Ten Thousand Truths (8 page)

Rachel couldn't imagine Zac ever hitting anybody. It was even harder to believe that he'd ever given Amelia a hard time. He was so respectful of her now and helped her in so many ways.
Maybe there's hope for me, too,
Rachel thought.

“I'm going to buy Raymond a guitar,” Zac said. “He'll drive us all crazy with it, but he's really musical. I know a guy that will give him lessons. Do you want to go in on it with me?”

“Sure,” Rachel said, relieved for the change in subject.

“I don't know what to buy for Chelsea and Crystal,” Zac continued. “I don't know how to pick clothes out for little girls. Can you help me with that?”

“Definitely.”

“Okay, then. Let's go get some serious shopping done. How about we start by buying you some winter boots? Those orange sneakers won't hold up very long in this snow!”

Rachel placed her shopping bags on the floor of her closet. She'd actually been able to find a pair of earrings with pansies on them for Amelia, and hadn't even minded paying almost half her chore money for them. She'd gone in on the guitar for Raymond with Zac, but he had refused to take much money, and she'd found a Barbie Cruise Ship for Chelsea and Crystal. But the thing she was happiest about was being able to buy Zac a hooded sweatshirt without him seeing her. The one he had now was just about worn out, and he was always saying how great a hood was to keep his neck dry when he drove the tractor under tree limbs heavy with snow.

Rachel hadn't received any mail since she'd arrived at Walton Lake—or in any of her other foster homes, for that matter—so when she got the mail from the mailbox two weeks before Christmas and found an envelope addressed to her she had no idea who it could be from. She held the envelope up, studying both sides. The postmark said Golden, BC. The Walton Lake address had been printed on the front of the envelope under Rachel's name, which was written in fancy cursive lettering. There was no return address in the left-hand corner, but a sticker sealing the flap on the back of the envelope read: “From the desk of Audrey Anderson.” The name Audrey Anderson meant nothing to Rachel. She looked at the letter for a few more seconds and then headed into the house and upstairs to her room.

Rachel sat down on the edge of her bed, opened the envelope, and pulled out a piece of bright pink paper. As she unfolded it, the first lines of the letter jumped out at her:

Dear Rachel,

My name is Audrey Anderson and I am your grandmother.

Rachel hadn't even made the connection. She knew her father's name was Donald Anderson, but it had been so long since she had heard his name spoken it hadn't occurred to her that this letter might be from someone related to him. Her mom had mentioned her dad's name every once in a while, and she'd always said the same thing about him: He wasn't able to be a husband or dad and had left after Caleb was born so that he could get some help. She'd always hoped that maybe some day he would be well enough to be with them. Rachel had never understood what her mom had meant and had long given up hoping that her father would come back. She couldn't even remember what he looked like. They had always been just fine, the three of them. Even after the accident, Rachel had never believed for one minute that her father would ride back into her life and take care of her.

Rachel thought about going downstairs, throwing the letter in the woodstove, and pretending that it had never come.
What could a grandmother I've never met have to say to me?
she wondered. The grandmother she did know, her mom's mom, hadn't cared enough to keep in contact with her, let alone take care of her after the accident, so why would she expect anything more from this one?

Rachel refolded the paper, placed it back in the envelope, and tucked it between the mattress and box spring. Then she picked up her book bag and dug inside, looking for her science homework. She didn't have time to think about her father and grandmother right now.
Besides,
she thought,
it's not like my father and grandmother have spent much time thinking about me in the last thirteen years.

Rachel picked up a wreath and straightened the bow. She was helping Amelia and the others decorate the house for Christmas. Raymond and Zac were stringing lights up in the second-storey windows and the twins and Amelia were sitting at the kitchen table making a garland of fir boughs to hang from the stairway banister. Rachel put her coat and boots on, grabbed the wreath, and stepped out onto the front veranda so she could hang it on the front door. As she lifted the wreath up over the small window in the door, it made her think of the front door of her old house on Regent Street. That door had a half-moon-shaped window, with four panes of pie-shaped glass. Her mom had always made a big production of stringing the outside lights on the porch and hanging the wreath on the door. The last Christmas they'd had together, her mom had held Caleb up so that he could be the one to place the wreath on the nail above the window.

Rachel threw the wreath across the veranda. She had been trying all day to pretend that all this Christmas stuff mattered. And she had been pretending to be part of this makeshift family.
But I already had a family,
she thought to herself.
And I messed that up. After what I did to them, I don't deserve another one.
That last thought hurt the most.

Rachel walked quickly to the end of the driveway. She figured that if she kept walking, she could get to the main road before dark. She could hitchhike from the end of Walton Lake Road to the Westfield ferry, and then walk to the highway and try to get a lift to Fredericton. She didn't know where she'd stay when she got there. She just wanted to be close enough to see the lights of her old house. She needed to see the lights through that moon-shaped window and for a few minutes pretend that she still lived there and that what had taken her real family had never happened.

Snow started to fall and Rachel's pace slowed. Deep down, she knew she wouldn't go, and besides that she knew that getting there would never fix anything. Whoever lived in that house now was not her family. She was a kid with no family and nothing would ever change that—not her old house, not Amelia, and certainly not Donald or Audrey Anderson.

Social Studies was the last class before noon. Mr. Williston was standing at the front of the classroom, droning on about an assignment they were going to work on this week. Rachel wasn't paying the least bit of attention. She was completely immersed in the novel she was reading, which was concealed inside the textbook propped open on her lap.

“Sorry to bother you, Miss Garnham,” Mr. Williston said. “But I think you should be paying attention to the instructions for an assignment that is going to be worth 50% of your December mark. Maybe you could come up to the board and fill in some spaces to show us what I just explained to the class?”

Rachel looked up at the diagram that Mr. Williston had drawn on the board. The title was “Family Tree.” Mr. Williston printed Rachel's name in the oval in the middle and then walked toward her, passing her the chalk.

What happened in the next few minutes was a blur to Rachel. She was now sitting in the principal's office while he talked to Amelia on the phone. He was using words like “meltdown,” “rage,” “unacceptable behaviour,” and “suspension.”

Once he finished his phone call, Mr. Harrison told Rachel that she was suspended until after the holidays. She would have to meet with the guidance counsellor and someone from the district office before she would be allowed back in school. He made it very clear that he would not have a student in his school who was a danger to others.

“Someone could have been seriously hurt when you threw your chair,” he said. “I will not have that kind of violent behaviour in my school!”

Rachel hadn't really thrown her chair. She had sat, not moving, while Mr. Williston had kept telling her to get up and fill in the spaces on the board. As she'd sat there, not responding, Mr. Williston had become more and more angry, yelling at her and asking her what made her think she didn't have to do the assignment. Then he'd grabbed the back of her chair and rocked it, trying to force Rachel to get up. When she'd stood up, the chair had gone flying. Rachel had run out of the classroom and was almost out the front door of the school when the principal had stopped her.

“Miss Walton is sending her neighbour to come and get you,” the principal told Rachel. “You should be more considerate of her. You know she can't come pick you up. Besides, she has her hands full with the others. You are old enough now to know how to behave.” Rachel just stared at him as he continued his rant. “I warned you the last time that your outbursts would not be tolerated. The kind of temper you just showed has no place in this school. And so close to Christmas.”

Rachel stared straight ahead, not saying a word, but her mind was just about exploding with what she wished she could say.

“So close to Christmas,” he'd said.
If only he knew what Christmas means to me!
Rachel thought angrily. She had held her breath to get through every Christmas for the last five years. Christmas in all those other homes just made remembering Christmas with Caleb and her mom harder to bear. This year at least she knew there would be no one getting so drunk that she would have to barricade her door to keep him out.

This year she had helped cut the tree and she and Raymond had dragged it into the front room last night. They had all helped trim it and Amelia had placed presents under it before they went to bed. She had seen presents there for her. She had a stocking with her name on it, too. Amelia had knit it and Rachel hadn't even seen her working on it.

“You should be more considerate of Miss Walton,”
Rachel repeated in her head angrily.
“She can't come get a foster child.” He has no idea what Amelia can and can't do!
she thought to herself.
“Old enough to behave.” Old enough to know that I had nothing to put in a family tree diagram! No father, a dead mother, a dead brother, one grandmother who didn't want me, and another who lives on the other side of the country. No family equals no branches for a stupid tree.

Rachel could feel tears starting to well up in her eyes, but there was no way that she was going to cry in front of Mr. Harrison. She sat just there silently, staring straight ahead, fighting back the tears, until Zac knocked on the door. The vice-principal walked her to her locker to get her stuff while the principal talked to Zac, probably warning him about the
dangerous offender
he was picking up.

They were almost home before Rachel said a word to Zac. He hadn't asked her anything since he'd picked her up—he'd just sung along to the radio as he drove. But when Rachel began to speak he reached over and turned the music off. “It wasn't my fault!” she cried. “Mr. Williston just kept going on about a stupid family tree, and I didn't know what to do.” She continued on, her words coming out in a jumble between sobs. “I wasn't going to stand up and tell everyone I don't have a family, that I had nothing to put in my tree. It's nobody's business.”

When they arrived in Amelia's driveway, Zac reached over and touched Rachel's arm. “I know,” was all he said.

Amelia was sitting at the kitchen table when they entered. She stood up and took Rachel's backpack from her. “Take these lazy dogs down to the lake, would you?” she said. “You need some time by yourself. We're having your favourite Hawaiian Chicken for supper and I'll get you to help me make an apple crisp later on. We'll talk when you come back up.”

The dogs followed Rachel out the door. There had been a light powder of snow the previous night, and the sun was glittering off the hill like a million tiny diamonds. The ice was solid now across the expanse of water and the boughs on the trees along the banks were covered with blankets of snow. It was very quiet; all Rachel could hear was the breathing of the dogs.

Rachel looked back up toward the house, thinking about what the principal had said about Amelia. He had been right about one thing: she should be more considerate towards her. Rachel vowed to herself that she would help Amelia as much as she could in the next few days so that having her out of school would not be a problem. For now, she would try to forget about having to go back in January, which would probably mean apologizing and admitting to being wrong. The unfairness of that didn't bother Rachel too much, because she was quite sure that when she talked to Amelia later, she would somehow understand. For the first time since she had lost her mother, she had someone who seemed to care about her, someone she could talk to. Two people, actually. She had Amelia and Zac, and that was more than she'd had since the day her mom and Caleb had left and never come home again.

When Rachel walked into the kitchen after her time at the lake, there was a sandwich and a glass of chocolate milk sitting on the table. She hung up her coat and sat down.

“You didn't have lunch, did you?” Amelia asked. “Your tuna sandwich was a bit smushed in your book bag so I made you another one. The snow looks beautiful, doesn't it? The snow banks were getting pretty dingy looking, but that dusting last night gave everything a nice new covering.”

Amelia poured a cup of tea in her pansy cup and sat down across from Rachel. “Tell me what happened.”