Who Is Frances Rain? by Margaret Buffie

air as if they were wet. “Or feeling guilty.”
    Gran cut in. “I think that’s enough, Connie. Maybe what you need —”
    Mother brought the flat of her hand down on the counter. “What I need is to be left alone! What I need is
peace
and
quiet!
What I need —”
    â€œListen to yourself. What you need ... what
you
need. What you need, Constance, is a kick in the backside.”
    Mother sagged against the counter. “You just don’t understand, Ma.”
    Gran’s voice softened. “I think I do, Connie. Carl left you. You’ve hardly seen him for two years. Now, for some reason, he wants back in your life. You have a choice to make. But, Connie, he’s the loser. Not you. It wasn’t your fault. But you’re starting to lose everything, too. By closing yourself off. Shutting out Tim. You have to decide. Tim won’t leave you. Not like Carl.”
    â€œHow do you know that? You’ve never understood, Ma.”
    Her eyes looked so stricken and bewildered that I wanted to put my arm around her, to protect her. I looked away. When I looked back, she was gone. The back door slammed.
    Running to it, I saw the tail of her red sweater disappear into the foliage along the path leading to a rocky ridge behind the cabin.
    â€œBest to leave her,” Gran said, behind me.
    â€œI’ve never seen her like this,” I said. “Not ever.”
    â€œShe needed to let go a little,” Gran said. “She’s been holding it in too long. Your dad never learned to share. Neither of them learned to give. Every-thing’s always come easy to Connie. Let’s see if she’s ready to give some of it back.”

Chapter Twelve
    WHEN I left the dock to paddle over to Rain Island, Mother still hadn’t returned, and Gran refused to say anything more. Maybe I should have been more upset, but I was actually relieved. Relieved, I guess, that my mother could yell and carry on like real people. I preferred that to white-faced, silent anger.
    I wondered what decision she’d make about Tim. And Dad. He’d never been around much, so I couldn’t pretend I’d missed him. But Tim was different. Hard to believe that I’d actually miss someone I thought I’d hated for three months. Maybe I was a born-again stepdaughter.
    Lucky for me Gran hadn’t even asked where I was going. I’d left her taking out her frustrations chopping wood behind the cabin, waiting for Mother.
    The sun was high and the dappling shadows of the trees had moved across the landing rock by the time I’d carried the gear bit by bit to the site. The waves on the lake were pale silver and glittery in the distance, and birds sang high in the trees. Mother’s problems drifted away on the morning breeze that cooled my face. Suddenly I felt ready for adventure.
    Walking around the site, I chose a spot that faced the lake through a wide break in the trees. It looked as if that view had been around a long time. Maybe the builder of the little cabin had even put a window overlooking this stretch of open water — as good a place as any to start. It was all going to be hit and miss anyway.
    I hammered four tent pegs into the ground marking off a square four feet by four feet, running a string around the pegs the way I’d seen the archaeologists do in the museum pamphlet. Now I had a spot I could attack. If nothing happened here, I’d move on.
    First I pulled up clumps of damp green moss and tossed them over my shoulder. Smaller plants, like blueberries and bunchberries, had all worked their way down through the sphagnum. The axe and shovel got a good working out on the snaky brown roots.
    Only smaller plants were growing in the sunken space — not one tree had taken hold in the low green bowl. The tallest plants were a few clumps of fern near the back of the cabin. I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. I couldn’t have hacked my way