Page 85 of The Gallagher Place
Marlowe glanced at the pillow nestled against his side and then back to his placid face.
“You will not do it.” Enzo sighed, and it was a sound of utter peace. “Because you are Marlowe, and you are good.”
Marlowe rose to her feet so fast, the chair scraped back with a harsh sound. It didn’t seem to disturb Enzo in the slightest.
Glory was waiting in the hallway, arms crossed, leaning against the door to Nate and Henry’s old room. She had heard every word.
“Was that true?” Marlowe whispered.
Her mother didn’t deny it. She nodded, unflinching.
Marlowe and her mother had the same thick hair and the same wide-set brown eyes, but no other resemblance. Marlowe was taller, as Tom Gallagher had once predicted. But Glory was stronger, both now and then.
“She fell badly,” Glory said. “I was trying to get her to stop fighting me, and she stumbled backward.”
An accident. Or something resembling one. Marlowe searched for her rage, but it was gone, back in the room with Enzo, who had been following orders to save his family.
“I put the trash in the other bin.” Glory stood up straight. Her hands dropped to her sides. Hands that had once picked corn and milked cows and typed up legal memos and fought with an innocent girl. “Before I did anything else, I picked up that bag and threw it out.”
Glory blinked a few times, as if she might cry over this one small act. The only thing she could admit to.
Of course she put the trash in the bin. Glory Fisher kept an impeccable house.
FORTY
THE BEAR
Sunday, May 31, 1998
They would have slept until lunch if Enzo hadn’t sauntered into their rooms clanging an old cowbell and literally startling them out of their beds.
Marlowe could hear Nate yelling from down the hall. “What the hell, Enzo! It’s summer. I can sleep all day if I want to.” Marlowe and Nora were rubbing their sleepy eyes in their twin beds and burst into a fit of giggles when Enzo put Nate in his place.
“Rise and shine, young master. Just because you’re at university now doesn’t mean you can waste this beautiful day. Get up or there will be no breakfast for you.” Whenever Enzo raised his voice, his Italian accent became more pronounced, which tickled Marlowe all the more.
The four of them piled downstairs, where a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs awaited, along with Enzo’s homemade bread and jam. Marlowe watched Nate get up and pour himself a large cup of coffee, while the rest of them filled their glasses with freshly squeezed orange juice from the pitcher on the dining table.
It was early, and unlike last summer, when they set out each morning to build their wall, none of them had a plan for the day. Nora sat with her chin in her hand, swirling her fork around herscrambled eggs. She wanted to swim, she had told Marlowe last night. Marlowe glanced out the window. No clouds, and it would get warmer by afternoon.
“There have been rumors of an injured bear in the woods,” Enzo announced. “Shot in the leg, I heard.”
Nate’s ears perked up, but he continued to slurp his black coffee.
“You must be careful if you go out wandering today. Stay out of the woods. The bear will be vicious, if you come across it,” Enzo continued. “A wounded animal backed into a corner will lash out with everything it has.”
Marlowe looked up at him. “We understand, Enzo, thank you for telling us.”
With no particular goal in mind, the four of them found themselves back at the wall later that morning, surveying the work of the previous summer. It was, in fact, a feat that they had managed to haul so many stones out of the woods and build such an impressive structure, a new wall that looked as though it had been there for ages.
“We could extend it farther,” Henry ventured. Nora shot him a sideways glance.
“Ugh, no one wants to keep building the wall, Henry,” Marlowe said. “Let’s just go down to the Bend. I want to sketch for a bit and then we can swim.”
But when Nate said, “Maybe we should go look for that bear,” they all knew the decision had been made.
As they crossed back over the road, Nate told them they had to move quick so Enzo wouldn’t spy them dashing up the North Field’s hill and into the woods, flouting his orders. So they ran, and Marlowe’s face was coated in sweat in no time. Nate outstripping them was no surprise, but Henry pulling ahead of the girls was new. He had gotten faster.
Marlowe and Nora were still several yards behind, leaping over the tufts of cut hay, when the boys vanished into the trees.
