His eyes widened. He took a step closer, peering down at me. I was very aware of the the strong line of his jaw and the curve of his mouth.
Ten, I thought, he’s definitely a ten.
“You’re Lauren Brandt,” he said. “I should have known it.
You still have those chocolate-kiss eyes.”
I took a step back.
“Here.” He plunked his wet hat on my head. “Don’t go anywhere,” he told me, then turned away. When he faced me again, his eyes were crossed and his mouth stretched wide by his fingers. “Now do you recognize me?”
“Nick? Nick Hurley?” I asked, laughing.
He took back his hat. “You’ll be sorry to hear I don’t make gross faces as much as I used to. Now I’d rather smile at girls.”
“I noticed.”
He waved his hat around as if trying to dry it, his green eyes sparkling at me, as full of fun and trouble as when he was in elementary school. I relaxed. This was my old buddy.
We used to fish and crab together and have slimy bait battles with chopped-up eels and raw chicken parts.
“You’ve changed,” he said. “You’re — uh—”
“Yes?”
“Taller.”
“I hope so. I was ten the last time you saw me.”
“And your hair’s really dark now-and short,” he added.
My mother had loved long hair and fussed with mine constantly. The year after she died, I cut if off and haven’t grown it since.
“Other things have changed, too,” he said, his eyes laughing again. “Where are you staying?”
“At Aunt Jule’s,” I replied. “Does your uncle Frank still live next to her?”
“Yup, and he and Jule still don’t get along, my parents still live on the other side of Oyster Creek, and Mom still teaches at the college. Things haven’t changed much around here.”
His face grew more serious. “You know, I waited for you to come back the summer after your mother died. And the one after that. When the third summer came and you didn’t, I figured you never would.”
I shrugged, as if things had just turned out that way.
“So why did you finally return?” he asked bluntly.
I told him the least personal reason. “Aunt Jule said she had to see me and insisted that it be in Wisteria.”
His face broke into a sunny smile. “I’m glad she did.
Listen, I have to get back. Tim is covering for me at the dunking booth.”
I nodded.
“See you around, “ he said.
“Yeah, see you,” I replied, and continued to watch him as he walked away. He turned around suddenly and caught me staring, then he grinned in a self-assured way that told me he was used to girls admiring him. I could never have predicted that the round-cheeked boy whose feet were always caked with river mud would turn out like this.
I glanced at my watch. Aunt Jule would be expecting me — not that she had ever stuck to a schedule, but she knew I did. I retraced my steps, pausing for a moment at a table of handmade jewelry.
Her again — the girl I had seen before. This time she was hiding in the narrow space between two brick houses, watching me from the shadows.
Was she a friend of Nick’s? I wondered, feeling uncomfortable. Perhaps she was someone who had dated him once and never gotten over him. Why else would she be watching me?
You’re acting the way Mom used to, I chided myself; someone looks at you twice and you read into it. It’s just a coincidence.
Wanting to avoid another scene at the dunking booth, I took a detour onto Shipwrights Street and stopped to admire an herb garden in a tiny front yard. There she was again! I found it disturbing that someone with such unhappy eyes would shadow me. At the end of the block I returned to High Street, feeling safer in a crowd.
I had parked my Honda in front of the old newsstand and stopped there to pick up a local paper. As I stood at the counter inside, I remembered buying a pile of magazines and comic books after my mother’s funeral My father, hoping to comfort me, had given me a twenty to spend and waited in the car, talking to his advisers by phone. I remembered looking at the tabloids that day, reading their glaring headlines: SENATOR’S WIFE MURDERED, SENATOR STOPS INVESTIGATION.
But it wasn’t my father who kept the police at bay the night my mother died and in the weeks following. Aunt Jule had argued fiercely with the sheriff and the state police, insisting the drowning was an accident, begging them for my sake not to stir up rumors with a pointless investigation.
Aunt Jule, whose long roots in this town gave her more clout than my father, had been my protector, and the house where my mother felt haunted, my refuge. The headlines made me cringe, but I had been taught that tabloids lied.
And I never stopped to wonder if my mother’s death was truly an accident or if Aunt Jule might have been protecting someone other than me.
I bounced my way over the potholes of Aunt Jule’s driveway, past her rusty Volvo, and thumped to a stop. From the driver’s seat I gazed up at the house, hoping it would look as I remembered. In most ways it did.
The long rectangular frame of the house was covered with gray clapboard. Its double set of porches, upper and lower, ran from end to end and a wood stairway led down from the upper porch. Along both porches there were doors rather than windows, each room having at least one exit to the outside. But unlike the pristine image I carried in my mind, the doors sagged with potbellied screens, and the paint was peeling badly. The river side of the house, which was identical to the garden side but exposed to the water, probably looked worse.
I climbed out of the car. The pungent smell of boxwood and the fragrance of roses surrounded me — just as I remembered! Between the house and myself were two big gardens, a square knot garden on the right, bristling with bushy hedges and herbs, and a flower garden on the left.
“Lauren! You’re here!” Aunt Jule cried out happily, stepping onto the lower porch. “Do you need help with your suitcase? Holly,” she called.
No matter what clothes Aunt Jule bought, she always seemed to be wearing the same outfit — a denim skirt or pants with a loose print top. Her long brown hair had streaks of gray in it now and fell in a thick braid down her back.
We met at the head of the path between the knot and flower gardens.
She threw her arms around me. “Hello, love. It’s good to have you back.”
“It’s good to be back,” I said, hugging her tightly.
“I’ve missed you.”
“And I’ve missed you.” I saw Holly emerging from the house. “But promise you won’t make a fuss over me.
When I was a little girl, my godmother would welcome me like visiting royalty and wait on me for the first few days.