Emilie Richards - The Color Of Light

Gretchen ignored that. “Why don’t you visit us and we’ll do the day up right? Maybe Elsbeth can fly in, too. Can you get away?”

“Not in this century.”

“They don’t deserve you, do they?”

Analiese could almost hear her sister checking the clock over the stove in her sleek Country French kitchen. Gretchen’s daughters would be eating, possibly squabbling, just as she and her sisters had done, and in a moment Gretchen would start reminding them to hurry. There was no time to share feelings. The fact that she and Gretchen had connected and were talking at all was surprising.

As nice as this was, now she felt even lonelier.

“I’ll come this summer,” she said. “My vacation’s in June. Maybe we can get to the beach for a day or two. Elsbeth, too.”

“We’re going to France in June, remember?”

Analiese did now. “Sorry, of course. Henry’s job, plus the girls in a language school.”

“You have no idea how competitive college applications are. Fluent French will help.”

Analiese thought of Shiloh and how, despite her obvious intelligence, she would never even be competitive for community college unless somebody intervened quickly.

“I miss you,” she told her sister. “We’ll find a time and a way to see each other.”

Analiese hung up. She had chosen her life path, and she wasn’t sorry. Still, somehow, she was alone and turning forty. And now the man who would best understand how she felt, a man who himself would never marry and have children, was playing peekaboo and refusing to get close enough for a conversation.

Wasn’t that for the best anyway? Since he was the man she most wanted and could never have? Self-pity was closing in fast.

“Time for a long walk.” She got to her feet and went to find the right shoes.

* * *

Shiloh knew her mother was sick, really sick and not just giving-up-sick. But now that Belle was feeling a little better, she was messing around in the kitchen, trying to act like a regular mom. Unfortunately there was nothing regular about the way she wiped crumbs to the floor and then didn’t have the energy to sweep them up. Things were better when Belle just stayed in bed. At least that way Shiloh could clean on her own schedule.

That was why she and Dougie were outside now. She’d had to get away before she said something really mean. After sweeping the floor she’d grabbed him and abandoned the apartment.

“Are all those kids gone yet?” Dougie asked.

From behind a row of shrubs Shiloh had logged the activity at Covenant Academy while Dougie tried to outrace squirrels. When chimes had sounded all the students had filed in, but Shiloh had seen plenty first. These kids didn’t look like the ones at her school in Ohio. She knew the difference between jeans that had faded from constant wear and the designer kind that had been artificially faded by women in India or Bangladesh who got paid, like, three cents an hour and used chemicals that would cause birth defects in their unborn children.

These kids came from homes where they could probably choose a different supersize television to watch every night. These were kids who had to decide between a Porsche or a Jaguar when they passed their driver’s test.

“Yeah, they all went inside.” She hoped she didn’t have to see them again today.

“I’m bored.”

This was Shiloh’s cue. This was garbage day. Early that morning she’d scoured recycling bins in the neighborhood behind the church to find magazines, and now she had two that might interest her brother. Ranger Rick , which had a funny-looking fish on the cover, and a Scooby-Doo! magazine, which was really more like a comic book.

The problem was she wasn’t in the mood to help her brother read. Dougie could read okay, but after almost every sentence she had to fight him to sit still and keep going. If she could just figure out how to help him read while he was running, he might catch up with the other kids in his grade.

If they ever went back to school.

“Let’s take a walk and figure out what kind of trees we see. I have some paper. We can make a list, maybe collect some leaves off the ground.” She vaguely remembered doing something like that in third grade, but earlier in the year when leaves were still in place on branches.

“I don’t know nothing about trees.”

“Anything. You don’t know anything.”

“If you know I don’t know nothing, then why do we have to go?”

She socked him on the shoulder. Hard. “Listen, Dougie. In case you didn’t notice, I’m not having fun here either.” She thought about yesterday and the way she’d felt when her family’s whole story had been laid out for everybody in church by Reverend Ana. Sure, the lady minister had done a good job of making it seem like what had happened to them could happen to anybody, but Shiloh had still felt like a bug pinned to a board. On display whether she liked it or not.

Dougie rubbed his shoulder. “I can hit back!”

“You’d better not. That’s the only way I can get your attention. And now we’re going to take that walk, whether you want to or not. I know the names of a lot of trees, and I’ll tell you.” She hoped that was true.

“Can we get ice cream?”

“Of course we can’t.”

He shrugged, as if to say I tried .

“I’ll just go inside and get the paper. You stay out here, okay? Don’t go anywhere. Promise?”

He rolled his eyes. She waited until he grudgingly held up his right hand. Right hand meant a promise, and Dougie knew if he broke it, Shiloh would never trust him again.

She took off for the stairs at the side of the building that led right to the third floor without having to go inside and maybe run into people who wondered why she wasn’t in school. Her father was off looking for work, and once she carefully avoided the four steps that didn’t look safe and went inside, she saw her mother was sleeping again. She tiptoed into the room she was sharing with Dougie and got the paper and a pen. She wished she had tape so he could tape the leaves on the paper, but tape cost money. Maybe Dougie could trace around them.

If he would just sit long enough to do it.

Outside again she turned the corner where he should have been waiting and saw him in the distance instead, near the big parking lot behind the church. Frowning, she went to lecture him and slowed when she realized he was chatting with a man. The man wasn’t exactly a stranger. He had sat beside her in church yesterday. She rarely forgot faces anyway, but his was interesting enough to be memorable.

He was tall, large, but not overweight. He had dark hair that curled just a little and skin that either tanned perfectly—unlike her own—or was naturally that color. Yesterday she had noticed his eyes, a deep chocolate brown that managed somehow to convey a lot of feeling. He hadn’t known who she was, but she thought maybe as Reverend Ana told the family’s story he had guessed. He’d tried to make her feel welcome by sharing his hymnal and smiling warmly, as if to encourage her to stay beside him.

Now he was smiling at her brother, listening as Dougie chatted a mile a minute, either giving away their family secrets or explaining that while most people were descended from Adam and Eve, Dougie himself was descended from space aliens. He’d gotten that from some television show when they’d still had money for cheap motels. Half the time she thought maybe he was right. Space aliens would explain a lot about her brother.

“Hello again,” the man said when she joined them. “You and I met yesterday. Or almost. I’m Isaiah Colburn.” He held out his hand, and she grudgingly took it and told him her name.

“This is my brother, Dougie, and he was supposed to wait for me over there.” She nodded back toward the church.