What sort of welcome was this? I stood there, full of a thousand anxieties, butterflies panicking in my chest.
"This is my friend, Richard," Mammy said feeling she had to explain Archie's presence first, I suppose. "He was kind enough to drive us here from West Virginia."
Aunt Sara nodded but her eyes quickly went to me with greater interest, her face brightening in anticipation.
"And this is Melody," Mommy added, putting her hands on my shoulders. Aunt Sara's gaze was so penetrating I thought she could look right through me. A small smile, almost impossible to notice, formed at the corners of her mouth.
"Yes," she said nodding as if I were exactly the way she imagined I would be. "She's about Laura's size and height, only Laura's hair was darker and she never kept it that long," she said, sadness making her face long and hollow eyed.
"I'm so sorry about all that," Mommy said softly.
"Yes," Aunt Sara said, still staring at me. I looked to Mommy. What was she sorry about? Who was Laura? Apparently, she knew more than she had admitted about Daddy's family.
"I bet you're hungry," Aunt Sara said to me, a smile returning to her lips. I smiled back, but my stomach was tied in so many knots I didn't think I could ever put food in it. "I've got a chicken roasting. Cary will be home from school soon with May. They're both very excited about your coming here." She turned to Mommy and Archie. "In the meantime, I have some clams steamed for you."
"Oh good. In the years since I've been here, I've never had any good as yours, Sara."
"I don't do anything more with clams than anyone else around here does," she said modestly. "You scrub them and drop them into a clam kettle with just enough water to cover them. No mystery about it," Aunt Sara said, her voice suddenly harder, sterner.
"Maybe it's just the clams here," Mommy said. She seemed awkward and uncomfortable under Aunt Sara's icy glare.
"That's it for sure," Archie said. Aunt Sara raised her eyebrows and looked at him as if she had just noticed his presence.
"Well now, come into the dining room and make yourselves to home," she said.
An antique trestle table stretched nearly the whole length of the dining room. It had a captain's chair at each end and four straight chairs in a perfect line on each side. Lying at the head of the table was a leather-bound Bible. There was a small pine table in a corner of the room with a vase of yellow roses on it. On the wall was an oil painting: a seascape with a lone sailboat moving toward the horizon. I looked closer and saw what looked like a ray of bright sunshine pouring through an opening in the overcast sky with a godlike finger in the center of the ray of light. The finger pointed at the lone sailboat.
"Please take a seat," Aunt Sara said. "That's Jacob's chair," she added and nodded toward the captain's chair at the end of the table where the Bible lay. Obviously, no one else was permitted to sit in it. "Everyone like cranberry juice?"
"It makes for a great mix with vodka," Archie quipped.
"Pardon?" Aunt Sara said. Mommy gave him a reprimanding look.
"What?" He recovered quickly.
"Oh, sure we like it. Thank you." Aunt Sara hurried back to the kitchen.
"Who's Laura, Mommy?" I asked. "Why didn't you tell me about her?"
"It's too sad," Mammy whispered and brought her finger to her lips. "Not now, honey."
Aunt Sara reappeared carrying a pitcher filled with cranberry juice on a tray with three tall glasses, each with two ice cubes. She gave us each a glass and started to reach for the pitcher.
"Let me pour that," Archie volunteered. Aunt Sara nodded to him. She gazed at me again, drinking me in for a long moment, her eyes twinkling with pleasure and approval. It made me feel uncomfortable to be scrutinized so closely. I looked away.
"Do you like clams, dear?" she asked.
"I guess so," I said. "I don't remember eating them."
"She loves them," Mammy said quickly.
"Laura loved them so," Aunt Sara said. She sighed. "I'll go get them."
She returned to the kitchen.
"Mommy?" I said, pleading for information.
"Just wait, Melody. Let everyone get to know everyone before you start asking all your questions." She looked at Archie. "She's always full of questions."