40
MORE INVITATIONS
Lily waited until she knew Grace was alone before
knocking, but even so, she had to rap twice on the door and stand
waiting for a while. Grace finally answered, her face puffy and her
eyes red. The words Lily had rehearsed flew out of her mind.
“What’s the matter?”
“Oh, nothing.” Grace shook her head.
“Dad just left on a walk with Dominic. Would you like to come
in?”
Lily stepped into the house. “I brought
you this.”
Grace took the small old glass bottle
from her and studied the label with a furrowed brow. “Cinnamon
sticks?”
“I read on the Internet that you should
boil them in water before people come over to look at the house.
It’s a psychological thing. It will make the house smell homey and
then people will want to buy it.”
At her words, Grace went from looking
slightly depressed to openly weeping. She barely squeezed out a
trembly “Thank you!”
“Is something wrong?” Lily
asked.
Grace gulped a few times before
attempting to speak. “Earnshaw died,” she squeaked.
“Dominic told me. I’m really
sorry.”
She waved her hand in front of her face
as if to cool off her tears. “It’s okay. It’s stupid for me to be
so upset—she was really sick. I mean, I knew it was going to
happen.”
Lily nodded, but didn’t want to say
anything more. The only times she’d glimpsed Earnshaw, she hadn’t
been very impressed. The cat had spent months squatting under
furniture, looking hunted. “Is Heathcliff okay?”
“He’s never
been better,” Grace said with a trace of bitterness. “All these
years, I thought the two of them were devoted to each other—that
they couldn’t live without each other. But Heathcliff is gamboling
about like a kitten. He’s never been so frisky!”
“Maybe he’s glad to have you all to
himself. Maybe you’re the one he’s devoted
to.”
Grace considered this. “I still feel
disillusioned.” She held up the tiny jar. “Anyway, thanks for the
cinnamon sticks. I suppose I should try to use them—although I’m
secretly tempted to sabotage any possibility of a
sale.”
“I wouldn’t want to leave this house,
either. It’s so much cooler than ours.”
“Your house is bigger.”
“Yeah, but it’s never felt right since
. . .” She didn’t finish, but she didn’t need to. Grace was nodding
in understanding.
A small object on the bookshelf caught
Lily’s gaze. An object that looked strangely like herself. “Hey!”
She picked the piece up and examined it. It was one of the little
push puppets that Grace collected, but this one was painted with
her face, and was even carrying a tiny plastic clarinet. Just to
test it, she pushed the plunger and watched herself collapse and
pop back up again.
“Where did you get this?” she asked
Grace.
“It’s a mystery. They keep appearing in
my mailbox. So far I’ve got Dad, Iago, and Dominic. And now
you.”
“Where do they come from?”
“I don’t know. They arrive in little
boxes with Austin postmarks.”
“But you must have some idea,” Lily
insisted.
“I have a suspicion.”
Lily narrowed her eyes. Who would do this? They were so cute, it would have to
be someone with a sense of humor. Also, someone who knew Grace
pretty well. And who was good at woodworking.
“I think I know who it is,” Lily
announced.
“Who?”
“I’m not going to tell,” she said. “I
want to find out for sure, first.”
Grace smiled. “So I guess we share a
suspicion.”
Lily suspected Crawford. Crawford had
carved a box out of the wood from the old elm tree and given it to
Grace last Christmas.
If it was Crawford, she was doubly glad
the figurine of her looked like the new her and not the old her.
There were no glasses painted on her face, and her hair was loose,
not in a ponytail. Aside from that, it was hard to know if her
likeness was flattering or not. She was certainly flat-chested, but
that wasn’t necessarily the artist’s fault. A cylindrical segmented
body didn’t exactly give an artist much to work with.
The important thing was that
Crawford—if it was Crawford—had been thinking about
her.
She was so wrapped up in the puppet
that she almost forgot the reason she had come over. The cinnamon
sticks had just been cooked up as an excuse. “You and the professor
are invited to our house for Thanksgiving,” she told Grace. “We
kids want to make dinner. Do you think you’ll be able to
come?”
Grace frowned. “Well, thank you,
but—”
“Please? Say you’ll come. Last year was
so awful—and this year Granny Kate and Pop Pop are taking a trip to
Florida to visit Great-Aunt Jeannie.”
“It’s nice of you to invite us, but Dad
has it in his head to have Thanksgiving here.”
“Again?” Lily
hadn’t foreseen this. “But last year was a disaster!”
Grace laughed. “I know, but since this
will be our last Thanksgiving here . . .”
Lily left the house soon after.
Mission not accomplished. Jordan would be
annoyed that she hadn’t been able to persuade Grace to come for
Thanksgiving. Now what were they supposed to do?
Crawford pulled into his driveway. He
got out and smiled at her over the roof of his car. “Hey! Seems
like I haven’t seen you in two hours.”
He was referring to their last-period
band class. “I was talking to Grace,” she said. “She received a new
one of those puppet thingies in the mail.” She watched him closely
for his reaction.
His face twisted in
puzzlement.
Oh, he was
good.
“Didn’t you offer to drive me somewhere
in your car?” she asked, crossing the yard toward him. Risks were
worth taking when there was a mystery to be solved.
Now he looked really confused . . . but
not displeased. “Okay—hop in.”
She did and he reversed out of the
drive and sped off down the street. When they were stopped at a
light, he turned to her. “You want to go grab something to
eat?”
“Sure,” she said.
Crawford drove to Taco Cabana. Lily
just ordered a Coke; her stomach was too jittery to actually eat.
They hadn’t been alone together since last spring, and back then it
had only been when someone else had happened to leave the room. It
had never been on purpose—at least not on Crawford’s
part.
After they sat down, Crawford took a
bite of a burrito—he wasn’t too nervous to eat, apparently—and
gulped it down with a swig from his drink. “You seem different this
year,” he said.
“Well?” she asked. “That’s a good
thing, isn’t it?” She sounded so defensive, she immediately wished
she’d kept her mouth shut.
He tilted his head. “Why did you leave
this summer? I never understood.”
“Just to get away,” she
replied.
“From your sister?”
“Mostly,” she admitted.
His brows scrunched together. “But
Jordan went away too.”
Did he still like Jordan? From his
expression, she couldn’t tell. She sucked on her straw, fighting
against all the old feelings that threatened to come roiling
back.
“Did you have fun while you were with
your grandparents?” he asked.
“Yeah, I did, but somehow it didn’t
seem real. It was like I wanted to belong there more than I
actually did.”
“But Dominic said that you were
actually thinking of living in that place.”
“I was.”
“So why did you change your
mind?”
“Because of something Grace said.
Although really I suppose it was really something Oliver Wendell
Holmes said about your feet leaving a place but not your
heart.”
He laughed. “Well . . . you still talk
in the same whacked way. That hasn’t
changed.”
She smiled.
“All this time since you got back, I’ve
wanted to talk to you,” he said. “But it seemed sort of weird
because of . . .”
“Last spring,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She hoped he couldn’t see her shudder.
After that episode, Crawford had probably thought she was a little
psycho stalker. It was so embarrassing. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey—don’t apologize to me. As far as
I’m concerned it all worked out great. Dad and Pippa broke
up.”
She sat up straighter. “You used to
like Pippa.”
“She was okay, but she and Dad would
never have lasted. So there would have been a lot of arguing and
stuff, like there was with my mom, and then they would have gotten
a divorce. So what was the point?” He leaned forward. “Besides,
without having a steady girlfriend, Dad got sort of into looking
for cars with me. That’s how I ended up getting a new one. He hated
all the used cars I looked at that I could have afforded on my own.
So, if you think about it, I have you to thank for my
wheels.”
He really was reaching. “That’s nice of
you to say—but I was so embarrassed. I still am. I basically
insulted everyone in the neighborhood.”
“You didn’t insult me,” he
said.
She felt a blush creep up her face and
she hunched over her drink, sucking Coke through a straw so she
wouldn’t have to say anything. She’d spent her whole life reading
books, but when she really needed words, her brain blinked out on
her.
And yet Crawford, who usually didn’t
talk that much at all, was able to keep the conversation
afloat.
“So I guess you’re bummed about Grace
and the professor moving,” he said. “I know I am.”
Here was her opening. She crossed her
arms, preparing to watch his answer very
closely. “Have you thought of doing anything . . . for Grace, I
mean?”
He blinked. “Like what?”
“Oh, you know . . . any special
farewell gift or something?”
“Not really.” Frowning, he asked, “Why?
Do you think she expects me to?”
“Not if you don’t want to. I mean, I
was just thinking, because you’re so good at making stuff, you
might have had something in mind.”
He shrugged. “I haven’t had
time.”
Lily frowned. He didn’t seem to be
hiding anything. So apparently there was some
other woodworker out there making her into a puppet.
Weird.
As they were driving home, he asked
her, “Would you ever be interested in going to a movie or
something?”
For a moment, she couldn’t believe
she’d heard him right. He was asking her to a movie. As in,
on a date. No one had ever asked her on a
date before. It had always seemed such a remote possibility that
even in her imagination she’d never gotten to the part about how
she was supposed to react. Her tongue felt frozen.
He darted a nervous glance toward her.
“No? Yes? Think about it?”
“Yes,” she blurted out. “Of course yes.
I mean, it sounds fun.”
When she got home, the moment she shut
the door she wanted to whoop with joy. Or toe dance through the
foyer. Or bound up the stairs three at a time.
But Jordan was waiting at the door for
her, practically tapping her watch like an impatient parent. “Where
have you been? You went over to Grace’s hours ago!”
“Crawford offered me a ride in his
car.” She was still floating, so she didn’t feel compelled to add
that he’d only offered once she’d asked him first. “We went to Taco
Cabana.” “Congratulations,” Jordan said. “Did you talk to
Grace?”
“Yeah . . . but it’s not good. She said
no.”
“What? And then
you just went out joyriding?”
“What else could I do? Grace said that
the professor wants to have Thanksgiving at their
house.”
“Did you try to talk her out of
it?”
“How could I do that? It’s obviously
the professor’s decision. Grace is really depressed about its being
the last year at their house.”
“Crap!” Jordan plopped down on the
stairs. “Now what do we do?”
Lily lifted her shoulders. “Give up, I
guess.”
Jordan’s head snapped up. “Give up?
With Muriel Blainey on the prowl? There’s no telling what that
woman has planned for Dad over in her lair.”
Lily twisted her lips, thinking. “Maybe
Dominic will be able to convince Grace to take the spa
trip.”
Too late she realized bringing up
that topic was akin to poking her sister
with a pin. Jordan roared in frustration. “What is the matter with
her? We go to all the trouble to win that stupid trip, and then she
won’t even go!”
Lily still experienced a pang of guilt
whenever she thought about those gumballs. “We shouldn’t have done
that. It was cheating.”
Jordan, on the other hand, entertained
no guilt about having sneaked into Dominic’s classroom during the
Parent Night recital and counting gumballs when no one was looking.
“It was necessary cheating, for a worthy
cause. Or it would have been,” she grumbled, “if the cause would
cooperate.”
Lily thought for a moment. Apart from
missing an opportunity to have her father and Grace together in a
social setting, she dreaded Thanksgiving alone, with just the
family. Things might be better than they were last year, but
another holiday alone with just the four of them would be grim.
Almost as grim as last Christmas, when their father had given them
all watches and taken them out for Indian food.
“We’ll just have to try a different
tactic,” she told Jordan.
“What do you have in
mind?”
“Being pathetic.”