The Quarry Girls(8)
It’d be weird if we hadn’t grown up with it.
While kids were allowed, even encouraged, to play in the tunnels, you’d never catch a grown-up dead down there unless they had to get to another house and the weather was bad, like for the Roots-watching party last January. A winter storm had raged overhead, turning the preparty tunnels into a busy world, all lit up with flashlights, faces friendly and arms heavy with Tupperware and slow cookers. Hawaiian fever was sweeping the Midwest, which meant most every dish contained pineapple. Fine by me. It left extra of the good stuff: bacon-wrapped water chestnuts, ambrosia salad, glorious, drippy cheese fondue.
Claude had asked once why we still lived in Pantown now that Dad was such a bigwig district attorney and we were rich and could move anywhere. When I’d posed the question to Dad, he’d laughed. He’d laughed so hard he’d had to wipe his eyes.
He looked like a Kennedy, my dad. Not the famous one, the one who had been president, but maybe his younger brother. When he’d caught his breath, Dad said, “Heather, we’re not rich. We’re not poor, either. We pay our bills, and we live in this house that is plenty good enough for us, in the house I grew up in.”
It really was something, living in one home your whole life as my dad had done. He was a Pantown lifer. I’d never met his parents, my grandparents. They’d both died before I was born, Grandpa Cash even before Mom and Dad married. Grandpa had been in World War II, though he made it home after. He looked grim in the single photo of him that I’d seen, the one that rested on our mantel. Grandma Cash appeared kinder, but there was a tightness around her eyes, a look like she’d maybe been tricked one too many times.
Striding toward their house that was now our house, I stopped so suddenly that Junie barreled into my back. I’d been so busy worrying about the upcoming county fair show that I hadn’t noticed the empty driveway until it was almost too late.
“What is it?” Junie asked, stepping around me. “Dad gone?”
I nodded. “Yup.”
Junie sighed. It was an old sound, old as the stars. “I’ll go to my room.”
I blew her a kiss as we stepped inside. “Thanks, June Bug. It’s just for a little bit.”
It wasn’t so much that Dad took care of Mom when he was around. It was more that part of her stayed present for him, an important bit that slipped away when it was just Junie and me.
That, and she cried less when Dad was home.
A woman’s job is to keep a happy house, she’d said once, forever ago.
I waited until I heard the click of Junie’s upstairs door before tiptoeing to Mom and Dad’s bedroom. Junie was old enough now that I didn’t need to protect her from this, but there was no good reason to expose us both when I had all the practice. Plus, despite the unsettling curves that had seemingly transformed her body overnight, Junie was only twelve.
I stuck my good ear to Mom’s door before knocking. It was quiet on the other side.
Knock knock.
I waited.
And waited.
Mom didn’t answer. My heart played an ugly beat. No sobbing was good, but no sound at all? That’d equaled a trip to the emergency room last time. The sense of déjà vu was so strong that it messed with gravity for a second, forcing me to grab for the wall. Once, before all this, Mom had told me that when I experienced déjà vu, I should do something totally out of character to break the spell. Otherwise, I’d be stuck in an infinite loop, living that same sliver of time on repeat. She’d pulled out her ears and puffed her cheeks to demonstrate what sort of behavior would suffice. I’d giggled so hard.
I wasn’t laughing now.
Even though it felt like swallowing concrete, I opened her bedroom door. Opened it quick, too.
Better to get this done and over with.
CHAPTER 4
The line of her body was visible beneath the covers, motionless. Not even the soft lift of breath. She usually styled her curls and makeup even on her worst days, but the shock of dark hair peeking above the blanket was wild. I darted forward, terrified to discover her cold and solid.
“Mom!” I yelled, shaking her, my legs gone numb.
She grunted, shoved my hands away, and sat up slowly, eyes bleary. “What is it, Heather? What’s wrong?”
The relief was sudden and overwhelming. It took a moment for feeling to return, and with it hot, pent-up blood filled my ears with the pound of surf. I forced my voice to calm. If she heard the slightest tremble in it now that she was awake, she’d attack.
“Nothing, Mom. Sorry.” I thought fast. “I just wanted to tell you that me and Junie are back from practice.”
She reached for the pack of Kools on the bedstand, brushing her tangled hair away from her face. In the shadowed room, the lighter’s flare outlined the sharpness of her skull. As always, her face made me swell with pride. It didn’t matter that she was too thin, her bones jutting beneath her pale skin. Her eyes were enormous and blue-violet, her nose a soft scoop, her lips lush pillows.
She was exquisite.
And other than her black hair to Junie’s red, the two of them could be twins.
Me, I was almost a different species. Drummer ganglititus, maybe. Or Girl uglican. Too tall, with bony knees and elbows and a long Dorothy Hamill haircut that was desperately out of style yet hid my burned-off ear. But looking at Mom, I forgot my own appearance. That’s how beautiful she was. It made me frantic to throw up the shades, to let the late-afternoon sun hit her face, to see her.