1932
Jess held her breath as she tiptoed down the corridor, nervously twirling one of her braids around her forefinger, listening for any telltale sound, any sign that one of them had come inside after her.
But the house was quiet except for the ticking of the big grandfather clock in the hallway.
They were all outside, gathered around the table on the back porch, celebrating her father's birthday.
Daddy had not wanted to celebrate. He had not really wanted anything for a long time, not since the accident, which was how everyone referred to the terrible day when Daddy's car had crashed into a tree, barely a few hours into what had then been the new year. He had been gone for many weeks, away at the hospital where they were not allowed to visit him, and Mommy had not come back at all.
Now Daddy never smiled or joked like he used to, and Mommy's place had been occupied by Aunt Dorothy, who had come to stay with them after the accident, supposedly to look after them until Daddy got better, and had never left again.
Jess doubted that Aunt Dorothy would ever leave, just as she doubted that Daddy would ever get really well.
It had not been quite as bad when Mick still wrote.
His letters had arrived, regular as clockwork, containing funny things he had experienced at work – he was a fisherman now – and little adventurous stories he made up for her and Janie, and he had always sent them a lot of kisses, a long row of Xes at the end of each letter. They had always looked forward to finding one of them on the hall table when they came home from school. Reading and answering it had always cheered them up no end.
But then, suddenly his letters had stopped coming.
When she asked why that was, Aunt Dorothy told her brusquely Mick was so occupied with other things that he had lost interest in them. After all, what should a grown-up fisherman (Jess hated how Aunt Dorothy spat out the word, like it was something disgusting) want with two little spoiled brats who were, after all, only his half-sisters?
Jess had been at a time devastated and disbelieving. Mick would never have lost interest in her and Janie, that much was certain, even if she couldn't figure out why he didn't write any more then.
One day, shortly before Christmas, she had seen something white and rectangular peeking out of Aunt Dorothy's apron pocket and nudged Janie excitedly, pointing her finger, which earned her a sharp reprimand from her aunt. Her question who had sent the letter went more or less unanswered. Aunt Dorothy only informed her icily that her mail was none of the girls' business.
Later the same day, Jess found the smouldering remains of an envelope in the fireplace. A few scraps of words were still recognizable – it was bits of their address and, above that, "To Miss J…" neatly printed in blue ink, in the handwriting she probably knew the best of all.
With an enraged yelp, she grabbed the charred paper, hoping she could save it, but most of it crumbled to sooty flakes under her fingers.
Bitter tears sprang to her eyes, and she angrily kicked the fire screen, which toppled over with a tremendous clatter. Instead of picking it up like a good girl would have done, she kicked it again and sent it flying into the next armchair with another great crash.
Of course, Aunt Dorothy appeared within seconds, her face a mask of ill-boding disapproval. "What do you think you are doing, Jessica?" she screamed.
Before she could launch into the usual dressing-down, Jess shouted at the top of her lungs, "You lied! You told us Mick stopped writing, but it was all lies! You burned his letters, and you lied to us! You're just a mean old scarecrow, and I hate you!"
Aunt Dorothy seemed barely able to restrain herself when she hissed through clenched teeth, "Calm yourself, Jessica. Aren't you ashamed to behave like that? Just think what your mother would say!"
"Mommy's dead! She can't say anything any more!" Jess yelled, her face red with rage, tears still flowing.
Aunt Dorothy flinched and gasped and said, quite shocked, "Jessica, please! I won't have this kind of talk, especially not with your poor father still so unwell. You know you mustn't upset him, don't you?"
"What's Daddy got to do with it? Why do we always have to be careful about him? Why can't he be the one to tell us what to do? Why do we have always have to listen to you? You're not my mother! You can't make me do anything, and I don't have to stick to all your - stupid - rules!" She banged both fists into one of the armchairs to give additional emphasis to her last words.
Her aunt cuffed her round the ear with her bony knuckles and lectured her once more about where she and Janie would have ended up after the accident, with their mother gone and their father so poorly that it was all but clear if he was going to pull through.
Jess listened with narrowed eyes, panting, and, when the tirade was finished, burst out, "I wish he hadn't pulled through! I wish he was dead, and so were you, for then we could go and live with Mick and Grandma Mary and Grandpa John! We could finally be happy again!"
Aunt Dorothy slapped her hard across the cheek.
Jess struck back at her without thinking and hardly noticed her aunt whipping a measuring tape out of her apron pocket and swinging back her arm in a threatening arc.
"Leave her, Dorothy!" a voice said from the door, Daddy's voice, firmer than Jess had ever heard it since the accident.
Aunt Dorothy gave him a long, hard, hateful stare before she scornfully coiled up the tape again and stalked away with a venomous glance at Jess, who had fled into her father's arms and was sobbing at his chest.
He held her and stroked her hair, but his grip was limp and his movements weak and strained, and he didn't even ask what the confrontation had been all about.
Jess didn't feel a lot better afterwards, not the way his, or Mommy's, hugs used to make her feel better before it had happened.
She knew she'd be in permanent disgrace with Aunt Dorothy now, but she didn't care. Nor did she care when she got sent to bed without dinner. She hadn't been hungry anyway.
In fact, she was glad to be alone in her and Janie's bedroom while the others were eating their dinner downstairs. Now that she knew Mick had not forgotten about her or lost his interest, she would simply write to him secretly.
She wasn't quite sure yet how she'd manage to get his answers – maybe she could ask him to send them to her friend Maggie's address, or to Ella Dawson, who had Mommy's best friend and the kind of woman she'd have loved to have for an aunt – but she wanted to pour her heart out to him on the spot, let him know why he had not had any letters from her and Janie in a while and tell him how awful it was with Aunt Dorothy around.
She wrote and wrote, covered page after page in her loopy longhand and finally stuffed it all into a big envelope, misspelled words and ink blots and all. She addressed it in her most beautiful handwriting and went to bed with a little smile on her lips.
All she had to do tomorrow was find a stamp, which would be fairly easy because she knew that there were some in the little box on top of the small writing desk in the living-room, and drop by the post office after school to send the letter on its way.
Penny Slater at the post office hardly looked up from the half-finished baby shoe she was knitting when Jess handed her the letter.
She longed to tell her this was very important but didn't dare to. Instead, she went home, trying to hide her excitement.
How long would it be until she received an answer? Or would he be mad at her because he hadn't had word of her for ages and not reply at all?
The next day, there was a fat envelope beside her dinner plate.
Her heart began to pound.
He could not have written that fast, could he? And he shouldn't have written her here.
With a very unpleasant twinge in her tummy, she realized it was her own letter.
"Young lady, would you care to explain this to me?"
Aunt Dorothy had approached unnoticed, sneaking up on Jess inaudibly as was her habit, and snatched the envelope off the table, holding it up, out of Jess's reach.
"What … how did you …", Jess stammered.
"I had the nastiest surprise when I went to the post office this morning! Mrs. Slater gave this to me and said I'd surely be happy to pay the additional postage …"
"But I put a stamp on it!" Jess interjected indignantly.
"It wasn't enough, you foolish thing!" her aunt said, making it sound as if Jess was a complete idiot. "And I thought I had made it quite clear that I do not wish any correspondence going on between you and … and that … boy. You should have seen the looks Mrs. Slater and the other customers gave me when I said I wouldn't because it had all been a misunderstanding."
"You didn't say a word", Jess exclaimed. "You only burned his letters!"
"That should have told you enough, young lady. Now what was so important that you had to write to him in secret?"
"I … I just … just wanted to tell him how much we're missing him, and that we love him. Nothing … nothing … bad."
"This must be quite the declaration of love, judging from the weight", Aunt Dorothy said acidly. "And if it's nothing bad, I'm sure you will not mind if I read it." She slipped a finger under the flap and began to pry it loose.
"No! Please!"
But Jess knew she was protesting in vain.
"I wish Janie and me could come to live with you, so we could at least have some fun again", Aunt Dorothy quoted, her eyes bulging. "We always have to be so frightfully good. It's nothing but 'don't run, don't talk back, don't laugh too loud'. It's always 'Behave like a lady'. I don't want to be a lady. Ladies are frightfully boring." She lowered the letter for a moment, piercing Jess with look sharper than the pointiest needle. "So that is all the regard you have for the good education you are getting?"
Jess said nothing, just stared back at her defiantly, arms folded over her chest, and Aunt Dorothy scanned the rest of the letter and froze.
"This is incredible!" she shrieked. "I say, that boy is having a very bad influence on you! 'Please write to Maggie Mathison's address if you want to reply. Aunt Dorothy burned the last letter you sent. You really were right when you said she's a wicked old witch.'" She tossed the letter onto the table and shook her head in frustration. "Jessica, what on earth is wrong with you? Haven't you got any love or loyalty for your family? Haven't you got any respect? I have no idea what to do with you except whip the living daylights out of you, and if I'm sparing you that, it's only because your father forbids it. Go away! Go, get out of my eyes. I don't want to see you anywhere down here until you are ready to apologize. And if you ever try anything like this again, it might well be the orphanage for you. They should know how to deal with the likes of you there."
Jess marched up the stairs without a word, but on the first landing, she turned and shouted down in her best Maine-tinged vernacular, "Daddy ain't never gonna let you send me away!", before she ran on up, muttering sullenly, "Stupid old witch, that's what you are!"
She banged the bedroom door shut behind her, took both of her shoes off and threw them against the wardrobe door, then hurled herself across the bed, half waiting for furious footsteps following her, but no one came.
For the next weeks, icy silence was all she got from Aunt Dorothy unless speaking couldn't be avoided.
Jess didn't mind that too much, but what angered her terribly was how Dorothy kept her stamps and small change locked away and how she always made sure to fetch the mail right after it was delivered so that the girls wouldn't get their hands on any undesired letters from Maine.
And then there was the terrible night when she woke up frightfully thirsty and sneaked downstairs for a glass of water.
As she walked past Daddy's study on her way back from the kitchen, she heard voices from behind the closed door, low but kind of urgent, speaking rapidly.
Something made her stop and listen, straining her ears to distinguish the words they were saying.
Something told her this was serious.
Serious and important.
"… not only those letters, but have you seen any of those stories he sent them? Highly unsuitable for girls their age, Daniel, about pirates and fights and dreadful things like that. Smoking and drinking even!"
Jess remained rooted to the spot, listening.
Aunt Dorothy was talking about Mick!
"And you cannot imagine the words he was using. Vulgar, coarse language. Not at all what we would want them to use. Well, I have to say I wouldn't have expected anything else."
There was an ominous little pause, and Jess could clearly picture the sour expression of distaste on her aunt's gaunt face, the way she looked down her long nose and pursed her lips in that wrinkly fashion that made her mouth looked even more pinched.
"All that would just have served to make the girls rebellious and insubordinate, and we don't want that, do we? Especially Jessica is fractious enough as it is. No, Daniel, this is the right decision to make, believe me."
"I don't need to be persuaded, Dorothy. God knows I want to get away from all those memories. I just can't bear being here without her. But the girls …"
"The girls are children still, Daniel. They will do as they are told, and they will adapt faster than you think. Children forget so easily. This time next year, they will hardly remember ever having lived here."
What was she talking about?
Jess's heart had jumped into her throat and sat there, thumping, a fat throbbing clump that made it impossible to swallow and difficult to breathe.
Were they going away from here, from home? For good?
She couldn't move anything but her right hand, which bunched up the bottom of her nightshirt and twisted it here and there.
She didn't hear another word either of them said. She just stood and stared and wanted to cry but couldn't.
After she had made them abandon all contact with Mick, she was now going to make them abandon their home; she had poisoned Daddy's mind to make him think it was all for the better even though he must have known it wasn't.
Jess wouldn't have thought she could hate her even more than she had before, but yes, she could.
She hated her so much, even if Miss Kristensen, her Sunday school teacher, said it was a very bad sin to hate any person. But obviously Miss Kristensen had no idea what people could be like.
A noise from inside the study startled Jess out of her stupor, and she hurried away after all. If she got caught eavesdropping, Aunt Dorothy might yet make good on her promise to whip the living daylights out of her.
When Daddy broke the news to her and Janie a few days later, Jess kept her mouth shut and forced all the ranting and raging that wanted to break out of her to stay inside. She didn't cry either, that was for babies - the silent tears that sometimes seeped into her pillow at night didn't count because nobody could see them.
But inside her, there was a small spot like a hard black marble, right beside her heart, where the utter resentment she felt had taken up residence and made her feel angry and hurt all the time.
Sometimes, it even made her do bad things, like when she deliberately stepped on Aunt Dorothy's good yellow silk blouse with her dirty boots, ripping the cuff and staining the fabric irreparably, or hid Aunt Dorothy's favourite brooch, an ugly silver thing with a cluster of blood-red stones in the middle, at the very back of the bottom drawer in her aunt's bedroom.
Now it was Jess who didn't to speak to her father and her aunt unless she couldn't help it. She didn't even speak a lot to Janie, who was weepy and whiny all the time and not much fun to be with.
They had been living in Virginia for more than half a year now, and Jess couldn't say anything had improved.
Daddy was still sad and depressed and came home exhausted at night, even if his new job at the hospital was supposed to be a lot less stressful than having his own practice.
Aunt Dorothy was still stern and implacable and ruled the household with an iron hand.
Janie still cried at the slightest insult or injury, and Jess herself felt painfully robbed of everything she had ever loved. She missed her old hometown, she missed their old house, she missed her old friends, and most of all, she missed Mick.
What hurt her almost as badly was to see how Janie gradually began to believe that Mick indeed had forgotten about them, that he had stopped thinking of them, that he didn't care any longer.
Jess defiantly put the photo of the three of them, all dressed in their Sunday best and laughing, up on her nightstand, amazed that Aunt Dorothy never tried to take it away. She probably thought that if she allowed Jess to keep the picture of her brother, she would refrain from trying to get in touch with him.
Nevertheless Aunt Dorothy maintained her close watch on stamps and stationery and the mail.
Nevertheless Jess kept devising adventurous plans how she might succeed after all.
Today, while they were trying to celebrate Daddy's birthday with a bunch of neighbours and new acquaintances, pretending they were such a happy little family although everybody knew they weren't, she had missed Mick worse than ever before.
She hadn't been able to get a single piece of birthday cake down and hadn't even touched the glass of fresh lemonade beside her plate. And then, Mrs. Whitney, the mother of her new school friend Kathleen, had made some well-meaning remark about how nice it was that she and Janie seemed to get along so fine.
"I always tell Kathleen to take a leaf out of your book. She's always complaining about Ruth and Doris and keeps saying she'd trade both of them in for a big brother any time. Wouldn't you, Kathy?" She had nudged her daughter playfully and added, "I'm sure Jess would agree with me that big brothers are quite overrated."
Jess had blinked and nodded dutifully and then excused herself quickly, hurrying inside through the screen door so nobody would see her cry.
As she stepped into the cool interior of the house, one of the ideas she had turned over again and again in her mind came rushing back at her powerfully.
She didn't feel like crying any more.
Yes, she would call Aunt Ella back home in Missouri and tell her how unhappy she was and how she missed Mick and wasn't allowed to write to him, or to anyone. She would ask her to act as a go-between. She surely wouldn't mind getting letters from Mick and passing them on to Jess and vice versa.
How she should manage to keep it all from Aunt Dorothy in the long run, Jess didn't know, but Aunt Ella usually had a clever solution for any kind of problem. She had always liked Mick well and would certainly come up with something. Or Joanne would, Aunt Ella's pretty, chestnut-haired daughter who had babysat her and Janie countless times.
Jess listened for steps or voices again, and when she was sure that she was still alone inside the house, she took a deep breath and pushed open the door to her father's study, which Aunt Dorothy had declared strictly off limits. It was dusky inside, the maroon curtains drawn against the summer heat.
Without switching on the light, she climbed into the big brown swivel chair whose leather felt cold under her bare legs and, kneeling in the chair so she could reach it, picked up the receiver of the telephone that sat in one corner of the heavy desk.
She was just about to answer the operator's routine questions, her heart hammering wildly, when the door was flung open and the feared, familiar figure towered in the doorway, an ominous outline dark and dreadful against the sunlit corridor.