Dan. Just standing inside that hall I could once again hear the pony-tailed Molly climbing up onto the porch overhang and tapping ever so gently on my window, waking me up out of a sound sleep. After climbing back through she’d get in bed with me, and hold me, and run her hands through my hair. She’d shush me back to sleep like a mother would a baby. I’d drift away to her sweet scent and the sound of her breaths, just the two of us cocooned inside the sheets and down comforter, no different from the nine months we spent cuddled up inside our mother.
Standing inside the upstairs of that old home, I could almost feel Molly’s arms wrapped around me. I could almost smell her breath. The sensations made me want to leave and never come back home. Back down on the first floor I thought about leaving for good, maybe putting the place up for sale, getting the past out of my life forever. But then something held me back. Something had been holding me back for years now. Like I said, this place and the many acres of land that surrounded it, was all that remained of my history. Would selling this place erase it?
Inhaling a deep breathe I once more made my way across the length of the living room to the large double-hung windows that made up the far window wall. I stood only inches away from the glass, stared out onto the field and the dense foothill forest beyond it.
I see myself walking behind Molly as she enters the woods. I watch her disappear from view as the colorful foliage consumes her like Alice through the looking glass. I find myself standing on the edge of a sea of grass; on the edge of the known and the unknown, the accepted and the forbidden. My heart has shot up from my chest and lodged itself in my mouth while visions of my father slapping us with a punishment so severe we won’t be able to leave the farm for a year.
After a few seconds (but what seems like hours) I hear Molly’s voice begging for me through the trees.
“ Bec, come on,” she shouts. “There’s a waterfall.”
Curiosity pulls at my insides. It is stronger than fear.
A waterfall.
A waterfall means a severe drop-off in the landscape-a cliff of some kind. Maybe a deep pool at the bottom of it. Is that why my father has forbidden us to enter into these woods alone? I realize then, the prospect of his little girls falling off of that cliff is reason enough.
Still, who can resist chasing a waterfall?
I take a few steps forward in the direction of Molly’s voice; toward the sound of rushing water. Ducking my head I slip on through an opening in the trees, make my way into the darkness…
Chapter 24
A howling wind woke me from out of my daydream. I felt a cold draft against the right side of my face. Looking over my right shoulder I saw that one of the double-hung windows had been left open. Not wide open, but open enough for me to feel the breeze.
Shifting myself to the window, I reached out with both hands, closed it. That’s when I noticed that the old lock had been sheered as if someone had tried to force the window open from out on the porch.
I had no choice but to investigate.
Outside on the porch I went to the window and discovered that it had, in fact, been tampered with. Jimmied. Kids, teenagers. It was the first thought that entered into my head. Locals looking to do a little partying.
But then if that had been the case, there would have been beer and liquor bottles tossed all over the living room floor; maybe even the charred remnants of a fire in the fireplace.
But the place was clean. No sign of foul play, least of all a group of teen partiers.
I made a mental note to call the carpenter to repair the window. I turned and started for the front door to lock it back up. It was then that I spotted the photograph. A black and white photo with a white border that was lying on the porch floor as if it had slipped out of somebody’s pocket not ten years ago, but just this morning.
Bending at the knees I picked the picture up.
I felt the floor beneath me shift. The image was of Molly and me. We couldn’t have been more than twelve years old at the time the picture was taken. In the photo we had our twin faces up so close to the camera lens our lips were practically pressed up against it. We were playing for the camera, laughing, smiling, really hamming it up for the photographer.
But this is not what robbed me of my breath and my balance.
The real shock was this: the image in the photo was identical to the one I had seen inside the basement art storage space of Franny’s house. The same one his mother said he’d painted back when he was still in his early twenties.
Had Franny been in possession of this photograph? How would he have gotten hold of it? Did he plant it here purposely for me to find it? If he did, how did he know that I would be coming here?
I sat down onto the porch floor, my back pressed up against the clapboard wall. I became convinced that Michael had been right all along. It wasn’t Whalen who had me spooked.
Franny was also doing a pretty good job of it.
Autism or no autism, Franny was playing with my head, my emotions. Somehow, I got the distinct feeling he knew all about Molly’s and my secret. Somehow he’d managed to invade my head, grab hold of my memories. Now he was toying with me, dangling me by strings like a puppet.
Sweet, old brilliant Franny.
I stood up, shoved the photo in my pocket, and took a three-hundred-sixty degree look around. My fear replaced itself with anger. Was I being followed? Stalked? Did Franny have something to do with it?
I needed answers and I needed them now.
First I locked the door. Then making my way down the porch steps, I jogged my way across the lawn to the Cabriolet. But before opening the door, slipping behind the wheel, I took one last look at the field and the thick woods that covered Mount Desolation.
“Up yours!”
Chapter 25
The studio was silent when I arrived. If anyone aside from Franny and Robyn had been there while I spoke with Caroline Scaramuzzi, they were gone now. Setting my knapsack on the coat hook and my jean jacket over that, I felt the deadweight of two sets of wide eyes focused upon me. Breathing deeply I made my way across the paint-stained floor toward Franny’s corner with the same enthusiasm a condemned prisoner might face the electric chair.
“Let’s see it Fran,” I said in the place of a hello.
“Bec,” Robyn said, her face a painted mask of awe and wonder. “I don’t know how-”
“Don’t,” I broke in. “Don’t try and explain it.”
As I came around to face the canvas, Robyn stepped off to the side, as if the corner wasn’t big enough for the three of us.
“Don’t, don’t.” Franny mumbled to himself.
“It’s okay, Franny,” I said, “I think I know what’s happening now.”
Before entering the art center just minutes before, I’d wanted to scream at Franny. What kind of game are you playing? Why are you playing it? I wanted to know if he was the one who walked to my parents’ house, dropped the photograph to the porch floor. I’d wanted to know if he was the one who tried to break into the house. But looking at the newest painting (the third in three days), I could only feel myself breaking down. I felt my limbs tremble, my throat close up on itself. I felt my heart lodge itself inside my sternum.
A tear rolled down my cheek.
“How is it possible to know these things, Fran?”
Painted on the canvas, an oil portrait of two blonde-haired girls, down on their knees at the edge of a
