Best Kept Secret

  “Can I have the albums?” Francie asked.

  “Absolutely,” Dana replied. “I wouldn’t have given them away.”

  “Can I take them with me now?”

  “Sure.”

  When darkness had fallen and Matthew said it was high time they hit the road, Dana walked down to the street with Francie and Peter and Matthew, helping them juggle the lamp shade and two cartons containing the albums.

  “See you Saturday,” Francie called as her father pulled their car into the traffic on the crowded side street.

  Dana waved to her and turned away, once again wiping her eyes. Francie fumbled for the box of tissues her mother had given her.

  Peter said fiercely, “Don’t anybody talk to me right now.”

  “Francie?” Dana called from the living room. “Matthew just pulled up.”

  “Coming!” Francie stood in front of her mirror and examined her outfit. She wasn’t sure what to wear to the PHS award ceremony. Nobody would be very dressed up, but she wanted to look nice anyway. Nice, but not dressy. She longed for the days when she and Kaycee used to spend every afternoon together. Kaycee would have known exactly what Francie should wear.

  She reminded herself that she had other friends now. It had taken forever (she seemed to be a late bloomer), but she had at last made new friends. She could phone Isabel. Or Beth. Or Dale.

  “Francie!” Dana called again.

  “Okay!” Francie took one last look at her outfit — new tight-fitting jeans over a pair of short black boots, which had used up a good chunk of her babysitting earnings; a long, loose blue-and-purple-striped sweater; a chunky purple bracelet that Peter had given her for Christmas; and a pair of gold hoop earrings that had belonged to Adele.

  She burst out of her room, calling, “I’ll be back before nine. Matthew said he’ll pick me up at eight thirty, when the ceremony is over. See you later!”

  “Bye, honey,” said Dana vaguely. She was seated at the kitchen table, reading through the page proofs of her newest book.

  “Bye!” called Peter, who was watching an old episode of Bonanza on the VCR. Francie noticed that he was wearing his ancient holster and cowboy hat, prized relics from his childhood.

  She hurried through the front door and out into the cool evening air. “Hi,” she said to Matthew as she climbed into the front seat of his car. “Thank you for driving me. Dana’s working tonight.”

  “No problem. What time did you say I should pick you up?”

  “It’s supposed to be over at eight thirty. It starts at seven thirty. But you never know. It might run a little over.”

  “No problem,” said Matthew again.

  Francie studied her father’s hands on the steering wheel, her eyes drawn to his left hand, where she knew he would soon be wearing a wedding band.

  “What?” asked Matthew, glancing at her.

  Francie smiled. “Nothing. Just thinking about the wedding.”

  Matthew smiled back at her. “Are you sure you’re okay with it?”

  “I’m sure,” she replied quickly, although what else could she say? No matter what she thought of Maura, she couldn’t exactly say to her father, “You know, I really don’t think you should marry her. She’s nice and all, but I’d rather not have a stepmother.” Luckily, she didn’t need to say any such thing. She liked Maura very much, and knew that Maura and her father were happy together.

  “You’ll get to be a junior bridesmaid,” Matthew pointed out, and that thought truly did make Francie happy. She’d tried on her dress and felt she looked rather glamorous in it. Amy Fox had said she looked like Adele’s lamp shade, but for once, Francie had disagreed — and said so.

  As Matthew approached Princeton High, Francie could see that the school was lit up. A line of cars was snaking toward the parking lot.

  “I’d forgotten what a big deal this is,” said Francie.

  She barely remembered the previous year’s ceremony, when she’d been a freshman. Adele’s funeral had taken place just three months earlier, and afterward, Francie felt as if she’d steered through her life from within the confines of a cocoon. Somehow, she had managed to navigate each school day, focus on her work, and bring home excellent grades. Period. She saw no friends except Kaycee and Amy on the weekends. She joined no clubs. She wrote no stories. Dana’s life seemed to have halted as well. Her writing had come to a stop. She focused on Francie and Peter, and on cleaning the house. Francie had never seen such a clean house.

  Then the warm weather had arrived and Francie had discovered that she was beginning to shed the cocoon. She found the journal Peter had given her for her eighth-grade graduation and wrote down random thoughts and phrases that she thought might work themselves into a story. At the same time, Dana began sketches for a new picture book. Francie accepted a summer babysitting job for Richie and his armpit-farting brothers next door. Dana hired a cleaning service. Francie spent weekend afternoons at the community pool with Kaycee and Amy and some of Amy’s friends, including Isabel, Beth, and Dale, who were in Francie’s grade and had soon become her friends, too. By the time September had rolled around and her sophomore year of high school had begun, Francie felt free of the cocoon. She still thought of Adele every single day, and knew Dana did, too, but more often she remembered things that made her laugh rather than cry.

  “There are Beth and Dale!” Francie said to Matthew now. “You can just drop me off here. I’ll wait for you on Moore Street later, not in the parking lot, okay?”

  “Okay. Have fun.”

  Matthew drove off and Francie ran to her friends.

  “Come on, you guys,” said Beth. “Hurry up so we can get good seats. I don’t want to get stuck in the back.”

  They joined a crowd of kids from all classes who were streaming into the building.

  “Why do you care if we sit up front?” Francie asked Beth as they squeezed through the back doors.

  “Because then we can look into the balcony and see whose parents are up there.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you remember last year?”

  Francie didn’t mention her cocoon. “No, not really.”

  “The winners of the awards are kept secret. From the students anyway. But the parents are notified ahead of time and they’re given seats in the balcony so they can be here to see their kids receive their awards.”

  “Oh,” said Francie. “I guess I’m not getting an award, then. My father just dropped me off. And Mom’s working tonight.”

  They reached the auditorium and Dale said, “Plenty of seats up front. Come on.”

  They settled into three seats in the fourth row, saving another seat for Isabel. Francie read her program. Beth swiveled around to check out the balcony so often that Dale said her neck was going to unwind and blast off.

  Presently, Isabel arrived, flopped into the empty seat, and elbowed Francie in the ribs. “Look, there’s Joel,” she whispered.

  Francie did not immediately look at the spot to which Isabel was pointing. Joel Morris was one of the most popular boys in the sophomore class — and one of the nicest.

  “Put your hand down,” Francie hissed. “He’ll see you pointing.”

  Isabel grinned.

  Two seconds later, Beth let out a shriek. “Francie, your parents and Peter are here!”

  “What? No, they’re not. They can’t be.”

  “They are, too. Look.”

  Francie craned her neck around and saw, in the very first row of the balcony, Dana, Peter, Matthew, and Maura. They grinned at her.

  Francie grinned back. “How did they even do that?” she asked her friends as she faced front again. “My mother was at home working, and my dad said —”

  “What does it matter?” Dale interrupted her. “They tricked you! Now you know you’re going to get an award.”

  Francie tried to quell the butterflies that were dancing in her stomach. The lights dimmed in the audience and were turned up on the stage, the room grew quiet, and then somethin
g happened to Francie that hadn’t happened in a while.

  Her memory flicked to a black station wagon and a handsome man with a puppy named Bubbles. Francie closed her eyes briefly and sank low in her seat. She thought about Erin Mulligan. She thought about Erin Mulligan’s parents. If Erin were alive, she would be a freshman at PHS and this would be her parents’ first opportunity to sneak into the balcony and cheer for their daughter as she won an award for sports or citizenship or math. Francie turned around, glanced at her family again, then faced forward and tried to focus on the members of the PHS band as they tuned up their instruments. Was every happy moment going to be like this? she wondered. Would she mark every milestone with thoughts of Erin, with the absence of Erin? And how many years — how many, many years — would have to pass before the sight of a black station wagon no longer sent a trail of fear down her back or made her immediately check to see that Peter was safe?

  Was this the price Francie paid for keeping her secret?

  * * *

  Francie won the sophomore creative writing award. She walked onto the stage and accepted it from the principal with trembling hands. From the balcony, she heard Matthew let out a whistle and Peter shout, “Yay, Francie, my niece!” Her thoughts were a blur of Erin Mulligan and Adele, of Mrs. Pownell and her parents and her grandfather Zander Burley, the famous writer.

  An hour later, the ceremony ended. The lights were turned up in the audience, and Francie edged down the row of seats, clutching her rolled-up certificate, following Isabel and Beth and Dale. She was making her way toward the back of the auditorium, wondering how to find Dana and Matthew, when she felt a hand on her shoulder and she turned around.

  “Hey.”

  Francie blinked. Joel Morris was grinning at her.

  “Congratulations,” he said.

  Francie indicated Joel’s own certificate. “Congratulations to you, too.”

  “I was wondering if you’d like to go to Conte’s with me.”

  “What? Right now?”

  “My mother can drive us.”

  Francie’s butterflies returned, thumping madly in her stomach. “Let me just check with my parents. I’ll meet you by the front doors.”

  “Francie!” squeaked Dale, the moment Joel was out of earshot. “You have a date! With Joel!”

  “You’re living out my dream,” Isabel whispered frantically.

  Ten minutes later, permission having been granted for a quick slice of pizza with Joel, Francie found herself sitting in the backseat of Mrs. Morris’s Chevette, trying to focus on something other than the heat that was being generated by the left side of Joel’s body.

  “Francie, your mother is going to pick you up in an hour, is that right?” asked Mrs. Morris as she pulled the car up in front of Conte’s.

  “Yup. Um, thanks for driving us.”

  Francie followed Joel out of the car, hoping any number of things: that she wouldn’t spill while they were eating, that she wouldn’t say something stupid, that her bra wouldn’t somehow unfasten itself during the meal and spring apart. And none of those things did happen. What Francie couldn’t recall later when first Isabel, then Dale, and finally Beth called to ask her for details about the date, was what had happened.

  Except for one thing. As she and Joel had left Conte’s on their way to meet their parents, who were already waiting for them, Joel had leaned over, quick as a cat, and kissed Francie lightly on the lips.

  “Good night,” he had whispered. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Night,” Francie had replied.

  She slid into Dana’s car and touched her fingertips to her tingling lips.

  Francie woke slowly, letting the sounds and smells of a February morning in Maine seep into her foggy brain. She lay still, eyes shut, feeling Dana’s presence beside her in the bed, in the little room at the top of the house in Lewisport. At last, she opened her eyes, rolled over, sat up, and peered outside, across Blue Harbor Lane at the roiling ocean. The day was dreary, and the sky and sea were leaden gray. Francie stared at the horizon, having difficulty telling where the sea ended and the sky began. Then she shifted her attention to the beach and watched the waves pound the rocks on the shore, sending plumes of spray in showers above the sand.

  It was the perfect dismal day for a funeral.

  Francie shivered, found a sweatshirt, and pulled it on over her nightgown. She added a pair of wool socks and began to tiptoe downstairs. Before she reached the second step, she heard Dana shift position, and she looked over her shoulder to see that her mother had sprawled out and taken command of the entire bed.

  Francie reached the bottom step, still shivering, and made a beeline for the thermostat, which she edged up several degrees. She turned around and found Peter standing behind her, and she jumped.

  “Did I scare you?” asked Peter.

  “No,” Francie lied. She knew Peter hadn’t meant to scare her. “I just didn’t realize you were up yet. Are you hungry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s start breakfast, then.”

  Peter followed Francie into the kitchen and sat at the table while she pulled eggs and bread and juice from the refrigerator.

  “I miss Sadie,” he announced.

  “I know. I miss her, too. But she couldn’t come with us on the train. I’ll bet she’s having fun with Matthew and Maura.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you ready for today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really? Do you remember what’s going to happen?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “We’re going to Papa Luther’s funeral.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Francie,” said Peter after a moment, “I don’t feel as sad as I did when Adele died.”

  Francie glanced at her uncle. “Neither do I. I think that’s because we knew Adele a lot better than we knew Papa Luther.” And, she thought, because Papa Luther never entirely accepted either one of us.

  “Yeah.”

  “Today’s Adele’s birthday, you know.”

  Peter shot Francie a look of surprise.

  “I mean, it would have been her birthday. It’s Valentine’s Day. Adele would have turned fifty-two today.”

  “Francie? How did Papa Luther die?”

  Francie hesitated. Papa Luther had been eighty-nine years old. He’d died in his sleep, peacefully, at the end of a perfectly normal day. But Francie didn’t want Peter worrying about unexpectedly dying in his sleep. “He was very old,” she said cautiously.

  “It was his time to go?” suggested Peter.

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  “Will I wear my suit today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  Another church, another funeral. While Adele’s funeral in Manhattan had been attended almost solely by friends, Luther’s was attended by a smattering of friends, and by dozens and dozens of members of his big extended Maine family. Francie stepped cautiously out of her aunt Julia’s car and stood on the soggy lawn in front of the church in Barnegat Point. It was the same church, she knew, in which Papa Luther had married Helen, his second wife, the wife who wasn’t a whole lot older than Grandma Abby, her stepdaughter.

  Francie looked at the relatives who were hurrying into the church, sidestepping puddles and wrestling with umbrellas as they ran along the walk toward the oak doors. She watched Peter catch sight of Grandma Abby and Orrin, and lumber in their direction, calling, “Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad! Look at my suit!”

  Francie saw Aunt Rose and Uncle Harry. She saw Rose and Harry’s grown kids and their families. She saw Nell, Dana’s younger sister. Climbing out of the car behind Francie were Aunt Julia, Uncle Keith, and their children. Francie thought of Fred, who wouldn’t be attending the service, but whom she and Peter and Dana had visited the day before. Fred had lost his father, Francie realized, although she didn’t think he quite understood that.

  Francie scanned the crowd for Helen and saw her en
tering the church on the arm of a man Francie thought might be her son Miles.

  “It feels a little funny to be here,” Francie said to Dana, whispering again.

  “Pumpkin, you really don’t have to whisper.”

  “This time I do. It feels funny to be here,” she went on, “because of what Papa Luther thought of me. And because of what I thought of him because of what he thought of me. I feel … what’s the word? I feel hypocritical. All I wanted from him was for him to accept me as I am. But I thought less of him, because of what he thought of me. So. I was hypocritical, too.”

  “I suspect you aren’t the only one here who feels hypocritical,” Dana replied with a wry smile.

  Francie shook her head. “Wow. I hope the people who go to my funeral someday won’t be whispering and feeling like this.”

  “I think that’s one worry you can cross off your list.” Dana held out her hand to Francie. “Come on. Are you ready to go inside and get this over with?”

  “I guess. Boy,” Francie grumbled, “Matthew really lucked out. Papa Luther hated him so much, he didn’t even have to come to the funeral.”

  “Papa Luther didn’t hate Matthew,” Dana said, frowning.

  “Didn’t he?”

  “Hate is a pretty strong word.”

  “Papa Luther had a lot of strong thoughts.”

  “But I don’t think he hated your father. I think he just disapproved of him.”

  “Well, that’s even worse! Hate says something about the person who’s doing the hating, about the hater himself. But being disapproved of — that says something about you, the disapproved-of one. That you’re, I don’t know, wrong, somehow. Disapproval is so quiet and behind the scenes. You can’t fight it. And it makes you feel really bad about whoever you are.”

  Dana had taken Francie by the arm and, elbows linked, they’d begun to make their way among the puddles to the door of the church. Now she pulled Francie aside and they stood under the dripping eaves.