comes down to Newport, I always knew that, and now I'm supposed to agree to send Carrie there?” And Mom whispered, “Stop now. It doesn't matter anymore; it never did. I love you, Andy….” And Dad just kept shaking his head as he drove along saying, “Of course it matters. No wonder you kept her out of our family all this time. She knew.”
“Sshh …” Mom said, with a tilt of her head toward me. My thoughts were on fire. What
had
caused the distance between her and her sister? What came down to Newport, and what did AuntKatharine know? I'd always heard of family secrets; I just never knew we had any.
“Hey how come Aunt Katharine wants you to visit her in Rhode Island and not me?” I asked Carrie, just before we went to Mackinac Island.
“She wants you too,” Carrie said. “But I'm older, so I'd go first.”
“Why haven't we ever met her?” I asked.
“I wish I knew, Beck. But I've gotten to know her through her letters,” Carrie said. “She's… different, that's for sure. But she likes my pictures, and tells me to express myself….”
I couldn't exactly complain about their correspondence—Carrie wanted to be an artist, a photographer, so it was only right she'd get more attention from our sculpting aunt. But still, I felt a little left out. Newport had sounded cool. I will confess that right now. But it sounded a little like Oz—over a rainbow we weren't meant to cross.
Carrie pointed out that Newport was full of kids from the rich side of town, whose parents belonged to the yacht club and wore cashmere sweaters and drove fancy cars, not people like us, whose dad coached baseball and wore sweatshirts and drove an old station wagon. That weekend before we went on vacation she'd started sounding reluctant, said maybe it would be disloyal to our dad if she insisted on going. So she didn't.
I kept wondering what had changed with our father. Did you know that kids feel happy, as if nothing could ever be wrong, when their parents love each other? My father would bring my mother coffee in bed every morning. He'd come home with her favorite ice cream. Every Mother's Day he'd buy her another lilac bush, plant it along the fence. We had the most beautiful lilacs in Ohio.
One summer night when I was six, the windows were open, and I heard laughing in the backyard. I pushed the white curtain aside and looked out. There, under the moon, my parents were dancing. Barefoot in the grass, my mom standing on my dad's toes, twirlingaround in the silvery darkness. Her arms were around his neck, and holding on, she arched her back to look up at the moon. She smiled, and for a second I thought she'd seen me.
But then I realized she was looking up at my father. She balanced there a long minute, and then he leaned over to kiss her. It was the kind of kiss kids weren't supposed to watch, and even though I prided myself on spying, I ducked down and tiptoed away from the window. I drifted off to sleep to the sound of my parents laughing and singing softly, and knew I was the happiest kid in the world.
That changed after Carrie's accident. No more laughing, no more singing, no more dancing under the moon. No more lilac bushes.
So. The day it happened. Last summer, a year and two months ago, we'd gone to Mackinac Island, this beautiful paradise way up north in Lake Michigan. The sun was bright, hitting the lake as if it were a mirror. We rented the same cabin as far back as I can remember. This was our summer place. There was one canoe. We had to take turns. Travis took me out first, early our second morning there.
The air was heavy, muggy with August heat. The sky was soft blue, veiled by haze. Easterners obviously think the ocean is the only thing, but they should see the Great Lakes. They are magnificent, endless, too wide to see the far shore. But there were little islands nearby. Sweet little islands that we sometimes saw deer swimming to. And the magic lighthouse.
That's what Carrie called it.
It had appeared
“Sshh …” Mom said, with a tilt of her head toward me. My thoughts were on fire. What
had
caused the distance between her and her sister? What came down to Newport, and what did AuntKatharine know? I'd always heard of family secrets; I just never knew we had any.
“Hey how come Aunt Katharine wants you to visit her in Rhode Island and not me?” I asked Carrie, just before we went to Mackinac Island.
“She wants you too,” Carrie said. “But I'm older, so I'd go first.”
“Why haven't we ever met her?” I asked.
“I wish I knew, Beck. But I've gotten to know her through her letters,” Carrie said. “She's… different, that's for sure. But she likes my pictures, and tells me to express myself….”
I couldn't exactly complain about their correspondence—Carrie wanted to be an artist, a photographer, so it was only right she'd get more attention from our sculpting aunt. But still, I felt a little left out. Newport had sounded cool. I will confess that right now. But it sounded a little like Oz—over a rainbow we weren't meant to cross.
Carrie pointed out that Newport was full of kids from the rich side of town, whose parents belonged to the yacht club and wore cashmere sweaters and drove fancy cars, not people like us, whose dad coached baseball and wore sweatshirts and drove an old station wagon. That weekend before we went on vacation she'd started sounding reluctant, said maybe it would be disloyal to our dad if she insisted on going. So she didn't.
I kept wondering what had changed with our father. Did you know that kids feel happy, as if nothing could ever be wrong, when their parents love each other? My father would bring my mother coffee in bed every morning. He'd come home with her favorite ice cream. Every Mother's Day he'd buy her another lilac bush, plant it along the fence. We had the most beautiful lilacs in Ohio.
One summer night when I was six, the windows were open, and I heard laughing in the backyard. I pushed the white curtain aside and looked out. There, under the moon, my parents were dancing. Barefoot in the grass, my mom standing on my dad's toes, twirlingaround in the silvery darkness. Her arms were around his neck, and holding on, she arched her back to look up at the moon. She smiled, and for a second I thought she'd seen me.
But then I realized she was looking up at my father. She balanced there a long minute, and then he leaned over to kiss her. It was the kind of kiss kids weren't supposed to watch, and even though I prided myself on spying, I ducked down and tiptoed away from the window. I drifted off to sleep to the sound of my parents laughing and singing softly, and knew I was the happiest kid in the world.
That changed after Carrie's accident. No more laughing, no more singing, no more dancing under the moon. No more lilac bushes.
So. The day it happened. Last summer, a year and two months ago, we'd gone to Mackinac Island, this beautiful paradise way up north in Lake Michigan. The sun was bright, hitting the lake as if it were a mirror. We rented the same cabin as far back as I can remember. This was our summer place. There was one canoe. We had to take turns. Travis took me out first, early our second morning there.
The air was heavy, muggy with August heat. The sky was soft blue, veiled by haze. Easterners obviously think the ocean is the only thing, but they should see the Great Lakes. They are magnificent, endless, too wide to see the far shore. But there were little islands nearby. Sweet little islands that we sometimes saw deer swimming to. And the magic lighthouse.
That's what Carrie called it.
It had appeared
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