Light from a Distant Star (34 page)

“Come on! The bell’s gonna ring!” she yelled. “You’re not being fair!”

Arms crossed, Bucky had been leaning against the chain-link fence, watching. Really watching Brianna, Nellie could tell.

“Hey, look out!” he cried, jumping at Nellie, causing her to drop the ball. “Your turn,” he told Jessica, who yanked at the crotch of her tight pants and ran into her square, laughing.

At the end of the day, Nellie lingered outside the classroom door. As soon as Mrs. Duffy left, she slipped back in and rummaged through the wastebasket. The crumpled drawing was at the bottom. She smoothed it out and put it in a notebook. She was going to send it to Max.

N
ELLIE AND
K
RISSIE
were headed downtown. She had a dollar in her pocket and an hour left before she had to be home for Henry. “What a jerk,” she said, meaning Bucky.

“He was just tryna help Jessica,” Krissie said.

“Bucky Saltonstall never helps anybody but himself, believe me.”

“Well, he seemed nice to me.”

“Oh, God,” Nellie groaned, hearing a familiar voice.

“Wait up!” Jessica called, running to catch up. “I was looking for you guys. I even went in the park.” Panting, she tried to catch her breath. Her cheeks were bright red. She kept pulling at the back seam of her pants as she walked. Other than the weight she’d gained since Nellie’d last seen her, little had changed. She acted as if nothing had happened between them. She couldn’t stop talking, mostly about Bucky. She’d seen him smoking in the park this morning and then again a few minutes ago, as soon as he got off school grounds, and guess where he’d hidden his cigarettes? In a French dictionary.

“He showed me.” She hurried to keep up. “He, like, cut the pages in the shape of the pack.”

“Ooh, that’s original,” Nellie said, rolling her eyes.

“He’s gonna get caught. It’s just a matter of time,” Krissie warned in her teacher’s-daughter voice.

“He drinks, too,” Jessica said. “Beer. In his yard he’s got this, like, underground thing. He dug it out and put a cooler in, and that’s where he keeps it.”

“What a loser,” Nellie groaned.

“No, he’s not,” Jessica said with a scornful look.

“Right.” Nellie quickened her pace.

“You’re just jealous, that’s your problem,” Jessica said.

Just then a horn tooted. Mrs. Cooper’s silvery blue BMW pulled up alongside. “What do you think you’re doing?” Her face was gray.

“I’m going with them. Downtown,” Jessica added in a weak whine.

“I have been sitting outside of that school for the last fifteen minutes waiting for you. And then I went inside looking for you. And now you’re late.”

Late for Jessica’s therapy, Nellie knew. It had always been on Mondays, right after school.

“I forgot!”

“Get in the car!”

“Well, if I’m late, then just call—I can go another day!” Jessica said.

“Jessica.” Mrs. Cooper fortified herself with a deep breath. “Get in this car and get in right now, and let’s not have any problems about this. Let’s just move on from here. Okay?” she said with a forced smile and warning eyes. She had yet to acknowledge the other girls.

“No, just make another appointment, that’s all, and then I can—”

“Jessica—”

“—go with them. I never have a chance to be with my—”

“Stop it!”

“—friends, and now you won’t let me.”

“Are you going to make me get out of this car?”

Yes
, Nellie thought,
please get out and wrestle her to the ground, so we can be on our way
.

“I just want to go with my friends, that’s all,” Jessica whined with a punch on the car door.

“Well, maybe you can all go tomorrow. How does that sound, girls?” Mrs. Cooper asked, the steel leash of her gaze locked on her daughter. “Sodas’ll be on me!”

“Okay,” Krissie agreed in a wan voice.

“I’ll pick you all up after school. It’ll be fun!” Mrs. Cooper called out as Jessica climbed, still whining, into the front seat.

“I can’t!” Nellie called back the minute the door lock clicked. “I’ve gotta do stuff. Thanks though!” Ignoring Mrs. Cooper’s glare, she waved. She had to get free of Jessica’s control somehow. Jessica might not get it, but surely her mother would.

“See! I told you!” Jessica was shrieking as they drove off.

A
S ALWAYS, THE
first thing Nellie did after school was bring in the mail. Still no letter from Max. But here on this warm September day right after the advertising circulars and bills was a pale green envelope postmarked Australia. The return address sticker said Blair Brigham.
She ran into the kitchen, turned on the electric kettle, and waved the envelope through the rising steam. The flap curled quickly and she peeled open the envelope. Inside was one page of the same pale green stationery.

Her hands shook as she read the grim, black-inked script.

“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod,” Nellie panted, taking the stairs so fast her glasses slid down her nose and she kept tripping. Ruth would be home soon. She locked her bedroom door, dropped to her knees, and frantically clawed out dust and shoes from her closet floor. She lifted the strip of linoleum, then slid the letter under the loose board into the dark, gritty cavity that now held two. And if she didn’t get Ruth to stop writing to Danny Brigham there’d be more, or worse, maybe even a lawsuit. She couldn’t very well give her this letter and not the first one. Here was the rueful liar’s conundrum: the entire truth or none at all. But maybe she’d think the reason she’d never gotten Daniel Brigham’s letter was because it had gotten lost in the mail. Sometimes that happened. Just last week hadn’t Nellie heard her father telling her mother that maybe Mr. Cooper’s copy of the signed purchase and sale agreement had gotten delayed in the mail. But then again, did she want to be responsible for her sister’s unhappiness? She knew how hurt
she
had felt reading Mrs. Brigham’s letter. She couldn’t imagine how painful it would be for Ruth to read. It might just push her over the edge, though exactly where and to what depths Nellie couldn’t begin to fathom, beyond the gleaming, dagger-point, paralyzing certainty that one way or another she was going to be in more trouble than she’d ever been in her entire life.

Downstairs, the front door banged shut, then came the thump of Ruth’s tossed backpack onto the floor. Nellie crawled back into the closet and pulled up the linoleum. She’d just destroy both letters and pray that’d be the end of it. But no, that was fear. This was no time for panic. She had to stay calm. She had to get tough. She needed to think. She dropped the linoleum and shoved the shoes back in. She’d learned her lesson. Never again would she interfere in someone else’s life. Certain things had to follow their own course. Their own destiny.

“I
T’S JUST BEEN OUR BEST YEAR
. G
ARDENING
, I
MEAN,
” M
ISS
Humboldt added, filling the doorway and breathing hard. The walk over had winded her. She had to get right back, she said, when Nellie’s mother invited her in. Sweat dripped down the sides of her face. She kept shaking the neck of her muumuu and puffing air into it.

Nellie’s mother was admiring the two sturdy trug baskets overflowing with zucchini, summer squash, bell peppers, radishes, cucumbers, pole beans, and tomatoes so richly red they didn’t look real. “Look at the size of this eggplant,” she marveled, then held it to her cheek. “And still warm from the sun.” She was touched and deeply grateful.

With no extra money for back-to-school expenses, Nellie’s mother had done something she’d vowed would never happen in this family. She had gotten a credit card. Finally! Never had Nellie been so proud as the moment in the shoe department at JCPenney when her mother opened her thin red wallet, and from one of three slots, the other two containing paltry library card and driver’s license, she removed that sleek plastic ticket to treasure. MasterCard. Its slow, reluctant passage from her mother’s hand to the clerk’s came with a swell of triumphant music. Or maybe it was just the soaring of Nellie’s heart, because now, finally, they were like everyone else. Whatever their necessities or desires, they could now be satisfied on a whim, at the drop of a hat—just hop in the car and get it, no more living according to the stingy dictates of the checking account balance. Nellie had spent the last few days poring over catalogs, earmarking pages, circling item numbers, and roaming the aisles of Walgreens’ breathless with the possibility of it all. She had new faith in her parents.

Her mother offered Miss Humboldt a cup of coffee. It was Sunday
morning and she’d just made a fresh pot. But Miss Humboldt couldn’t stay. She had to get right back. It was Tenley. His nerves. But at least he was back on his medication. She was hoping and praying he’d stay on it this time.

“Same as always,” she said when Nellie’s mother asked how she was doing. She said she was looking forward to the cooler weather. “The summers are just getting too hard what with the yard work and the gardens, and … all the other things …” Her voice trailed off.

“I know,” her mother agreed. “And this year with so many hours at the salon I’ve barely kept up with the weeding. In fact, that’s on today’s list, right, Nell?”

“Right.” Nellie nodded. First time she’d heard of it, but she knew that bright, burbly lilt was trying to fill dead air.

“And trimming the front shrubs,” her mother went on, peering at her now as she fretted about forsythia gone wild and low-hanging tree limbs. “Everything’s getting so overgrown. And all of a sudden there’s all this bittersweet everywhere I look. And you know how—”

“Sandy?”

“Yes? What? What is it, Louisa?”

Miss Humboldt’s face was buried in her hands. Her great shoulders trembled.

“Nellie,” her mother said, “go … just … go somewhere … please.”

So she darted around the corner.

This was just the worst thing she’d ever had to do, Miss Humboldt was saying. Even as a child Tenley had been single-minded, obsessive, paranoid—call it what you will—but she’d always known how to handle him, which usually consisted of hearing him out, letting him have his say, however unreasonable or angry it might be, and often was. And for years he’d listened and let her talk him down. But not anymore. Not since that terrible night, being attacked in his own yard, and then, to confirm his worst fears, the slaughter of that poor young woman right next door, here, in this very house.

“Slaughter?” her mother said. “You mean killed. Murdered.”

Same difference
, Nellie thought, “But that’s how Tenley sees it. And now he thinks there’s more to come. He’s afraid!” Miss Humboldt cried. “He’s absolutely terrified!”

“But they’ve got him, the man, the person that did it. He’s in jail.”

“I know, and I keep telling Tenley, but he won’t listen. And now … now he’s got a gun,” she said with a gasp.

“Oh, my God,” her mother said. “Have you called the police?”

“Well, no. I can’t. It’s perfectly legal. I mean, he filled out all the paperwork. He’s got his permit.”

“But that doesn’t mean he should have a gun. Especially when he’s so … so troubled.”

“I know. I know! And I keep thinking I’ll just take it, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll hide it, but he’s got this holster. He wears it. Night and day! Even when he goes to bed. But I’m working on it. I watch him. Every minute. All the time, believe me. He goes into the bathroom and I tiptoe around the corner, and I wait. I listen and I wait for him to come out. I just feel so … furtive.”