Follow the Stars Home (26 page)

Seizures, by themselves, were not serious, although their underlying causes could be. Julia stabilized enough to go home. She gradually became more alert, her hand waving approaching its usual vigor. Dianne felt overcome with relief. She had been through this before: a bad scare for which Julia had had to be hospitalized, from which Dianne hadn't been sure she would recover.

Alan drove them back to Gull Point. Coming around the bend, Dianne half hoped to find the Winnebago parked in the driveway.

“Mom called from Haverhill, Massachusetts, last night,” she said. “She should be here anytime. I can't believe I stuck her with the whole drive home.”

“I'm sure Amy's doing a good job as copilot,” Alan said.

“I should have known it was just a seizure,” Dianne said, looking over her shoulder at Julia. “I should have kept my cool, known it was going to pass.”

“You know what I wish?” Alan asked, looking
across the seat. “I wish you'd know what a good mother you are. The word
should
does you no good here. You made a call, and it was the best one.”

Dianne looked down at their hands, fingers laced together. She glanced up at Alan's eyes, and she saw them looking back with warmth and curiosity. She settled back in her seat, smiling at him across her shoulder. Those kisses in the library had stayed with her all through Nova Scotia. The breeze blew through the car, making her skin tingle.

“It's good to be home,” she said.

“The marsh is beautiful today,” he said, staring out at the golden blanket of reeds. After yesterday's storm, the air was cool and clean. The breeze blew briskly, moving the tall grass as if it were one shimmering sheet of gold.

“That's not what I mean,” Dianne said.

“No?”

“I missed you,” she said.

Alan smiled as if she had just made him the happiest man in the world. “You have no idea how much I missed you.”

“Julia and I never went away like that before,” she said. “We had an incredible time. I'll have to tell you all about it, show you the pictures we took, the souvenirs we brought back. We saw the most beautiful beaches in the world, but you know …” She smiled, and she had to swallow hard in order to go on.

“What?” he asked gently.

“It felt so good to see you at the airport.”

“Didn't you know I'd be there?”

Dianne tilted her head. “Yes. I did. That's the amazing thing. I knew you'd be there-you always are.”

“That's what family is for,” he said.

“What it's supposed to be,” Dianne said, looking
from Alan to Julia. She thought of Tim, and she thought of the bad things that had happened under Amy's own roof.

Then it was time to get Julia into the house. They carried her inside, opened the door and windows to air the place out, let the September breeze blow through. Julia was happy to be home. She looked around and patted the air. Dianne sensed her looking for Lucinda, Amy, and the animals.

“They'll be home soon,” she said.

“Gaaa,” Julia squeaked.

Alan carried Julia upstairs. Dianne walked behind, and she watched how tenderly he cradled the child in his strong arms. He brought her into her room, and he put her down on the changing table. Dianne stepped forward to take over, but Alan was already doing it.

It was such a little thing, watching him change Julia. She kicked her heels against the pad, her hands moving weakly. Alan talked to her the whole time, and she stared at his face. Dianne watched him bend down to kiss her. Reaching up, Julia grabbed his glasses. Julia's gnarled fingers were wrapped around Alan's steel frames; they were momentarily frozen face-to-face.

“Daaa,” Julia said.

“I'm glad you're home,” Alan said. “You can't believe how much I missed you.”

Dianne caught her breath. She reached for his hand, and he took her in his arms.

Later that night Lucinda, Amy, and the animals were safely back home in Connecticut. The air was as chilly as it had been in Canada, so Dianne lit a fire. Lucinda popped the dolphin tape into the player.
They all sat around in non-moose pajamas, updating each other on the last week, reliving their trip. Stella lay on a windowsill, and Orion curled in front of the fire.

“I'm just glad to be in a house without wheels,” Lucinda said.

“Yes, I like this campground best of all,” Dianne said.

“Dleee,” Julia said weakly.

Amy lay beside her on the floor, staring into the fire.

“You're quiet, Miss Brooks,” Lucinda said, nudging Amy with her toe.

“Julia sounds different,” Amy said.

“She's just recovering from the seizure,” Dianne said. “It's normal for her to seem quiet for a week or so.”

“Oh,” Amy said, still looking worried.

Lucinda didn't want to say anything, but she agreed with Amy. Julia seemed listless, as if some of the life had gone out of her. Her eyes weren't as bright as before, and her voice seemed to be coming from far away. Julia's regression had always happened in small ways. When she was one, she was able to pick up small toys. But by the time she was two, she had begun to lose her pincer grasp.

Her interest in toys had gone. The hope that her sounds would become words had begun to fade. She was slipping into her own world, and nothing Dianne tried could pull her back. People would urge Dianne to stimulate her more: read to her more often, make her play with building blocks, wrap her finger around Dianne's and get her to pull herself up.

“Don't they think I know?” Dianne would cry. “Don't they think I read the parenting books, that I want to be a good mother?”

“You're a wonderful mother,” Lucinda would tell her, but Dianne would cry anyway. It was as if she believed she had failed Julia in some terrible way before birth, cursed her with bad genes, driven away her father.

“Gaaa,” Julia said now.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Lucinda said. “Do you feel better? Did you have a marvelous vacation?”

“Gaa,” Julia breathed.

“When she says ‘Ga,’ she's saying ‘Granny,’” Amy said.

“That's what I've always thought,” Lucinda said.

“I wonder how many of our castles are still standing,” Amy said. “We built them pretty high up, away from the tide, didn't we?”

“The tide has a way of finding all sand castles,” Lucinda said. “It seems to be the tide's mission on earth.”

“Maybe not all of them,” Dianne said, nuzzling Julia's chest.

Amy had been gazing at Julia, but now she blinked, taking in Dianne and the way she was playing with her child. Lucinda watched Amy watch the mother and daughter, and she wondered what serious thoughts were going through her mind. Their time together had convinced Lucinda that Amy was sensitive, compassionate, and smart, and that she loved using her imagination. Lucinda would try to convince her to enter the library's short-story contest in November.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Lucinda said. “All of you.”

“Me?” Dianne asked. “I was just thinking I can't wait to get the pictures developed. That it's good to be home. And that Julia's beautiful.”

“Maaa,” Julia murmured.

“School starts in a couple of days,” Amy said. “That's what I'm thinking. I can go home. I want to and I don't want to, all at the same time.”

“That's how I feel about you,” Dianne said, squeezing Amy. “I'm excited for you, going home, but I also want you to stay here with us.”

“Let's not talk about it tonight,” Amy whispered. “Let's just have our homecoming and not think about being apart.”

“How about you, Mom?” Dianne asked. “Penny for
your
thoughts.”

“I was just thinking,” Lucinda said, remembering their long drive, the endless beaches, the shooting stars, the thrill of seeing the
Anne of Green Gables
island home. “That I have the best girls in the world. All three of you.”

“Gaaa,” Julia said, quietly singing along with the dolphins on the tape.

The next day Amy was to go home. She woke up very early, when it was just getting light. Violet shadows covered the yard and marsh, and the sea beyond was a darkly glistening mirror. Standing in the window of Julia's room, Amy listened to her friend's crackly breathing and wished they could go out and play.

Being away from home had made Amy even more independent than before. She padded downstairs, ate a Pop-Tart, and took Orion out for a walk. With bare feet she ran down the path to the marsh. The old dinghy was there, full of water from all the rainstorms. Bailing it out, she got Orion to jump in.

The Hawthorne marshes smelled like nowhere else. They were full of sea life, warm and muddy, fresh and clean. Amy had learned a lot about confusion
on her trip to Canada. The knowledge had sunken in that life could be more than one way at the same time, that a person could feel many emotions and not go crazy.

Rowing across the dark water, she felt grown-up and ready for she-didn't-know-what. Going home, she wasn't sure what she would find. She wanted to get something from the beach, store it up inside herself, make her ready for anything. Pulling on the oars, she wound up the marsh toward the lighthouse.

Beaching the rowboat on the lee shore, she wedged in the anchor as Dianne had done. Orion bounded across the dune, barking at the sun as it rose out of the Atlantic as if it were his own red ball. He whiskered through the beach grass, uncovering fish heads and driftwood. Amy walked along, picking up sea glass, whelk egg cases, and an old wine bottle.

When she got to the lighthouse, she fell to her knees. The sand felt damp on her legs, and she began to dig. Glancing up, she made sure it was the right place. The high tide line was a good twenty feet away. The only reason the sand there was damp and hard was that runoff from the lighthouse had packed it down.

“This one's going to last,” she said to Orion.

He barked.

Amy had learned a lot about sand-castle building, watching Dianne and Lucinda. She wanted this one to be as sturdy as a fortress, as lasting as one of the playhouses Dianne made in her studio. It seemed magically symbolic to her: If she could build a sand castle that would survive, Julia would be healthy. Julia would live.

Amy packed the sand extra hard. She made thick walls topped with careful crenellations. She strengthened
the foundation with rocks. She fortified the walls with driftwood buttresses. Patting the sand, she thought of building a safe house. A place where no one could ever be hurt.

In a few hours Amy would be going home. The thought made her a little afraid, but why? Her mother loved her; her mother was getting well. Amy's fear was nothing compared to what Julia must be feeling. To have a seizure like that: to bite your tongue and twitch from head to toe without being able to stop. To get on a plane for your first time, go up in the air, zoom through the sky, not knowing if you were going to fall. To have words that no one understood, to have your voice get so weak, people could hardly hear.

The castle was finished.

Orion barked, running in joyous circles. Amy's legs were cramped from kneeling, so she began to run after the dog. All her pent-up energy came out, and she whooped like a puppy, saying things no human being could ever understand. The red sun balanced on the waves, sending rose and lilac ripples into the beach.

The castle was strong. It wasn't beautiful like the ones they had all built on Prince Edward Island. It wasn't delicate and enchanted like some fairy-tale castle high in the mountains, deep in the forest. It wasn't like the castles Amy had seen in movies, the ice-cream-like castle that stood in the middle of Disney World.

It was Julia's castle. It was strong and sturdy and full of hope. Amy had lain awake, worrying that the castles they had made in Canada might have washed away, leaving nothing of them behind. That wouldn't happen here. For extra measure she pulled a postcard and pen out of her jacket pocket and wrote a note.
Jamming the card into the bottle Orion had found, Amy walked to the water's edge.

Arm back, she flung the bottle out as far as it would go. The bottle bobbled on the waves, but Amy hadn't stuck a cork in it, so it started to sink. She wanted it to. Staring at the waves, she remembered Dianne teaching her to bodysurf at this very spot. It was the perfect place to build her castle, send her note.

The bottle sank. The sun rose a little higher, baking the walls of Amy's sand castle even harder. Orion headed back to the dinghy, lay down on the shady side of the dune. Amy knew she was ready to see her mother again, to return home. Pulling on the oars, she rowed across the marsh.

Dianne stood on the bank, watching Amy row across the marsh. She had left Julia inside with Lucinda, wanting a few minutes alone with Amy. She had watched the young girl leave earlier, heard the oars as she slipped away. The water was glass calm. Wisps of mist rose from the surface.

Grabbing the bow, Dianne helped Amy tie up the boat. The dinghy floated with Amy still inside. Dianne
gazed down at her. Birds made the only sound. Dianne wanted to say something philosophical and wise, something that would sum up their summer together. But she couldn't speak. She and Amy stared at each other, knowing that this was good-bye.