The Days of Summer. Jill Barnett

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      A second later the light came on, bright and blinding, and Victor stood in the doorway. “What are you doing in here?”

      Cale felt instantly sick.

      “Never mind,” he said in the same angry voice he’d used on the phone. He crossed the room and pulled off the covers.

      Jud looked too scared to say a word.

      “In this house, we sleep in our own rooms.” Victor pulled Cale up, put his hands on his shoulders, and marched him to his own room, where he flipped on the light and paused before he pointed at the lump on the bed. “You know what that tells me?”

      I’m in trouble. But all Cale said was, “No,” in a sulky voice.

      Victor threw back the blankets. “It tells me that you knew damned well you were supposed to stay in your own bed.”

      Cale didn’t admit anything.

      “You are eight and I’m a lot older. There isn’t a trick you can pull I won’t see through.” He threw the clothes into a corner. “Now get into bed.”

      Cale crawled in and lay board-stiff, his eyes on the ceiling.

      “Do you want the light on?”

      “No,” Cale said disgustedly and jerked the covers up over his head as the light went off. He could see through the white sheet.

      His grandfather filled the doorway, backlit from the hall light. “Banning men don’t need anyone, Cale. We stand on our own.” He closed the door and the room went black.

      * * *

      Jud awoke to a sound like someone beating trash cans with a baseball bat. By the time he reached the window, the neighbor’s dogs were barking. It was after midnight, and misty fog hovered in the air. Cale lay sprawled in front of the wooden garage doors, two metal trash cans lids next to him, one of them spinning like a top, the barrels rolling down the concrete driveway toward the street. His little brother had tried to look in the high glass panes of the garage doors. Jud opened the window and called in a loud whisper, “Are you nuts? Get back inside. Hurry up!”

      Cale sat up, rubbing the back of his head. “I want to see the red car.”

      “Moron! It’s the middle of the night.”

      “I know, but he won’t let me see it. He won’t let me talk to you or sleep with you. Besides, he’s asleep.”

      “I was asleep, but someone woke me up making more noise than a train wreck.” Their grandfather stepped out of the shadows and walked toward Cale. There was a threat in the way he moved.

      Jud leaned out the window. “Don’t you hurt him!”

      His grandfather looked up, frowning. “I’m not going to hurt him.”

      “How do we know that?” Jud yelled. “We don’t even know you!” He raced down the stairs. By then the chauffeur was outside his room over the garage, dressed in pajamas and carrying a shotgun, and Cale glared up at Victor with a stubborn look on his face … one that was exactly like their grandfather’s.

      “Don’t hit him,” Jud said.

      “I’m not going to hit him,” his grandfather said in an exasperated tone. He looked down at Cale. “Do you think I’m going to hit you?”

      “I don’t care if you do.”

      “This is all your fault,” Jud said. “You should have shown him the car, too.”

      The chauffeur came down another step. “Mr. Banning?”

      “I’ve got it, Harlan.” His grandfather sounded tired. “Go back to bed.”

      The chauffeur turned back up the stairs.

      “Harlan, wait! You—” Victor pointed a finger in Cale’s belligerent face. “Apologize for waking him up.”

      For a moment Jud thought Cale was going to say no. The silence seemed to stretch out forever, then Cale faced the chauffeur and didn’t look the least bit apologetic when he said, “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

      “It’s all right, son.” Harlan went back upstairs, leaving the three of them standing silently.

      “So, Jud. You think I should show Cale the car?”

      “Yes.”

      “Okay.” Victor took a key from the pocket of his robe, unlocked the door, and held it open. “Go inside, both of you, and look all you want.”

      In a flash of brown Hopalong Cassidy pajamas, Cale slipped under Victor’s arm and Jud followed. The MG was low and lean, its chrome sparkling. The tan top was folded down and the glass in the headlamps picked up the reflection of too-bright overhead lights. You didn’t see that kind of car anymore, except in old movies. It was square, with running boards, tan leather seats, and a red paint job that made it look like a miniature fire engine.

      “Wow!” Cale walked around the MG, then put his hands on his knees and made a face in the side mirror, then more faces in the polished chrome grille. He was just a little kid with his pajamas buttoned wrong and leaves from the driveway sticking to his back and spiky hair, which looked as if it were angry.

      Their grandfather leaned on the fender. “I bought this car for your father.”

      Jud didn’t know the MG had been his dad’s. He could only picture his dad behind the wheel of that old two-tone Ford. But something wild had lived inside his father, like the red car.

      “Jud.” His grandfather opened the car door. “Get in.”

      He slid into the soft leather seat and placed his feet on the pedals. His little brother crawled into the passenger side, chattering, cranking the window up and down and punching the door locks, while Jud just held the steering wheel in both hands and stared out the low chrome-edged windshield, trying to feel something familiar: a sense of his dad, whatever was left behind—if anything was ever left behind after someone died. A strange kind of hunger came over him, sharp and intense: this car belonged to him. He wanted this car more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life.

      Beside him, Cale was up on his knees, bouncing and gripping the seat back. “Someday I’m gonna have this car. I’m gonna be just like my dad and drive it everywhere.”

      Jud shot a quick look at his brother, then up at the old man, who was watching him with an unreadable expression. Jud turned back around. No, little brother. No. This car’s going to be mine.

       CHAPTER 4

      Kathryn paid the driver and got out of an orange cab that smelled like dirty ashtrays. Laurel ran up the front steps of Julia Peyton’s home, an English Tudor gabled house with leaded glass windows, stone chimneys, and lush gardens flanking a downward sweep of sheared lawn.

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