He shrugged. “I call it like I see it. And if you ask me, you can learn a lot about people by watching and observing so-called lower animals.”
“I gu
ess you learn a lot about the people you build or redo houses for.”
“Nothing reveals as much about people as the home they live in,” he said. “And their children are products of all that, too, often through no fault of their own.”
I wanted to ask, What if you were brought up in a mansion with parents from hell like Corrine Foxworth? Would that excuse her behavior after her husband died? But I didn’t. I started to clear off the table.
“Only odd thing,” Dad added, sounding more like he was talking to himself than to me.
“What?”
“Huh? Oh. The only odd thing was the feeling I got that both Johnson and his wife—her name’s Shannon—that both knew a lot more about both the original and the restored Foxworth Hall than Johnson first revealed.”
“How do you mean? Knew what?”
“What it looked like in detail, inside and out. He makes references to it from time to time. Where windows were and what they looked out on, stuff like that. Although it’s a different architecture, with all sorts of technological updates, he wants to be sure some things are the same.”
“Well, there have been pictures of it. What’s the surprise?”
“No. It was as if they had been there when it was in its heyday.” He thought a moment and then shook his head. “Probably just my imagination. Anyway, don’t let my blabbering make you late for school.”
I had been late once before because of reading the diary late into the night and then oversleeping. One time was a warning, two was a detention and a demerit, and with my pursuit of class valedictorian, any misbehavior could affect a close decision if my final grades and someone else’s were practically the same, which, right now, was the case. But it wasn’t just that. Ever since my mother had died of a cerebral aneurism and my father and I were the only immediate family we had, disappointing him in any way, even with something as relatively minor as a tardiness demerit, was abhorrent to me. It was as if since my mother’s death, both he and I felt things more, especially sad and disappointing things.
I once heard my father say that the death of someone as close as a wife or a husband strips away the bark. “The rain, even a sharp breeze, stings more.”
“I won’t be late. I have someone making sure of it, remember?”
“Oh, right. Okay. I left a meat loaf in the fridge. You just have to warm it up. Don’t wait dinner on me,” he said, and gave me a kiss. He held on to me just a few seconds longer than usual.
“Don’t worry about this bird. I’m not leaving the nest so quickly, Dad,” I said, and he laughed.
“Have a good day, Kristin.”
“You, too, Dad.”
I turned back to the sink but paused to think. What had my father meant by people accepting more when it came to relationships these days? Would they easily accept Christopher’s father and mother marrying even though he was her half-uncle? According to Christopher Jr., that’s what Corrine had finally revealed, making it sound so romantic and inevitable that she expected her children would accept it. There was a time when parents actually wanted their children to marry within the family, marry cousins, believing it kept their blood purer or something, and no one thought of it as incest back then.
I glanced at the clock and finished cleaning up quickly. By the time I had my hands wiped, Kane was sounding his horn. One long beep and two short beeps, like he was sending Morse code or a spy message. Why are we all so dramatic at our age? I thought. When we were older, would we look back and laugh at the little things that made us cry or laugh, sad or happy? When had I become so damn analytical? Maybe because of the way Christopher described Cathy, I was thinking more about everything I did. I was finding myself blaming more of what I thought and felt on my reading of the diary. Was that a bad omen?
I scooped up my books, flicked my dark blue hooded jacket off the hanger in the entryway, and shot out the door as if I was being chased. I slammed it behind me, the echo reverberating like a gunshot. It jerked me out of my deep thoughts as effectively as a slap on my face.
Kane was laughing at me as I hurried to the driveway, putting my jacket on as I went.
“What?” I asked, getting in.
“You should see me when I get up in the morning and stumble into the kitchen for some breakfast. I have to feel my way to the table. You look so alert, so ready to go,” he said, and he gazed at the front of the house for a few seconds to see if my father might be looking out the window, then leaned over to kiss me quickly. “Hi.”
“I’m not raring to go. Don’t remind me how tired I am,” I said. “I didn’t sleep that well.”
“Why not?”
“I just didn’t.”
He carefully backed out of the driveway. It was a mostly cloudy day. Before this, I had barely noticed the chill in the air. If it had ever smelled like snow was on the way, it did this morning. Already I missed the songbirds and the sweet scent of freshly cut grass. Our short Indian summer was gone. The leafless trees looked stunned. The surrounding woods had become the sleeping forest, hibernating, and the fields of dry grass looked like faded yellowish-green carpets, corpses of hay. With the weather so unpredictable, it was difficult to know confidently what it would be like tomorrow, much less next week or next month. Normally, we didn’t have heavy snowfalls this early, but there were also many Christmases without snow at all.
Kane was only in a long-sleeved khaki shirt and jeans despite the cool air. Sometimes I thought he must have ice in his veins. He could be indifferent about the weather. I thought he was that way about almost everything. Whenever I’d complain about something, he’d simply nod, shrug, and give me that “what’s the difference?” smile. What’s the difference what I wear, what I say, even what I think? Just move along, and if anything, just laugh. Laugh at the changes in the weather, laugh at the nervousness before exams, laugh at the school rules, and especially laugh at the drama of growing older and closer to being totally responsible for yourself. Just laugh.