My mother had felt safe, volunteering at the food bank. She’d been wrong. Had she felt safe before she was stabbed? Or did she realize what her killer was about to do? She must have realized, but not soon enough.
“Enjoy your fish,” I said, and before he could say anything else, I sprinted up the path with Jackson at my side.
Three
“You weren’t gone very long,” Lisieux called when I reached the yard, chickens scattering around me.
I ran up the hill, panting as I entered Lisieux’s favorite reading spot, the weathered gazebo on the side of the yard. My mother had it built for Sam and Jason’s wedding.
“I was gone as long as I wanted to be,” I said curtly, placing my hands on my thighs.
I’d pushed myself hard on that run, much harder than I typically did. Though I was not typically running from anyone.
I didn’t want to discuss my time on the trail. I especially didn’t want to reveal my encounter with Luca. Or how stupid I felt for getting scared. I was safe now, no longer alone with Luca. The emotion was clearing and I realized I was a coward for getting so terrified. Why had I even been scared? He asked about the inn and had a creepy expression. He was weird; that’s just who he was. It didn’t mean he was going to hurt me. I glanced up at our house. Asking about the inn didn’t make him someone to be scared of—staring at my windows did.
Jackson lay down in the sun outside of the gazebo. I sat on the opposite side of my sister; she wouldn’t ask me any more questions, not with a book so close to her. To her, books were like a drug; she was unable to resist them. She rarely got punished, but when she did, it was typically the same punishment—no reading. Gigi always said something about that was wrong. Dad countered, saying there was nothing Lisieux loved more than reading, so why shouldn’t he take that away when she misbehaved. I leaned forward. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. How she could reread the same book over and over again, I didn’t understand.
I sat back. Jackson stood and trotted toward the chickens.
“Jackson,” Lisieux cautioned, not lifting her eyes from the page.
He slowed, caught in the act, as the chickens clucked and moved from him.
“How do you do that?” I asked her.
“What?” Her face was still in her book.
“Know what Jackson is up to and read at the same time.”
She lowered the book. “Once you understand a person—or in this case, a dog’s pattern of behavior—it doesn’t take much to predict what he or she will do next, even while reading.”
“You’re sort of strange,” I said, “in the best possible way.”
“Being different doesn’t offend me. Why would it?” she asked, her book in front of her again.
“You’re back!” Avi shouted as the kitchen door slammed against the stone wall, and she ran toward the gazebo.
Avi, on the other hand, was often punished and it was never done by taking away reading time. To Dad’s credit, he was equally creative with his punishments for Avi. A recent favorite was having her do a hundred jumping jacks. This wasn’t meant to actually punish as much as it was meant to make her body become too tired to do whatever dangerous thing she had been caught doing.
On the outside, she and I looked a great deal alike—red hair, pale skin with freckles, green eyes—on the inside, we were opposites.
She viewed danger as an invitation, an attraction she couldn’t refuse. If she felt fear, it was at the precipice of a mountain or the top of a tree and she relished in it. Meanwhile, I felt fear at the first branch, the first step up a slope, and I ran from it. Luca’s startling expression entered my mind. Avi wouldn’t have been scared of him. She would’ve asked him why he was looking at her so weird.
Avi pounced with exuberance into the gazebo. “Gigi and I are going for a walk. Want to come?” she asked, bouncing on her tiptoes.
“I just got back from a run,” I said, desperately wishing I could be more like her.
“Please! Please!” She begged. “If you come, I’ll let Gigi make you blueberry scones instead of blueberry pie.”
We’d been discussing this at dinner last night. Gigi said she wanted to do some baking today. I wanted scones, and Avi wanted pie. The blueberry part was always a given. If it wasn’t blueberry season, which this wasn’t, we had plenty in the freezer.
She held her hands together as if praying, begging silently for me to go.
I laughed; this was how she always was. Her life was full of excitement … she was the excitement.
“All right, I’ll go with you,” I said as I rose from the cushioned bench. “And Gigi can make the pie first.”
She practically tackled me with a hug and I fell into Lisieux.
“Hey,” Lisieux cried in her grumpy voice.
She wouldn’t have been scared of Luca, either, I decided as she shoved us off her. She’d have told him to stop it, and he would have. I was the coward in the family. It was only I who ran from fake danger.
I pulled Avi up with me. “Do you want to come, Lisieux?” I asked, already sure of the answer.
She was content to read about the adventures of others, rather than have her own. Unlike me, she was not scared of them, simply not interested in having them.
“No,” she practically shouted, irritated we had fallen on her.
“Okay, have fun,” Avi said as she pulled me from the gazebo.
I marveled at how unfazed she was by Lisieux’s harshness.
Gigi appeared, a colorful scarf tied around her shoulder-length gray hair.
“Where do you want to go?” Gigi asked, holding out her hand for Avi.
“Blueberry Trail,” Avi said confidently.
She even made decisions better than I did. I was unsure of everything. Avi was never unsure. She might be wrong a lot, but she was always sure she wasn’t.
“It’s awfully late in the season,” Gigi said, cautioning Avi not to get her hopes up.
“I found a few last week,” Avi responded.
“Were they rotten?” Gigi questioned.
“Some of them,” Avi said, holding our grandmother’s hand with both of hers, pulling her toward the chickens and the start of the trail.
Gigi laughed. “There’s no harm in trying.”
Jackson rolled onto his belly as we approached.
“Come on, Jackson,” Avi said, running to the dog. “We’re going for a walk, in search of the last remaining blueberries of the season.” Her voice boomed, as if announcing a mighty quest sure to end in, at least, injury, if not death and destruction.
Jackson stretched and yawned. Like the rest of us, he was used to her dramatic flair. He stood and trotted after us. The chickens did their fast walk to stay away from him. Blueberry Trail started the same place as the trail to the beach, but split off a little after the trail which led to Jason and Sam’s house. Unlike the other trails that took us directly to the beach or their house, this one wound its way around the bushes and a quarter of the way up the side of the mountain. Beyond that, it became too steep.
Mom and I used to climb up to the cliff, hunting blueberries or beautiful views, but none of us had been up the cliff since her death. Avi hadn’t climbed it because she was forbidden from trying. And I hadn’t climbed it because I was afraid. The rest of my family wasn’t interested—or maybe the memory of the place was too painful.