“Marcy’s shop. That’s very nice.”
She sounded normal, making me wonder if she had taken some kind of medicine. I thought it took longer for psychiatric drugs to work.
“I hope you remembered to get Dr Pepper,” she said, watching me put away groceries.
“I did. Want some?”
“No, thank you,” Aunt Iris replied. “I have private matters to attend to.”
I opened the refrigerator and moved to one side all the stuff I planned to throw out when she wasn’t looking.
“It’s unfortunate,” she said.
“What is?” I asked, wiping off the cleared shelf with a dishrag.
“I really can’t say. They are private matters.”
“All right.”
“I’ll be in my office.”
I pulled my head out of the refrigerator in time to see her slip a key into the door that led from the kitchen into the next room, the one I’d found locked last night. Curious, I followed her to the door to see what was there.
Two of the room’s walls had glass-fronted cabinets with counters beneath, the kind you see in an old science lab.
There was a desk, what looked like an examining table, and an old-fashioned scale. A bookshelf just inside the door was crammed with worn volumes on the care of horses, cows, sheep, and, yes, goats.
“Was this my great-grandfather’s office?” I asked.
Aunt Iris swung around. “I told you some things are private!”
“Okay, okay,” I said, taking a step back.
She sat down at the desk, which was topped with a collection of candleholders, all of them covered with wax, their candles burnt down to the metal. What did she do in here?
“Don’t,” she said.
“Don’t what?”
“I can hear you prying. It’s nobody’s fault.”
“It isn’t?” I replied, not sure what she was talking about.
“Of course not,” she said. “People just die.”
“Sooner or later.”
“On your way out, Joanna, close the door behind you.”
Obviously, I was supposed to leave. I returned to the kitchen but kept the door cracked between us. A minute later she closed and locked it — I heard the double click. Oh, well.
I fixed myself a salad and ate the other chicken leg, listening for movement inside her office, hearing nothing.
Thinking about the melted candles, I sniffed but couldn’t smell anything burning. While she was occupied with
“private matters,” I cleared the gross stuff out of the fridge, triple bagging it, then took it out to a set of heavy-duty trash cans next to Uncle Will’s pickup. On my way back to the kitchen I saw that Iris had closed the shutters in her office.
Once inside again, I called to her. “Aunt Iris?”
She didn’t respond.
“Aunt Iris, can I help you with anything?”
“No, these are private matters.”
Tomorrow I was buying several smoke detectors. “All right. I’m going down to the dock for a while.”
Sitting on the dock, I turned my back to the house, but I couldn’t shut her out of my mind. According to her lawyer, there were a lot of decisions to be made. Turning eighteen in a month and being the one-and-only “next of kin” to Aunt Iris, I would have to make choices that were far beyond my own experience. Ms. Nolan had strongly suggested that I call Mom. I would, but after her vacation. Tomorrow’s text message would be “GETTING 2 KNO AUNT IRIS + LUV THE CREEK.”
Lost in thought, I didn’t notice the steady sound of flicking water coming from the left, not until cool drops were flicked at me.
“Earth to Anna,” Zack called.
I turned and saw him treading water about eight feet from the dock. His wet hair was slicked straight back and dripped down his neck, almost touching his shoulders.
Some people look weird wet and slick, but not Zack.
“Hi.”
“Hi! Come on in,” he invited. “Water’s great.”
“Looks great, but no thanks.”
“Come on,” he coaxed.
“I’m not wearing a bathing suit.”
“So?”
“So,” I said firmly.
“Do you like boats? I’ve got a rowboat.” He pulled a tan arm out of the water to gesture in the direction of the Flemings’ dock. “Want to use it?”
I had always wanted to take out a boat — I mean a real one, not the purple sea dragons that I had pedaled in the Baltimore harbor. Floating around on an evening like this. .
“I’ll row for you.”
“I can row myself,” I said — not that I ever had.
“Okay. There’s a gate through the hedge, close to the house.”
I glanced in the direction of the Flemings’ dock, then back at the gate.
“Meet you over there,” he said, and swam toward his own dock.
Well, how hard can rowing be? I asked myself as I crossed from one yard to the other. It was a children’s song — Row, row, row your boat. But when I walked out on the Flemings’ dock, I had second thoughts. There was an expensive-looking cabin cruiser tied next to the rowboat, and I imagined myself rowing into it. These things didn’t have brakes.
Zack was floating on his back. When he saw me looking at the cabin cruiser, he righted himself. “Do you like big boats? Our sailboat’s at the marina. We can’t get its mast under the bridge.”
And where do you keep your oceangoing yacht? I felt like asking. I stared down at the water. I didn’t remember the boats in Baltimore’s harbor sitting that many feet below the dock.
Zack swam closer. “Want some help getting in? Tide’s low.”
“I can manage it,” I assured him, and jumped. I landed squarely on both feet, the force of my leap making the boat rock wildly. I rocked with it and grabbed the piling to which the boat was tied, holding on to it like a cat clinging to a tree.
When I peeked at Zack, he had ducked under the water.
From the bubbles coming up, I knew he was laughing.
“Next time,” he said, when he’d surfaced, “you might want to sit on the dock and ease yourself down to the boat.”
“I might.”
“Why don’t you put on the life jacket,” he suggested, “just in case the coast guard comes by.”
The coast guard wasn’t coming by; Zack thought I needed something to keep me afloat, and he was probably right.
I let go of the piling, sat down, and pulled on the clumsy padding. Slipping the oars in the oarlocks — that was surprisingly easy to figure out — I was about to shove off when, just in time, I remembered I was still tied to the piling.
Now, that would have been embarrassing.
