The Summer We Lost Alice (28 page)

"I've got the cards," Flo said.

Heather picked up a few other miscellaneous items from the kitchen. A jar of peanut butter. A knife, some plates.

"What about these candles?" she said.

"Good idea," Flo said as Heather passed her in the hallway, headed for the basement door. "You've done this before."

"Never," Heather said, and then she took Flo's meaning. Alice was familiar with the drill.

They gathered downstairs where an old sofa and a few wooden chairs provided a measure of comfort. The light came from a couple of bare, overhead bulbs. Around them sat the flotsam of everyday life, everything they needed not-too-often and a lot of stuff worth throwing out, from knotted Christmas lights to Uncle Billy's old tools, dusty from disuse. Ethan noticed that Uncle Billy had owned a router. Only men who are fairly handy, or who aspire to be, own routers. Ethan was surprised he even recognized the thing.

Flo found candlesticks in a cardboard box and set the candles around in case the power went out. She pulled out an old rug and spread it on the floor for Matt and Brittany
. She sat down herself and brought out the playing cards.

"What'll it be?" she asked. "Go Fish or Crazy Eights?"

Matt complained that Go Fish was a little kids' game so it was Crazy Eights by default.

"Can we light the candles?" Brittany asked.

"Maybe later. We don't want to use them up too soon."

"Did anybody bring a radio?" Cat said.

"There's an old TV around here somewhere. The picture rolls."

"TV's all digital now, Aunt Flo," Ethan said. "It won't work."

"Look in that box," Flo said, pointing. "There's a radio. It'll work as long as we've got power. Or have the radios all gone digital, too?"

"Not yet."

Ethan found the radio and the power cord. He plugged them in. He tuned to a station Cat recommended and they listened for weather updates. Now and again Heather checked her phone, but reception in the basement was touch and go.

The adults took turns sitting in on card games with the kids. The lights
flickered a couple of times but they never lost power. Sometimes they'd hear the wind howling but they were spared the freight train roar of a tornado passing over. The time passed agreeably enough.

Brittany was the first to fall asleep, curled up on the old sofa and wrapped in blankets, her head in Heather's lap. The others were engaged in a dying round of Chinese checkers when Matt asked Ethan the question that made Cat's back
stiffen.

"Can you talk to my dad?" he asked.

Ethan studied the board in front of him. It was metal and a bit rusty. They'd dug it out of a box of miscellaneous toys and games. Some of the marbles were missing but they'd put together enough for four players.

"No, Matt, I can't talk to dead people," Ethan said.

"You do it on TV."

"That's just a show. It's like a game."

"How do you play it?"

Without looking, Ethan could feel Cat's eyes burning at him.

"Well, the idea is, you say very general things and let people fill in the specifics for themselves."

Matt's face was blank.

"Okay, like this," Ethan said. "Let's say you're on my show. Matt, I feel a strong, spiritual connection with you. Someone you care about has passed over. Am I correct?"

"Well, duh. I'm on your show."

"Exactly! I feel that it's a relative, or a friend you're very close to."

"That could be anybody."

"Right again! Play along. Who was it, Matt? I see someone ... tall."

"My dad."

"Your father, yes. He died unexpectedly, before he could tell you something. Something he wants to tell you now."

"What?" Matt's voice was low, barely more than a whisper.

"He says ... he says he loves you. And he misses you. And one other thing, but I can't quite make it out."

"Is he mad at me for the bad things I do?"

Ethan closed his eyes and listened hard.

"No," he said after a few seconds. "He says he's proud of you. He's proud of the boy you've become, and he wishes he could be there to see you grow up."

Tears were welling in Matt's eyes. Cat was about to call a halt to the reading when Matt spoke.

"What you tell people—it makes them feel better.
Even if it's a lie."

"Who's to say it's a lie?" Ethan said. "I mean, just because it's an act doesn't mean it isn't true. I'll bet your dad
is
proud of you. I'm sure he does miss you, very much."

Matt swiped at his eyes.

"I could try harder," he said. "I could be better."

"We all could, kiddo," Ethan said.

* * *

The tornado warning ended by nine o'clock, though it seemed much later.
They put the kids to bed. Cat got out clean blankets for the sofa bed. They turned on the television to check out the tornado damage. Flo and Heather went to the kitchen to make a pot of decaf.

Flo busied herself with the dinner dishes while Heather filled the pot and measured out the coffee. Cat entered to return the kitchen goods they'd taken to the basement. She found her mother standing in front of the kitchen sink, staring at the soup bowl in her hand
as if she'd never seen such an item before. Cat's immediate fear was stroke.

"Mom?" she said.

"I was a terrible mother to you girls," Flo said. "Don't try to tell me any different."

Heather and Cat exchanged warning glances. Cat nodded as if to say, "Leave it to me."

"Yes," Cat replied, "you were horrible."

Flo stiffened and Cat heard a tiny intake of breath. Heather wasn't sure she'd heard quite right.

"You were the worst," Cat said. "Devoting every waking moment of your life to raising us, teaching us what we had to know, keeping us in line. Getting up every morning at dawn to make breakfast. Making sure our socks matched. Getting us off to school. Riding us about our homework. And loving us. God, that was the worst. Loving us in the face of disobedience, outrage, temper tantrums. No matter how we disappointed you."

"You never disappointed me."

"We
always
disappointed you. Me, especially. You wanted so much for me not to make all of the stupid mistakes I made anyway. You warned me, but I wouldn't listen. I refused to listen as a matter of principle."

"I was too harsh.
Too judgmental. You rebelled. I don't know what else I expected."

"All kids rebel."

"So did Alice. I couldn't ... I couldn't just hold her. I had to squeeze and control and—she had to wiggle free because I held her too tight." She looked directly at Heather. "It's my fault you died so young."

"Flo—" Heather began, at a loss.

Cat walked over to her mother. She took her hands. Flo gripped Cat's fingers desperately, as if holding on for dear life. They stood quietly for long minutes while Cat summoned the courage to say what needed to be said.

"I saw her that night."

Flo said nothing, as if she hadn't heard.

"Mom, I said I saw Alice. I saw her and Ethan and Boo the night they ran off. I could have stopped them, but I didn't. I was with Sammy, in his car. We were parked out by the lake, and—"

"Hush," Flo said. "I know all about it. I was young once myself, believe it or not. It doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter!
Mom, it's my fault that Alice was kidnapped! I as good as killed my own little sister!"

Ethan spoke from the doorway. "That's a load of crap," he said. He walked in and draped an arm around Heather's shoulder.

"I beg your pardon?" Cat said.

"He's right, dear," Flo said. "It's a load of crap."

Cat turned, astonished, to her mother.

"Mother!"

"You were a teenager. Full of hormones. That age, you know everything and most of what you know is wrong, including how much in control of yourself you are."

"Mom, I didn't even try!"

"What could you have said to stop them once they got that far? You know how Alice was once her mind was made up."

"I could have gone home, told you they were out—"

"Look back," Flo said. "Look at yourself back then, sixteen years old. Look at the kids today at the high school, all of the silly young things. That was you! It was you back then! You look back at yourself and expect that girl to be as responsible as you are now, for her to know back then everything it's taken you half a lifetime to learn. Might as well expect her to sprout wings and fly."

"If it hadn't been for me and my stupid idea to follow Boo, we'd never have left the house in the first place," Ethan said.

Cat snapped at him. "For Christ's sakes, Ethan, Alice had you wrapped around her little finger. You weren't at fault for anything. You weren't in control of anything. You were a dumb little kid."

"I knew what I was doing."

"Pish," Flo said.

"Aunt Flo—" Ethan began.

"Never mind, Ethan," Cat said, shutting a cabinet door. "She's said 'pish.' There's no arguing with Mother once she's said 'pish.'"

They stood in respectful silence for nearly a minute, as if in mourning for the various secrets that lay stretched out before them, skeletons from their respective mental closets. Just bones, really, when examined in the light.

Flo wiped her hands on a tea towel which she then folded and draped neatly on the handle of the oven door.

"Well," she said, "that was a conversation, wasn't it? Shall we see what the television has to say about our tornado?"

They all filed into the living room. A few twisters had touched down in rural areas and there was widespread wind damage over a number of communities, but no casualties. The storm had already moved out of the area. Tomorrow promised to be crisp but sunny.

Cat turned off the television so that Ethan and Heather could go to bed on the sofa. Everyone said their good
nights and retired, relieved to put this particular day behind them. They slept soundly.

They would not learn until the next morning that, sometime during the storm, a young girl named Kaitlin had vanished from the local motel.

FLO WOKE EARLY, before the rest of the house. She sat up and swung her legs off the side of the bed. She was feeling for her house slippers when it occurred to her that this was the first morning in a long time she hadn't lain in bed feeling the weight of the world pressing down on her. She actually wanted to get up and see what this new day had to offer.

"I wonder why," she said to herself. Maybe her little talk with Cat last night had shaken things loose. It couldn't be as simple as that!

She thought about making waffles. She hadn't made waffles in ages, but she remembered seeing the waffle maker in the basement last night. Maybe she'd get it out, clean it up, and see if she still had her old scratch waffle recipe. Billy and Alice used to love those waffles! She hoped Alice hadn't lost her appetite for waffles in the years since—

She stopped. So that was the reason for her good mood. Some part of her had accepted the outlandish notion that her daughter lived on in the body of a stranger. It was an endearing fantasy, seductive.
Comforting.

Ethan appeared to remain skeptical, but then he would, wouldn't he? He didn't even believe in his own gift. She thought about the miracle he'd worked with Matt. How many thousands of words had Flo wasted on the boy to no avail, only to see Ethan reach him in a way she'd never managed, and in only moments?

She walked to the front door and stepped out. She paused on the porch to survey the damage from the storm. The yard was a mess of branches and leaves.

It felt odd to be up so early, not to have lingered in bed waiting for the morning hubbub to crescendo and fade before she made her way to the kitchen
where the newspaper would lay on the table. Most of the neighbors hadn't risen yet. The sun was new in the lightening sky. It felt as though the rest of the world were under a slumbering spell. She felt alive and powerful.

She retrieved the newspaper and brought it, sealed in its plastic bag, to the kitchen. She started a pot of coffee.

She sat down at the table and pulled the newspaper from its wrapper. The headline hit her like a blow between the eyes.

GIRL MISSING

She unfolded the paper and read hurriedly about how Kaitlin's mother had awakened in the middle of the night to find her daughter's bed empty. The story said that she had alerted the motel manager, who had called the police, but Flo knew the real story. She could read between the newspaper's dispassionate lines.

She knew how the mother had called out Kaitlin's name and, hearing no reply, how she had rushed to the bathroom only to find it empty. Flo knew how she'd run to the door and noticed that the chain wasn't fastened, how she'd thrown the door wide and called Kaitlin's name, her heart beating wildly. She knew how Kaitlin's mother had run to her car and pounded on the windows and peered in, desperate for any sign of her daughter, how she'd wandered in shock and panic around the motel, how she'd beaten on the doors of empty rooms.