Sample text for Deep and dark and dangerous / by Mary Downing Hahn.
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Chapter 1
One rainy Saturday in March, I opened a
box of books Mom had brought home from
Grandmother's house. Although
Grandmother had been dead for five
years, no one had unpacked any of the
boxes. They'd been sitting in the attic
collecting dust, their contents a
mystery.
Hoping to find something to read, I
started pulling out books--Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory, Misty of
Chincoteague, and at least a dozen Nancy
Drew mysteries. At thirteen, I'd long
since outgrown Carolyn Keene's plots,
but I opened one at random, The Bungalow
Mystery, and began flipping the pages,
laughing at the corny descriptions:
"Nancy, blue eyed, and with reddish
glints in her blonde hair," "Helen
Corning, dark-haired and petite." The
two girls were in a small motorboat on a
lake, a storm was coming, and soon they
were in big trouble. Just as I was
actually getting interested in the plot,
I turned a page and found a real-life
mystery: a torn photograph.
In faded shades of yellow and green,
Mom's older sister, Dulcie, grinned into
the camera, her teeth big in her narrow
face, her hair a tangled mop of tawny
curls. Next to her, Mom looked off to
the side, her long straight hair drawn
back in a ponytail, eyes downcast,
unsmiling, clearly unhappy. Dulcie was
about eleven, I guessed, and Mom nine or
ten. Behind the girls was water--a lake,
I assumed.
Pressed against Dulcie's other side, I
could make out an arm, a shoulder, and a
few strands of long hair, just enough
for me to know it was a girl. The rest
of her had been torn away.
I turned the photo over, hoping to find
the girl's name written on the back.
There was Grandmother's neat,
schoolteacherly handwriting: "Gull
Cottage, 1977. Dulcie, Claire, and T--."
Like her face, the rest of the girl's
name was missing.
Alone in the attic, I stared at the arm
and shoulder. T . . . Tanya, Tonia,
Traci, Terri. So many T names to choose
from. Which was hers?
Putting the photo back in the book, I
ran downstairs to ask Mom about Gull
Cottage, the lake, and the girl. I found
her in the kitchen chopping onions for
the vegetable casserole she was fixing
for dinner. Standing there, head down,
she wore the same expression caught in
the photograph. Not surprising. She
always looked sad, even when she wasn't.
I waved the photograph. "Look what I
found--a picture of you and Dulcie at a
lake somewhere. And another girl--"
Mom snatched the photograph, her face
suddenly flushed. "Where did you get
this?" She acted as if I'd been
rummaging through her purse, her bureau
drawers, the medicine cabinet, looking
for secrets.
I backed away, startled by her
reaction. "It fell out of your old
book." I held up The Bungalow Mystery.
"It was in one of those boxes you
brought back from Grandmother's house.
Look, here's your name." I pointed to
"Claire Thornton, 1977," written in a
childish scrawl on the inside cover.
Mom stared at the photograph as if I
hadn't spoken. "I was sure I'd thrown
this away."
"Who's the girl sitting beside Dulcie?"
I asked, unable to restrain my curiosity.
"Me," Mom said without raising her eyes.
"No, I mean on the other side, where
it's ripped." I pointed. "See her arm
and her shoulder? On the back
Grandmother wrote T, but the rest of her
name was on the torn part."
"I don't remember another girl." Mom
gripped the photo and shook her head.
"At the lake, it was always Dulcie and
me, just Dulcie and me. Nobody else."
At that moment, Dad came through the
kitchen door and set a grocery bag on
the counter. "Salad stuff," he said.
"They didn't have field greens, so I got
baby spinach."
"Fine," Mom said.
"What are you looking at?" Reaching
over Mom's shoulder, he took the photo.
"Little Claire and little Dulcie," he
said with a smile. "What a cute pair you
were. Too bad the picture's torn--and the
color's so awful."
Mom reached for the photo, but Dad
wasn't finished with it.
"This must have been taken in Maine,"
he said. "At your cottage."
"Yes." She reached for the picture again.
"Hey, look at this." Dad handed her the
photo. "There's another girl sitting
next to Dulcie. See her arm? Who was she?"
"This picture was taken thirty years
ago," she said sharply. "I have no idea
who that girl was."
Slipping the photo into her pocket, Mom
went to the kitchen window and gazed at
the backyard, which was just beginning
to show green after the winter. With her
back to us, she said, "Soon it'll be
time to mulch the garden."
It was her way of ending the
conversation, but Dad chose to ignore
the hint. "Your mom and aunt spent their
vacations at Sycamore Lake when they
were little," he told me. "They still
own Gull Cottage, but neither one of
them has gone there since they were kids."
"Why not?" I asked. "A cottage on a
lake . . . I'd love to see it."
"Don't be ridiculous," Mom said, her
back still turned. "The place has
probably fallen to pieces by now."
"Why not drive up and take a look this
summer?" Dad asked her. "Ali would love
Maine--great hiking, swimming, canoeing,
and fishing. Lobster, clams,
blueberries. We haven't had a real
vacation for years."
Mom spun around to face us, her body
tense, her voice shrill. "I hated going
there when I was little. The lake was
cold and deep and scary, and the shore
was so stony, it hurt my feet. It rained
for weeks straight. Thunder, lightning,
wind, fog. The gnats and mosquitoes were
vicious. Dulcie and I fought all the
time. I never want to see Gull Cottage
again. And neither does Dulcie."
"Oh, come on, Claire," Dad said,
laughing, "it couldn't have been that bad."
"You don't know anything about it."
Pressing her fingers to her temples, a
sure sign of a headache, she left the
room and ran upstairs. A second later,
the bedroom door slammed shut.
I turned to Dad, frustrated. "What's
the matter with Mom now?"
"Go easy on her, Ali. You know how
easily she gets upset." He sighed and
headed toward the stairs. "Don't you
have a math test tomorrow?"
Alone in the kitchen, I opened my
textbook and stared at a page of algebra
problems. Go easy on your mother, don't
upset her, she can't handle it. How
often had I heard that? My mother was
fragile. She worried, she cried easily,
sometimes she stayed in bed for days
with migraine headaches.
From the room overhead I could hear the
drone of my parents' voices. Mom's voice
rose sharp and tearful. "I've told you
before, I don't want to talk about it."
Dad mumbled something. I closed my
algebra book and retreated to the family
room. With the TV on, I couldn't hear
them arguing, but even a rerun of Law
and Order couldn't keep me from thinking
about the photo. I certainly hadn't
meant to start a scene--I just wanted to
know who "T" was.
I never saw the photo again. No one
mentioned Sycamore Lake or Gull Cottage.
But the more we didn't talk about it,
the more I thought about it. Who was
"T"? Why didn't Mom remember her? If
Grandmother had still been alive, I
swear I would've called her and asked
who "T" was.
I thought about calling Dulcie and
asking her, but if Mom saw the number on
the phone bill, she'd want to know why
I'd called my aunt and what we'd talked
about. Mom had "issues with Dulcie"--her
words. They couldn't be together for
more than a few hours without arguing.
Politics, child raising, marriage--they
didn't agree on anything.
Maybe because I couldn't talk to anyone
about the photo, I began dreaming about
"T" and the lake. Week after week, the
same dream, over and over and over again.
I'm walking along the shore of Sycamore
Lake in a thick fog. I see a girl coming
toward me. I can't make out her face,
but somehow I know it's "T." She seems
to know me, too. She says, "You'd better
do something about this." She points at
three girls in a canoe, paddling out
onto the lake. One is my mother, one is
Dulcie, and I think the third girl is
"T." But how can that be? Isn't she
standing a few feet away? No, she's
gone. The canoe vanishes into the fog.
That's when I always woke up. Scared,
shivering--the way people feel when they
say, "Someone's walking on my grave."
I wanted to tell Mom about the dream,
but I knew it would upset her. Although
Dad didn't agree, it seemed to me she'd
been more nervous and anxious since I'd
shown her the photograph. She started
seeing her therapist again, not once but
twice a week. Her headaches came more
frequently, and she spent days lying on
the couch reading poetry, mainly Emily
Dickinson--not a good choice in my
opinion for a depressed person.
Dickinson's poems were full of things I
didn't quite understand but frightened
me. Her mind was haunted, I thought, by
death and sorrow and uncertainty.
Sometimes I suspected that's why Mom
liked Dickinson--they were kindred spirits.
Except for my dream and Mom's days on
the couch, life went on pretty much as
usual. Dad taught his math classes at
the university, graded exams, gave
lectures, and complained about lazy
students and boring faculty
meetings--standard stuff. I got involved
in painting scenery for the school play
and doing things with my friends. As the
weather warmed, Mom cheered up a bit and
went to work in her flower garden,
mulching, transplanting, choosing new
plants at the nursery--the best therapy,
she claimed.
And then Dulcie paid us an unexpected
visit and threw everything off track.
Copyright © 2007 by Mary Downing Hahn.
Reprinted by permission of Clarion Books
/ Houghton Mifflin Company.
Library of Congress subject headings for this publication:
Secrets -- Fiction.
Ghosts -- Fiction.
Mother and daughters -- Fiction.
Cousins -- Fiction.