The Diary (2 page)

“If that's the case, it must've been before she and Dad were serious about each other.” Sarah found it impossible to envision their churchgoing, pie-baking, S&H Green Stamp—collecting mother involved in something as tawdry as sneaking around behind their father's back, even if it had been before they were married.

“No. Look.” Emily brought her sister's attention back to the first entry, where their mother had written that she was expecting a proposal from Bob soon—proof that they'd been deeply involved at the time. Then Emily flipped to the earlier passage she'd bookmarked, dated August 12, 1951, just five weeks later.

“
I don't see how it's possible for a human heart to hold all that I feel for AJ. Can a heart burst from too much love? How can it be that Bob hasn't noticed? Whenever I'm with him, I'm sure it's written all over my face
.”

Sarah shook her head slowly, still struggling to digest it. “What I want to know is who is this AJ character? How come we never heard of him before?” she demanded huffily.

They both knew the answer. Who had there been to tell such tales? Both Bob and Bets had been only children, so there were no aunts or uncles to fill the girls in on family lore. Their parents hadn't been much for telling stories about the past, either. Now Emily thought she understood why: When keeping secrets, it was best to keep the past tucked away.

“I don't know, but I intend to find out.” Emily rose with a decisive upward thrust, clutching the diary in one hand.

Sarah struggled to her feet with a bit more difficulty, wincing as her cramped joints popped in release. The days when she'd been head cheerleader in high school seemed distant from the vantage point of her forty-nine years, with the twenty pounds she'd packed onto her small frame with each of her boys. Despite her best efforts, she'd been unable to shed the extra weight.

“Maybe we should wait until we can ask Mom,” she said, placing a hand on Emily's arm.

“You're kidding, right?” Emily gave her an incredulous look. “You know what the doctor said. We shouldn't expect a miracle.”

“Still …” Sarah remained troubled.

It was true that their mother's prognosis wasn't encouraging—six months earlier she'd suffered a massive stroke that had left her unable to speak or move, even to feed herself. But Sarah, and to a lesser degree Emily, continued to hold out hope nonetheless. At her bedside, they searched for glimmers of the woman they'd known, just as, when they were children, they'd once searched in vain for arrowheads in the vacant lot behind their house. Meanwhile, the white-haired old lady with the blank eyes and frozen rictus of a mouth who'd once been the vibrant, outspoken Elizabeth Marshall remained suspended in this twilight state, tended to around the clock by the nurses at the Miriam Hastings McDonald extended care facility. The sisters took turns visiting her there, the facility being conveniently located midway between Sarah, who lived with her husband and two sons, and Emily, with her three cats and newly issued divorce decree.

Some of Emily's resolution fled. As she stood in the close atmosphere of the attic, motes of dust dancing in a beam of sunlight angling across the floor at her feet, she felt small and lost. Her narrow shoulders sagged with the weight of all the decisions she and her sister had had to make in a short span of time: where to place their mother after her release from the hospital, whether or not to sell her house—the pink, gabled Victorian they'd grown up in—and what sort of advance funeral arrangements were to be made. Their mother had been the soul of organization in most respects, but about that she'd been maddeningly vague. Whenever one of them would broach the topic, she'd smile and say, “You girls will know what to do when the time comes.”

“I know. I hate it, too.” Emily sighed. In some ways, it was as though their mother were already gone—all that was left a body of no use to her or anyone, an empty shell washed ashore by the tide. “But I can't just sit on this. I have to know.”

Sarah looked unconvinced, and Emily thought she understood why: Reading other people's diaries was what you did after they were dead.

There was also the matter of their father not having been their mother's one and only. This was what Emily found most troubling. Their dad hadn't been one to wear his emotions on his sleeve—a reserve their mother had chalked up to psychological scars sustained in combat—but she didn't doubt that he'd loved them. Emily was certain that after their marriage, he'd never even looked at a woman other than his wife. This was the same man, after all, who'd been deacon of their church, past president of his Masonic Lodge, and a dedicated employee of the same firm for more than forty years. The term “one-woman man” had been invented for Bob Marshall, and for him, that woman had been Elizabeth. How awful, Emily thought, to find out that theirs hadn't been the storybook romance she'd always thought was a given!

But her desire to know the truth was greater than any fear that she'd be opening a Pandora's Box. Her sister, she could see, was leaning in that direction as well. Sarah had a habit of tugging on her lower lip when in the throes of making a decision, and right now it was pulled down so far that Emily could see the bridge where she'd lost a tooth after being hit by a runaway croquet ball as a teenager.

Finally Sarah came to a decision. “All right. I'll phone Jeff and tell him not to wait on me for supper.”

“While you do that, I'll go see if there's still some of that wine left in the fridge,” said Emily as she headed for the stairs, the diary clutched firmly to her breast. “I have a feeling we're going to need it.”

CHAPTER TWO

J
ULY
3, 1951

Dear Diary
,

Bob asked me to marry him today. Well, he didn't come right out and ask. That's not his style. He asked what I wanted for my birthday in September, and I told him to surprise me. So he says, with this little twinkle in his eye, “Oh, I already have something picked out. I just hope it's what you want.” When I asked for a hint, he said, “All I can tell you is that it comes in a small box.” Now, what could that mean other than what I think it means? And wouldn't that be just like Bob, wanting it to be a surprise but not wanting to take any chances, either? As if there could be any doubt, given that we've been together almost four years. Besides, everyone has been talking about it for so long, it feels like we're already engaged. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Mother has been secretly planning the wedding this whole time
.

But nothing's been settled just yet. I have the whole rest of the summer to be Elizabeth Harvey, single girl extraordinaire. Who knows? I may just decide to run away and join the circus. Can't you see me as a trapeze artist, swinging through the air in my itty-bitty costume? Wouldn't Mother have a fit? Which reminds me, the county fair is tomorrow. Afterward there's to be the usual picnic and fireworks. Bob and I are riding over with Mother in her car. At last year's fair, Gunther Willis's prize Brahman bull escaped from its pen and caused quite the ruckus when it tried to mount Missy Carruther's pony. I wonder what excitement is in store this year
.

“
Go on
. Don't be shy.”

Elizabeth Harvey cast an imperious eye on the young man who was now motioning for her to have a seat. AJ sat perched on a stool before an easel on which a large sketch pad was propped, surrounded by other artisans hawking their wares—weavers, potters, wood-carvers, and the like. Displayed on another easel beside him was a caricature in pastels of a freckle-faced little girl—quite a skilled one, she noted. He was smiling up at her, knees spread in a pose as impudent as his pitch, fair hair luffing in the welcome breeze that blew through the fairgrounds, carrying the smell of hot dogs and kettle corn and the more fecund waft from the 4-H barn. His fingers were rainbow-hued from the pastels scattered over the easel's tray. His eyes, the color of the faded blue jeans he wore, seemed to mock her in some way.

“I'm not here to get my picture drawn. I only stopped to say hello,” she informed him, all at once regretting the impulse that had made her pause at the sight of a familiar face in this unfamiliar setting.

Undeterred, he asked, “What's your hurry?”

“I have to—” She started to reply that she was on her way to the main pavilion to meet her boyfriend, but AJ didn't let her finish.

“Think of it as a souvenir,” he went on in the same cocky vein. “One day when you look back on this, you'll remember it as the county fair where you had your caricature done by your old pal AJ.”

Her cheeks warmed at the seemingly ironic reference to their childhood friendship, and she felt a twinge of guilt for having allowed that friendship to fade—though was she really to blame? He was the one, after all, who'd spurned every overture since then. And after the incident in high school that had resulted in his being sent away, he'd dropped out of her life altogether. This was the first time she'd seen him in more than three years. “I suppose this is what you call making an honest living?” She injected just the right note of playfulness into her voice so he wouldn't take offense but at the same time would know that she didn't think making eyes at young women and having them pay for the privilege fell into the category of an honest living. Even if he was someone she'd known since kindergarten.

His shoulders rolled in an indolent shrug. “Beats cutting hay.”

He had a point. This time of year, nearly every able-bodied man in the county who didn't have a crop of his own to bring in was recruited to work in the neighboring fields. She took a mincing step in his direction, one hand on her straw hat to keep it anchored in place, though the breeze was a mild one, just enough to flutter its ribbons. “How much are you charging?” she inquired.

“Five bucks a pop.”

“Isn't that kind of steep?”

He flashed her a lazy grin, somehow all the more appealing because of a crooked eyetooth that had never benefited from orthodontia. Under the snugly fitting white T-shirt he wore with his jeans, the muscles in his arms and chest were clearly defined. He reminded her of a mountain lion, lithe and sinewy and built for speed; he seemed coiled to spring even while sitting perfectly still. “You can always frame it and hang it on your wall,” he told her. “Can't put a price on that.”

“You seem to have a high opinion of your artistic talent,” she observed coolly.

“Oh, I wouldn't say that,” he demurred with what she might have deemed modesty if she hadn't known him to be proud to the point of arrogance. “It's just a little parlor trick I picked up along the way.”

A reminder that while she was going to football games and dances, he was spending the second semester of their senior year at the Silas Kingston Youth Detention Facility in Riverton. AJ, for reasons known only to him, had set his uncle's car on fire. The act had sent shock waves through their small community and catapulted him overnight from an aloof and somewhat disreputable figure on the fringes of the sock-hop/pep-rally world Elizabeth inhabited to the most-talked-about kid in school. Yet despite all the talk, nobody seemed to have a handle on AJ. Although gossip swirled around him, mostly having to do with girls with whom he was rumored to have had his way, he was a mystery even to classmates who'd known him as long as she had.

Elizabeth knew him better than most, she supposed. They'd been playmates as children. He'd been just another kid back then, if a bit more free-spirited than most. But the tragedy that left him orphaned at the age of nine altered him in other ways. After he went to live with his grandparents, he became withdrawn to the point of being antisocial. His only friends, if you could call them that, were class troublemakers Gunnar Nielson and Del Hannigan. With Elizabeth, who'd once ridden on the back of his bike and with whom he'd shared Orange Crushes and played kick-the-can, he grew more and more distant with each passing year. In class he seldom acknowledged her presence, and if their eyes happened to meet when they passed each other in the halls, he never greeted her with anything more than a half-cocked smile or ironic arch of the brow. During their junior year, when they were briefly thrown together as lab partners in biology, she made an attempt to rekindle their old friendship, but it was met with a coolness that bordered on disdain. Convinced that he found her silly and frivolous, not worthy of his time or attention, she decided he wasn't worthy of hers, either. Still, she remained curious about him, and at times that curiosity drove her to distraction. Why, she wondered, was he the only boy immune to her charms? She'd see him with other girls not half as pretty as she and feel oddly rejected. Then she'd tell herself it was silly to feel that way when she already had a boyfriend—one who was sweet and caring—and she had no romantic interest in AJ in any event.

It was the same curiosity that kept her rooted to the spot now, any thoughts of the boyfriend she'd been on her way to meet far from her mind. “Are you any good at it?” she asked, edging a step closer.

AJ cocked his head, studying her with a keen, professional eye. The canvas tarp shielding him from the sun was torn in spots, and with each new gust of wind, little wavelets of sunlight found their way through the rips to shimmy over his face. Not an especially handsome face, she thought, but certainly an arresting one: narrow and sharp-featured as if honed by hard, clean strokes of an ax, with high, planed cheekbones and tanned skin the dusky gold of just-pressed cider. His heavy brows, the color of the charcoal pencil his fingers were loosely curled about, stood out in marked contrast to his fair hair. His eyes were so blue they seemed to crackle.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Let me have a go at you, and if you don't like it, it's on the house.”

Elizabeth felt herself prickle with unaccustomed heat. She was glad her mother wasn't here, for she would have railed at the mere thought of any boy “having a go” at her daughter, however innocent his intentions. (Mildred Harvey was at that moment sequestered in the main pavilion with the panel judging pickles and preserves, a job she took as seriously as a high government office.) The fact that it was “the Keener boy”—as AJ had been known ever since his parents had died in that auto wreck and he'd gone to live with his mother's folks, Joe and Sally Keener—would have rendered her positively apoplectic.