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“That is exactly what this house needs,” answered my aunt coldly. “Another Audrina.”
“You listen to me, Ellie, and listen well. You keep Vera away from my daughter! You keep reminding Vera each day of her life to keep her mouth shut or I’ll have the skin from her back and the hair ripped from her scalp. If ever I find out Vera was somehow connected—”
“She wasn’t! Of course she wasn’t!”
Their voices faded away. I was left in the shadows, feeling sick and trying to figure out what all that meant. Vera had the secret of why I couldn’t remember like everyone else. I had to get Vera to tell me. But Vera hated me. She’d never tell me anything. Somehow I had to make Vera stop hating me. Somehow I had to make her like me. Then maybe she’d tell me the secret of myself.
The next morning at breakfast Momma was smiling and cheerful. “Guess what,” she said as I sat down to breakfast. “We’re going to have neighbors. Your father rented that small cottage where Mr. Willis used to live before he died.”
That name rang a familiar bell. Had I known Mr. Willis?
“They’re moving in today,” Momma went on. “If we weren’t expecting your Aunt Mercy Marie, we could stroll through the woods and welcome them. June is such a lovely month.”
I stared at her openmouthed. “Momma, the deliveryman said yesterday it was March.”
“No, darling, it’s June. The last deliveryman to come here came months ago.” She sighed. “I wish I had the department store deliver every day; then I’d have something to look forward to besides Damian’s return home.”
All the joy I should have felt at the prospect of neighbors was spoiled by my disjointed memory. Vera limped into the kitchen then, throwing me a mean look before she fell into a chair and asked for bacon, eggs, pancakes and doughnuts. “Did I hear you say we’re going to have neighbors, Momma?”
Momma? Why was she calling my mo
ther that? I shot my own mean glare her way. I tried not to let Momma see. She looked tired, rather distraught as she began to make goose liver pâté for the party. Why did she go to so much trouble when that woman was dead, and only Aunt Ellsbeth would be there to eat the best of everything?
“I know who the new neighbors are,” smirked Vera. “The boy who gave me a box of candy for Valentine’s Day hinted he might be moving near us. He’s eleven years old, but he’s so big he looks like thirteen or fourteen.”
My aunt stalked in, her long face grim and formidable. “He’s too young for you, then,” she snapped, making me wonder if Vera really was much older than I’d thought. Gosh, why couldn’t I know anyone’s age? They knew mine. “Don’t you start fooling around with him, Vera, or Damian will kick us both out.”
“I’m not afraid of Papa,” said Vera smugly. “I know how to handle men. A kiss, a hug, a big smile and they melt.”
“You are a manipulator, I know that. But leave that boy alone. Are you listening, Vera?”
“Yes, Mother,” answered Vera in her most scornful voice. “Of course I am listening! Even the dead could listen! And I don’t really want a boy who’s only eleven. I hate living ‘way out here in the sticks where there aren’t any boys but the stupid ones in the village.”
Papa came in next, wearing a new custom-fitted suit. He sat to tuck a napkin under his chin so nothing would spot his pure silk tie. If cleanliness was next to godliness, Papa was a god walking the earth.
“Is it really June, Papa?” I asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“It seems only yesterday it was March—that man who brought Momma’s new dress said it was March.”
“That was months ago, darling, months ago. Of course it’s June. Look at the flowers in bloom, the green grass. Feel how hot it is. You don’t get days like this in March.”
Vera ate half her pancakes and then was up and heading for the foyer to pick up her schoolbooks. She’d failed her grade and had to spend eight weeks of her vacation going to summer school.
“Why are you following me?” she bit out.
I held fast to my determination to make Vera like me. “Why do you hate me, Vera?”
“I don’t have time to list the reasons.” Her voice was haughty. “Everyone in school thinks you’re strange; they know you’re crazy.”
That surprised me. “How can they when they don’t know me?”
Turning, she smiled. “I tell them all about you and your quirky ways, staying close to the shadows near the wall, and how you scream out each night. They know that you’re so ‘special’ you don’t even know which year, month or day of the week it is.”
How disloyal to spread family secrets. Again wounded, my desire to have her like me weakened. I didn’t really think she ever would. “I wish you wouldn’t talk about me to people who might not understand.”
“Understand what—that you’re a nutty freak with no memory? Really, they understand you perfectly, and nobody, absolutely nobody, would ever want to be your friend.”
