Nightshade

“Are you?” Matt countered, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

His mother hesitated, then shook her head. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”

Matt’s eyes shifted from Joan to the coffee maker. “Do you think Dad’ll come home this afternoon?” he ventured as he refilled his cup and poured one for his mother.

Once again the chasm of silence widened until it threatened to engulf them while Joan tried to decide what to say. Her first impulse was to try to reassure him, as she had when Bill Hapgood first came into their lives eleven years ago. But then she remembered that he was not a little boy anymore. “I don’t think so,” she admitted. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”

Suddenly Emily’s voice could be heard drifting down from the floor above. Though her words were indistinct, both of them heard the anger in her tone. Joan flinched, and the hot coffee slopped out of the cup onto her hands. “I’d better go up and see what she wants.”

His mother started toward the door. “Maybe Dad’s right,” Matt said, and though his voice was soft, his words stopped Joan short. “Maybe Gram shouldn’t be here. Maybe you should let Dad find a place for her.” He saw a flicker of something in his mother’s eyes. Fear? Anger? He couldn’t be certain, and it was gone as quickly as it had come.

“No,” she said. “She’s my mother and I have to take care of her.” Then she was gone and he could hear her hurrying up the stairs as his grandmother called out again.

Matt drained his coffee, picked up his backpack, and went out into the cold morning, walking quickly down the long driveway. Kelly Conroe was waiting for him by the mailbox, just as she always did, but as he came out the gate her usually sunny smile faded.

“Matt?” she asked, unknowingly echoing the words he’d asked his mother a few minutes earlier. “Are you all right?”

He fell in beside her, taking her hand in his own. They’d been going to school together almost as long as they could remember, first waiting for the grade-school bus at the stop halfway between the Hapgood house and the Conroes’, then riding their bikes, and then, when they got to high school, walking. It wasn’t until last spring that they started holding hands, and though neither Matt’s parents nor Kelly’s had said anything, both of them were sure that their mothers, at least, were already speculating on the future possibilities, happily ignoring the fact that since Kelly was planning on going to medical school and Matt was toying with becoming a lawyer, whatever “future possibilities” there might be were at least eight or ten years away.

“My dad left last night,” Matt told her.

Kelly stopped short. “What do you mean, he left?”

Matt suddenly felt annoyed with Kelly. “You know — left?”

“But why?” Kelly asked.

“Why do you think?” Matt demanded, his voice harsh. “Because of my grandmother moving in.”

“But he’s coming back, isn’t he?”

Matt dropped Kelly’s hand. “How should I know?” He hesitated. Then, as the rain that had been threatening began to fall, all the feelings that had been building in him through the night poured out. “It’s not like he told me if he’s coming back or not! He didn’t say anything at all. There wasn’t even a fight, or anything.” The whole story of what had happened the night before tumbled from his lips.

“He’ll come back,” Kelly decided when Matt was finished. They were in front of the school, and the first bell rang as she spoke. “I mean, your dad’s not going to leave just because — ”

Matt’s eyes, as stormy as the sky, fixed on her. “He’s not my dad, remember? He’s only my stepfather. So who cares if he comes back? I don’t!” Turning his back on her, he hurried up the front steps and into the shelter of the school.

Kelly, oblivious to the rain, watched him go.

You care, she thought. You care if he comes back.

CHAPTER 4

“THAT DOESN’T GO there! why can’t you do anything right?”

Joan’s hands tightened on the dress she was holding. Pale blue, the bodice covered with seed pearls, the satin dress had been her mother’s favorite. But that was years ago, and even though the dress had been kept carefully hung in the closet since the one time it was worn, the color had begun to fade and the material to rot. In fact, it should have been given away years ago, while someone could still use it. Now it was beyond repair — not that it would be worth repairing, since the seed pearls were plastic and the satin was made of rayon instead of silk. But in her mother’s eyes the dress was still beautiful.

As beautiful as it had once been…

* * *

JOAN STOOD AT the door to her sister’s room, her eyes fixed on the large gray cardboard box on cynthia’s bed. She knew what was in the box, for it was all her mother and sister had been talking about for weeks.

The dress.

The dress Cynthia would wear tomorrow night when she went to the prom with Marty Holmes.

The dress that Cynthia and their mother had started planning weeks ago, on the day Marty asked Cynthia to the prom.

The dress that Mrs. Fillmore had made, making Cynthia come over for fittings day after day.

“I’m starting to hate that dress,” Cynthia had whispered to her last week. “I can never stand still enough for Mrs. Fillmore, and she always sticks pins in me, like I’m some kind of voodoo doll or something.”

“But Mom says it’s going to be the most beautiful dress anyone’s ever seen,” Joan said. “If she finds out you don’t even like it — ”

Cynthia, four years older than her twelve-year-old sister, fixed her eyes on Joan. “Why would she find that out?” she asked. “I’m not going to tell her — if she wants me to wear the stupid dress, I’ll wear it. What do I care?”

“Don’t you even want to go to the prom?” Joan asked wistfully. Since the moment she’d heard about the prom, she thought everything about it sounded wonderful. All the boys would be dressed up in dinner jackets, and the girls would wear beautiful dresses, but none of them as beautiful as Cynthia’s. The wonderfully soft and smooth satin from which Mrs. Fillmore was making the dress was the exact same blue as Cynthia’s eyes, and the dressmaker was even letting Cynthia wear a string of her own pearls.

“They’re not quite real,” she’d admitted to her mother when she brought them over. “But they match the seed pearls on the bodice perfectly.”

Joan had stared longingly at the pearls, wishing she could try them on, but knowing she shouldn’t even ask.

Maybe in four years, when it was time for her own prom…

“I don’t care if I go or not,” Cynthia said, finally answering the question that had begun Joan’s reverie. “And I sure don’t want to go over to old Mrs. Fillmore’s again.” She cocked her head then, her eyes fixed on her younger sister. “Why don’t you go to the fitting tomorrow?”

Joan’s eyes widened. “Me?”

“Why not?” Cynthia countered, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

“But it won’t fit — ” Joan began.

Cynthia didn’t let her finish. “It won’t matter if it doesn’t fit perfectly, because she’s only doing the hemline tomorrow! Stand up.”

Joan scrambled off Cynthia’s bed.

“Stand next to me.”