The Mill River Redemption (25 page)

“I’m glad you ended up with Dad,” Emily said.

“Me too,” Rose said.

“I’m grateful every day that I took a chance on one more of Darlene’s blind dates and met your father,” Josie said. She reached out to smooth a strand of Rose’s hair away from her face. “Otherwise, you girls wouldn’t be here, and we wouldn’t all have each other. In the end, that’s the only thing that matters.”

1994

E
MILY AWOKE WITH A START
. T
HE BEDROOM SHE SHARED WITH
Rose was dark and quiet, but something had disturbed her sleep. The clock on the nightstand read 1:46 a.m. She thought perhaps Rose had had a nightmare and called out, but the lump in Rose’s
twin bed was silent and unmoving. Emily was ready to close her eyes again when she heard the floor creak on the other side of the room. She turned to see Rose, fully clothed, standing at the open window.

“What are you doing?” Emily asked, sitting up. She glanced over at her sister’s bed again, confused as to what was under the covers if Rose herself wasn’t there.

“Shhhh. I’m going out.”

“What?” Emily was wide-awake now. “What do you mean, going out?” Only then did she notice trailing out the window the portable fire-escape ladder that their mother insisted they keep in the bedroom. “You’re going
down the ladder
?”

“Duh,” Rose said. “Tyler and Jason are coming by to pick me up. Tyler Crowe’s the most popular guy in school. He’s a
senior
! And he just got his own car. Crystal’s coming, too. They should be here any minute.” Rose craned her neck out the window, obviously watching for someone.

“Where are you going to go?”

“I’m not sure, just riding around, probably. But it doesn’t matter,” Rose said. “We’re just going to have a little fun.”

“You’re crazy. What if Mom finds out?” Emily asked. “She’ll kill you.”

“Look, Mom’s hardly home anymore unless she’s sleeping. If she really cared about what you and I were doing, she wouldn’t be like that. So, I figure I’ll just hang out with my friends.
They
want to spend time with me.”

At that moment, they both heard a hushed voice calling from the lawn below. Rose stuck her head out the window and waved.

“Rose, what if Mom wakes up and finds out you’re gone?”

“She won’t. The only way Mom’ll find out about tonight is if you tell her,” Rose hissed. “But I know you wouldn’t do that, right? ’Cause we really need to look out for each other.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Emily said, but she knew nothing she said or did would prevent her sister from leaving.

“It’ll be fine,” Rose said, clambering out onto the ladder. “I’ll be back before morning. Go back to sleep.” When she finally uprooted herself from her mattress, Emily made it to the window just in time to see Rose and a boy she didn’t recognize run together around the side of the house.

Emily sighed. Of course, there was no way she could go back to sleep now. She was torn between risking her sister’s wrath by going to wake their mother and just waiting for Rose to return, hopefully unscathed and unnoticed. She climbed back into bed and pulled the covers up over her head. Everything having to do with Rose was difficult these days, and it was getting worse.

Her sister was a sophomore in high school. So much had changed since the beginning of the school year. Rose was blonde, beautiful, and gregarious. She was easily the most popular girl in her class. In fact, she was one of the most popular girls in the whole high school, and she’d recently begun to hang out with a couple of the seniors.

Maybe that’s why she’s wearing so much makeup
, Emily thought. Heavy eye makeup and lipstick were now the norm on Rose’s face even though their mother disapproved. On the first day Rose had tried to leave for school wearing bright red lipstick and blue eye shadow up to her eyebrows, a huge fight between Rose and their mother had ensued.

“Go wash that off your face, every bit of it. No teenage daughter of mine is going to leave this house looking like that,” their mother had insisted before confiscating Rose’s cosmetics. It hadn’t done any good. The next day, Rose had left the house with a freshly scrubbed face and returned after school looking like she’d stepped out of a cosmetic advertisement in a fashion magazine. With her vast circle of friends, Rose could get her hands on new makeup, or
nearly anything else she wanted, almost immediately. Their mother’s continued seizure of beauty products, scolding, and grounding hadn’t worked. Eventually, she’d given up trying to enforce the cosmetics rule, and Rose now wore as much as she liked.

The makeup was only one of the ways Rose was changing. In eighth grade and even during her freshman year, Rose had been a straight-A student. Last semester, though, Rose hadn’t had a single A on her report card. She’d become more and more preoccupied with her appearance and her social life, and Emily rarely saw her do homework. Even worse, Rose had developed a blasé attitude toward school.

“Oh, Em, it’s just a stupid book report,” her sister had said when she’d asked whether she’d finished the assignment for her English class. “Mrs. Wilson is a pushover. She’ll let me turn it in late.” Rose had turned to her and pointed to her bangs, which she had curled and teased into a puffy ball. “How does this look? Hurry, ’cause I need to spray it before it moves.”

“Fine,” Emily had responded. Talking to her sister about school was useless when Rose’s main concern these days was spending time with her friends.

Emily couldn’t imagine herself ever sneaking out like her sister just had, even if she’d been offered the opportunity. She was quiet and shy, and she had none of the easy popularity Rose possessed. “Boring” was how Rose teasingly referred to her, but it wasn’t anything she could change about herself even if she wanted to.

The question now was whether to tell on Rose. Part of her was worried that something would happen to her sister while she was out joyriding and doing whatever else. But another part of her looked forward to hearing about Rose’s middle-of-the-night adventures and experiencing the excitement vicariously. This was her big sister, after all. As far back as she could remember, Rose had always been there, watching out for her, and Emily loved her
fiercely. As different as they were, and as comfortable as she was in her own skin, she still looked up to Rose and basked in any sort of praise from her bold, funny, adventurous sibling.

Emily uncovered her head and looked toward the open window. Of course she would remain loyal to her sister. She wouldn’t alert their mother, but would stay in their room and wait for Rose to return.

A
N HOUR AFTER SHE AND
A
LEX HAD FINISHED SUPPER
, Rose was still seated at the kitchen table, nursing a bottle of white wine and staring at the empty Stouffer’s packages that had contained their meals. Although Alex had dutifully cleared his place after he’d finished eating, she hadn’t gotten around to doing the same. When her phone rang, she glanced at the number and rolled her eyes before answering it.

“Rose?” Sheldon spoke before she had a chance to say anything. “Rose, what in the hell is wrong with you? How many times have I told you to be careful about what you post on my wall? You know I’m keeping my profile totally public while I’m looking for work.”

“Hi, honey, so nice to hear your voice, too,” she said in an overtly genteel tone before continuing in her normal voice. “I called you earlier, several times, actually, and you didn’t answer. Sometimes I think Facebook is the only way to get in touch with you.”

“I was out running errands. Actually buying a new toner cartridge, if you must know, and my phone battery went dead. And then I come back and find your little post for God and everyone to see.”

Rose tried to remember exactly what she’d written on Sheldon’s Facebook page earlier in the afternoon, but it was a bit of a
blur. All she could remember was crying over her laptop and typing the words “bald,” “unemployed,” and “George Costanza.”

“It wasn’t a big deal, Sheldon. I was just pissed because you didn’t pick up.”

“It
was
a big deal, Rose. A potential employer might’ve seen what you wrote and decided against considering me for an opening. Why would you do something like that? Were you ‘drunk Facebooking’ again?”

Rose remained silent. She didn’t have a rational answer for him. In fact, although she truly didn’t remember what she’d typed, she now felt ashamed to have done anything that might jeopardize Sheldon’s finding a job.

“Rose, are you there? Rose?”

“Yes.” Overwhelmed by emotions, Rose felt her face crumple.

“Rose, how much are you drinking?”

That question, and especially Sheldon’s tone in asking it, sparked enough anger to stanch her despair and allow her to regain her composure. She had every intention of cutting back, as she had resolved to do the previous evening. Tonight, though, she’d really needed something to take the edge off.

“I’m not drinking,” she said. She swigged the last of the wine in her glass. “But I
am
miserable. Isolated, stuck up here in a matchbox of a house with no air-conditioning. Did I mention that the house is full of junk, and I can’t stand being around my sister? Neither of us has any idea what my mother meant for us to find, and there’s so much crap to go through that we may never figure it out. I just want to come home.”

“Well, I’m not exactly a happy camper, either. I had a consulting job fall through today, and your little stunt didn’t improve my prospects at finding more. You can’t come home yet, and if you want a home to come back to, you’d better suck it up and do what you need to do to get your inheritance. And, stay off my Facebook
page. That’s all I have to say to you, but I want to talk with Alex. I’m starting to think that maybe he should spend the summer here with me after all. When you’re drinking, you’re in no shape to take care of him.”

“I’m
not
drinking,” she snapped. “And Alex is fine. You can hear for yourself.” Rose pulled the phone away from her face and yelled for Alex to come downstairs. “Here,” she said, thrusting the phone at him when he appeared in the kitchen. “It’s your father.”

Alex smiled as he took the phone from her. “Hi, Dad,” he said. Rose couldn’t hear exactly what Sheldon was saying, but listening to Alex’s replies made it possible to follow the conversation.

“Yeah, I’m okay. She’s fine, too,” Alex was saying. “No, not too much … She just doesn’t like it here, that’s all. We went out this morning, to breakfast and to go shopping … I’ve been reading books, mostly. I was going to ask Mom if I could go see Aunt Ivy and get a few new ones when I’ve finished the ones I have … uh-huh, I love you, too, Dad. Bye.” He pressed the
END
button and returned the phone to her.

“Thanks,” she said, leaning back in her chair. She was thinking that she would be far more comfortable in her usual spot on the sofa when she realized that Alex was still standing in the kitchen watching her.

“Mom, are you okay?”

Rose looked at her son. She smiled, fully intending to offer him all manner of reassurances, but she couldn’t seem to articulate anything. Alex’s eyes were large and round behind his glasses. He stood, waiting for her to say something. Her lower lip began to tremble, and she turned her face away so that he would not see the tears that had appeared.

“Mom, please don’t cry.” Alex came closer and patted her arm, as if he were trying to comfort her but didn’t know quite what to do.

“Come here,” she said, turning in her chair and revealing her tear-streaked face. When she opened her arms, he embraced her eagerly, putting his arms around her neck and his head on her shoulder in the same way he had when he was a toddler.

She pressed her cheek against his head, breathing in the familiar sweet and slightly sweaty smell of his hair. “Everything is going to be fine,” she managed to say. “I’m just frustrated right now, with your dad, with everything. Except you.”

Alex didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then, he pulled away so that he could look into her face. “Mom, I’ve been working really hard on the list of books. I’m almost done with it. I know you said you didn’t want me to be around Aunt Emily, but I really want to help figure out Grandma’s clues. Since I read fast, I could skim the books for you. I’ve already read a lot of them, and if you told me which ones you’ve read, I could talk to her about them so you won’t have to. Please, can I do it? I don’t want you to be sad anymore.”

Rose smiled through her tears. Alex was so earnest and innocent. He had no idea what had happened to drive her and Emily apart all those years ago, no idea how difficult it was to live with the knowledge of what she had done, and now, to be forced to live next door to the most obvious reminder of it. Most days, she was able to keep it bottled up, pushed to a dark corner of her mind, away from the regular flow of thought required to navigate each day. Recently, though, it was increasingly difficult to ignore the dark episode that she had long tried to forget.

“I know, baby,” Rose said. “I’m so glad you’re with me.” She took both his hands. “I wish I could turn over this whole project to you, but I’m afraid that your aunt and I are the only ones who knew your grandma well enough to figure out the clues. But, why don’t you finish up our list of books and let me see it? I’ll give you the list I made of the rest of the stuff in the house, too, and you can take everything over for Aunt Emily to see. I already have a copy of
her list, so we could each look over everything separately. That way, your aunt and I wouldn’t have to meet again unless one of us has an idea about the clues.”

Alex smiled. “Okay. I’ll have the book list done by tomorrow morning, promise.” He glanced at her wineglass and tugged at her hand. “Why don’t you go upstairs and take a bubble bath? It might make you feel better. I can clean up the rest of the kitchen.”

Rose sighed and slowly got to her feet. “Maybe I will,” she said. She leaned down and kissed Alex’s hair. “I know I don’t say it often enough, but I love you, Alex. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

A
LEX WAITED UNTIL HE HEARD HIS MOTHER
’
S FOOTSTEPS REACH
the top of the stairs before he dared move.
Don’t cry, only girls cry
, he told himself as he stood in the kitchen. Despite his best effort, a few tears squeezed out the corners of his eyes, and he wiped them away angrily, not even bothering to remove his glasses.