“Inside. He was going to do some artwork, then go lie down.”
“I think I’ll go check on him.”
“Jax, don’t let on that you know about me and Terri, okay? She’s still… unsure about our relationship. She was sure enough to ask Randy for a divorce, but that whole thing has been messier and more difficult than she’d hoped. She feels like shit for hurting him. She isn’t ready to tell people about us yet. Not even Ryan.”
I smiled. “Mum’s the word,” I said.
I headed inside and upstairs, walked down the carpeted hall to see if Ted was in his room before going up to try the attic. The door to my own room stood open—but I was sure I’d closed it. I slowed my pace. There was someone in there. Someone sitting on the bed. From my vantage point, I could see a pair of bare legs.Lexie?
It was Terri.
She was sitting on my bed in shorts and a T-shirt, no sign of a bathing suit, with her back to the open door, going through the boxes of Lexie’s papers. She was rummaging quickly, like she was searching for something specific. She pulled out a blue envelope. She opened it up, flipped through the contents, then set it down on the bed on top of a pile of papers and photographs she’d already pulled out. She reached back into the box, pulled out something else, and studied it. Then, as if sensing that she was no longer alone, she turned and saw me standing in the hall.
“Oh!” she said. “You frightened me!”
I’d frightened her?“Is there something you’re looking for?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. Her face was red and sweaty. She looked… caught. Guilty. She held out the photograph in her hand. “I was looking for this.” I stepped into the room and looked down at the photo: Terri and Diane at fourteen or fifteen standing in front of the pool in bathing suits, hair wet, arms around each other, sly expressions on their faces. Two girls with a secret. “Lexie showed it to me not long ago. I was hoping to find it so I could show it to Diane.” She glanced down at the photograph. “It seems impossible that we were ever that young. Do you mind if I take it and show her?”
“Not at all,” I said.
She slipped the picture into her back pocket, then gathered up all the other papers and photos she’d pulled out and shoved them into the nearest box. “Lexie found a lot of great stuff,” Terri said. “A real treasure trove of family history.” She put the lids back on both boxes and stood, reaching for her cane.
“Yes, she did,” I said.
I watched her go. Then I went to the window and looked out. Terri was heading for her car—so much for her swim. Diane loaded the jars of water from the pool into the backseat—she seemed flustered. Shetouched Terri’s shoulder, but Terri shrugged her away and got into the car. Diane leaned down, spoke to Terri through the open driver’s-side window. Terri shook her head and drove off.
Diane and I made sandwiches for lunch.
“Terri decided against a swim?” I asked.
“She wasn’t up for it. She gets tired easily.”
I told her about Terri rifling through the papers in my room. She immediately snapped to Terri’s defense.
“She was looking for a photo, Jackie,” she said, setting down a jar of mustard too hard.
“I know. She showed me.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I just think it’s odd, don’t you? That she’d sneak up there and go through the boxes on her own instead of asking?”
“Jesus, after everything I just told you out by the pool? Terri is not the enemy here.” Diane glared at me. “You’re sounding a little like your sister, looking for secrets and conspiracies that just aren’t there.”
Diane turned away from me and sliced her sandwich in half decisively; the conversation was over.
My father came into the kitchen, whistling. Then, sensing the tension, he fell silent too. He made his own sandwich and we had a quiet lunch, no one saying much of anything.
After fifteen uncomfortable moments in which the only words uttered were “Pass the chips, please,” Diane cleared her plate and announced she was going into work and then home and she’d see us tomorrow. “I trust you two will be all right here on your own tonight?”
“Of course we will,” I said, the words coming out with more of an edge than I’d intended.
chaptertwenty-eight
February 11, 1931
Lanesborough, New Hampshire
