Listening for Lucca (18 page)

Suddenly someone plopped down next to me.

“Sam!”

“Your mom said you were here.”

“It’s true, we are.”

“Are you better?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“What was the matter?”

I shrugged and smiled at him. Even if I could explain, I wouldn’t in front of Lucca.

When Lucca fell down, panting, and didn’t spring back up again, I said, “Let’s build a sand castle.”

It was probably the best sand castle I’d ever seen. Sam knew how to use just the right amount of water to pack the sand firm enough that he could stack bucket after bucket on top of one another. The towers ended up as tall as Lucca, who’d put himself in charge of building a wall around the castle, which he decorated with rocks. After Sam had constructed each tower, I smoothed it out, then traced designs and shaped turrets with my fingers.

When we were done, if Lucca had been talking, he would have said, “Wow!” I could tell by his bright eyes. He gave a whoop and jumped in the air and fell back into the sand, laughing.

“It’s a great castle, buddy.” Sam used his fingers to trace in the sand
Siena’s Castle
.

We brushed the sand off our hands as best we could, and I unpacked sandwiches, corn chips, cantaloupe, and juice boxes. It was a great picnic, and I had packed enough food even though I hadn’t known that Sam was coming.

“I like your sandwiches,” he said. They were plain, just turkey and brown mustard.

“Thanks.”

After we ate, we lay back on the blanket and watched the clouds. Sam and I said what we thought each cloud looked like, hoping that Lucca would tell us what he saw in the sky. But whatever he saw remained a mystery.

Sunday morning.

Extra sleepy, I slumped down to the kitchen.

Dad was there. It was nice when he was.

“Games?” I mumbled.

“What?” Dad asked.

“Do you have games?”

“Oh. Not today. Exciting, right?”

That made me start to wake up. Maybe we could do something cool together, like all get in the car and go somewhere. We could explore a different town or beach. I hadn’t seen much of Maine at all.

But before I could even ask, Mom came through, all dressed and with a full laundry basket, on her way to the basement.

“It’s Housework Day.” Super-final, already-decided, the-last-word-on-everything.

“But it’s the weekend.”

“Only time we’re all here to do it.”

“But I’ve been sick.”

“You seemed fine Friday
and
yesterday when you were out at the beach. Sorry, sugar.”

I moaned and put my head on the table. Mom went on down to the basement.

“Hey, don’t pout,” Dad said. “You’ve at least got a good job.”

“We have jobs?” Worse every minute.

“Yeah. I have to mow the lawn and make sure the basement is properly sealed so it won’t flood if we get a lot of rain. And get some more paint-scraping done.”

“What did I get stuck with?”

“You have to clean out the built-in china cabinet in the dining room.”

“Clean it out? There’s nothing in it.”

“There’s years and years of dust. Mom wants to put her nice dishes in it.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Not so horrible, is it? And things will look even better after you have some waffles with strawberries.”

Probably true. Dad makes really good waffles with strawberries. The juicy, cut berries were already in a bowl on the counter. Dad poured batter onto the hot iron. In a minute, there was a pair of waffles for me, and in two minutes, a pair for him.

“Even Lucca has a job.” He started eating.

“Really? What?”

“Sorting his toys. We’ve only been here a few weeks and his room’s a disaster zone. Mom got him some colored bins to put everything in. Thomas toys in green, Playmobil in blue, blocks in red … He’s throwing everything in, playing explosion, having a blast.”

That was lucky. Getting a three-year-old to clean anything can be tough.

When I was done eating, Dad and I washed up. He gave me a special spray for the cabinet’s wood and a different one for its windows and a whole bunch of rags.

I set to work. I have to admit, it was kind of fun. I shined up all the glass first and could see the improvement right away; Mom wouldn’t be able to tell
me
to try my job again. The amount of dust that can settle inside cabinets is unbelievable. When I finally got around to wiping down the shelves, the rags quickly turned black.

I got up on a kitchen chair to clean the top shelf and reached one of the rags along the side, stretching all the way back. Something shuffled—thick paper. I slid it along until I could grab it properly.

It was a folded yellowed card. When I opened it, a black-and-white photo fell out. I picked it up and saw a girl with light hair pulled away from her face with some kind of ribbon headband. She wore a sweater with a button-up shirt under it. I flipped the photo over, but there was no name or date. She looked a little younger than me, maybe eleven.

I knew this girl.

I turned to the card. The front had typed lettering with neat script filling in the blanks. It was a report card written by Miss Jeremy, Grade Five, for the school year 1944–45, for Sarah Alberdine.

Sarah’s report card
.

I held my breath and opened the card, hardly believing what I was holding. Inside was a list of school subjects with names like Penmanship, Arithmetic, and Geography, with the letters
S
and
E
across from each. The letters stood for “Satisfactory” and “Excellent.” There were more marked
S
than
E
. I flipped the card over to
read the teacher’s comments for November, March, and June.

So it was all true. I had the proof. She’d continued not to talk.

There was nothing I could do. This had all happened already. It was all written. It was right here in my hands.

“Siena?”

“What?” I jumped a mile, then got a toppling feeling, a reminder that I was still standing on top of a chair, and grabbed the side of the cabinet.

“Are you all right?” Mom asked. “You look … greenish.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I just think I’m still not feeling too good.”

“Probably the cleaning supplies. Go get some fresh air. We can worry about the cabinets later.”

I walked slowly up to the fresh air of my window seat, even though I knew it wasn’t cleaning supplies making me sick. I gently set the report card on the shelf with the other abandoned things. Then I sat in the window, feeling the breeze play with the ends of my hair and my T-shirt.

What would be the point of going into Sarah’s story again? There was nothing I could do for her. That had all been so long ago.

I had to watch these things unfold, but there was nothing I could do.

Nothing.

The rest of the day was quiet. I didn’t hear from Sam at all, and I’d gotten used to hearing from him or seeing him almost every day. Was he with Morgan? He must have been.

The gloominess of not being able to do anything for Sarah, or for my brother, clung to me like heavy, invisible clothes.

I even started to feel a little sniffly.

“Maybe you are still sick,” Mom said to me at dinner.

“Just a summer cold. Let’s get her some extra vitamins,” Dad suggested.

Lucca said, “Puh … puh—puh—puh.”

We all looked at him. Could that be “puh, puh—pass the ketchup?” or “puh, puh—please?” or “puh, puh—potatoes?”

Then he zoomed his fork around his plate. “Puh, puh, puh.”

We got unexcited again.

I was lying on my bed staring at the wall when Mom came up to the bathroom and started unpacking a drugstore bag. “It’s nice to see your door open for a change.”

Hmm. I hadn’t realized I’d left my door open. Or even that I usually didn’t. It was true, though.

“I got things for you. Come see.”

What embarrassing things had she bought me from the drugstore?

“Here.” She placed three tubes of lip gloss in my hand.

“Why did you get so many?”

“Because I didn’t know what you’d like.” She sounded sad, as if she thought she should have known what I would like. But how could she, when I didn’t know either? She watched me staring at the colors and, with a look of affectionate exasperation, picked one of the tubes back up to unwrap the plastic. “Try them.” She started unloading
lotion and sunscreen from the bag into the medicine cabinet.

I tested each color on the back of my hand. “I like this one.”

“You do?” Mom looked at me with an expression so soft and pleased it made my heart ache. I regretted telling her I liked anything. I didn’t wear makeup. She did. I didn’t want her to think we were close now just because she’d gotten me some makeup.

“Sit down,” she said.

I shut the toilet lid and sat. She took the gloss from me and applied it to my lips.

“I think it’s nice.” She handed me a small mirror from the counter. It was nice. But still …

“Is this about Sam?”

Mom waited a moment before answering. She looked almost hurt. “No, sweetheart. It’s about you. I just thought you’d like some lip gloss.”

I rolled the tubes in my palm.

Mom knelt in front of the toilet and pulled me into a hug. She felt like my mom, the one who used to do fun things with me. I didn’t hug her back, but just for a moment, I rested my head on her shoulder.