The Back Door of Midnight (7 page)

“Stepmother,” she corrected, then smiled. “I owe you for yesterday. Thank you for getting rid of our four-legged friends.”

I nodded.

“How is Iris doing?” she asked.

“I—I’m not sure. There are a lot of things I have to figure out. She’s not really—uh—”

“Normal? Then I guess she is doing the same as before. It was very decent of you to come,” Mrs. Fleming added. “There aren’t a lot of young people who would visit their batty aunt.”

“I didn’t come for that reason.” It seemed as if I had given this spiel a hundred times since arriving. “Uncle Will invited me. He said there were some family things to talk about, so I came expecting to see him.”

“You mean you didn’t know? Oh, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. Someone should have informed you.”

“According to Aunt Iris,
Uncle Will
should have.”

She smiled a little. “How long will you be staying?”

“I don’t know yet. I have college orientation in August.”

“So you’re looking for a summer job.”

What could I say? No, I’m as paranoid as Aunt Iris and think people are following me. . . .

“Yes, but the truth is, I don’t have the experience you want. I worked at Panera Bread for two years—you know, handling bagels, sandwiches, that kind of thing.”

“I see. And how many bagels a week would you say you dropped?”

“I had a counter in front of me. There was no place to drop them.”

She laughed a tinkly laugh that seemed too girlish to go with her businesslike appearance. “You’re hired.”

“Excuse me?”

“Honesty is important. And I need an employee who knows how to position herself so she doesn’t drop things. Of course,” she added, “Zack would advise you not to take this job.”

“Why?” I asked bluntly.

That tinkly laugh again. “I’m a tough stepmother and a tough employer. Sometimes we’re swamped, other times it’s slow. When it is, I’ll expect you to help with cleaning, inventory, whatever I need. There is no slacking off in my shop. And there is certainly no socializing, no little visits from friends.”

I thought fast. Aunt Iris’s problems weren’t going to be solved in a week, probably not in several weeks.

“What were you paid at Panera?”

I told her.

“I can match that. And on the bright side,” she went on, “I would understand if you have an emergency involving Iris and couldn’t come to work. I also know you will be leaving for school. You realize, of course, no one in town will hire you if they think you are leaving in August. But some help now will get me through the longest days of the tourist season.”

Working in a shop might keep me sane; it would definitely keep me in air-conditioning. It would give me extra money for college—and a new muffler. The only strange thing was Mrs. Fleming’s connection to Zack. But I liked her. She was no-nonsense and blunt, the kind of person I found easy to get along with.

“I’m thinking ten to five Wednesday through Saturday, twelve to five on Sunday.” She cocked her head. “Interested?”

“Yes.”

“When can you start?”

“Wednesday.”

“Training tomorrow,” she said.

“Okay.”

She folded her arms and appeared pleased. “It will be worth your time, Anna. If you do the job well, I’ll teach you more than clerking a store. You’ll learn how to run your own business.”

“Awesome.”

“There’s a small lot in the back for parking. Don’t block me in. See you tomorrow.”

A few minutes later I was hurrying home to Aunt Iris’s. Zack’s friend must have given up the game. Aunt Iris was out, so I got to enjoy the rest of my doughnuts on the kitchen stoop, gazing at the creek. At noon I roared off to the gas station to get a new muffler, then drove more quietly to Tilby’s Dream.

The old farm lay along Oyster Creek on the eastern bank, like the O’Neill house, but on the other side of Scarborough Road, past the bridge. “Can’t miss it,” the sheriff had told me. “Got a big old tulip poplar on the corner”—whatever a tulip poplar was. I drove slowly, looking at every large tree I passed—there were a lot—and finally turned onto the first paved road I saw.

McManus had said to go almost to the end, then turn right on an unmarked dirt road, hidden by trees. Mrs. Fleming—Marcy, as I was supposed to call her—had looked at my penciled map and said the road was used for hayrides in the fall, but she couldn’t remember any kind of landmark helpful for a girl like me who was used to road signs and marked intersections. I drove more than a mile through golden green fields of soy and corn, then spotted a grove of trees that might be camouflaging a dirt road. Since I had been warned about
potholes, I pulled over and got out to walk.

I knew I was in the right place when I saw the deep tracks made by heavy equipment that had passed through recently—fire trucks, I assumed. The trees that lined both sides of the road had been planted at even intervals, perhaps to make a shady avenue, but were now overgrown with shrubs, vines, and smaller trees. Although it wasn’t wilderness, to a city person it was the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t even the distant whoosh of traffic that afternoon, the cornfields and trees shielding the road from every sound but that of insects.

After ten minutes of walking, I reached the site. In my dreams I had come in darkness; now the site was bathed in sunlight, but the smell was the same—pine and sour ashes. It was unnerving to feel that a place was very familiar when I had never physically set foot on it.

I surveyed the area surrounded by yellow police tape. The scorched ground was sandy with pieces of shell embedded in it, oyster shells, like those on Aunt Iris’s driveway. Perhaps there had been a building here once. On either side of the clearing were fields. The one on the right was nothing but dried stalks and was hemmed with a stand of pine; the one on the left stretched to distant woods with row after row of green soy.

The dirt road continued past the burn site and through
another avenue of trees. I recalled the sounds of sirens and running feet from my first dream. If fire trucks had entered from one direction, it would have been easy for the kids setting the blaze to exit through the other. It seemed an ideal place for arson.

I ducked under the police tape and walked to the center of the cordoned-off area. Standing there, I turned slowly, my eyes sweeping the landscape. It was like looking at something in a wavy mirror, like looking at your living room reflected in a Christmas ball, finding it both strange and familiar. Somehow, the image of this place had gotten inside my head. Somehow, it had rooted in my brain before I had seen the place for real, and it scared me.

WHEN I ARRIVED
home at dinnertime, Aunt Iris was sitting at the kitchen table making a sandwich. “You’re back,” she said, sounding surprised.

I was about to explain who I was and why I was here, then decided it wasn’t worth the trouble, as long as she thought I was myself or my mother. “I got a job, Aunt Iris. And I’ve been to the grocery store.”

“We have plenty of food,” she replied.

I eyed the two pieces of slimy meat she had just laid on her bread and the mayo jar with yellow, crusty stuff inside the rim. “Thanks, but I don’t want to be mooching off of you. I bought one of those already-cooked rotisserie chickens. Want to try it?”

Without waiting for her response, I slid her sandwich plate to the side and placed the plastic container with chicken in front of her. She studied it for a moment, then picked up the butcher knife she’d been using and hacked off a leg.

“Where will you be working, Anna?”

So she did know who I was. “At a store called Always Christmas.”

“Marcy’s shop. That’s very nice.”

She sounded normal, making me wonder if she had taken some kind of medicine. I thought it took longer for psychiatric drugs to work.

“I hope you remembered to get Dr Pepper,” she said, watching me put away groceries.

“I did. Want some?”

“No, thank you,” Aunt Iris replied. “I have private matters to attend to.”

I opened the refrigerator and moved to one side all the stuff I planned to throw out when she wasn’t looking.

“It’s unfortunate,” she said.

“What is?” I asked, wiping off the cleared shelf with a dishrag.

“I really can’t say. They are private matters.”

“All right.”

“I’ll be in my office.”

I pulled my head out of the refrigerator in time to see her slip a key into the door that led from the kitchen into the next room, the one I’d found locked last night. Curious, I followed her to the door to see what was there.

Two of the room’s walls had glass-fronted cabinets with counters beneath, the kind you see in an old science lab. There was a desk, what looked like an examining table, and an old-fashioned scale. A bookshelf just inside the door was crammed with worn volumes on the care of horses, cows, sheep, and, yes, goats.

“Was this my great-grandfather’s office?” I asked.

Aunt Iris swung around. “I told you some things are private!”

“Okay, okay,” I said, taking a step back.

She sat down at the desk, which was topped with a collection of candleholders, all of them covered with wax, their candles burnt down to the metal. What did she do in here?

“Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what?”

“I can hear you prying. It’s nobody’s fault.”

“It isn’t?” I replied, not sure what she was talking about.

“Of course not,” she said. “People just die.”

“Sooner or later.”

“On your way out, Joanna, close the door behind you.”

Obviously, I was supposed to leave. I returned to the kitchen but kept the door cracked between us. A minute later she closed and locked it—I heard the double click. Oh,
well.

I fixed myself a salad and ate the other chicken leg,
listening for movement inside her office, hearing nothing. Thinking about the melted candles, I sniffed but couldn’t smell anything burning. While she was occupied with “private matters,” I cleared the gross stuff out of the fridge, triple bagging it, then took it out to a set of heavy-duty trash cans next to Uncle Will’s pickup. On my way back to the kitchen I saw that Iris had closed the shutters in her office.

Once inside again, I called to her. “Aunt Iris?”

She didn’t respond.

“Aunt Iris, can I help you with anything?”

“No, these are private matters.”

Tomorrow I was buying several smoke detectors. “All right. I’m going down to the dock for a while.”

Sitting on the dock, I turned my back to the house, but I couldn’t shut her out of my mind. According to her lawyer, there were a lot of decisions to be made. Turning eighteen in a month and being the one-and-only “next of kin” to Aunt Iris, I would have to make choices that were far beyond my own experience. Ms. Nolan had strongly suggested that I call Mom. I would, but after her vacation. Tomorrow’s text message would be
“GETTING 2 KNO AUNT IRIS + LUV THE CREEK.”

Lost in thought, I didn’t notice the steady sound of flicking water coming from the left, not until cool drops were flicked at me.

“Earth to Anna,” Zack called.

I turned and saw him treading water about eight feet from the dock. His wet hair was slicked straight back and dripped down his neck, almost touching his shoulders. Some people look weird wet and slick, but not Zack.

“Hi.”

“Hi! Come on in,” he invited. “Water’s great.”

“Looks great, but no thanks.”

“Come on,” he coaxed.

“I’m not wearing a bathing suit.”

“So?”

“So,” I said firmly.

“Do you like boats? I’ve got a rowboat.” He pulled a tan arm out of the water to gesture in the direction of the Flemings’ dock. “Want to use it?”

I had always wanted to take out a boat—I mean a real one, not the purple sea dragons that I had pedaled in the Baltimore harbor. Floating around on an evening like this . . .

“I’ll row for you.”

“I can row myself,” I said—not that I ever had.

“Okay. There’s a gate through the hedge, close to the house.”

I glanced in the direction of the Flemings’ dock, then back at the gate.

“Meet you over there,” he said, and swam toward his own dock.

Well, how hard can rowing be?
I asked myself as I crossed from one yard to the other. It was a children’s song—
Row, row, row your boat.
But when I walked out on the Flemings’ dock, I had second thoughts. There was an expensive-looking cabin cruiser tied next to the rowboat, and I imagined myself rowing into it. These things didn’t have brakes.

Zack was floating on his back. When he saw me looking at the cabin cruiser, he righted himself. “Do you like big boats? Our sailboat’s at the marina. We can’t get its mast under the bridge.”

And where do you keep your oceangoing yacht?
I felt like asking. I stared down at the water. I didn’t remember the boats in Baltimore’s harbor sitting that many feet below the dock.

Zack swam closer. “Want some help getting in? Tide’s low.”

“I can manage it,” I assured him, and jumped. I landed squarely on both feet, the force of my leap making the boat rock wildly. I rocked with it and grabbed the piling to which the boat was tied, holding on to it like a cat clinging to a tree.

When I peeked at Zack, he had ducked under the water. From the bubbles coming up, I knew he was laughing.

“Next time,” he said, when he’d surfaced, “you might want to sit on the dock and ease yourself down to the boat.”

“I might.”

“Why don’t you put on the life jacket,” he suggested, “just in case the coast guard comes by.”

The coast guard wasn’t coming by; Zack thought I needed something to keep me afloat, and he was probably right.

I let go of the piling, sat down, and pulled on the clumsy padding. Slipping the oars in the oarlocks—that was surprisingly easy to figure out—I was about to shove off when, just in time, I remembered I was still tied to the piling. Now, that would have been embarrassing.

I quickly leaned forward and untied the rope, trying to look as if I knew what I was doing. When the difficult knot finally came undone, I noticed Zack once again making like a submarine, sending up flurries of bubbles. I bit my lip.