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hand and walking with her down the street toward town.
I quickly signed how wonderful I thought her pictures were, and then she shook her head.
"What?" I asked, even more curious. She took the pad from me and flipped the pages to the end to show me the inside of the back cover. I gazed down at it and felt my blood freeze in my veins.
"I don't understand," I signed. "Aren't these your drawings?"
She shook her head and I looked at the words scribbled on the inside back pages again.
"But--"
I flipped through the pad, gazing more closely at the drawings I thought were drawings of me. I guess it was just that I assumed it was I who had been depicted. How strange . . . eerie. This pad had belonged to Laura. She had been the artist and she had drawn pictures of herself and pictures of herself with May.
Somehow, maybe because of the way Aunt Sara treated me and spoke to me, or because I was living in her room and wearing her things, I had mistaken Laura for myself in these drawings. At this moment I could appreciate and understand what Aunt Sara was experiencing when she looked at me with sad eyes that told me I reminded her of Laura.
"Do you draw, too?" I asked May. She shook her head and asked me if I wanted to show the pictures to Kenneth.
"Yes, maybe I will," I signed, which pleased her. I perused the rest of the pad and found a picture of Cary that intrigued me. In it he was standing on the beach, holding his hands out while sand was falling through his fingers. It was as if he were saying that something he thought was important really had no meaning.
Just then, as if on cue, I heard Cary coming down the ladder. May saw the direction my eyes had taken and turned in anticipation, too.
"Hi," he said. "How did the rest of the day go?" "Fine."
"But nothing . . ."
"No."
"What do you have there?" he asked stepping through the doorway.
"May brought me these pictures Laura drew and gave her. She wants me to show them to Kenneth."
He saw that I had turned to the page containing the picture of him.
"I gave May that pad the week Laura died," he said, his dark eyes gone bleak, "so she would have something to cherish, but it's not the sort of thing I wanted to show everyone. I don't mind your seeing it, but Laura was very choosy about whom she would show those drawings. Nobody in school saw them, not even her art teacher, and if she wanted Kenneth to see them, I'm sure she would have shown them to him herself."
"Okay," I said, trying to hide my nervous laughter. "What's funny?"
"I thought May had done them and was bringing them to me to show her own work." I answered, though I didn't add that I thought they were pictures of me.
He signed to May, telling her she should keep the pad in her own room where it belonged. She looked disappointed, but took the pad back when I handed it to her.
"Did you deliberately pose for any of them?" I asked. It was more than just curiosity. I wanted to know what he felt like modeling for someone, but he wasn't willing to talk about it.
"For a few," he admitted. "I'm starving," he quickly added to change the subject. "Is dinner ready?"
"I think so. Did you hear about my invitation to Grandma Olivia's?"
"As soon as I walked in the door. It was the first thing Ma told me," he said.
"Why just me?"
He shrugged.
"She wants to get to know you better?"
I smiled skeptically.
"Maybe Grandma's easing up. Old age," he added with a grin.
We all went down to dinner, where I helped serve. I noticed throughout the meal that Uncle Jacob was staring at me from time to time. Finally, before we were finished, he stopped chewing, drank some water, and leaned back.
"You mean to tell me," he said as if we were still in the middle of our earlier conversation, "you've been there over a week and he hasn't mentioned nothin' about Haille?"
Cary shifted his eyes to me quickly.
"He spoke of her," I said, "but he didn't say they had been romantically involved."
"Romantically involved?" Uncle Jacob said with a laugh. He shook his head.