? ? ?
ANNIE CAN STRETCH no farther. The smell is stronger. It’s an earthy smell, like damp leaves rotted down to their stems and the fuzzy green moss that grows among the river rocks and the mud when it squishes up between her toes. But there’s something else too. Something faint. Something foul. Before Annie can push away from the well to pinch her nose, the smell is gone.
“That’s my husband you’re seeing,” Annie says.
“He’s right there. Plain as day. Don’t you see?”
Annie squints, puckers her mouth.
“It’s true, Annie,” Caroline says. “My goodness, it’s true. That’s my husband.”
Even though Annie can’t see her, she knows Caroline’s black eyelashes will be fluttering and her cheeks will be flushed with red and she’ll be smiling the slightest smile. It’s the same way she looks when she leans over a baby carriage and babbles on about the sweetness of babies. She is seeing her future, her entire perfect future, and Annie is seeing nothing.
“I see something too,” Annie says. “Yes, I see something. Right there. I see him. I see my husband too.”
But she sees no one, nothing. This is how it goes between Annie and Caroline. Caroline all the time getting the better of things. She isn’t prideful about it. She never brags. She doesn’t even seem to notice she always does best or looks best or is best. The not being prideful and the not bragging and the not even seeming to notice make it all the worse. And now Caroline has stolen Annie’s vision, and it’s likely she’s stolen Annie’s husband.
“I see dark hair,” Annie says, her lies spreading out before her. “Brown. He has brown hair. That’s my husband. He’s tall and slender. The one with brown hair. He’s mine.”
As she tells her lies, Annie pushes away from the well, her stomach already queasy. Caroline stands too, holding the light so it catches her under the chin like it did in the bedroom. Her eyes sink into their sockets, her nostrils flare, and her cheekbones protrude.
“I saw him,” Caroline says.
In the slow way a person does when just waking up, Caroline opens and closes her eyes. She exhales one loud, long breath, and lets her arms drop to her sides. The flashlight dangles from one hand and throws a circle of light at her feet.
“The most handsome man ever,” she says. “The man I’m going to marry.”
She pauses, her eyes closed. She’s savoring Annie’s vision. Right this minute, she’s falling in love with Annie’s husband. Not only is Caroline stealing Annie’s first kiss, she’s stealing Annie’s future too.
“Now we have to find him,” Caroline says.
“That’s a damn fool thing to say,” Annie says, staring at the yellow patch of ground near Caroline’s feet. “Everyone knows you’re going to marry Olsen Weber. Was it Olsen Weber you saw down there?”
“No, it was not,” Caroline says, twisting her face as if she’s smelling the same foul smell as Annie, though it’s probably the thought of Olsen Weber causing that face. He’s one of many boys Caroline fancied for a short time before deciding he didn’t quite fit.
“The man I saw was striking, powerful,” Caroline says. “Successful, and rich too.”
“How can you figure all that from the looks of him?”
There’s something on the ground at Caroline’s feet, a twig maybe, a fallen branch, definitely something Caroline would trip over if Annie were to startle her and cause her to take a backward step or two.
“I know because I know,” Caroline says. “He had dark hair and blue eyes.”
“You’re lying.”
It might not be proof positive Caroline’s lying, but every dark-haired man Annie has ever seen has had dark eyes.
It’s times such as this when Annie wishes she’d be altogether good or altogether bad, because living somewhere in between is like having those cicadas buzzing in her ears. Rolling her hands into fists, she takes a step toward Caroline. And as Annie thought she would, Caroline takes a step away. That something on the ground creeps into the light.
“I’m not lying. Clear as day. I saw him clear as day.”
“Then it’s my husband you were seeing,” Annie says. “My husband down there.”
Annie slides one foot forward and then the other.
“It’s my day and my husband.”
Caroline takes another backward step, smaller this time because she bumps up against something that makes her stop and look at the ground.
“I saw blue eyes,” she says, turning and shining the light around her feet. “Yes. Yes, he had blue eyes and dark hair.”