Forecast

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

June 28, 2010

Afternoon

Calvin wrote on the blank side of an air sickness bag:

Pros and Cons for going to New Jersey:

Pros:

Rent is free.

We’ll have way more room than in that cramped apartment.

Mom won’t have to cook for us.The sound of clicking teeth made him look up. Cleo was biting her nails with such ferocity, she’d chomp flesh if she wasn’t careful. His sister leaned from her middle seat to see out the airplane window as the Chicago skyline melted into clouds beneath them. She didn’t turn when he touched her arm.

A woman rushed down the aisle to use the lavatory, as if she’d been waiting all day just to crouch over a metal bowl of pungent blue chemicals. Flying made Calvin queasy, but it would be worth it, he promised himself. This distance from Chicago—hell, from all of Illinois—would be perfect. Still, his stomach rolled.

Cleo needs me, he reminded himself.

He asked her gently, “What’s going on?”

Her phobias sometimes developed without warning, and he just hoped it wasn’t a fear of heights today. His jeans pocket itched where his knife should have been.

Damn airport security.

Cleo’s pigtails flapped against her shoulders as she turned. “I guess I miss home already,” she said, “and Mom.” She fingered their grandmother’s silver locket, then flipped it open to look at the photos of their mother and Uncle Joseph.

Her nostalgia was nothing unusual.

“Mom will be fine,” Calvin assured her. “She needs her space, too.”

And we need our freedom even more, he added silently. This summer’s our last chance to act our age.

He couldn’t believe his mother hadn’t mentioned their family access to the house until a few months ago, almost as if it were a guarded secret. He’d been dreading the start of their junior year because only this stood between him and the next summer he’d spend locked in the library, advance researching for college scholarships. If he didn’t manage the funding, there’d be trouble. He and Cleo incurred a double expense: they’d graduate together, the curse of twins. Most kids’ thoughts were far from this topic as their sixteenth birthday approached, but not Calvin.

His neck flamed as Cleo resumed nail-biting. It was so completely backwards to see Cleo worrying over her mother’s emotional health on her own summer vacation. He forced his voice soft. “Is it just Mom you’re worried about?”

Cleo flinched as the man in the window seat pushed her elbow off the armrest. It was meant to look accidental, but Calvin knew better.

“Hey, you bought the view. You don’t own the chair.”

The man vacated the armrest, eyebrows raised.

Calvin missed the brave version of Cleo. In second grade, she’d stood up to bullies who’d mocked Calvin’s lisp, but these days, he was the one who looked after her. Calvin grabbed an in-flight magazine and turned to the crossword. Cleo loved those. When he looked up, her cheeks were pink.

“You don’t have to do that,” she whispered.

“Do what?”

“Always defend me like that. It’s embarrassing.” She straightened to her full height, an inch taller than him when sitting, a crime for which he’d yet to forgive her. Nevertheless, the crossword worked its magic, and she uncapped the pen he gave her from his backpack. A second later, her forehead crumpled.

“I just keep thinking, ‘Will Dad come back while we’re gone?’” she said.

The two voicemails Martin had left on their mother’s phone just one week ago were troubling, especially after years of hearing nothing, but by the time the calls had come in, Calvin had already purchased the plane tickets with his hard-earned savings, and he wasn’t letting anything or anyone turn them around.

“Martin’s not coming back.” He leaned into the aisle to check for the beverage cart. “And even if he does, Mom’s had therapy and learned good stuff from her meetings. She’ll be all right.”

Cleo’s eyes glistened. She nodded and turned back to the crossword.

Calvin sighed. Apparently, he could still convince an audience better than he could convince himself.

Your father isn’t going to do anything that I don’t let him do, his mom had said, after promising them she wouldn’t return Martin’s calls. But that’s the problem, Calvin had thought. His mother had finally stopped slouching and even dated a few other men, but Calvin remembered how pathetically fast she always melted in Martin’s presence. No one was 100% immune to strong poison.

He returned to his pros list:

It’ll be good for Cleo to be away from Mom.

It’ll be really good for me to be away from Mom.

I’ll finally feel like Martin isn’t watching over my shoulder.

This is our last chance to really play for the summer.

We’ve never explored this manor place before.He paused, chewed the end of his pen, and began his cons column:

Cons:

Cleo doesn’t do well away from Mom, and I might have to take care of her the whole time.

We don’t know anyone in New Jersey.

Martin could come back while we’re gone, and Mom would be all alone with him.He immediately scratched out the last item because it was dumb. He had to be stronger and smarter than Cleo.

He wouldn’t come back.

Calvin unzipped his Linkin Park sweatshirt. It was surprisingly warm for an airplane cabin. “So what are you looking forward to doing while we’re out there?” he asked Cleo.

She tilted her head. “Reading all the books I brought without getting interrupted by chores or homework. I’ll find some new flowers and press them for bookmarks.”

“You make me yawn just thinking about it.”

“Oh yeah? What are you planning to do?”

“Buy weird food from street vendors; sneak in the back door of a movie theater and watch something for free; travel as far as I can on a bus, then spend the whole day walking home, looking at everything.”

“So you want to get yourself killed,” she surmised. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. ‘Life without risks is a life unlived,’ right?” Though she’d spoken sarcastically, Cleo wore mildly amused resignation on her lips.

Calvin grinned. There was a reason his debate team always offered him the tough-to-argue positions that frustrated the rest of them: he thrived on the adrenaline rush of knowing he had a chance, yet could still so easily lose.

The flight attendant arrived with the beverages. Cleo ordered ginger ale. Calvin sweet-talked his way into two cans of Coke. Cleo knuckled his ribs. He looked at her.

“What?”

She was squinting at the crossword. “What’s an eight letter word for seeing something in advance? F—O—blank—blank—C—blank—blank—blank.”

Calvin peered at the boxes. “Seeing the future sounds useful. Hmmm…looks like the word’s ‘forecast.’”

In baggage claim, as Cleo wrestled her huge suitcase off the carousel, he retrieved his pocket knife from the top of his duffel bag. Just being parted from it for the two-hour flight had made him edgy. He and the knife had been inseparable since the day he’d discovered it on the floor of a Yosemite campsite when he was eight years old.

As he was tucking it into his jeans, a beautiful woman in a tight-fitting pinstriped business skirt and blouse approached them. The acrid smell of the airport was eclipsed by peach perfume.

“Are you related to the Humboldt family?” the woman asked in a pleasant alto buzz.

“That’s the last name of our grandfather,” Calvin replied, a little dizzy. To his instant embarrassment, his stomach growled. He’d eaten only salted peanuts on the plane.

The peach-scented woman flashed a silver business card. After her name, he read:

Astrologer. Business and Life Consultant.

A rhinestone twinkled inside each of the Os.

“Please notify me if the family business re-opens,” she said. Her eyes sparkled, either with urgency or curiosity. “You’re twins, I take it?”

Calvin found it difficult to speak, but Cleo nodded.

“Amazing,” the woman said.

Calvin blushed as she hurried away, her heels hitting the floor like stone hammers.

Cleo peered at the card. “Did she say ‘family business’? Do our ancestors have, like, connections to the mob?”

Calvin shrugged, and his stomach roared. He wouldn’t buy food from the overpriced airport shops if he could help it. The thought of money reminded him that he’d need a stash of his own if he wanted to keep Cleo from telling him how to spend each dollar of their allowance.

He pushed the business card into his pocket beside his knife. The encounter was probably just due to his good looks. That sort of thing happened.

“Uh...” Cleo whispered, “don’t look now, but that lady just took our picture with her cell phone.”

With his suspicions confirmed and a springy step in his gait, Calvin shouldered his duffel, pulled Cleo’s bag on its wheels, and walked with her through the sliding doors to the outdoor curb. The light was bright and blinding. As they passed a TSA agent, Calvin sensed the man’s visor swinging to follow. A pair of eyes grabbed his shoulder, like eagle talons. As Calvin looked back, the TSA official noticed something else and turned away. Calvin’s eyes landed on the back of a portly gentleman with a briefcase and a huge bump of cash in his back pocket.

“Be right back,” Calvin said, dropping their bags at Cleo’s feet.

By the time Cleo realized what he was doing, he would be too far away for her to shout without making a scene. When he returned, lobbing the wallet easily from hand to hand, she just shook her head.

“I guess Martin taught me something useful,” Calvin said.

“You have a sick sense of humor, you know that?” Cleo shot her hand into the air as if she were drowning.

Seconds later, a lemon yellow cab slid beside them, and they crawled in, panting with mild excitement and adrenaline. It was only as the cab pulled safely into traffic that the robbed gentleman began patting his back pocket in disbelief.

The crooked-nosed cabbie grinned at them in his rearview mirror. “To Humboldt Manor?”

Calvin and Cleo exchanged looks. Neither had given him an address.

Calvin replied slowly, “How did you know that?”

“You’re the spitting image of Percy Humboldt,” the cabbie returned. “I’m frankly surprised you didn’t know.”

“Do I look like him, too?” Cleo asked.

The cabbie studied her in the rearview mirror. “I’d say you favor the missus.”

Cleo frowned, then demanded, “So how do you know our grand-father?”

“I was a kid when he died, and I can still picture the photo on the coffin.” The cabbie sighed. “It was the funeral of the century, you know.”

Calvin would have asked more, but Cleo pinched his arm and shook her head, sucking in her cheeks so she looked exactly like their mother. He relented and watched the freeway thin to city streets. Eventually, large houses appeared with more and more trees pushing them apart. He wondered if the housekeeper that their mother had mentioned had left out food for their arrival. Finally, the cab pulled onto a lonely lane.

The road ran between an iron gate that stood half open, room enough for a small car to pass. Two square-edged stone pillars flanked the gate. A plaque on one read “Humboldt Manor.” Below it, a rectangular patch of cleaner stone with four holes bored into the corners implied a second plaque had been removed.

Cleo tapped his shoulder and pointed to the arrowhead tips of the fence. Faded flower bouquets were bound to the bars with tattered ribbons. “Looks like one of those car crash memorial things,” she said.

Calvin nodded as the car passed through. The wheels crunched on the gravel drive, and he noticed how silent everything had become, like entering the 24-hour quiet ward where his mother had once stayed for two nights. He couldn’t shake the thought that tickled the back of his neck, murmuring that he’d run from one bad family story and tumbled right into another one.