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Ann never saw so little of her older brother as the summer when he was seventeen, and there were special houseguests at the Thoroughbred stables down the road. Fourteen years old, she'd been, and happily turning the corner away from childhood. Able to see over the patched backs of the Guernsey cows without standing on her toes, able to decide her own bed hour. And then suffer the exhaustion as Mother dragged her out of bed. Expected to contribute more to chores, before more heavily delegated to Dick, who rose obscenely early to feed and milk the bloated cows. She usually helped cook him and Dad breakfast an hour after that. She tried not to roll her eyes when Dick thanked her earnestly for the plate slid before him, loaded with two fried eggs—easy on the salt, but drowning in pepper—a chewy pink pile of side pork, hash browns, glass of milk and orange juice, and a hot slice of bread.
"I'm not your wife, you know," she'd muttered. Dick smiled blearily into his glass of milk and their Father laughed at the sink as he finished washing his hands. It was still dark, save for a seam of light at the edge of the world.
Ann Winters was old enough now and expected simply to rise and boil a tub of water when a nervous heifer went into her first labor in the spring. No longer could she grip at her mother's elbow as her father and her brother coaxed the bellowing animal, or bolt from the stall in disgust as a wet and bloody calf plopped into the straw. She now mended her own clothing, and sometimes Dick's too. Always wearing the hems and the inseams threadbare from riding and climbing in the barn, that kid, she thought as she wetted down a string with her lips and fumbled around for the eye of the needle.
She was expected to more promptly attend to her chores—not chasing the barn cats all day and coddling and naming their wild kittens. Couldn't fidget aimlessly in Church, either. She was adjusting to the fact of approaching adulthood. But sometimes, she missed the seemingly endless days of pretend-cops-and-robbers at Aunt Lottie's, making mud pies with cousin Jack, of counting minnows from the bank and running outside until Mother called them in for dinner. She now spent a lot of time sewing clothing and preserving Mason jars full of food. Canning jelly she much preferred to vegetables, because Mother let her choose the fruits—plum and blackcap berries a favorite combination—and then lick her fingertips afterward. It was a habit she wasn't allow to indulge much anywhere else, because if she was caught at the dinner table, she got a quick smack! on the knuckles.
It was June, and the blackcaps were still shrunken and red—still good enough to lick off her fingers, but not all that ripe—when Dick first walked into the kitchen after missing dinner. When their mother asked, he said he'd met a friend and simply lost track of the time. Mother wasn't wholly pleased with that—growing boy and all that, she recited, missing meals—but didn't see he deserved more punishment than just a stern reminder. When she'd left to start taking down the laundry outside, Ann sighed and retrieved a frying pan from the lazy susan. Dick looked at her in surprise and she resisted the urge to scowl back.
"What?" she demanded, fighting a needless embarrassment.
"It's just… strange to see you pick that up yourself."
"Well, my arms aren't broken. Nor is my sense of time, unlike some in this house," she retorted, turning towards the stove. "You'd better be nicer to me if you want me to fry you something to eat."
"Oh." Dick seemed to shake some distraction and then chuckle. The chair at the dinner table scraped along the floorboards as he sat thankfully down. "Sorry," he said. "And thank you."
"Well, if you skip meals and don't grow big and tall," she clarified, "then I'm going to be stuck with all the tough chores around here."
Wouldn't be the last time he missed a meal, though. Always promptly rose for morning chores and settled in for a hearty breakfast at the table, but Ann noticed him taking longer and longer at the stable and wandering up the driveway later in the afternoons. When he began in May, picking up slack for an injured farm hand during foaling season, he was usually done with his tasks by noon. Sometimes went fishing or swimming afterward, or asked Ann to play some piano for him. Lately, it'd been mid-afternoon, or just down to the wire as the scent of dinner emerging from the oven wafted outside. He wouldn't earn himself another lecture for missing a family meal.
She divided her newly found free time between listening to Mother and Aunt Lottie chatting as they worked in the kitchen, reading the hard-bound books above the mantle, or sewing herself clothes and blankets. Came down to eat lunch, often, to the sound of the screen door clattering shut, and Aunt Lottie commenting on her nephew as he disappeared again. "Shouldn't he have more than a sandwich to eat before he goes? He's still rather skinny for his age," she said to her sister.
"He's made friends with a boy who's staying with Mabel Parsons this summer," their mother said, patting a lump of dough between her powdered hands. Touches of flour floated in her hair, making her look older than she was. "Thick as thieves, from what I've heard—Lewis, that's his name."
Aunt Lottie then took notice of her niece entering the kitchen and opened her arms to greet her. "Oh, and look at you! Taller than you were yesterday!"
Ann fought a smile and tried to dodge an enormous bear hug from her affectionate aunt, but accepted it when she circled the table and swept her up. "Not so much," she said, her face pressed into her aunt's chest bone. "I still can hardly breathe when you do this," she joked. But she had grown some. In comparison to her brother, though, she wasn't sure. He didn't come back until dinner that night, either, then he was engrossed in more tasks to be done around the house and Mother wanted her help patching their father's clothes from when he'd burnt them on the overheated innards of their new tractor.
Then—it must have been the first of July, remembering rapidly tying together red and blue ribbons for the white porch railing in preparation for Independence Day—he appeared in the kitchen like an abruptly remembered chore Ann had forgotten to do. She blinked twice at him before registering he was her brother trotting through the doorframe. He never grinned like that.
"Ann, is Mother home?" Dick asked. Teeth beamed awfully white against skin ripe with almost too much sun. Not surprisingly: Ann could count the hours he'd spent indoors this summer on one hand.
"She's hanging the laundry outside—"
"Thanks," he said hurriedly, then strode past her, even ruffling an affectionate hand through her short, loose blonde hair as he went. She squeaked unhappily and patted it down in his wake. She heard him raise a polite question to their mother through the flapping of the sheets and the clatter of the screen door—"Excuse me, Mom, but would it be all right if—" and a shuffle of feet in the foyer.
Curious, she clutched the skinny roll of blue ribbon to her chest and peered around the doorframe. Something had downright possessed her brother, she thought.
First of all, she noticed ugly dirt stains circling the elbows of his fine-looking white shirt, and the too-precious kind of shoes he wore. Certainly nothing you'd wear out to play, but polish and tuck safely under the bed until Sunday. Second of all, the strange boy idling in the foyer was nervously staring around the ceiling, unaware anyone was watching him. Dark hair half-perfectly-combed, half-wild, the skin of his cheeks sun-singed pink. Rather cute, if very unexpected. He stood stock-still, entranced by some photograph, until Dick's voice echoing triumphant caught his attention. Ann ducked out of sight, just in time to catch her silly-grinning brother passing by again, calling out, "She says it's alright, Lew."
The boy piped up cautiously from the other room. "I can stay?"
"Yes, but the only space left is in the barn. Sorry."
A barking laugh. Had Ann possessed ears like a horse, one would have been glued toward the foyer as she idly cut strips of ribbon, casually eavesdropping. "Oh, no, it's good. I thought you'd be a little lonely out there!" the boy retorted, and Dick laughed, no doubt through an unusual grin. She listened until the front screen clattered shut and their voices faded away.
When the Winters gathered outside beneath the firework rain, Ann stubbornly took her hand from her brother's, claiming she's old enough to keep track of it herself, thank you. Neither did the possibility of getting burnt by a rouge firework frighten her anymore—much. Again, he disappeared a few moments later to climb the hill, meeting the now familiar shadow of Lewis Nixon at its height. Blue and white blossomed overhead, and a golden weeping willow dripped from the sky. Ann soaked in the colors and breathed in sticky-sweet July humidity without much more notice of her absent brother.
And so it continued. Afternoons at the stables. Evenings at the lake. Dinner at Parson's occasionally. Fewer nights squished onto the narrow piano bench with Ann, plucking out a trickle of high notes as she played, or waiting for the sun to sink and fireflies to blink. She accepted that, for there were fewer feuds, fewer sibling disagreements, and certainly fewer ripped clothes to mend. She even met her brother's as-of-late-abductor, and he kissed the back of her hand. She was disappointed but unsurprised when they disappeared down the road to her exclusion. She had hobbies and a mind of her own.
But one night, he didn't come back. It was late August, and even as night settled in late—just after nine and the clock chiming so—there was no sight of him. A peaceful evening reading interrupted by Mother opening her door, face drawn cautiously.
"Have you seen your brother, Ann?"
"No. Isn't he with Lewis?" She searched her memory for particulars, but so much of that summer was "with Lewis," and the attempt failed.
Their mother called steadily and wearily from the porch until the moths and beetles flocked around it and all sunlight was gone, her voice shivering through the house, unanswered. Hadn't even remembered to remove her blackcap-stained apron, or take the sealed mason jars from the boiled water. Ann stood until twilight in the kitchen, where their father impatiently tapped a jar lid on the counter, straining his eyes against the dark. There'd been jokes the Parsons' young houseguest was part siren, and leading their unsuspecting Dick to a watery demise, and Aunt Lottie had laughed herself silly.
Ann slept anxiously that night, starting awake at every disturbance, every slight noise. The kitchen light glowed up the narrow stairs, infecting the peaceful dark. "Moonstruck idiot," she'd mutter before tossing and turning another minute in the sheets. She supposed she might have known then. Following the sternest talking-to of Dick Winters' life at four that morning, upon his arrival, she rose to hear the screen door slam and see him running across the pasture.
She sees him go absent now, as a grown man of twenty, in the halfhearted way he bids her goodbye at the train station, distracted by a hissing engine and the steam rising.
"Hey. You can't be daydreaming if you expect to return with anything but some bruised knuckles."
"Ann, they don't slap your knuckles in college."
"Well, just don't encourage them, all right?" She stands on her toes to kiss him on the cheek, gripping him lightly by his shoulders. "I know you'll do wonderfully. And try to enjoy yourself somewhat. All study and no play, and all that."
Distractions forgotten, he offers her a smile of warmth and embraces her. "I will. Thanks."
It feels strange now to see him disappear without his shadow tagging along, without the distorted siren song of a laughing boy drawing him away, and she wonders how he'll adapt to the new chapter of his life. She had never worried the summer he was seventeen. He'd never been alone even when he was gone from her sight, and that thought comforted her.