Free Cast a Blue Shadow by P. L. Gaus Page B

mother had made, it seemed senseless for Martha to have risked the encounter that going back would surely produce. And the struggle there had been a long one, Martha’s muteness starting in the first grade. Evelyn Carson had taken years to bring Martha out of the wordlessness, about when Martha’s son had been born.
    With growing unease, Caroline’s eyes ran over the faces Martha had captured on film. The older people had changed little in the intervening years. The children she could only guess. But one fellow, though changed, seemed recognizable to her. A man in his twenties, beardless, and apparently happy to have sat for the photo. With a renewed sense of purpose born of disquiet, she turned her attention to the closet.
    Into an empty travel bag, she put several dresses, two pairs of jeans, a sweater, and an extra pair of string-tie shoes. At the dresser, she got out black hose, underpants and bras, and two long-sleeved blouses. She put the bag on the bed and stepped back to the closet. Reaching up to the shelves overhead, she took down a heavy camera bag, and carried that to the bed, too. From the photos beside Martha’s bed, Caroline took down the picture of the handsome Amish man in his twenties, smiling clean-shaven from the seat of a hack.
    In the bathroom, she found a plastic bucket of toiletries, and this she also carried out to the bed. On going through the contents, she found the box for an Early Pregnancy Test kit. Back in the bathroom, she found a used pregnancy tester in the wastebasket, and her stomach hollowed out like a sinkhole.

14
    Saturday, November 2 8:58 A.M.
    “I THOUGHT you and Martha were seeing each other,” Branden said to Sonny.
    When it was apparent that Sonny was not going to respond, Branden said, “Sit up, Sonny. I’m talking to you.”
    Sonny pulled himself up to sit on the edge of his bed and leaned over with his elbows on his knees. After a minute on the edge of the bed, he straightened his back, looked up at his professor, and said, “Posture.”
    Branden didn’t comment.
    “My mother is always correcting my posture,” Sonny explained.
    Branden nodded slowly. “Your mother called me several times this semester,” he said.
    “It’s the way she said things, mostly,” Sonny said. “If just once she could have said she was proud of me.”
    “Some people just don’t show it much, Sonny.”
    “It makes me nervous being in the same house with her. Always has, even before this. Couldn’t really tell you why. Is that normal? I don’t think that’s normal, Dr. Branden. She wanted me to go to Harvard business school.”
    “Let’s get you through college first, Sonny. Each semester has its own beginning and its own end. So that’s all you have to worry about. Do this semester now, and let the other ones come along, in their own time.”
    “I’m getting a D in chemistry, Dr. Branden. I’ve got a test on Monday, and I haven’t cracked a book.”
    “I think, under the circumstances, we’ll talk to your professor about that. You’re in the 11:00 class?”
    “Right.”
    “So that’s Professor Pomeroy.”
    “He’s a stickler. Won’t give anybody a break.”
    “We can try to postpone your exam.”
    “Sally had him, too. Got an A in chemistry. She even worked in the lab for him one semester. She’s who ought to go to Harvard. Don’t know what I want to do. Never have.”
    “You’re not necessarily supposed to know that yet, Sonny.”
    “A lot of kids know exactly what they want to do.”
    “That’s not you, Sonny. We both know that.”
    “I’m supposed to run the family businesses.”
    “Maybe you will. Surely you have plenty of money.”
    “She’s got it set up so that if I don’t accomplish certain things, I’ll only get an allowance. Mr. DiSalvo had it all in his computer last night.”
    “Do you want to do those things?”
    “I don’t believe she ever thought I could.”
    “That’s your mother talking, Sonny, not you.”
    “She’s probably