In Plain Sight

Unlike the Scarletts, who passed down everything, Sheridan’s family seemed to be starting anew, creating their own legacy and tradition. She didn’t know which was better. Or worse.

However, the longer Arlen talked, the happier Sheridan was that the family oral history in her household seemed to have started when her dad met her mom. What Arlen presented seemed to be too heavy a burden for a girl as shallow and frothy as Julie to carry on. It would be nice, though, to know more.

AS SHERIDAN AND Julie had gone upstairs for bed, Sheridan had noticed the pair of binoculars on a stand near a window in the hallway and had asked about them.

In response, Julie parted the curtain and pointed out across the ranch yard into a grove of trees, where Uncle Wyatt’s chicken coop could be seen in the distance.

“That way Uncle Arlen can check to see if Wyatt is around,” Julie said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“My grandma used to tell me stories,” Julie said to Sheridan when both girls were in Julie’s room for the night. “She’d tell me about my great-grandfather Homer, and my grandfather, her husband. And about my dad and my uncles. She had this really pretty voice that would put me to sleep. I really miss her, and that voice.”

Sheridan didn’t know quite how to respond. The Julie she knew from the bus and school—impetuous, fun loving, charismatic—was not the Julie she was with now. This Julie was cold, earnest, arrogant, superior—but at the same time very sad. She didn’t think she liked this Julie much, although she did feel sorry for her. This Julie just wanted to tell Sheridan things, not have a conversation. Although Julie’s monologues had, at first, been interesting, Sheridan had reached a point where she wished her friend would not make it so completely about her.

“You probably don’t know what it’s like to be a part of a famous family,” Julie said. “I mean, if it weren’t for the Scarletts, there would be no Saddlestring, and no nothing out there. Like, without us, you wouldn’t even be here. No offense, of course.”

“Of course not,” Sheridan said, sarcastically.

“You don’t have to be like that,” Julie said, sounding insulted. “I’m just telling you what is, you know? That’s what my grandma used to do. She made sure I knew I was special, and that my dad and uncles are special too. We have the Scarlett Legacy and nobody can take it from us. I’m the sole heir, that’s what she told me from the time I was little, how special that is.”

Sheridan simply nodded. This was going to be a long night.

“I miss her,” Julie said.

SHERIDAN LAY WIDE awake in her sleeping bag on the floor of Julie’s bedroom. Julie was next to her in a sleeping bag of her own. It was one of the rules of sleepovers: both the guests and the host slept on the floor, so there would be no jockeying or fighting over the bed. Sheridan could hear Julie’s deep, rhythmic breathing. Her friend was asleep.

Sheridan felt both scared and guilty. The house itself frightened her, and she felt silly about it. What Julie’s mom had said about “getting used to it” helped a little, but not much. The house was so big, so dark, so creepy. There were sounds, the soft moaning of old boards in the roof, the pop or squeak of a floorboard. She thought of what Julie had told her once about Uncle Wyatt rambling through the hallways in the middle of the night because he couldn’t sleep. She wondered if he was out there now.

And there was something about how Julie, Doris, Arlen, and Wyatt looked at one another, as though they were sharing a secret. It was probably just intimacy, she knew. Her own family probably displayed the same thing to strangers, a familiarity so comfortable that others could only wonder what was going on. But in this case, she felt remarkably like an outsider.

Jeez, she thought, her dad had given her a chance—more than one chance, actually—to back out of this sleepover.

Now, though, she tried to persuade herself there was no need to be scared. It had been years since she had felt this way. She wondered if it was the house, or the odd way Julie had acted, those photographs, the dinner, what? Maybe a combination of all of them. She wished she had a cell phone. Really wished it. If she had one, she could call her dad to come get her.