Part One
She Said
With a weary sigh, Honey heaved the box she carried into the trunk of her car and slammed the lid. “That’s the last of it, I hope,” she told Mart, as they headed back to her room together to check. “I’m just so glad that it’s time to go home. I thought this day would never come.”
He took her hand and swung it a little as they walked. “Funny,” he mused, lightly. “I’d rather stay here. I’m not looking forward to a whole summer in Sleepyside.”
“It will be good to see my family, and yours, and all of our friends,” she pointed out.
“But we won’t have the freedom we have here,” he added. “And most of our friends will only be around for a weekend here and there.”
Honey shrugged. “I’m looking forward to swimming in the lake, riding the horses, having picnics.”
Mart frowned. “If we have picnics in Sleepyside, everyone we ever met comes and interrupts. If we have picnics near here, we can be all by ourselves.”
Shaking her head at this defeatist attitude, Honey slowed her steps and thought over the last eight or nine months. She had been excited to leave home for the first time, to start college and begin this new phase of her life. It had been a little overwhelming at first, with so many new experiences crammed into a short period of time. Those first few weeks had been rather lonely, too. With her friends scattered between several colleges, she had opted to go to the same one as her boyfriend Mart. While she was glad that he was there for her, she missed having a close female friend nearby.
As the months passed and she made new friends, she became less lonely but also less satisfied with her situation. None of her classes seemed to catch her imagination. Worse still, she could not find any enthusiasm for those she would take later. The thought of returning here at the end of the summer was a very unattractive prospect, but she could not quite bring herself to voice the thought to anyone, especially as all of her friends seemed to love college.
“Earth to Honey,” she heard Mart tease. “Are you going anywhere in particular?”
With a jolt, she noticed that in her abstraction she had walked straight past her door. Retracing her steps, she opened it and stepped inside for a final inspection. A slight frown creased her brow as she ran her eyes over the bare, sterile space, then she set to work looking for missed items.
“Yours?” Mart asked, a few minutes later.
Looking up, Honey saw that he was kneeling on her bed, holding a paperback novel. Its title, in big, yellow letters exclaimed ‘Hot Six’. Honey shook her head, feeling her cheeks flush. “My room-mate’s. I don’t think she liked it very much, but she thought the title was funny. She liked leaving it places for me to find.”
Her boyfriend grinned. “I’ll take her example.” He took the novel and slid it beneath the mattress of the other bed. “It can be a surprise for the next occupant.” When she continued staring at the spot, he added, “It reminds me of something I read over and over in Bobby’s Dr. Seuss stage – now, how did it go? Something about chicks and clocks and bricks and blocks. Six sick bricks tick. Six sick chicks tock. Did your room-mate ever tock? I think she might have been one of the sick chicks.”
Honey smiled and shook her head.
“That’s better,” he told her. “I don’t like you to look so unhappy.”
“Well, I think that’s it,” Honey decided, backing towards the door. “Good-bye, hell-hole; hello, Sleepyside!”
With a deft movement, Mart shut the door before she could reach it and pressed her back against the hard surface. “We could stand a small delay,” he told her with a smile, before their lips met.
He Said
“You won’t change your mind?” Jim asked, while keeping his eyes firmly on the road that would lead them back to Sleepyside. The first few weeks of summer had already passed and the pair were making a short trip home to spend time with family and friends.
Trixie gave an exasperated sigh and looked out the side window. “It’s just for a week or two. What does it matter? It’s not like they would refuse to have us if they knew.”
A flashy red car with a large dent in the driver’s side rear door cut in front of them on the inside and Jim eased back to give it some space. He eyed several scrapes across the back of the vehicle in front, some of them bearing traces of yellow or white paint, and committed the out-of-state licence plate to memory before turning his thoughts to Trixie’s question. What does it matter? Only that it feels like I’m living a lie. He knew that he could not express himself in those terms, however.
Since the previous summer, the pair had come to the decision not to seek an annulment of their hasty marriage, but only to be as financially independent of their parents as possible. From that point, Trixie had taken up the position that being secretly married was practically the same thing as being secretly engaged. As there was no shame in being secretly engaged, there was no need to feel guilty about their situation and no reason to behave in any manner other than if the previous summer had never happened at all. It made Jim feel rather queasy just to think about it.
“It’s like letting Mr. Lytell assume that I was Honey’s brother, when we first met and I was hiding out at the mansion,” he explained in slow, measured tones. Up ahead, the red car sped away, to the general inconvenience of other motorists. “Regardless of whether what we’re doing is right or wrong, I feel guilty. I think it would soothe my conscience if we actually announced our engagement, but if you’re set against it–”
“They’ll just say we’re too young and make a big deal of it,” Trixie objected. “We have a plan, remember? No talk of getting married for two more years at least. We agreed.”
“Yeah, we did.” His voice was soft as he admitted the fact. “I’m beginning to wonder if it was a mistake, though.”
A silence fell between the pair, as Jim began to enumerate his mistakes of the previous year. It was a long list. Sleepyside was only about ten minutes away, leaving him little time to resolve the situation. He was beginning to wonder whether he could come up with an excuse to postpone the visit indefinitely when Trixie spoke.
“We need to stick to the plan.” There was a slight tremor in her voice, which puzzled Jim a little. “I don’t like lying to our families and friends, either, even when it’s just a lie of omission, but think about what would happen if we stopped. We agreed: it’s not the right time for being married for real. It’s better this way.”
He gave a shrug, keeping his eyes on the road. A grim smile flickered across Jim’s face as he saw the red car that had passed them earlier pulled over to the side, a stony-faced policeman standing over it and the car’s driver in full rant. They left the irate driver behind to his fate without another glance. In only a few more minutes, they would be turning onto Glen Road. He could not face the prospect just yet.
From the corner of his eye, Jim caught the brief look of mild surprise on Trixie’s face as he took a different turning from the one that would take them to their destination. He could almost see the wheels turning in her mind as she tried to figure out where they were going. By the time that he pulled up in a spot overlooking the Hudson, she wore a meditative look. Turning off the engine, he turned to look her in the face.
“I’m not changing my mind,” she told him in a firm voice, pre-empting anything he might have to say.
He nodded. “I know. I wasn’t going to try to make you.” He laid his hand upon hers and gently stroked her fingers. “I just wanted a few minutes together before we have to face everyone. And I wanted to ask you something.”
She cast him an enquiring look. “Well?”
Jim lined up the sentence carefully in his mind before he spoke. “Before this summer is over, can we renegotiate that agreement, please? I really didn’t expect to feel this bad about it, Trix.”
Without speaking, she nodded. He smiled his thanks and sealed the deal with a kiss.
She Said
The following day, the Bob-Whites held their traditional start of summer barbecue down at the lake – albeit a little later in the season than usual – with all of those staying outside of Sleepyside that summer converging for the weekend. Originally, they had held these gatherings near the boathouse, but since Matthew Wheeler had built the Pavilion on the other side of the lake two summers earlier, they had shifted to that more comfortable setting. Their food stowed in the refrigerator for later, the group carried chairs down to the water’s edge to enjoy the breeze that blew across the lake.
“This is the life!” Mart stretched luxuriously and settled into the nearest chair. “Someone wake me when it’s time for lunch.”
Seeing her brother close his eyes, Trixie filled a plastic cup with lake water and tip-toed over to him. She was poised to pour it over him when a slight sound caused his eyes to pop open. He caught at her wrist and the water spilled into his lap and across her shorts. Mart let out a yelp as the coldness penetrated to his skin and he grabbed his sister by the arms. The struggle was a short one, ending with Trixie falling into the water, but managing to pull Mart after her.
“Take that, wench!” he cried, dunking her head under the water. “That will teach thee to hatch such dastardly plans against your innocent kinsman!”
“Innocent kinsman?” she queried, astounded by the description. “Kinsman I get, but innocent? I don’t think so!”
He set off for the shore, but his sister caught him off balance and dragged him down. He was close enough to shore and the water shallow enough that his head did not go under, so Trixie set to splashing him. By the time she was finished, he was just as wet as she was. He crawled out of the shallows and stood up, water streaming down his arms and legs from sodden clothes.
“If anyone needs me, I shall be in the shower,” he announced, with affected dignity. Turning to his girlfriend, he added with waggling eyebrows, “You didn’t want to join me, did you?”
“No, thank you,” Honey replied, blushing.
“Go on, Honey,” Dan prompted, as Mart sloshed away. “Don’t mind us.”
Diana gave him a slap. “Leave her alone. If she wants to keep shared showers for a more private setting, then good for her. Heaven knows, if I was going to share a shower with someone, I wouldn’t want all of you to know about it!”
“Puh-lease stop talking like that,” Trixie begged, hands over her ears. She still lounged at the edge of the lake, regardless of her drenched clothes. “I don’t care what they do when I’m not around, but I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Then maybe you’d better stay away from the shower when you’re not using it,” Dan quipped. “You might overhear more than you’d like, one day.”
As Di and Dan laughed, and Honey continued to blush, Trixie looked across at her eldest brother. The suppressed emotion in his face startled her with its intensity. She could see that he was angry and embarrassed, perhaps even outraged, and holding it in with an obvious effort. She knew that she had to divert the conversation to another topic, but lacked Honey’s grace in such things. Her friend could guide a dialogue to whatever end she chose without any apparent effort. Trixie did not have that skill, but often wished that she had. Instead of making the direct attack she usually made, this time she tried something a little more subtle.
“Are the two of you are going to give out hints on shared showers, then?” she asked, turning an enquiring gaze on Di and Dan. She knew that their relationship was not on those terms, but it only seemed fair to turn the tables on them. “Since you seem to know all about it and all.”
“Or maybe you could give us hints on when you might be available for a trip away,” Honey suggested, picking up the ball as if she had known exactly what Trixie would say. “I thought it might be nice to have some Bob-White time sometime this summer, since we had such a good time last summer and I was wondering if there was a time when we all might be free, and whether you had any ideas of where you’d like to go, or whether you’d rather we did a group project to taking a group trip.”
While the others discussed availability, potential destinations and potential projects, Trixie watched Brian. The fury had subsided, replaced by a sort of embarrassed resignation. She felt profoundly sorry for her brother, trapped as he was in a situation of his own making, but also relieved that a further blow-up had been averted. She had also hoped that the last year had been enough to assuage his wounded feelings, but perhaps there was not enough time in the world to do that.
A few moments later, she was surprised to see a different expression on her brother’s face. He was looking at Honey now, watching her carefully. It was not the look that he used to reserve for her, however. Something about it had subtly changed. With a start, Trixie deduced that perhaps her brother’s feelings for Honey had changed after all. She breathed a silent sigh of relief. Perhaps the tensions of the last year would soon be a thing of the past.
Later, when lunch had been had and the more energetic members of the group had worked off some of their enthusiasm, the party settled down to a more quiet stage. They moved the chairs into the shade of some nearby trees, or lounged on the ground. Brian pulled out a crossword puzzle and pencil and began to work on it.
“Pronounce, aloud, an example of the baffling conundrums upon which you toil,” Mart demanded. “I, I will have you know, am exceptionally accomplished at the deciphering of such perplexities.”
Brian raised an eyebrow. “You won’t find answers dabbling in game.”
“Excuse me?” Mart asked. “Are you casting aspersions on my puzzle-solving abilities?”
“How many letters?” asked Di. On being told six, she squeezed her eyes shut and answered, “Enigma.”
Mart narrowed his eyes at her and then at his brother. “That’s a synonym of the M-word.”
“Well done, Mart,” his brother encouraged him, even as he pencilled in the answer. “We’ll have you speaking English in no time. And thanks, Di. I’m fairly sure you’re right.”
“You never told me it was a cryptic crossword,” Mart grumbled.
“You didn’t ask,” his brother answered, eyes on his puzzle.
Honey smiled at her boyfriend. “I never could understand cryptic crosswords. Someone tried to explain them to me once, but they don’t make sense to me at all. I get all jumbled up with the different kinds of clues.”
“Hmm,” Di pretended to muse. “If it says ‘jumbled up’, that would be an anagram, but should it be of ‘Honey’ or ‘I get all’? Neither of them really lend themselves to anagrams. I’d really need to know how many letters it is to figure out which it would be.”
As Honey pretended to hide from this attempt to interpret her words as a crossword clue, the others laughed. “Don’t worry about it, Honey,” Di told her. “Anagrams are the only ones I can do. All I did was mix up the letters in ‘in game’ and I got enigma, which is something you can’t find the answer to. Mixing up words is easy.”
Honey groaned. “Well, I think I’ll be quite happy to ignore the existence of cryptic crosswords for a long while yet. Can we talk about something else instead?”
“Such as Mart’s inability to distinguish crossword clues from insults?” suggested Brian, without looking up.
Mart huffed loudly. “If I am to be treated like this, I decline to take part in this conversation. I shall take a nap.”
Taking his hat, he covered his face and pretended slumber. As Trixie crept towards him with a cup of cold lake water, he added, “And if there is a repeat of your earlier performance, sister mine, there will be revenge of a quality not seen before in these parts. Understand?”
Trixie eyed the cold water and her brother, sizing each of them up, before tipping the cup’s contents back in the lake. “I’ll let you off for now,” she conceded, “but you’d better not go to sleep for real, or I might not be able to control myself.”
By the middle of the afternoon, the group started to come out of their after-lunch stupor. The amount of activity among them started to rise once more and Mart began complaining of hunger. Luckily for him, afternoon snacks were waiting in the refrigerator and Honey was kind enough to go and get them. The group immediately gathered around as she did so, all ready for something to eat.
As Honey set out the food, she warned, “Be careful of this dip – Jim chose it and it’s rather spicy.”
Diana stayed her hand from reaching out for it and chose something else instead. She watched, in horror, as Jim took a large scoop of the dip and ate it.
“Doesn’t that burn?” she asked, still staring at him.
Jim shook his head and several of the others laughed.
“Never try to outdo Jim on hot and spicy,” Honey advised. “He loves chilli with everything – he even loves ice cream and chilli sauce!”
Her brother shook his head. “Someone told me it was good and I had to try it for myself. It was… interesting, but I wouldn’t say that I love it.”
“He loves it,” Honey whispered to the others. “He just doesn’t want to admit being weird.”
Jim shook his head at her and took another large scoop of dip.
He Said
“You can’t spend the entire week outside, you know.”
Jim gave a start, not having expected anyone to sneak up behind him so successfully as he lingered on the front doorstep of Crabapple Farm. The group had tired of the lake, but agreed to continue the togetherness a little longer at the Belden home. Trixie had gone ahead to make some preparations, but Jim had procrastinated about following.
“Shh,” he chastised Trixie. “I’m trying not to let him know there’s anyone here.”
“Who?” she whispered, craning to see what he was looking at. “Where?”
He stepped aside from his position not far from her parents’ front door to let her see, pointing in the right direction. “The man in that car. He’s been sitting there ten minutes since I noticed him and the car was already stopped when I got here. You recognise him, don’t you?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Where would I have seen him before?”
“He passed us on the way home the yesterday, then we passed him after he’d been pulled over by the police.” He frowned a little. “What I’d like to know is, what’s he doing down there? I don’t think he’s anyone we know, and he doesn’t look like a delivery driver, so why is he hanging around at the bottom of the Manor House driveway?”
“Spying on someone?” she suggested, at once. “Waiting for someone to come out? Waiting for an accomplice, so they can go in together? Casing the joint? Or, how about waiting for an accomplice who is already inside to come out?”
“In such a conspicuous spot, and in such a conspicuous car? I don’t think so.” Jim let out a breath as the man seemed to look straight at them, start the engine and pull away. “Whatever he was doing there, I don’t think it bodes well.”
The two shared a look of concern, neither wanting to say more.
She Said
Late that afternoon, most of the Bob-Whites were still hanging around Crabapple Farm somewhere. Honey and Mart were together in the kitchen, cleaning up after the group’s second afternoon snack. They had a date planned for that night and Honey knew that she would have to go home soon to get ready, but had been putting off the inevitable. To that end, she had kept up an endless stream of conversation.
“What do you think of the ideas we had for a Bob-White trip later this summer,” she asked, not giving him time to answer. “I’d really like to go on one, but we don’t really have any plans for anything special for just us for the summer, yet, so maybe we should talk about that tonight, when we’re by ourselves.”
“Maybe,” he replied, looking away. “I kind of liked the idea of a trip to the beach. It’s been too long since the last time we went.”
Honey stopped short and considered him with narrowed eyes. “You’re hiding something from me.”
Immediately, an impossibly innocent look sprang to his face. “Moi? Why would I hide something from such a pulchritudinous one as yourself?”
“I’ll find out, Mart Belden,” she promised. “Whatever it is, you won’t be able to keep it a secret from me for long.”
He smiled, dropping the fake attitude. “I wasn’t intending to. You’ll find out in good time and not before.”
“But I want to know right now.” She pouted, hoping for – and receiving – a kiss for her trouble.
“I know you do, sweetheart,” he told her, lightly, “but what I’m planning is a surprise. It wouldn’t be one if you knew what it was, now, would it?”
“I suppose not,” she conceded. “Will I know tonight?”
He shook his head. “I won’t be doing anything secretive between now and our date, so you can put that out of your mind. Speaking of tonight, I need to take a shower before someone else gets in the bathroom, so unless you’re planning on taking up my earlier offer of a shared shower, you might have to let me go.”
Feeling a blush stain her cheeks, Honey shook her head and kissed him goodbye. She knew that she really needed to get going if she wanted to be ready on time, but her curiosity over what Mart had hinted made her hesitate. After a moment of indecision, she made her choice. A few minutes later, she located Trixie and Di talking together in the back yard, sitting on the ground in the shade of a tree and enjoying an afternoon breeze.
“You’ve got to help me,” she gasped, dropping down beside them with a bump. “Mart has some kind of secret – a good secret, or at least, he thinks so – and he won’t tell me what it is, only I just have to find out somehow because the suspense is going to kill me!”
Trixie screwed up her nose. “You want me to spy on my own brother, when he’s probably planning something soppy and romantic? I don’t think so!”
With a laugh at the disgusted look on Trixie’s face, Di added her two cents. “I don’t think Mart is soppy. He can be romantic if he puts his mind to it, but he’d never be soppy.” A faint smile crossed her face for a moment. “Are you sure you don’t want to just wait? It might spoil the surprise.”
A faintly embarrassed look came onto Honey’s face. “I might want to be prepared for it.”
Di laughed, a wicked glint in her eye. “Oh, I’m sure you can trust Mart to be a good boy scout and Be Prepared – especially if he’s the one doing the planning.”
Honey gave her friend a slap. “That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.”
Hands firmly over her ears, Trixie cried, “I don’t want to know! Don’t talk about sex and my brothers! Please! The shower conversation was bad enough, but this is just too much.”
The glint in Di’s eyes intensified. “Oh, we’re not talking about your brothers. I’m quite sure you’ve already deduced that neither of us has had, or ever intends to have sex with either Brian or Bobby.”
Trixie scowled. “I meant my brothers as individuals, not collectively. And leave Bobby out of this conversation. Ew! He’s only twelve. Puh-lease don’t talk about him and sex – that’s just icky.”
With a dreamy sigh, Di sank back and gazed into space. “I had such a crush on Mart when he was twelve.”
“Yes, we know,” Trixie answered impatiently. “But that was different, because you were eleven, unlike now, when you most definitely are not.”
Di lost her dreamy look and smirked. “I’ve moved on from that stage, I’ll admit.”
“Yes, we know that, too.” Trixie frowned, wishing she could change the subject, but fearful that would make things worse. She was saved the decision at that point by her best friend, who wanted to put the conversation back on to its original track.
“You can put that whole line of thought aside,” Honey asserted, earning a pout from Di. “I’m sure it’s not anything to do with the – uh – physical side of our relationship. Details omitted for Trixie’s sensitive ears, but we’ve settled that between ourselves already.”
“So, what do you think it’s about, then?” Di asked, eyes narrowed as she speculated.
Honey sighed wearily. “That’s it: I just can’t think what it might be. Nothing really seems to make sense.”
“Is there some kind of anniversary coming up?” Di began to tick the questions off on her fingers. “I guess it can’t be for your birthday, since you’ve just had it. He did do something special to celebrate it, didn’t he? Last year’s road-trip was about this time of year. Did something happen then that he wants to remember? Or, is there something he might want to take you to that has a limited season?”
“The only anniversary in July that I can think of,” Honey answered, “is of the day we met, but since neither of us can exactly recall which day that is, exactly, that’s not exactly helpful, is it?”
“Not exactly,” Trixie answered, giggling.
Her head slightly on one side as she thought, Honey continued, “The anniversary of our first date was about two months back, so it can’t be that; the anniversary of our first kiss was the same day…”
Di leant over and whispered something in Honey’s ear, mouth covered with her hand to prevent Trixie overhearing. For her trouble, she received a firm slap on the arm.
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Honey grumbled, face slightly flushed. “I’m sure it’s not anything like that, okay?”
Her friend smiled and quirked an eyebrow. Honey’s face turned a deeper pink.
“So, what do you actually want us to do, Hon?” Trixie asked, desperately trying to divert the conversation away from things she really did not want to know.
“Keep an eye on him, I guess,” she answered, with a shrug. “Watch what he’s doing when he’s not with me and see if we can catch him at it, whatever ‘it’ is.”
Di nodded. “Okay. I think we can do that. For now, though, maybe you should try to keep him with you as much as you can, even if it means–”
“Please!” Trixie interrupted, as Di convulsed in laughter. “If you’re going to have these conversations, leave me out of them!”
He Said
“Ahem.”
Near the bottom of the Manor House driveway, Jim turned with a start. In the shadow of a particularly leafy shrub stood a strange man. His appearance was neat, but casual; his brown hair long enough to show evidence of a slight wave.
“Can I help you with something?” Jim asked.
At once, the man’s rather pleasant face took on a sneering expression. “Yes, I think you can. You’ll be Jim Frayne, I think.” Wary now, Jim nodded and the man continued: “If I’m not mistaken, you’re a man of many secrets. For example, there’s something that happened while you were away last summer. Something you don’t want anyone to know.”
In spite of his best intentions, Jim felt his face redden and his throat constrict. His hands clenched into fists and the muscles of his arms and shoulders tightened. Harsh breaths began to rush between his lips and he was sure he could feel sweat starting to bead on his forehead. He knew, without a doubt, that he was showing every possible sign of guilt but he was powerless to stop it.
“Well, what of it?” Jim asked, in the coolest voice he could muster.
Across from him, the man laughed. “I know more of your secrets, Frayne; things you thought you’d buried forever. I wonder what would happen if those secrets got out? We’ll talk again soon.”
Jim stood motionless as the man strode away towards a well-dented red car that was becoming quite familiar. As the engine turned over and the car pulled out into the road, Jim’s gaze fixed on the Tennessee licence plate.
Continue to part two.