Laura's Shadow, page 8
It was the first I’d seen them together since before their courtship started, and the sight of them took away my breath. My brother was a different man when standing next to this woman. Everything about him—his countenance, his posture, the set of his mouth, the stillness of his hands—he’d been transformed into yet another man beyond my reach. If the kitchen caught fire, he would scoop Katrina up and leave me to burn. If she and I began to speak at the same time, his ear would tune to her voice.
Being gentlemen, both Merrill and Oscar stood upon Katrina’s entrance, and I did too, throwing myself into the instinctual duty of fetching coffee, but Charles waved me off.
“I have to get Katrina straight back home, but we wanted you to be the first to know—well, I guess you and these fine fellows. Evening, Cap.” His greeting held the smallest hint of surprise.
“Evening,” Oscar said.
“Anyhoo,” Charles continued, “we wanted you to be the first to celebrate with us. I have asked Katrina to marry me, and she said yes. Moreover, so did her father.”
Through all of this, Katrina hung on adoringly, her eyes never straying from Charles until I said, “Welcome, Sister.” Then, with reluctance, she pulled herself away and allowed for my quick embrace. Merrill shook Charles’s hand as did Oscar, each taking Katrina’s hand too as we spoke congratulations and best wishes.
The conversation became a blur behind me as I busied myself with dishes. Charles and Katrina and Oscar spoke over each other, but I didn’t hear a word from Merrill. I did, however, sense a movement over my shoulder and turned to see him, standing, looking at me with a new appetite that had nothing to do with the cake plates in his hands.
CHAPTER 5
TRIXIE
Trixie always thought of the drive home as a languid time machine. Her neighborhood was the essence of modern America—resplendent with commercial businesses and residents of every color living together in bustling harmony. Then, after a quick zip of freeways and looping exits, the road grew quiet as she sped past one farm after another, each looking like something out of a children’s book: red barns, tall silos, cows, corn. Miles of green forest, miles and miles of crops. Tiny white churches with pointy steeples and stained glass. Except for the massive metal machines hurtling down the paved road, her great-grandmother would have recognized all of this at Trixie’s age. Take two steps off the highway and the world took on the silence of a century ago.
Normally, by the time she took the first turn (those were the directions: drive until the road ends, then turn left), she had given herself over to the peace that came with an engine humming an undercurrent beneath a steady stream of rock and roll. But then, she’d never been sent off with a kiss before.
She’d inadvertently managed to time her departure with the first hour of the American Top 40 radio broadcast, something she usually listened to while carrying a portable radio from room to room doing her weekend chores. She sang along as she could, pitching her voice to Karen Carpenter with “Won’t Last a Day without You” as well as Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.” She wailed with Carly Simon, singing, “I haven’t got time for the pain …” and commiserated with Olivia Newton John—”If You Love Me, Let Me Go.” By the time she saw her family’s three-story ramshackle blue farmhouse poking through the breakfront trees, she was belting out the week’s number one song through tears: Billy, don’t be a hero. Come back to me.
Always a sucker for a tragic tale, Trixie could see the lyrics—the young soldier in his blue uniform, his fiancée’s head on his shoulder, begging him to come home. And the tragic letter informing her that he never, ever would.
She wiped the last of her ridiculous tears on the back of her hand as the car came crunching to a stop on the gravel drive. Casey Kasem was signing off, making predictions for the next week’s countdown, but she cut him off midsentence, killing the car’s engine and taking a deep breath. Normally her car would by now be bombarded with three generations of mothers—hers, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother—who would have been tracking the nearly three-hour drive to the minute. Now, there wasn’t even a flutter of a window curtain to let her know that anybody was watching at all.
The thought set like a stone in her stomach. They must all be gathered around GG Mariah’s bed, waiting, spending the precious final minutes. Unless—no. Surely they would have called if she had passed in the night.
She got out of her car and took her bag from the trunk, swatting away the memory of Ron’s kiss with a promise to herself to get back to it later, and walked up the sagging steps to the porch that spanned the front of the house. The screen door was new, but the front door was the same Trixie passed through a million times over the course of her life. Until today. Because it was locked.
In her life, it had never been locked. Not at night, not when the entire family was away for a day in town, not when the entire family was away for a weekend of camping at the lake. She knocked, quietly at first, like this was some sideways mistake, then again, bolder. The knob turned, the door opened, but there was nobody there. Except—
“Hello?”
Trixie looked down at the tentative voice and saw a little girl standing, clutching a book to her chest.
“Hello?” Trixie returned, equally unsure.
“I’m not supposed to let anybody in.”
“You can let me in. I live here.” Anybody else might have softened their tone or bent to look the girl in the eyes, but Trixie had been around few children in her life and never counted any as a positive experience.
“Are you Trixie?”
“I am.” She had the absurd notion that the kid might ask her to show identification, but instead she backed away, opening the door wider with each step. Trixie got herself and her bag through and took the initiative to shut the door.
The light inside was dim, all the curtains closed as if they’d gotten no attention that morning. It took a minute for Trixie’s eyes to adjust, and when they did, they fell on the girl again. The little girl. Trixie would guess her to be five or six—the number arrived from a lifetime of watching kids on television. Her long brown hair was parted on the side and secured with a barrette, and she wore a pair of pale pink shorts and a T-shirt printed with tiny blue flowers. Her socks were grayish, and since she wasn’t wearing shoes, one seemed to have slipped almost to the arch of her little foot. The sight triggered an irrational desire for Trixie to tug it up, but she resisted and instead asked, “Who are you?”
“Samantha,” the girl said. Only, because she was missing four teeth across the front of her mouth, the name came out with the same sound on both ends. Thamantha. “And you’re Trixie.”
“We’ve established that.”
“You don’t look like a Trixie.”
Like I haven’t heard that a million times. “You look exactly like a Samantha.”
Samantha smiled, something Trixie found immediately, and oddly, rewarding.
“Have you heard of Trixie Belden?” Samantha asked.
“I have,” Trixie said. “She’s a girl detective. Do you read those books?”
Samantha shook her head. “They’re too advanced for me. But my babysitter reads them sometimes, and she likes them. She has a boyfriend.”
“Your babysitter has a boyfriend?”
“No. Trixie Belden has a boyfriend. And she’s only fourteen years old, so she’s not supposed to have a boyfriend. My babysitter is fourteen years old too. And she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Wait,” Trixie said, too late to interrupt the flow of lisping exposition before it reached the final inquiry, which, frankly, was none of the child’s business. “Who are you?”
“I’m Samantha.”
“Yes. Samantha. But, like, why are you here?”
“I’m here with my dad. He’s a doctor.”
Then Trixie saw it. The cowlick on the right side that no barrette could restrain. The squareness of her jaw, the sandy color of the lashes fanning above those too-blue eyes.
“Dr. Carter?” Trixie’s mouth still had trouble with the unfamiliar title.
“He’s my dad.”
“You’re—you’re Cam’s daughter?” Apparently there was one link in the chain of gossip that hadn’t made it to the kitchen table.
“Oh, I see you two have met.” Trixie’s mother swept herself into the conversation as if Trixie and the girl were at a swanky cocktail party for which only she—Alma Gowan—was properly dressed. Trixie’s mother always looked like something from a midcentury fashion plate. Her dresses were either belted numbers with a fitted top and wide, swinging skirt, or—like now—fitted within an inch of every curve. Her figure was a testament to the power of a good girdle—nipped waist, proportioned hips. Her bust simultaneously impressive and restrained. She wore her blond hair in a perpetual twist and her makeup precise with black, winged eyeliner and matte red lipstick. Trixie always thought her mother looked like a Barbie doll—the very first ones, with eyes flirtatiously downcast and lips pursed, like she was thinking about giving a gentleman a kiss but probably wouldn’t.
“Mom,” Trixie said, offering her cheek for the kiss that wouldn’t quite land on her cheek. “What is going on?”
“Trust me,” she said, the words barely eking out of the corner of her mouth, “we were all surprised.” Then, in a normal tone, “We’re all upstairs, sitting with Gram.”
“All right.”
Trixie headed for the stairs but stopped at her mother’s, “Wait. You’ve had a long drive. Come with me into the kitchen. I’m putting on some coffee. And making this one some lunch. A late lunch, isn’t it, honey? I’m sure you’re hungry.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Samantha said, looking at Alma adoringly.
Trixie rolled her eyes. To the rest of the world—meaning, anyone who actually lived outside of this house—Alma appeared to be the perfect mother. She dressed like a cross between Donna Reed and Mrs. Cleaver, perpetually stuck in the world of the 1950s ideal. Growing up, Trixie loved having friends over to show off her pretty mother. She would host slumber parties and beam when Alma came in with trays of Rice Krispies treats and vats of hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows. Other mothers at other slumber parties would order pizza and roam the house in ratty bathrobes with their hair in curlers. Alma did too, of course, but never with guests or visitors of any kind. If the postman came at nine o’clock in the morning needing a signature on a package, he’d wait on the front porch until Alma was dressed, coifed, made-up, and shod. Fortunately, she’d streamlined the process to a matter of minutes.
As Trixie grew older, around ten, she realized the reason behind the ruse. Inevitably, at some time during the sleepover, or a study date with a new friend, or a birthday party with a beautifully piped cake and a spread of tiny sandwiches, somebody would ask, “Where’s your dad?” And Trixie would have to answer, “I don’t know.” It never occurred to her to make up a story, because her mother had always been truthful with her. When Trixie asked, “Who’s my dad?” Alma gave the same answer always.
“Best I can offer is a good guess.”
Always a fan of classic romantic films, a young Alma had given herself over to the cause of sending soldiers off to Korea with the memory of a girl worth coming home for. Soldiers, plural, gave a wrong impression. There were only two, and as she always said, a possible third. None had written her their promised letters. None ever came back to see what they’d left behind, and what one of them left behind was Trixie.
Now she followed her mother into the kitchen with Samantha trailing behind, and though she had absolutely no genetic connection to the child, couldn’t help thinking, Oh. Look. Another generation.
Trixie set about making coffee (Alma always made it too strong) while Alma made a peanut butter and honey sandwich for Samantha before commencing to make a stack of sandwiches, which she cut into triangles and arranged on a large plate.
“So, how is GG?” Trixie asked. The silence upstairs was unsettling, given how this—a house full of women—was usually bouncing with chatter and shouts. “Why are you trying to keep me away?”
Alma licked the knife before plunging it back into the jar. “She’s very weak. Taken to her bed, and honestly, it’s like she’s wasting away right in front of us.”
“Is she alert?”
“Mostly. She eats very little and won’t drink anything but Dr Pepper, which isn’t good for her at all.”
“Mom, she’s one hundred and four years old. She’s a Pepper. They should make commercials with her.”
“Well, you know what they say. The kidneys are the first to go.”
“My dad says she’s an amazing woman,” Samantha said, reminding Trixie and Alma of her presence. “He says she knew Laura.”
Trixie was taking four mugs down from the cabinet, and at the sound of the name, she let them clatter to the counter.
“She doesn’t know,” Alma whispered, squeezing the upside-down honey bear over a top slice of bread.
Trixie saw the book Samantha had been holding under her arm now sitting beside her plate. How could she not have noticed before? The familiar shade of yellow. The crayon-colored image of a little girl clutching a doll. Bearded Pa looking on. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. GG always told everyone who would listen that she knew the real Laura Ingalls, the word real wrapped tight in derision.
“Where did you get that book?” Trixie’s voice was unnaturally high, because she knew. She’d recognize that fold along the front cover anywhere.
“I found it.”
“She was taking a nap in your old room,” Alma said, “while Dr. Carter was seeing to Gram.”
“Looks like she was doing a little snooping in my room,” Trixie said not quite under her breath.
“I wasn’t snooping,” Samantha said indignantly. “Mrs. G said I could look through the box and find a stuffed animal to sleep with, and I found this.”
“You had to dig down through a lot of bears to find that,” Trixie said. She had the whole series, each title squirreled away in a different part of the house. She knew she should take them home—to her home, in Minneapolis, but they seemed to belong here, with other bits of her childhood. The girl was looking at her through squinted eyes, as if daring Trixie to take the argument further. Instead, Trixie poured a glass of milk in her favorite Winnie-the-Pooh glass (a jelly jar when she was Samantha’s age) and set it on the table. “Have you read it?” She rethought the question, having no idea of age and reading level. “Can you read it?”
Samantha nodded, biting into her sandwich. “Yes, but I haven’t finished it. I love Mary. The sister. She’s sweet.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, dear,” Alma said, though the mouthful of bread and peanut butter had little impact on Samantha’s speech. “Why don’t you sit here and enjoy your lunch and read while Miss Trixie and I take our snack to the others upstairs?”
“Okay,” Samantha said with the tone of a child used to getting instructions before being left alone.
“Just don’t get it sticky,” Trixie said, holding the tray of sandwiches in one hand and two of the four coffee mugs in the other.
“I won’t. I promise. I’ll finish my sandwich and wash my hands.” To reinforce her vow, Samantha pushed the book a little farther away.
“Isn’t she wonderful?” Alma said when they had barely left the kitchen. “Other than you, the best-mannered child I have ever seen. You’d never even know she’s here.”
“Always an important trait.” Trixie trained her eye on her mother’s rounded backside, admiring how the woman could climb the stairs carrying a tray of coffee without rattling a single spoon.
It was warmer on the second floor, even with windows open to the breeze, making Trixie wonder if glasses of iced tea might not have been a better idea than coffee, but a cold beverage wouldn’t offer the sipping comfort of a hot one. They were looking for ritual more than refreshment. Once they rounded the corner at the landing, Trixie could hear voices—her grandmother’s sharp, straightforward and inquisitive, followed by something low, warm, and familiar.
Cam.
She stopped and took in a restorative breath.
“Yes,” Alma said without turning around.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, he’s still as handsome as ever.”
GG Mariah’s room was the first on the left at the top of the stairs, the largest of the four bedrooms, with its own sitting area and bathroom. It had been renovated as such in the early days of World War II to be a room to let for itinerant officers, Mariah fancying herself Wisconsin’s answer to Claudette Colbert in Since You Went Away. Later, the sort of drifting, single-room-seeking men who answered the advertisement proved to be looking for a send-off, and when Alma spent every morning from Thanksgiving to Christmas puking in the downstairs toilet, the ROOM FOR RENT sign was tossed into the fire and Mariah moved in.
Trixie rounded the corner and braced herself. In retrospect, a good daughter of the home would have politely set the tray of sandwiches on the sideboard by the door and gone to sit at the bedside of her ailing great-grandmother. All of which Trixie eventually did, but first she stood, clutching the plate, staring at the man framed by the sunlit window, gauzy curtains fluttering around him. Tall, trim, wearing a subtly patterned shirt tucked into tan corduroy pants that sat snugly belted on his hips.
He said, “Hey there, Trix,” and everything beneath her skin melted and swirled into the consistency of the sandwiches on the plate.
“Hey there, yourself,” she said, and nothing else would come.
“Give me those.” Trixie’s grandmother, Eugenie, rose from her chair beside the bed and took the plate away, grabbing two triangles before holding it out to Cam. “Sandwich, Dr. Carter?”
“Yes, thank you Mrs. Gowan.” He plucked a sandwich off the tray and held it aloft. “I mean, Eugenie.”
“There ya go,” Eugenie said, bustling to put the plate on the dresser top.
Anyone coming into the room would be hard-pressed to match her as Alma’s mother—the two were as unalike as two women could be. Where Alma was round, Eugenie was square. Where Alma had meticulously plucked and pruned and cinched, Eugenie had given over to the forces of gravity and nature. Her figure was an undefined series of squares beneath pale slacks and a front-button cotton blouse. Eugenie Gowan, perhaps the only woman on earth for whom polyester would fade, had hair of an undetermined color cropped close in a mass of unstylish waves. Because she had earned the Gowan name by marrying into the family, GG Mariah often called her the “missing link,” and not always out of earshot.
Being gentlemen, both Merrill and Oscar stood upon Katrina’s entrance, and I did too, throwing myself into the instinctual duty of fetching coffee, but Charles waved me off.
“I have to get Katrina straight back home, but we wanted you to be the first to know—well, I guess you and these fine fellows. Evening, Cap.” His greeting held the smallest hint of surprise.
“Evening,” Oscar said.
“Anyhoo,” Charles continued, “we wanted you to be the first to celebrate with us. I have asked Katrina to marry me, and she said yes. Moreover, so did her father.”
Through all of this, Katrina hung on adoringly, her eyes never straying from Charles until I said, “Welcome, Sister.” Then, with reluctance, she pulled herself away and allowed for my quick embrace. Merrill shook Charles’s hand as did Oscar, each taking Katrina’s hand too as we spoke congratulations and best wishes.
The conversation became a blur behind me as I busied myself with dishes. Charles and Katrina and Oscar spoke over each other, but I didn’t hear a word from Merrill. I did, however, sense a movement over my shoulder and turned to see him, standing, looking at me with a new appetite that had nothing to do with the cake plates in his hands.
CHAPTER 5
TRIXIE
Trixie always thought of the drive home as a languid time machine. Her neighborhood was the essence of modern America—resplendent with commercial businesses and residents of every color living together in bustling harmony. Then, after a quick zip of freeways and looping exits, the road grew quiet as she sped past one farm after another, each looking like something out of a children’s book: red barns, tall silos, cows, corn. Miles of green forest, miles and miles of crops. Tiny white churches with pointy steeples and stained glass. Except for the massive metal machines hurtling down the paved road, her great-grandmother would have recognized all of this at Trixie’s age. Take two steps off the highway and the world took on the silence of a century ago.
Normally, by the time she took the first turn (those were the directions: drive until the road ends, then turn left), she had given herself over to the peace that came with an engine humming an undercurrent beneath a steady stream of rock and roll. But then, she’d never been sent off with a kiss before.
She’d inadvertently managed to time her departure with the first hour of the American Top 40 radio broadcast, something she usually listened to while carrying a portable radio from room to room doing her weekend chores. She sang along as she could, pitching her voice to Karen Carpenter with “Won’t Last a Day without You” as well as Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.” She wailed with Carly Simon, singing, “I haven’t got time for the pain …” and commiserated with Olivia Newton John—”If You Love Me, Let Me Go.” By the time she saw her family’s three-story ramshackle blue farmhouse poking through the breakfront trees, she was belting out the week’s number one song through tears: Billy, don’t be a hero. Come back to me.
Always a sucker for a tragic tale, Trixie could see the lyrics—the young soldier in his blue uniform, his fiancée’s head on his shoulder, begging him to come home. And the tragic letter informing her that he never, ever would.
She wiped the last of her ridiculous tears on the back of her hand as the car came crunching to a stop on the gravel drive. Casey Kasem was signing off, making predictions for the next week’s countdown, but she cut him off midsentence, killing the car’s engine and taking a deep breath. Normally her car would by now be bombarded with three generations of mothers—hers, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother—who would have been tracking the nearly three-hour drive to the minute. Now, there wasn’t even a flutter of a window curtain to let her know that anybody was watching at all.
The thought set like a stone in her stomach. They must all be gathered around GG Mariah’s bed, waiting, spending the precious final minutes. Unless—no. Surely they would have called if she had passed in the night.
She got out of her car and took her bag from the trunk, swatting away the memory of Ron’s kiss with a promise to herself to get back to it later, and walked up the sagging steps to the porch that spanned the front of the house. The screen door was new, but the front door was the same Trixie passed through a million times over the course of her life. Until today. Because it was locked.
In her life, it had never been locked. Not at night, not when the entire family was away for a day in town, not when the entire family was away for a weekend of camping at the lake. She knocked, quietly at first, like this was some sideways mistake, then again, bolder. The knob turned, the door opened, but there was nobody there. Except—
“Hello?”
Trixie looked down at the tentative voice and saw a little girl standing, clutching a book to her chest.
“Hello?” Trixie returned, equally unsure.
“I’m not supposed to let anybody in.”
“You can let me in. I live here.” Anybody else might have softened their tone or bent to look the girl in the eyes, but Trixie had been around few children in her life and never counted any as a positive experience.
“Are you Trixie?”
“I am.” She had the absurd notion that the kid might ask her to show identification, but instead she backed away, opening the door wider with each step. Trixie got herself and her bag through and took the initiative to shut the door.
The light inside was dim, all the curtains closed as if they’d gotten no attention that morning. It took a minute for Trixie’s eyes to adjust, and when they did, they fell on the girl again. The little girl. Trixie would guess her to be five or six—the number arrived from a lifetime of watching kids on television. Her long brown hair was parted on the side and secured with a barrette, and she wore a pair of pale pink shorts and a T-shirt printed with tiny blue flowers. Her socks were grayish, and since she wasn’t wearing shoes, one seemed to have slipped almost to the arch of her little foot. The sight triggered an irrational desire for Trixie to tug it up, but she resisted and instead asked, “Who are you?”
“Samantha,” the girl said. Only, because she was missing four teeth across the front of her mouth, the name came out with the same sound on both ends. Thamantha. “And you’re Trixie.”
“We’ve established that.”
“You don’t look like a Trixie.”
Like I haven’t heard that a million times. “You look exactly like a Samantha.”
Samantha smiled, something Trixie found immediately, and oddly, rewarding.
“Have you heard of Trixie Belden?” Samantha asked.
“I have,” Trixie said. “She’s a girl detective. Do you read those books?”
Samantha shook her head. “They’re too advanced for me. But my babysitter reads them sometimes, and she likes them. She has a boyfriend.”
“Your babysitter has a boyfriend?”
“No. Trixie Belden has a boyfriend. And she’s only fourteen years old, so she’s not supposed to have a boyfriend. My babysitter is fourteen years old too. And she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Wait,” Trixie said, too late to interrupt the flow of lisping exposition before it reached the final inquiry, which, frankly, was none of the child’s business. “Who are you?”
“I’m Samantha.”
“Yes. Samantha. But, like, why are you here?”
“I’m here with my dad. He’s a doctor.”
Then Trixie saw it. The cowlick on the right side that no barrette could restrain. The squareness of her jaw, the sandy color of the lashes fanning above those too-blue eyes.
“Dr. Carter?” Trixie’s mouth still had trouble with the unfamiliar title.
“He’s my dad.”
“You’re—you’re Cam’s daughter?” Apparently there was one link in the chain of gossip that hadn’t made it to the kitchen table.
“Oh, I see you two have met.” Trixie’s mother swept herself into the conversation as if Trixie and the girl were at a swanky cocktail party for which only she—Alma Gowan—was properly dressed. Trixie’s mother always looked like something from a midcentury fashion plate. Her dresses were either belted numbers with a fitted top and wide, swinging skirt, or—like now—fitted within an inch of every curve. Her figure was a testament to the power of a good girdle—nipped waist, proportioned hips. Her bust simultaneously impressive and restrained. She wore her blond hair in a perpetual twist and her makeup precise with black, winged eyeliner and matte red lipstick. Trixie always thought her mother looked like a Barbie doll—the very first ones, with eyes flirtatiously downcast and lips pursed, like she was thinking about giving a gentleman a kiss but probably wouldn’t.
“Mom,” Trixie said, offering her cheek for the kiss that wouldn’t quite land on her cheek. “What is going on?”
“Trust me,” she said, the words barely eking out of the corner of her mouth, “we were all surprised.” Then, in a normal tone, “We’re all upstairs, sitting with Gram.”
“All right.”
Trixie headed for the stairs but stopped at her mother’s, “Wait. You’ve had a long drive. Come with me into the kitchen. I’m putting on some coffee. And making this one some lunch. A late lunch, isn’t it, honey? I’m sure you’re hungry.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Samantha said, looking at Alma adoringly.
Trixie rolled her eyes. To the rest of the world—meaning, anyone who actually lived outside of this house—Alma appeared to be the perfect mother. She dressed like a cross between Donna Reed and Mrs. Cleaver, perpetually stuck in the world of the 1950s ideal. Growing up, Trixie loved having friends over to show off her pretty mother. She would host slumber parties and beam when Alma came in with trays of Rice Krispies treats and vats of hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows. Other mothers at other slumber parties would order pizza and roam the house in ratty bathrobes with their hair in curlers. Alma did too, of course, but never with guests or visitors of any kind. If the postman came at nine o’clock in the morning needing a signature on a package, he’d wait on the front porch until Alma was dressed, coifed, made-up, and shod. Fortunately, she’d streamlined the process to a matter of minutes.
As Trixie grew older, around ten, she realized the reason behind the ruse. Inevitably, at some time during the sleepover, or a study date with a new friend, or a birthday party with a beautifully piped cake and a spread of tiny sandwiches, somebody would ask, “Where’s your dad?” And Trixie would have to answer, “I don’t know.” It never occurred to her to make up a story, because her mother had always been truthful with her. When Trixie asked, “Who’s my dad?” Alma gave the same answer always.
“Best I can offer is a good guess.”
Always a fan of classic romantic films, a young Alma had given herself over to the cause of sending soldiers off to Korea with the memory of a girl worth coming home for. Soldiers, plural, gave a wrong impression. There were only two, and as she always said, a possible third. None had written her their promised letters. None ever came back to see what they’d left behind, and what one of them left behind was Trixie.
Now she followed her mother into the kitchen with Samantha trailing behind, and though she had absolutely no genetic connection to the child, couldn’t help thinking, Oh. Look. Another generation.
Trixie set about making coffee (Alma always made it too strong) while Alma made a peanut butter and honey sandwich for Samantha before commencing to make a stack of sandwiches, which she cut into triangles and arranged on a large plate.
“So, how is GG?” Trixie asked. The silence upstairs was unsettling, given how this—a house full of women—was usually bouncing with chatter and shouts. “Why are you trying to keep me away?”
Alma licked the knife before plunging it back into the jar. “She’s very weak. Taken to her bed, and honestly, it’s like she’s wasting away right in front of us.”
“Is she alert?”
“Mostly. She eats very little and won’t drink anything but Dr Pepper, which isn’t good for her at all.”
“Mom, she’s one hundred and four years old. She’s a Pepper. They should make commercials with her.”
“Well, you know what they say. The kidneys are the first to go.”
“My dad says she’s an amazing woman,” Samantha said, reminding Trixie and Alma of her presence. “He says she knew Laura.”
Trixie was taking four mugs down from the cabinet, and at the sound of the name, she let them clatter to the counter.
“She doesn’t know,” Alma whispered, squeezing the upside-down honey bear over a top slice of bread.
Trixie saw the book Samantha had been holding under her arm now sitting beside her plate. How could she not have noticed before? The familiar shade of yellow. The crayon-colored image of a little girl clutching a doll. Bearded Pa looking on. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. GG always told everyone who would listen that she knew the real Laura Ingalls, the word real wrapped tight in derision.
“Where did you get that book?” Trixie’s voice was unnaturally high, because she knew. She’d recognize that fold along the front cover anywhere.
“I found it.”
“She was taking a nap in your old room,” Alma said, “while Dr. Carter was seeing to Gram.”
“Looks like she was doing a little snooping in my room,” Trixie said not quite under her breath.
“I wasn’t snooping,” Samantha said indignantly. “Mrs. G said I could look through the box and find a stuffed animal to sleep with, and I found this.”
“You had to dig down through a lot of bears to find that,” Trixie said. She had the whole series, each title squirreled away in a different part of the house. She knew she should take them home—to her home, in Minneapolis, but they seemed to belong here, with other bits of her childhood. The girl was looking at her through squinted eyes, as if daring Trixie to take the argument further. Instead, Trixie poured a glass of milk in her favorite Winnie-the-Pooh glass (a jelly jar when she was Samantha’s age) and set it on the table. “Have you read it?” She rethought the question, having no idea of age and reading level. “Can you read it?”
Samantha nodded, biting into her sandwich. “Yes, but I haven’t finished it. I love Mary. The sister. She’s sweet.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, dear,” Alma said, though the mouthful of bread and peanut butter had little impact on Samantha’s speech. “Why don’t you sit here and enjoy your lunch and read while Miss Trixie and I take our snack to the others upstairs?”
“Okay,” Samantha said with the tone of a child used to getting instructions before being left alone.
“Just don’t get it sticky,” Trixie said, holding the tray of sandwiches in one hand and two of the four coffee mugs in the other.
“I won’t. I promise. I’ll finish my sandwich and wash my hands.” To reinforce her vow, Samantha pushed the book a little farther away.
“Isn’t she wonderful?” Alma said when they had barely left the kitchen. “Other than you, the best-mannered child I have ever seen. You’d never even know she’s here.”
“Always an important trait.” Trixie trained her eye on her mother’s rounded backside, admiring how the woman could climb the stairs carrying a tray of coffee without rattling a single spoon.
It was warmer on the second floor, even with windows open to the breeze, making Trixie wonder if glasses of iced tea might not have been a better idea than coffee, but a cold beverage wouldn’t offer the sipping comfort of a hot one. They were looking for ritual more than refreshment. Once they rounded the corner at the landing, Trixie could hear voices—her grandmother’s sharp, straightforward and inquisitive, followed by something low, warm, and familiar.
Cam.
She stopped and took in a restorative breath.
“Yes,” Alma said without turning around.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, he’s still as handsome as ever.”
GG Mariah’s room was the first on the left at the top of the stairs, the largest of the four bedrooms, with its own sitting area and bathroom. It had been renovated as such in the early days of World War II to be a room to let for itinerant officers, Mariah fancying herself Wisconsin’s answer to Claudette Colbert in Since You Went Away. Later, the sort of drifting, single-room-seeking men who answered the advertisement proved to be looking for a send-off, and when Alma spent every morning from Thanksgiving to Christmas puking in the downstairs toilet, the ROOM FOR RENT sign was tossed into the fire and Mariah moved in.
Trixie rounded the corner and braced herself. In retrospect, a good daughter of the home would have politely set the tray of sandwiches on the sideboard by the door and gone to sit at the bedside of her ailing great-grandmother. All of which Trixie eventually did, but first she stood, clutching the plate, staring at the man framed by the sunlit window, gauzy curtains fluttering around him. Tall, trim, wearing a subtly patterned shirt tucked into tan corduroy pants that sat snugly belted on his hips.
He said, “Hey there, Trix,” and everything beneath her skin melted and swirled into the consistency of the sandwiches on the plate.
“Hey there, yourself,” she said, and nothing else would come.
“Give me those.” Trixie’s grandmother, Eugenie, rose from her chair beside the bed and took the plate away, grabbing two triangles before holding it out to Cam. “Sandwich, Dr. Carter?”
“Yes, thank you Mrs. Gowan.” He plucked a sandwich off the tray and held it aloft. “I mean, Eugenie.”
“There ya go,” Eugenie said, bustling to put the plate on the dresser top.
Anyone coming into the room would be hard-pressed to match her as Alma’s mother—the two were as unalike as two women could be. Where Alma was round, Eugenie was square. Where Alma had meticulously plucked and pruned and cinched, Eugenie had given over to the forces of gravity and nature. Her figure was an undefined series of squares beneath pale slacks and a front-button cotton blouse. Eugenie Gowan, perhaps the only woman on earth for whom polyester would fade, had hair of an undetermined color cropped close in a mass of unstylish waves. Because she had earned the Gowan name by marrying into the family, GG Mariah often called her the “missing link,” and not always out of earshot.
