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I believed him. It was in his chocolate-brown eyes, he meant what he said. I know my eyes lit up with gratitude for Lamar Rensdale, who swore the very next day he’d visit my aunt. I warned him my father wasn’t likely to listen to him.
Arden, Vera and I swam in the river that summer, fished and learned how to sail the small boat Papa had bought. Each month saw Papa just a little richer. Now he was making plans to fix up the house and restore it to its former grandeur. He talked so much about it without doing anything that I feared he never would. Anyway, it didn’t matter now, for Momma was dead.
My aunt was not as grouchy as she had been; in fact, I often saw her looking rather happy. Papa no longer made sarcastic, cruel remarks about her long face and her skinny figure. He even complimented her new hairstyle and the makeup she’d begun to wear.
Papa still wouldn’t tell me why he couldn’t bring Sylvia home. I saved money from the allowance he gave me to buy Sylvia rattles and teething rings, but he never brought her home. Now she was too old for those things. He told me the hospital wouldn’t let her have her own toys. I still didn’t understand what was wrong with Sylvia.
Day by day Arden was growing taller. He was fifteen now, but seemed much older. He was beginning to plan for his future. “Now, please don’t think this silly,” he began in a tentative way, “but ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted to be an architect. At night I dream of the cities I’ll build, functional and beautiful, too. I want to plan the landscaping, have trees in the middle of town. I’d make the highways multilevel so they won’t take up so much ground space.” He smiled at me. “Audrina, just you wait and see the kind of cities I build.”
I wanted for Arden what he wanted for himself, and many times I’d wondered why he bothered with me when so many older gir
ls must have attracted his eyes. Why did he give me the feeling sometimes he was duty-bound to me and no other?
Arden had up days, and a few down days. He liked being outdoors more than he liked being in, and I told myself time and time again that’s why we never went into his house. And Billie must be just the opposite, for she never came outside. In all the time I’d known Billie and Arden, not once had she invited me into their home. Of course, I couldn’t invite Arden into my home, either, because of Papa, and maybe they were just retaliating. Vera often teased and said Billie didn’t think I was good enough for her son, and not good enough for her house, either.
At the edge of the woods Arden and I paused to say goodbye. As the sun sank low over the horizon, Whitefern loomed up dark and lonely against a sky that was purple and shot through with crimson and orange. “What kind of sky is that?” I asked in a small whisper, holding tighter to his hand.
“A sailor’s sky,” he said in a low voice. “Signaling a better day tomorrow.”
How like Arden to say that, even if it wasn’t so. I looked from the house to the drive, and then I stared off in the direction of the family cemetery. I had to clear my throat before I could ask, “Arden … just how long have you known me?”
Why did he let go of my hand, blush and turn away? Was that such an awful question? Was I convincing him with such a question that I was truly crazy?
“Audrina,” he said at long last, in the tightest of all possible voices, “I met you first when you said you were seven.”
That wasn’t the answer I wanted.
“Hey, stop frowning. Run on home so I can see you enter safely before I go.”
From the doorway I looked back to see him waiting there. I waved, then waited for him to wave back. Reluctantly, I entered the gloominess of Whitefern.
Time had slowed down, and August really dragged. The sultry, sticky days made me wish for a vacation where it was cool, but we never went anywhere. Inside the house the high ceilings made it cooler than outside, but the dimness of the rooms made the stained-glass colors too brilliant, and the colors still tinkled the wind chimes that still tried to whisper secrets.
“Papa,” I said in September when Vera was going back to school, “is Vera three years or four years older than me?”
“She’s three, almost four years older,” he said without thought, then gave me a strange look. “What age does she tell you she is?”
“It doesn’t matter what she tells me, for she lies all the time, but she tells Arden she’s older.”
“Vera is fourteen,” said Papa indifferently. “Her birthday is November the twelfth.”
I marked that down as possibly true, knowing that birthdays in our house just didn’t happen normally. Knowing, too, that First Audrina’s never-never party had spoiled all birthdays for everyone.
I did remember my eleventh birthday, for Arden gave me that piece of pink quartz he’d had made into a rose. It hung around my neck on a slender gold chain and made me feel very special. No one at my house gave me anything for my birthday—or even wished me a happy birthday.
* * *
I was still using my string-tied-to-the-ring trick and giving Papa my lists. Sometimes I found those lists in his office wastebasket, and sometimes I saw him stare at those lists for long, long moments, as if memorizing every stock I listed before he threw the list away.
In November I caught him doing this. “You wanted me to do something to help you, and when I do, you pretend I don’t. Papa, why do you go to such trouble to convince me I’m special, then toss away my lists as if you don’t believe I am.”
“Because I’m a fool, Audrina. I want to gain by my own abilities, not by yours. And I’ve seen you perform your silly little trick by swinging the ring over the stocks. I want honest dreams, not contrived ones. I know when you’re honest and when you’re not. I’m going to make you what you should be if it takes me the rest of my life—and yours.”
Chilled, I froze in position, frightened by his determined tone. “What is it you want me to be?”
“Like my First Audrina,” he said resolutely.
Even colder, I backed away. Maybe he was the crazy one and not me. His dark, brooding eyes followed my every motion, as if commanding me to run to him now and love him as she’d loved him—and I couldn’t do what he wanted. I didn’t want to be her. I only wanted to be me.
