Flickering Hope (6 page)

O
n the way to the town library the next day, I fingered the small compass in my pocket, which I had found instead of a map piece in drawer three.

“Just open all the drawers already!” Ruth said as we pulled off our scarves and mittens and hung them to dry. “You’re driving me crazy!”

The librarian had left our piles of books on our tables. Ruth sat, took the first book off her pile and sighed. “I will never finish.”

“Don’t do everything. If Mario doesn’t help, Ms. Barton will see that you did your part.”

Tess and Nicole’s raised voices carried across the library. “Just because you have diamond earrings, you’re suddenly better than us?” Tess asked Frankie. Was she being loud on purpose?

“Give me my backpack,” Frankie said, her voice low and demanding.

“Even if you move to New York,” Nicole said, equally loudly, “Owl Creek will always be your home. It’s in your blood.”

Frankie shoved Nicole so hard that she stumbled back and fell onto a bench. The backpack tumbled out of her arms and clattered onto the floor.

“Frankie!” Ms. Barton said. “Come with me.”

Ms. Barton took Frankie into one of the study rooms and closed the door. Tess and Nicole took their books to Ty’s table, where all three leaned their heads together and whispered.

Through the study room windows, I watched Frankie sit stone faced as Ms. Barton spoke to her. I couldn’t put the pieces together—the haircut, the pierced ears, Frankie’s anger. Did Frankie’s mom live in New York? If so, why was Frankie so unwilling to talk about it?

“What if the family in the woods is Jewish?” Ruth looked up from her book on Jewish history. “We can’t bring them a tree if they celebrate Hanukkah.”

“Ruth, until we go out there — ”

“Go out where?” Frankie asked, sliding onto the bench across from us.

I jumped in my seat. Neither Ruth nor I had seen her come back from Ms. Barton.

“Sheesh Frankie, you scared me!” I said. Ruth wordlessly went back to reading her book.

I handed my book to Frankie. “Take a look at this one— there’s a lot on food.”

“What is it, some big secret?” Frankie asked.

Ruth caught my eye. Perfect. The only thing worse than the youth group knowing about the family in the woods was Frankie knowing, or more specifically, Frankie’s dad. The girl knew about Patch’s den, and I meant to keep Patch far away from Jim Paulson.

“Ruth and I are making ornaments for a tree that our youth group is giving as a Christmas present. You know, to a family who wouldn’t have one otherwise.”

“So where are you going?” Frankie leaned forward, her interest no longer casual.

I racked my mind for the dullest possible answer. “To collect glass bottles. We’re going to break glass to make into ornaments.”

Frankie closed her book and gave me the look she had given me that first day I met her in Moose Tracks Trading Post, her narrowed eyes full of warning. Obviously, I was avoiding her question, but something larger seemed to be bothering her too, as though Frankie had a secret of her own.

“How will you make broken glass into ornaments?” she asked lightly, testing me.

“Vivian uses shards of glass all the time. She presses them into clay or cement and lets it harden. So there’s no sharp edges, but the glass still catches the light. I watched her do it. Back when I was taking lessons with her.”

“Clay will be too heavy for a tree. You should do fused glass instead.” Frankie watched my reaction to this, as though she still didn’t believe we’d been talking about ornaments in the first place.

Fused glass? What did Frankie know about fused glass? We all worked in silence for a few moments, and my heartbeat slowed, settling back into a normal rhythm.

“Can I help?” Frankie asked. “With the ornaments?”

The question — so direct, so sudden, so totally unexpected — was like a punch in the stomach. She hadn’t looked up from her book. Was this another test? Frankie wanted to know if I knew her secret, whatever it was. Still her voice was entirely without the usual bite. And she did know about fused glass, whatever that was. Maybe she actually wanted to help.

“Ummm …” I said. “I guess so. Maybe.”

Ruth kicked me under the table. I kicked her back. What did she expect me to do? Frankie was somehow, weirdly, trying to be our friend.

Frankie looked up at me then, smiled her sad half-smile. “Thanks, Sadie.”

Either I was totally mistaken, or she really meant it.

“G
rab this box, Sades.” Dad handed me yet another overstuffed box from the attic. Mid-ladder I paused, my arms aching from the million other boxes I had already lifted down. Mom sifted through a sea of boxes and paper, oohing and ahhing over a camel here, a Santa there. Higgins, wisely, watched from downstairs. But Christmas wouldn’t be the same without all of this production. The best part was Mom’s smile, her sparkly eyes. Sometimes, when the exhaustion came, she shrunk deep into herself, and her eyes became like a dark cave opening. No matter how deep I looked, I couldn’t see Mom. Days like today when she expanded back into herself made me feel more my right size, too. Mom was here, doing all the Mom things, so I could be Sadie, doing all the Sadie things. I’d decorate the house every day if it meant she could be here with us, really here.

“We’re missing a bunch of trees, Matthew,” Mom said. “Are there some black plastic bags up there?”

Dad poked his dusty head out and grinned at her. “One never-ending flock of plastic-bag-covered trees coming right up.”

Mom held the world record for number of Christmas trees displayed in one house—all fake, except for our one, official Christmas tree. I had fought, year after year, for a real, pine-smelling tree from the forest. Even though pine needles made my nose run and my eyes water, I refused to give up any part of the tree-cutting tradition, Dad and I choosing the perfect tree, taking turns sawing, wrapping the branches in rope, lifting the bundle onto the Jeep, driving home and stringing the lights, and then finding the exact right branch for each mismatched, memory-filled ornament.

Dad handed down bags of trees of every size protected by black mylar. We passed them to Mom until I thought we might be buried alive. Policemen would come to the house and poke around, speculating.

“What happened to them, Jones?”

“Not sure, Davis. Appears they were suffocated by Christmas spirit. ”

Mom interrupted my exhaustion-induced daydream. “Matthew, we’re still missing one. The tall, skinny one. I want to put it on the landing with all the boat ornaments.”

The ceiling creaked and groaned as Dad crawled deep into the attic.

He dragged out yet another tree. “Stand on the ground for this one, Sades. It’s heavy.”

After I set the bag down, I collapsed onto the pile of bags. “Enough. Time for cookies.”

Mom and I had spent the morning making our favorite Christmas cookies, red and white almond flavored dough twisted together into candy cane shapes. I had wrapped a ziplock bag full of peppermints in a towel and crushed the candy with a rubber mallet on the sunroom floor. We’d sprinkled the minty powder on top of the cookies, fresh out of the oven, so the sugar melted just enough to stick.

I brought up a plate of cookies from the kitchen, and we sat on the stairs while Mom gave us our marching orders. First, distribute the trees around the house. Wrap white fluff around their metal bases to give the illusion of snow. As if anyone needed more snow than the foot-deep snowbanks outside. Next, match boxes of ornaments to the correct tree. Some trees only had lights, but most had themes. Santas, boats, trains …

“Sadie, are you listening?” Mom asked.

“What?” Every last cookie on the plate had disappeared. “Who ate all the cookies?”

“After the ornaments, you’re in charge of the garland.”

I grinned. “Yep! Ready when you are!”

I took the plate downstairs, put in a Christmas CD, and got to work. After four hours of decorating, every surface, corner, and wall glittered with Christmas cheer. We packed up the empty boxes and lifted them back into the attic.

“Ready to go to the cabin, Sades?” Dad asked.

Finally. I stuffed my feet into my boots, put on my coat, and hurried out to the Jeep.

Dad pulled the Jeep out of our driveway, and snow crunched under its tires. “What did the Advent calendar bring today?”

“Another map piece. So far I’ve gotten three sections of the map and a compass.”

“A compass? So this is a true adventure, it seems.”

“Come on, Dad. Admit you made the calendar.”

“Can’t say that I did.”

Even though our speed topped out at fifteen miles an hour all the way to the cabin, Dad made screeching sounds as we rounded corners, trying to be funny. I turned up the radio, but he simply screeched louder. No matter how worried I became, Dad could always make me smile.

Snow flew up behind us as Dad pulled into the research cabin’s long driveway. “Here we are.” He opened my door and helped me down.

Dad knocked, and we heard a faint, “Come in!”

Dad threw open the front door, stomping off his boots in the mudroom and blowing on his freezing fingers. We hung up our coats and went through the inner door. Helen was stirring a pot on the stove, and cinnamon-apple steam wafted our way. Andrew was sitting in the living room with a textbook and a notebook. Sometimes he pretended to do math or English, but mostly, he just helped his mom and called it homeschool.

“Hallelujah! You saved me from the quadratic equation.” He leapt off the couch.

I hadn’t expected such an enthusiastic greeting. In fact, I hadn’t expected a greeting at all. I sat on a kitchen stool and
watched Andrew, trying to decide how to bring up a hike to the shack.

Helen poured Dad and me mugs of cider. I blew on the steam and followed Helen to the file-covered kitchen table.

“I’ve gathered enough data on the behavior of black bears in this area,” Helen began. “I already told you my first research idea, to identify nursing sows that will take an orphaned cub into their dens. DNR agents spend hundreds of hours rehabilitating and relocating orphaned cubs. They want to radio collar trusted bears in the summer and watch over their dens in the winter.”

I picked up a file, so dense with text I couldn’t possibly skim it and gather any information. Andrew sat next to me, so I pretended to browse the file anyway.

“What’s the other idea?” I asked Helen.

“Another scientist has findings that match mine, that bluff charges aren’t aggressive acts. Right now, bears can be labeled category two and removed from their habitat if they huff and blow and stomp their front paws. But my findings show that behavior is just bluster. The bears just want to be left alone, and are trying to scare intruders enough so they’ll leave.”

Dad flipped through one file after another. “How can I help?”

“Meredith wants you to give both questions an unbiased look. She knows I feel strongly about both of these issues and wants me to run my research by you before I write a proposal.”

I felt Andrew’s eyes on me as I sipped my cider again. Even though he had uninvited me to his house and had acted like I ruined Thanksgiving, I had to talk to him. Patch was in danger.

“I wonder,” I said, compromising with a half-look at Andrew, “if we could hike back out past Patch’s den. I mean, we know the family in the woods isn’t dangerous or anything.”

“Are you kids willing?” Helen swept her hand over the folders piled on the table. “I can’t find time to hike out there, and I worry about Patch.”

Finally — a bit of good luck. “Sure.”

“I’d like that,” Andrew said.

He’d like that? I couldn’t keep up with Andrew these days. Was he angry with me or not? Was I angry with him? “Ruth said she’d like to come, too,” I added. “Oh, yeah. Okay,” Andrew said.

Helen gathered the files into a box. “I know it’s a lot, Matthew. You don’t have to read it all. Just see if there’s reasonable cause for more research.”

I took a last sip of my cider and washed my cup. “Thanks for the cider, Helen.”

“Sadie.” Andrew caught my elbow. “So, you’ll come tomorrow then? You and Ruth, I mean.”

I looked at Andrew’s face for the first time since I had walked in that day. His expression took me completely by surprise. He hurried back to his homework on the couch, but not before I saw his unspoken question.
Are we okay?

For some reason that I totally didn’t understand, Andrew was nervous.