Summer of Fear

  “Julia’s coming with us?”

  “Of course. She’s very excited about it.”

  “But you said—” Slowly I lowered the photograph into the proper tray, trying to keep my voice steady. “You said it would be us, just you and me. That it would do us good because we were so upset about the professor.”

  “I never said we wouldn’t take Julia. Honey, she’s as upset as we are! She may not have known him long, but she evidently formed a very strong attachment during the few conversations they had. Besides, she’s never been to Santa Fe. She’ll love seeing Canyon Road and some of the other wonderful places.”

  “If Julia’s going,” I said, “then I’m staying home.”

  “Rachel, don’t be ridiculous!” Mom exclaimed in exasperation.

  “I mean it. I’m not going to spend a day cooped up in the car with Julia, no matter where we’re going. That’s why I moved out of the bedroom—because I couldn’t bear to be near her. You know that.”

  “I thought that a day together doing something fun might make you girls closer,” Mom said. “Rae, please try. Make an effort to be gracious and loving. Julia is such a sweet person—”

  “Julia’s a witch!” I cried. “A witch! Can’t you see it? Can’t any of you see past your own noses?” I slammed the tongs down onto the edge of the tray and turned toward my mother. I couldn’t see her face clearly in the dim light. I didn’t have to see it. I knew how she looked when she was upset, her mouth held tight to keep it from trembling, the freckles standing out like dark splotches against her pale skin.

  “She put a spell on Professor Jarvis!” I told her. “He didn’t have a stroke, or if he did, it was Julia who made him have one! He knew she was a witch and he was going to talk to you about it! Julia was afraid you would listen to him and so she put him out of the way!”

  It was a last frantic try and it didn’t work. Could I really have thought it would? Was there any reason that Mom would listen now to what she wouldn’t hear before? Still, for an instant, I’d thought she might. In this little room where we had worked so closely together on so many occasions, where we had held conferences and shared our thoughts and feelings, it had seemed just faintly possible that we could find each other again.

  But it wouldn’t happen that way.

  “I think you’d better go,” she said.

  “Go? Where?”

  “Back in the house. Out in the yard. I don’t care where, as long as it’s someplace where I won’t have to listen to crazy accusations about my sister’s child. I don’t care whether you like your cousin or not, Rae; you can learn to get along with her regardless. I loved your Aunt Marge very much, and Julia is all that’s left of her, and it tears me to shreds to hear you slander her so cruelly.”

  “But, Mom—” I began miserably.

  “Please, no more!” She was turned away from me now and I could tell by her voice that she was trying not to cry. “Just go, Rae, please. I can finish the printing by myself.”

  “All right,” I said.

  I waited until she put the paper into a light-proof container and then I opened the door and stepped out into the garage. I pushed the door closed behind me and stood there wondering what to do next. Then, because there was nowhere else to go, I went into the house.

  The kitchen smelled of roasted chicken. Julia had evidently started dinner. From the voices in the family room I knew that Dad and Peter were both home from work and that Julia was with them. From the far end of the hall I could hear Bobby and the other airplane-makers going strong in the back bedroom; somebody was yelling something about “revving up the engine.”

  I went to the family room and stood in the doorway. Julia was sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table, on which there was spread a road map of New Mexico. Dad and Peter were sitting across from her on the sofa, and Dad was explaining, “You take the freeway here and go north. It’s only sixty miles or so on a nice double-lane highway. About twenty miles north of Albuquerque there’s an Indian pueblo, which your Aunt Leslie will probably want to take you through. Then up here, on the outskirts of Santa Fe, you’ll get into the area of the red clay cliffs. It’s beautiful scenery.”

  “The open-air opera house is here in these mountains,” Peter said, touching the map. “They’ll probably be rehearsing while you’re up there. Do you like opera?”

  “I’ve never heard any,” Julia said. “I don’t know much about singing.”

  “We’ll have to go sometime. I’ll check and see what’s planned for the rest of the season. Knowing Mom, she’ll take you to eat at La Fonda. That’s her and Rae’s favorite place for Mexican food.”

  “It all sounds so great,” Julia said, tracing the route with her forefinger. “Did you say the cliffs are in this area?”

  “Right here,” Peter said. “I wish I were going with you. Rae’s lucky not to have a summer job; she gets to hang out and do whatever she wants to.”

  Julia moved her finger slowly up and down the black line that represented the road to Santa Fe.

  “Is it all right if I take the map to my room?” she asked. “I’d like to study it awhile tonight. I’m ashamed at how little I know about my adopted state.”

  “Go right ahead,” Dad said warmly. “Keep it as long as you want to. I’m glad you’re interested.”

  “Thanks, Tom.” Julia smiled at him. It was a nice smile, gentle and loving. Despite the difference in their coloring and features, when Julia smiled at my father that way she reminded me startlingly of Mom.

  That night we ate chicken and rice and peas for dinner. Mom didn’t speak to me at the table except to ask me to pass Bobby the peas because he hadn’t taken any the first time around. I cleared the table and cleaned up in the kitchen without being asked. Mike stopped over for a while; he had the next day off and wanted to know if Julia wanted to go on a picnic, but she told him she already had plans. After Mike left Bobby asked Julia if she wanted to play dominoes, and the two of them played a game. Then Peter decided he wanted in on it, so he joined them. Dad read the newspaper, and then got some papers out of his briefcase and went over them with a red pen, making little marks and corrections. Mom spotted the doll house prints and got them ready for mailing. She also remarked to Julia that she would develop the American Girl photos after her return from Santa Fe. I read a magazine.

  It wasn’t an unusual evening in any way. The only reason I remember it in such detail is that it was to be the last evening we were all together. It was the evening before the end.

  I did not get up the next morning until after Mom had gone. She hadn’t mentioned to the family the fact that I wasn’t going on the Santa Fe outing, and I knew it was because she hoped I would change my mind. I was too tired of conflict to be able to face any more of it, so I remained in bed until I was certain she and Julia had left, and then I got up and put on my shorts and a T-shirt and went out to the kitchen.

  Bobby was there, eating a piece of chocolate cake.

  “Is that your breakfast?” I asked him.

  “It’s my breakfast dessert,” he said. “I had cereal already. How come you’re home? I thought you were going with Mom.”

  “I was,” I said, “but I changed my mind.”

  “That’s dumb,” Bobby said. “It means Mom doesn’t have any company.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “She has Julia, doesn’t she?”

  “Julia’s sick.” Bobby took a huge forkful of cake and stuffed it into his mouth and continued to talk through a ring of chocolate icing. “Her stomach was upset and she had a headache. Mom said it sounded like she was coming down with the flu.”

  “You mean she didn’t go?” The twist in circumstances was more than I could bear. I wouldn’t have had to share the day with Julia after all! It could’ve been just Mom and me, like I’d wanted!

  “Mom said for her to take aspirin and stay in bed,” Bobby told me. “She couldn’t stay home herself because she had an appointment with an editor, but she said she’d come
straight back when that was over and if Julia wasn’t feeling better she’d take her to Dr. Morgan.”

  “It’s funny Julia can’t cure herself,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  I went to the phone and dialed the hospital and asked about Professor Jarvis. They transferred the call to the nurse on his floor who told me there was “no change.” Then I got a piece of cake about half the size of Bobby’s and sat at the kitchen table to eat it while leafing through the morning paper.

  The doorbell rang, announcing the arrival of a gang of Bobby’s friends. They came trooping in, yelling and jabbing at each other and romping around. The noise seemed to fill the house. If anybody but Julia had been sick I would have told them to be quiet. As it was I kept my mouth shut.

  However, I myself couldn’t stay in the house with all that racket. It was more than my nerves could stand. I decided I would develop the film Mom had left in the “hold” box so that when she got home it would be ready to be printed. It was a small way of saying “I’m sorry” for having made her unhappy.

  I think back sometimes on that decision, how casually I made it. I might just as easily have decided to do something else. If that had been the case—but there’s no reason to dwell on that. As it happened, I did make the decision, and I went out to the darkroom, and there was Julia. The overhead light was on, and she was standing in front of the “hold” box with a roll of film in her hands.

  “What are you doing here?” I said. “I thought you were sick!”

  Her back was toward the door and evidently she had been too deeply involved in what she was doing to hear me open it, for she started and whirled to face me. The film spool dropped from her hands and rolled across the floor, leaving in its trail a long strip of undeveloped film.

  I looked down at the film and up at Julia.

  “You’ve ruined it!” I exclaimed. “You know it can’t be exposed to light!”

  Julia’s voice was very low and choked with fury.

  “You were supposed to have gone to Santa Fe with your mother!”

  “Well, I didn’t,” I said. “And it’s a good thing too or you would have wrecked all of Mom’s pictures. What are you doing, trying to develop them? Don’t you know that has to be done in the dark?”

  “Really?” Julia said. And slowly, very deliberately, she took a second roll of film out of the box, tore off the label that held it together, and lifted it high above her head, letting the strip unwind to its full length so that the spool fell out onto the floor with a sharp, metallic clink.

  I was so surprised that I didn’t move to stop her. I simply stood there, staring at her in amazement.

  “What—” I stammered. “Why—”

  “I think you know.”

  “I don’t know at all!”

  “Those books you got from the library must have told you something. If they didn’t, then the professor did. It was you who suggested to your mother that she use me for a model. You did it for a reason. You wanted to show your parents that my image wouldn’t appear on the negatives.”

  “But it would have!” I said. “I was wrong!”

  “You weren’t wrong.”

  “But you’ve been photographed before! Mary Nesbitt showed your yearbook picture to her brother! You were photographed for that.”

  I paused. The thing that was beginning to occur to me was so incredible that I couldn’t believe it was possible, and yet—and yet—

  “Julia Grant was photographed for that,” I said slowly.

  “Yes?”

  “If a witch can’t be photographed, then Julia Grant wasn’t a witch. So you—”

  “Yes?” Julia’s dark eyes were fastened to my face. She smiled slightly. “Go on, Rachel. ‘So you—’?”

  “You are a witch,” I said. “So you—can’t be Julia Grant!”

  And now that they were spoken, the words were not so unbelievable after all. In fact, they explained everything. The reason Julia had sung in her church choir but had never sung for us—her lack of interest in Mary Nesbitt’s letter—the million and one little inconsistencies in personality and background that had come to light over the past months—suddenly I could understand them. It was as though the pieces of an unsolvable puzzle were coming together and suddenly, miraculously, they fit!

  “But if you’re not Julia,” I said softly, “then—who are you?”

  “You haven’t guessed that?”

  “No. I have no idea.”

  “My name is Sarah Blane,” the girl I knew as Julia said quietly. “I worked for Ryan and Marge Grant in Lost Ridge. They hired me as a cook and a cleaning girl, but I realized pretty quickly this wasn’t the reason they wanted me to live with them. They’d heard in the village that I had the gift of witchcraft handed down to me from my grandmother. They thought that if I lived with them I’d tell them things. Ryan Grant was using me to get information for his book.

  “Well, that can go both ways. I used them too. While they were studying me, I studied them—the way they talked, their table manners, their outside ways. I’m smart and I can copy. By the time I’d been there a year I could do an imitation of Marge Grant that was so good her husband himself wouldn’t have known the difference in the dark. I was like the daughter of the house. I wasn’t a maid, I was family.”

  “But Sarah Blane was killed,” I said stupidly. “She was riding in the car with Aunt Marge and Uncle Ryan when it went off the cliff. They were taking her back to the village.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because—” Once again I paused uncertainly. “Because—”

  “Because I told you so?”

  “But there was a third body in the wreckage,” I said. “As badly burned as they were, they were able to tell that. The third person—” And then I understood.

  “It was Julia,” I whispered. “The real Julia. She was the one in the car riding to the village with her parents. After the accident you took her identity. But why?”

  “Me take her identity?” Sarah shook her head. “You’re wrong there. Julia’s the one who came back and took mine. I was the daughter in that house for a whole year, and I liked it. I wasn’t about to give that place back to Julia. I wasn’t going to go back to being somebody’s cleaning girl, to live my whole life in a place like Lost Ridge, and marry some jakey durgen with cordwood on his breath and breed brats and slop hogs till the sky fell in. Not with a real world out there someplace waiting!”

  “My aunt and uncle liked Lost Ridge,” I said. “They thought it was a perfect place.”

  “Then why did they ship their precious Julie off to Boston? They liked it, sure, for a squattin’ place, for a spot for writin’ a book in, but they wasn’t about to stay there, you can count on that. They was goin’ to leave this summer, to ‘come back to civilization’ as your aunt called it, and where would that of left me? Right back where I’d started, except now I knew the difference. Now I knew what it was that I was missin’.”

  “You didn’t have to stay there,” I said. “Nobody has to stay anywhere if she doesn’t want to. There was nothing to stop you from taking your paychecks and buying a bus ticket and just—going.”

  “Just going? Where?”

  “Anywhere. Any big city.”

  “Without schoolin’? Without trainin’? What would I do when I got there—scrub floors? What does a girl like me do, took out of school at the age of ten to help raise the little ones, whose only talent’s one that nobody will pay for? Sure, I know the art of witchcraft, I learned it from my gram and her from hers, but a lot of good it would do me shut off in the hills. And in the city alone, what good there either? I’d end up as a waitress in some dingy little diner or being somebody’s motel maid.”

  “Well—” I could think of no answer. She did have a point. What could she have done? There must’ve been something.

  “You could have gone to night school and learned a trade,” I said. “Plenty of people start from nothing and make
something of themselves. It takes time—”

  “I got no time,” Sarah said. “I spent enough time. Lost Ridge was where my time went. I’m not no child no longer—”

  “You’re seventeen!”

  “Your cousin Julie was seventeen.”

  “Oh!” I stared at her. “Then, you—” And another part of the puzzle fell into place. The strange, high-boned face, the womanly body, the deep, knowing eyes that seemed so unusual for a teenage girl, were not those of a girl at all. Sarah Blane was a grown woman.

  “And so,” I said softly, “you decided after Julia was killed that you would take her place and come here to us. But how did you know you could do it? What if we had known better what Julia looked like—if we had guessed?”

  “I was with the Grants a long time,” Sarah said. “I heard a lot of things. I knew how long it was since they’d seen you last and that they didn’t send pictures. Like I said, I’m smart. I pick things up fast. Once I got here I learned how to act from you and your friends. It didn’t take me long.”

  “No, it didn’t,” I admitted. “The clothes you wore—the dress—” I knew now where it was that I had seen the yellow dress that Sarah had worn down to dinner the first night she was with us. It was the same dress that was worn by the angel singing on the mountain top on the Grants’ Christmas card. The angel had been Julia, the real Julia! No wonder the clothes hadn’t fit correctly, had been wrong in style and color. They had been bought for an entirely different person.

  “So you bought new clothes,” I said, “and you got your hair cut like Carolyn’s and you learned how to act like a teenager. But you must have known that you wouldn’t get away with it indefinitely. When school started in the fall you would have gone in as a senior. You couldn’t have done the work. There’s no way you could have faked that! You’d have been exposed!”

  “I’m not going to be free to go to school in the fall,” Sarah said calmly. “I’ll be needed somewhere else. There’ll be a home to take care of, a little boy to raise, a lonely man to be comforted. I’ll have my own place then, the sort of place that should rightfully be mine. And before long the man will begin to love me, and soon I’ll be his wife.”