The Sweetness of Salt(38)

Except that when I came to the fork in the road behind the high school again, my feet had other plans. In ten minutes I found myself at the foot of the little yellow house again, studying the flagstone path that zigzagged through the grass and the strange stone wreath on the door. There was something about this house, I thought. Something that made me want to stay, to go inside and take off my shoes and sit down in one of the kitchen chairs. It would smell like cedar and apples and the wooden table in the center of the kitchen would have an enormous jelly jar in the middle of it, filled with wildflowers. Along the windowsills would be a line of the same small stones that were in the wreath, set up like so many round dominoes. The only sound in the house would be my breathing, or maybe the soft footfalls of a cat slinking in and around my chair. Nothing else. No one else.

A faint whirring sound from the back of the house made my heart beat a little faster. I moved up the lawn cautiously, wondering if Aiden would come charging down again like he had the last time and order me off. The whirring sound got louder as I reached the top. I flattened myself against the side of the house and then rolled my eyes. What was I doing, sneaking around some strange house like this? This was so stupid. Practically stalkerlike, if you really thought about it. Which was not me.

I turned around quickly and headed back down the expanse of lawn.

“Hey!” I froze as Aiden’s voice charged out at me. “Julia?”

He had the same black hat on his head, and the same black Converse sneakers. Only his T-shirt—red, with a print of Pink Floyd on the front—was different. I thought fast. “Oh, hey, Aiden. Hi. Um…sorry to bother you. I was just looking for something. From the other day, I mean. I think I might’ve dropped it around here.” I scanned the grass around my feet helplessly. “On the lawn, I mean.”

He strode down toward me, his lanky frame tilted back slightly from the pull of the hill. “What’d you lose? I’ll help you look for it.”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” I took a few steps backward, desperate to get out of the lie. I hated lying. Plus, I wasn’t good at it. “Seriously. Go back to work. It’s nothing.”

“No, really.” He was in front of me now. “I was gonna take a break anyway. What’d you lose? I’m good at finding things.”

Damn. “I, um, I think I lost an earring. But seriously, it’s not a big deal. I can totally get another pair.”

But Aiden was already hunched over, peering through the grass. “Tell me what it looked like,” he said. “Gold? Silver?”

I closed my eyes, scurried a few feet away from him, and then quickly, furtively, withdrew one of the small rectangular amber studs that Mom and Dad had given me last year for my birthday. “Um…they were amber,” I said. “And sort of…rectangular shaped.” I gasped and made a show of reaching down into the grass. “I found it! Here it is. Oh my God, I can’t believe I found it!”

Aiden came over toward me. “Cool.” He watched intently as I reinserted the earring. “Amber’s a great stone. I don’t blame you for wanting to find it.”

I nodded, relieved the scene had ended.

“Did you just get in?” Aiden asked.

“In?” I repeated, before I realized what he meant. “Oh no. Actually, I never left. I’ve been here. In Poultney. All week.”

“Oh yeah?” Aiden shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “What happened?”

“Nothing, really. My sister and I just decided that I would stay a little longer. We wanted to, you know, extend our visit.”

Aiden raised one eyebrow.

“What?”

He shrugged. “Nothing.”

I could tell he didn’t believe me. So what? What did I care if he knew what was going on with Sophie and me? In the first place, it was none of his business. And in the second place, well, it was none of his business.

He motioned briefly with his arm. “Come on up,” he said. “Now that you’re staying a while, I can show you the stuff that I do.” I didn’t move. “If you want to, I mean.” He shrugged. “You did seem interested before.”

I watched the soles of his Converse sneakers as I followed him up the hill. The laces, tied carelessly in a single knot, drooped on either side in wide loops. It reminded me of the time Dad tried to teach me how to tie my shoes: “bunny ear, bunny ear, criss-cross, loop.” For as intelligent as I was—even back then, at four years old—this simple task had eluded me. I simply could not, no matter how many times I tried, get the bunny ears to cooperate. Finally, I had kicked off my shoe, hurling it across the room in exasperation. Dad had been shocked by my outburst. Speechless even, for a moment. “That’s something I would expect Sophie to do,” he said finally. “Not you, Julia.” The disappointment in his voice—as well as the comparison to Sophie—was something I never forgot. Ever.

“Holy cow,” I said now, surveying the patio, which seemed more or less to have been transformed into a pottery studio. There was even a partial roof over half of it, shadowing the bricks underneath. A brick wall, no higher than my knees, was flanked at either end with flat, raised pedestals. On top of each pedestal was a design made out of little white stones.

“Did your dad make these too?” I stared down at one. It was a starfish. Tiny stones, no larger than ladybugs, had been arranged into what looked like swaying pieces of seaweed on either side.