"Are you feeling all right, Laddie?" she asked with concern. "You look flushed and warm to me and your face is all perspired.
Here, let me wipe it for you." Her hand sought his breast-pocket handkerchief.
"Why, Laddie, what happened to your handkerchief? I saw it in your pocket when you left."
For a moment there was something in his eyes that reminded her of a stricken animal, then it was gone.
"I- I guess I lost it," he stammered.
She touched his forehead.
"Are you sure you haven't a fever?"
"I think you'd better go up to bed, son," his father said.
"Yes, Father." He turned to his mother and kissed her. "Good night," he said and went quickly into the house.
"I wonder what's the matter with him?"
Harrison Marlowe snorted. "I know what's the matter with him."
"You do?"
He nodded. "He's spoiled, that's what.
He's so used to having everything the way he wants it, he sulks when he has to do a little thing like chaperon his sister.
He's angry because he couldn't sit over in the Randall's yard and spoon with Tommy's cousin Joan."
"Harry, you're being horrid!"
"No I’m not," he said.
"Take it from me. I know boys.
What he needs is a little discipline." He began to pack his pipe. "And you're doing the same with Rina.
Giving her everything she wants. She'll be spoiled soon, too."
"I know what's bothering you," she said.
"You just don't like the idea of them growing up.
You'd like to keep them children forever." "No. But you have to admit they are spoiled." "Maybe they are a little," she admitted.
He smiled.
"Well, anyway, it's a good thing they'll be going back to school next month.
Barrington's good for Laddie."
"Yes," she agreed. "And I'm glad Rina's been accepted at Jane Vincent's school.
They'll make a little lady out of her."
For Laddie, it was a summer of pain and torture, of wild physical sensation and excruciating, conscience-stricken agonies.
He couldn't sleep, he couldn't eat, he was afraid to look at her in the mornings and then, when he saw her, he couldn't bear to let her out of his sight.
Jealous tortures flamed inside him when he saw her smiling or talking to other boys.
Visions born of his knowledge of her would fill his mind and he could see them with her the way he had been. An uneasy, frightened contentment would steal through him when they were together.
And lurking all the while in the deep recesses of his mind was the fear – the fear of discovery, the fear of seeing the hurt and shock and loathing come to the faces of his parents once they knew.
But when she looked at him, smiled at him, touched him, all that was suddenly gone and he would do anything in the world to please her.
He abased himself, groveled before her, wept with the agony of his self-flagellation.
Then the fear would return.
Because there was no escaping the fact. She was his sister. It was wrong.
It was with a feeling of relief that he saw the crazy summer come to an end.
It was over, he thought. Away from her, he would be able to find himself again, to control the fevers that she set raging in his blood.
When they would come again to the beach next summer, it would be different.
He would be different, she would be different.
No more, he would say to her. No more.
It's wrong.
That was what he believed when he returned to school at the end of that summer.
7.
"I’M PREGNANT," SHE SAID. "I’M GOING TO HAVE a baby."
Laddie felt a dull ache spread over him.
Somehow, this was the way he'd always known it would turn out.
Ever since that first summer two years ago.
He looked up at her, squinting his eyes against the sun.