up the steps to Marcy’s shop, I quickly looked for another piece of glass to polish.
The sleigh bells jingled.
“Hi, Marcy. Hi, Anna.”
“Well, this is a nice surprise,” Marcy said to Zack. “Is everything all right with your father?”
“Yes, I’m delivering some blueprints for him, and I thought I’d stop by.”
“You never stopped by before,” she observed.
“I never realized what great air-conditioning you had,” he answered smoothly. “I may have to come more often.”
“Uh-huh.”
He flashed his stepmother a grin, then walked over to me.
“Actually, I came because I have a last-minute invitation. My friend Erika Gill is having a big party tomorrow night, one of those all-out birthday bashes that girls like. Want to go?”
For a moment all I could do was stare at him. This is just a coincidence, I told myself. But in my gut I didn’t believe it.
What I had dreamed two nights ago was somehow becoming real, just like the fire. He was carrying out the drama queen’s request to date me.
“No. Sorry.”
“Since it’s a catered thing, at a restaurant, I’ll pick you up at — what did you say?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t do it.”
Behind his back, Marcy watched, her eyes bright.
“You’re busy?”
“I just can’t do it,” I said.
“Maybe she has a boyfriend, Zack,” Marcy suggested.
“She doesn’t,” he replied quickly, then bit his lip. “I mean, it’s just that we talked about that last night.”
Was that why he had asked the question? Was last night also part of carrying out Erika’s plan?
“I thought you might like meeting new people,” he said.
“Will there be any cute jocks?”
He looked irritated. “Yeah, sure, if that’s what you want.”
What I wanted was to stop falling for guys who acted interested in me, when really. .
“Maybe another time,” I said, and turned back to a display of glass figures.
When he left, Marcy shook her head in amazement. “Now I have seen everything. Zack never gets turned down. He needs a secretary to keep track of all the girls.”
“Then he’ll get over it.”
“Why did you say no?” Marcy asked. “It’s none of my business, but I can’t help but be curious. I hope it wasn’t because I was here.”
“It wasn’t.” I picked up a skinny Santa and polished his boot.
“Are you playing hard to get?”
“No.”
Marcy studied me, head tilted. “Well, I’m glad someone has finally said no to him. Being motherless and an only child, Zack is used to getting one hundred percent of his father’s attention, which I understand, but it isn’t good for him. And he is so popular with kids his own age, he expects everyone to do whatever he wants. This time, someone didn’t. You’re a different kind of girl, Anna.”
“I guess so.”
Playing hard to get? A guy had to be interested in you before you could play hard to get.
When I arrived home that evening, Aunt Iris and her gold Chevrolet were gone. I found two large trays of cat food and a scattering of nuggets on the kitchen floor, indicating she had recently fed the herd and let them out again. I fixed dinner and carried it into Uncle Will’s den. Two cats were sleeping on the porch, and I lured them inside with scraps from my plate, trusting them to tell me when Aunt Iris was coming home.
I sat at Uncle Will’s big oak desk, eating a chef’s salad and planning my search. The wall across from the fireplace was lined from floor to ceiling with shelves. Books, magazines, and newspapers were crammed between the shelves and piled on the floor next to an old leather chair, where Uncle Will must have read. The papers on the desk and things on the floor were neatly stacked, perhaps the result of a police search. But it didn’t look as if the stuffed bookshelves had been touched.
I began with the desk, rifling quickly through old bank records, canceled checks, and outdated warrantees. When I opened the last drawer, I stopped. It was filled with photos, pictures of my birth mother and me: me with a tricycle, me with an inner tube, several photos of me with a fishing rod. I had my own copies of the photos that included my mother, but seeing them here, in the place where we had lived together, made the woman in the pictures more real. Even I was struck by the resemblance between us, especially since I was almost as old as she had been in the photos. If I wore my hair up as she did, we could have passed for twins.
Finding no important documents in the desk, I turned to the wall of shelves. In my study nook at home, I tended to stick things on the shelves closest to where I was sitting.
Since Uncle Will’s desk backed up to the wall, making some of the shelves within easy reaching distance, I decide to start three shelves from the bottom, then work progressively above and below that shelf, going from most accessible to least. Removing each book in turn, I flipped through it, hoping to find loose papers. If there was something in this room about my mother or family, something Uncle Will had wanted me to know, I was going to find it.
Most of Uncle Will’s books were about Maryland, the two World Wars, and wildlife, some of the volumes quite old. He must have subscribed to every fishing and outdoorsman magazine in existence. The magazines and newspapers were stuffed between the tops of the books and the next shelf up. I removed one newspaper, skimmed it, and finally found an article on a fishing charter service out of Wisteria, which may have been the reason Uncle Will had saved it.
Realizing it would take forever to go through all the newspapers looking for the reason they had been kept, I began to stack them on the floor with the plan to go through them when I had completed my search of the den.
As I removed book after book, I stopped reading the titles. Then I noticed one with pictures different from battlefields and shorebirds: mug shots. I thumbed back to the title page: Psychosis and the Criminal Mind. Well, that was interesting! I glanced at the binding of the next book: Famous Psychotics. I pulled it out, turned to its table of contents, and scanned the chapter headings: Criminals, Kings, Scientists, Musicians, Writers, Actors, Mediums.
There was a penciled check next to the first and final chapters. Aunt Iris probably considered herself a medium, a channel for thought and feelings from “the other side.” I hoped she wasn’t a criminal. Continuing down the row of books, I found A History of Psychosis and Healing. I guess it wasn’t surprising that Uncle Will had an interest in mental illness. There were three more thick books on it, then the topic changed. You and the Paranormal, I read. He had about a dozen books on that subject.
I completed two shelves, petted the sleeping cats, telling them to keep up the good work, then moved on to a third.
Halfway through it, I pulled out a wad of newspaper that was lighter in color than the others. Figuring it was more recent, I checked the date: May 22, one day before Uncle Will had written his letter inviting me to Wisteria. I reviewed it carefully but found nothing that appeared related to him or Aunt Iris. Setting it aside, I pulled out the books beneath where it had been crammed. Another wad of newspaper came out with them, this one toast-colored — old. At first I thought that the wad was nothing more than neatly folded paper, then I realized something was wrapped inside it. I knew that the tape on the wrapping had been broken recently, because it had left behind white stripes. I carefully removed the layers of dry paper and found an old notebook with soft covers.
Fingers trembling, guessing that this was something important, I opened the book. My mother’s name was inscribed on the inside cover. I touched the ink, then traced her handwriting, as if I could read the person who wrote it in the slashes and curves of her letters. The phone number listed beneath her name belonged to Uncle Will and Aunt Iris — she had used this book when I was part of her life.
The first sheet was headed “Appointments,” the information beneath it written in neat columns: month, day,
