretending like I wasn’t anx
ious to see my family, though in truth I was.

“Luke!” My mother came to me and wrapped
me in her arms. “We’ve missed you! Phone calls just aren’t the
same!

“Hey, Mom,” I said, returning her hug.

“Luke, how’s it going?” Dad slapped me on the back,
giving me a manly, one-armed embrace.

“Good.”

“Hey!” Ethan said. “Whose hammock?”

“Grandpa’s. I helped him put it up.”

“Grandma and Grandpa inside?” Dad said as they began
walking toward the house.

“Yep. Things the same at home?”

“Pretty much,” his mother said as they walked.

“I got a new skateboard,” Ethan interjected. “And Patti Carmichael’s dog had puppies. Mrs. Liekfisch’s cat died. And Norah and
Kieran are back.”

I whipped my head around. “They are?”

“Yep,” Ethan said, running ahead.

I searched my parents’ faces for confirmation. My mother’s face was expressionless. I turned to my dad. “Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“For good?”

My father kept walking toward the house. “I don’t know. I
didn’t actually talk to them or Nell. Ethan saw Kieran for a few minutes when we were loading up the car to leave.”

“Oh.”

I looked at his mother but her eyes were trained on the steps of the porch as she climbed them. “Can we talk about this later?” she said. Her hand reached for the doorknob, and she went into the
house without waiting for an answer.

I spent the next seven days relishing my final week in South
Dakota one moment and anxious to get home the next. Even the camping trip to Custer State Park, one of my favorite places, failed
to completely hold my interest. I didn’t know why it was so im
portant to see Norah and Kieran, but it made me restless to picture them, especially Norah, in Halcyon, probably swimming in
Goose Pond, perhaps with Matt and Derek. That thought alone annoyed me.

When the vacation was finally over, the drive home had never seemed so boring and monotonous. We pulled into Halcyon around nine-thirty at night. I could see lights on
in the Janvik house, but I had no intention of going over there
and ringing the doorbell. I helped my dad unload the car, stealing multiple glances at Nell’s front windows, wondering if
a face might appear through the curtains. But it did not happen.

I took my suitcase up to my room, opened it, and began to
unpack, needing something to do. Usually I let it lie open in my bedroom for several days after the family vacation until my mother
would nearly explode in frustration and demand that I unpack
it and put it away. I had nearly emptied it when it occurred to
me that maybe Norah would come to the tree house that night.
If she had noticed that our car had pulled up into the driveway, maybe she would try to sneak over and say hello. I looked at my wristwatch. It was a few minutes before ten o’clock, the usual meeting time. I walked over to the window, raised the
glass and the screen, and climbed out. I inched along the massive branch and ducked inside the tree house.

There seemed to be a dark shape in the corner.

“Norah?” I whispered.

But there was no answer.

I bent down and switched on the camping lantern. The dark shape was just my old beanbag chair. She wasn’t there. I crawled over to the beanbag and eased myself into it, inwardly chiding myself for imagining Norah would suddenly decide to climb into the tree house after having been away for seven
months.

I leaned my head back and gazed up at the stars through the window opening. They were shimmering in the heavy velvet sky. Wisps of cloud fell about the moonlight like illuminated gauze. The songs of crickets and bullfrogs began to lull me, and I started to relax. Then the sound of a motorcycle broke the music of the evening. The sound got closer until it was right below me. I sat
up and looked out the opening. In a pool of amber light cast by the streetlight, I saw Norah climb off the back of the motorcycle. Her
arms had been around the driver’s waist. The driver turned as she
got off, and I saw his face. It was Matt.

A thin bolt of anger, or something like it, coursed through my
body.

What was she doing with Matt?

“’Bye!” Norah was saying.

“See ya,” Matt called out, and then his cycle bolted down the street like, as Mrs. Liekfisch was fond of saying, a bat out of hell.

Norah began to walk up the path to Nell’s front door. I made no move to silently retreat from the opening. I continued
to stare at her. Perhaps she caught a glimpse of my head as she got closer to the tree house, or perhaps she was just suddenly aware she was being watched. She stopped and looked up.

“Luke!” she said, and her voice sounded bright. “You’re home! Did you get home today?”

“Yeah. A little while ago,” I answered, purposely keeping my voice as toneless as possible.

She took two steps toward me. “Kieran and I are here for a
while.”

“So I heard.”

She took another step toward me.

The closer she got, the more I could see she had changed in the seven months she’d been gone. She was taller, and she had filled out in the places where a girl’s body becomes a woman’s.

“Can I come up?”

I swallowed. “If you want.”

She walked to the tree and disappeared from view. I could hear her climbing up. Then her head poked through the opening in
the floor, and she clambered inside.

“So you were in South Dakota at your grandparents’?” she asked as she swung her legs in.

“Yep.”

I watched her settle into a cross-legged position. Her now womanlike face stared back at him. She seemed to be waiting for
me to say more.

“Aunt Eleanor went on a cruise,” she said when I did not speak up.

“Oh.”

An awkward pause followed.

“Grandma came up to get us.”

“So you’re only staying for a little while?” The question fell from my lips before I
had time to consider if it mattered to me.

“I don’t know. Grandma hasn’t said. Sometimes she acts like she’s glad to have us back, and other times it’s like she can’t stand
us. She’s different… I don’t know. Sometimes I’ll catch her looking at Kieran and it almost looks like she wants him. Like she loves him. And then the next minute she’s yelling at him. It’s weird.”

I said nothing. That didn’t seem weird to me. It seemed
like good ol’ Nell. Impossible to please.

“Living with Aunt Eleanor hasn’t been all that bad,” Norah
said, moving on. “I mean, it’s not the greatest, but she takes us
places like the zoo and museums and stuff. I think she really misses
her grandkids. They live in Nevada. She hardly ever sees them.”

I knew it was my turn to say something, but all I could
think of to say was,
What were you doing on the back of Matt’s motorcycle?
I didn’t know if I was angry, jealous, or concerned. Or
maybe a crazy combination of all three.

“Luke, are you mad at me?” she said, giving me exactly what
I needed—an opportunity to find out.

“What were you doing with Matt?”

“What?”

When I repeated the question, I felt the warm rush of embarrassment creep across my face. I knew how I sounded. I sounded like I was the wounded boyfriend. I told myself I
was neither. Not wounded. Not the boyfriend.

“He gave me a ride home,” she said plainly, studying my face.

“A ride home?”

“Yeah.”

I wanted to ask,
From where?
But I felt silly even thinking
it. That’s what a parent would ask.

“He invited me to one of his friend’s houses. Grandma said I
could go if I was home by ten.”

“You went to one of his friend’s houses? And Nell let you go?” I said, feeling angry all over again.

“Well, yeah.” Norah frowned in confusion. “Luke, are you and
Matt, like, mad at each other or something?”

I turned my head to consider my answer without having to look at her. It wasn’t that I was mad at Matt; I just didn’t have
that much in common with him anymore. The things that Matt liked to do with his free time reminded me too much of Darrel
Janvik and all the things
he
had liked to do. I didn’t want to end up like Darrel Janvik. I didn’t want Norah to end up like Darrel
Janvik. I found myself wondering for the first time if it truly was possible to break the curse. If Norah could grow up and be a Janvik
without acting like one. If it were going to happen, she’d have to
stay clear of people like Matt.

“He and I just don’t like the same things anymore, Norah.”

“Like what things?”

“Well, he likes to go to drinking parties, he likes to smoke pot,
he likes to skip school, he likes to get into trouble,” I answered.
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here in Halcyon. I don’t want to have to work the line in the paint factory because I’ve got no other options. And I don’t want the highlight of my week to be drowning my paycheck in beer at The Eight Ball in Carrow.”

I had not meant for my explanation to sound like a sad com
mentary on the demise of Darrel Janvik, but there it was. “And that’s where Matt is headed,” I continued. “I don’t want to hang out with people like that.”

Her gray eyes
held my gaze. They looked like metal in the mix of moonglow and lantern light. I wondered if she was seeing in her mind the lifeless body of her hopeless father, lying in a pool of
blood and wasted opportunities.

“Do you think I’m like that?” she asked.

Images of Norah caring patiently for Kieran, of her deflecting Nell’s and Darrel’s constant verbal abuse, of her tireless efforts to locate her mother floated across my mind. She was not like them. She was not like Nell and Darrel and Matt. But she could be. Any
body could be. All you had to do is want it. I did not think she wanted it.

“No,” I said gently. “I don’t.”

She seemed to visibly relax. “You think I should stay away from
Matt?”

“Matt and I have been friends since kindergarten, and I’ll probably always think of him as my friend, but I don’t think he’s safe to be around.”

“Then I won’t hang out with him anymore,” she said firmly.
“I don’t want to stay in Halcyon either. I want to go back to San
Diego when I grow up. Maybe I can run a little hotel on the beach,
and Kieran can work at Sea World like he’s always wanted. And
our mom can live with us. If she were happy, I don’t think she’d do
drugs. And if she lived with Kieran and me on the beach, she’d be happy. I got a letter from her. Did I tell you that?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“She’s hoping to get out early, in two more years instead of
four. She didn’t know a cop had been killed. That guy she was with
never told her he’d shot a cop. I told you she couldn’t have had
anything to do with killing anybody.”

I didn’t know what to say to this.