"Then they sent us to Grandmother in July. I guess they thought she was the best person to take care of us." Daphne's voice was flat and lifeless.
"You didn't have any other relatives?"
Daphne shook her head. "Neither my mother nor my father had any brothers or sisters, and my mother's parents died before I was born. She did have some cousins and aunts, I think, but I never met them. They lived in Maine. That's where she was born."
"Maybe there's some way you could find them."
Daphne looked at me. The wind played with her hair so that strands of it lifted and fell around her face, making it hard to read her expression. "What's the use?" she asked dully, turning away from me to gaze across the valley.
"Well, I was thinking that if anything happened to your grandmother, if she got worse or something, maybe you could live with them. Then you wouldn't have to worry about foster homes and things like that."
Daphne sighed. "I told you Grandmother will be better in the spring." Daphne tossed her apple core far out into the air and watched it fall down into the valley. "Maybe an apple tree will grow down there, and I'll come back and find it when I'm grown up."
"What are you going to be when you grow up?" I asked, wanting to change the subject to something more pleasant.
"An illustrator, of course." Daphne smiled at me. "And you're going to be a writer. We'll do all our books together, and we'll live in Boston. I know just the street. We can share an apartment in an old townhouse, the kind with a walled-in garden behind it. My studio will have a skylight in the ceiling, and we'll hang plants everywhere."
I stretched out flat on the rock and smiled up at the blue sky. "My den will have a skylight, too, and we'll have lots of cats. A black one, a marmalade one, a calico, a tabby, and a couple of Siamese."
"We'll give parties, and the people who come to them will all be artists and writers."
"We won't know anybody like Sherry and Michelle and Tony."
"No. Our friends will be smart and interesting." Daphne laughed. "Like us. Right?"
I laughed too. "Right."
"And we'll never get married and live boring lives. We'll just have men friends. Lots of them. And they'll all smoke pipes and talk about philosophy and be desperately in love with us."
It was such a daring thought that I laughed even harder. "You're crazy, do you know that?"
"Sure. Crazy people are lots more interesting than normal people. Just look at Sherry and Michelle." She wrinkled her nose and sprang to her feet. "Come on, Jessica, we'd better start walking back."
Taking a long, lingering look at the valley below us, I turned and scrambled over the rock behind Daphne. A crow flew by overhead, cawing, and somewhere below us a dog barked.
About halfway down the hill, we stopped to rest on a fallen tree. Suddenly Daphne laid a hand on my arm and pointed. About fifteen feet away, a deer stepped out of the trees. She paused and sniffed the air. Neither of us made a sound as she moved gracefully down the bank of a small stream and bent to drink the water. Behind her, two more deer appeared, another doe and a young stag. They, too, drank from the stream. Then, sniffing once more, the three of them waded across the stream and vanished among the trees.
"I've never seen a real deer before," I whispered.
"I saw one once standing in the woods, so still I thought I was imagining him. But he wasn't nearly as close as they were." Daphne turned to me, her eyes shining. "Maybe it's an omen. Maybe it means something good will happen to us."
I nodded. "Let's always be very quiet when we're in the woods. Maybe we'll see them again."
Like Indians, we slipped off the limb and walked as silently as we could, trying not to rustle the fallen leaves. As we reached the edge of the woods, I looked across the field toward the road. "Is that Hope down there by the mailbox?"
Daphne nodded. "I told her not to leave Grandmother alone!" Breaking into a run, she dashed across the field toward Hope.
"Daphne!" Hope cried. "You didn't tell me Jessica was coming!"
"Why aren't you home with Grandmother?" Daphne sounded angry.
Hope frowned. "She fell asleep, and I got lonesome. I came out to look for you. You said you were getting more bottles and cans." Hope looked accusingly at Daphne.
"I did. Look." Daphne climbed down into a gully and pulled a black plastic garbage bag out of the bushes. From the clunking sounds inside, I could tell it was full of bottles.
"Will it be enough to buy more hot dogs?" Hope asked.
"I think so. A small pack at least. Or a jar of peanut butter."
"I'd rather have hot dogs." Hope smiled at me. "Want to go to McDonald's, Jessica?"
I shook my head. "I don't have any money, Hope." Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my last sandwich. "Do you want this?"
Hope took it and bit right into it. "Thank you," she said, her mouth full of peanut butter.
"Was Grandmother feeling all right?" Daphne asked Hope.
Hope nodded. "She's happy because Daddy's coming home soon, maybe tomorrow, she said."
"Don't talk like that, Hope," Daphne said sharply.
"It's true." Hope smiled. "She saw him this morning on the front porch."
"She didn't see anyone, Hope." Daphne frowned. "You can't see someone who's dead."
"He's not dead, Daphne. They never sent his body back. He was missing, not dead. And now he's coming home." Hope wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and licked her fingers. "Next time, can mine have jelly on it, Jessica?"
Daphne bit her lip. "Hope, you have to understand. In Vietnam lots of soldiers died, but no one found their bodies, so they were called 'missing.' They were really dead, though. Daddy is dead. He can't come back."
"Then how come I saw him, too, Miss Smarty?" Hope put her hands on her hips and stared up at Daphne, her eyes gleaming. "He was standing there, I saw him. So there!"
"Oh, Hope." Daphne knelt down and put her arms around Hope. "Daddy would come home if he could, and so would Mommy. But they can't, Hope, they can't!"
Angrily Hope pulled away. "I saw him! I saw him!" she screamed. "Grandmother told me where to look, and I saw him!" Turning around, she ran down the drive toward the house, her hair swirling around her shoulders.
"Daphne, what's she talking about?" The air around me seemed full of ghosts and my scalp felt prickly.
Daphne shook her head. "It's Grandmother. She's talked about seeing Daddy so much that Hope's getting as crazy as she is." She clapped her hand over her mouth. "I didn't mean that! She's not crazy, she's just, just..."
Daphne's voice trailed off and she looked away from me, toward the house, at Hope running up the steps and opening the door. "I love my grandmother," she whispered. "I really do."
"I know." I patted her arm.
"She will get better in the spring, Jessica. Won't she?" Daphne looked at me, her eyes wide and wet with tears.
"I hope so." Dropping my eyes, I stared at the ground. I couldn't tell her what Josh had said. She was too upset already.
"I better go see if Hope is all right. I don't want her to upset Grandmother." Daphne backed away, down the drive, lugging the plastic bag. "Thanks for coming to see me. I'm glad we saw the deer and the hawk."
"Me, too." I watched Daphne back farther away, wanting to do something for her, but not knowing what.
"Will you come back next Saturday?" she asked.
I nodded. "Maybe I'll come out one day after school, too, if the weather stays warm."
"Okay." Daphne smiled and waved. "'Bye, Jessica."
"'Bye." For a few seconds I stood still and watched her hurrying toward the house, bumping the plastic bag along behind her. Then I turned away and walked slowly home.
Thirteen
AS THE MONTH of February dragged itself by, I walked out to Daphne's house at least once a week, sometimes after school and always on Saturday. Once in a while we took Hope to McDonald's, but usually we climbed the path through the woods to our favorite spot above the Patapsco Valley. We s
aw the hawk almost every time, but we never saw the deer again, no matter how quietly we walked.
Although I always took the mice with me, we didn't play with them unless Hope was along. We usually had too many things to talk about. Sometimes Daphne shared her worries about her grandmother with me, but more often we discussed books we'd read or daydreamed about our future as a great author-illustrator team.
One of our favorite pastimes was making fun of Michelle and Sherry. Daphne could imitate them perfectly. She made me laugh until my sides ached, prancing around and saying exactly the sort of dumb things they said.
On my long walks home from her house, I often wondered how I'd gotten along without Daphne to talk to. Never had I known anyone who made me feel so comfortable.
Around her, I didn't have to worry about being immature or odd. As she said, our talents made us different from other people, but not strange.
"And besides," she liked to say whenever I was feeling depressed about something Michelle had said or done to me, "all artists and writers have unhappy childhoods. They have to suffer. It's what makes them creative."
The only cloud on the horizon of our friendship was Mrs. Woodleigh. The weather was getting better, but she wasn't. If anything, she was getting worse. And Daphne wouldn't face it. No matter how irrational her grandmother was, Daphne insisted that she was just having a bad day. I couldn't say a word against Mrs. Woodleigh without upsetting Daphne, so I had to bite my lip and keep my thoughts to myself.
One afternoon late in February, Daphne invited me into the house. It was a cold, blustery day, the sort that drives people inside. After convincing me that her grandmother was asleep, Daphne led me quietly upstairs.
Most of the rooms were empty. The wind rattled the windows in their frames, and strips of wallpaper, coming loose from the wall, fluttered in the drafts. The house was hardly any warmer than the front yard, and we roamed from room to room, searching for a cozy corner.
Pausing by an old trunk in a room lined with stacks of newspapers, Daphne opened the lid.
"Want to see what my grandmother looked like a long time ago?" She lifted a pile of photographs from a box and motioned me to sit down beside her.
I studied the brownish pictures spread out on the floor. A pretty girl, looking very much like Daphne, smiled up at me. Sometimes alone and sometimes in a group of laughing people, Mrs. Woodleigh posed happily for the camera.
"She was so pretty," I whispered. It seemed tragic that Mrs. Woodleigh had once been young and happy, that she had never dreamed that one day she would be an old woman in a cold, dark house, full of misery and fear.
Daphne nodded, her face sad. I knew she was thinking the same thing I was thinking.
Shuffling through the photographs, she pointed to a picture of a handsome young man. "This is my grandfather. And look, here's Grandmother holding my father when he was a baby."
On and on the pictures went, telling the story of Mrs. Woodleigh's life. Gradually the baby grew, and the man and the woman got older.
"This is my mother," Daphne whispered, showing me a group of wedding pictures.
"She looks just like Hope, doesn't she?" I handed the photos back to Daphne, and she laid them aside. Everyone seemed so happy clustered around the smiling bride and groom! that I couldn't bear to look at them.
"And—ta-da!—here I am!" Daphne showed me a fat little baby held aloft in her father's arms.
There were a few more pictures of Daphne, growing from a laughing baby into a solemn little girl with long hair. The last photograph was of her father, wearing an army uniform.
"Well, that's it." Daphne scooped up the pile of pictures and dumped them back into the box. "My family history."
As Daphne put the box in the trunk, we heard footsteps pattering down the hall toward us. I clutched Daphne's arm, terrified of encountering Mrs. Woodleigh.
But it was only Hope. "Look, Jessica." Kneeling next to me, she showed me what she was carrying. "Callie had kittens yesterday. Did Daphne tell you?"
"Oh, can I hold him?" I held out my hands, and very carefully, Hope laid a tiny black kitten in them.
"His eyes aren't even open," she whispered, stroking his head lightly with one small finger.
"He's beautiful," I sighed. "How many did she have?"
"Five, but he's the only black one. All the rest are tabbies."
I laid my cheek next to his back, loving the soft, fluffy feel of him. "I've always wanted a black cat." As I patted him gently, I heard him purr, a tiny rumbling sound almost too loud to come from such a little creature. "If you were mine, I'd name you Raven," I told him, "because you're black all over and very beautiful."
"Do you want to keep him?" Hope asked.
"I'd love to, but we have Snuff. I don't think Mom would let me have two cats."
"Snuff needs a friend," Hope said. "Raven could keep her company."
"But how about your grandmother? Maybe she wouldn't want me to take him."
"Considering how many cats we already have, I doubt she'd miss him," Daphne said.
"Besides, it will be one less cat to eat our hot dogs," Hope said.
That evening I asked Mom about the kitten.
"Oh, Jess, we have one cat. Isn't Snuff enough?"
I frowned at Snuff quietly washing herself in a corner of the room. "You know what a grump she is. This kitten is so sweet and pretty. I just know he'd grow up to be the kind of cat who sits on your lap and purrs. And I'd do everything. Feed him and change his litter box and clean up any mess he makes. You wouldn't have to do anything, Mom. Please?"
Mom smiled. "Well, I'll think about it. Snuff is getting old and crotchety. It might be nice to have a kitten around the house."
I hugged her. "You're the most wonderful mother in the whole world!"
"Especially when I say yes, right?" Mom hugged me back. "But don't blame me if Snuff eats him for dinner!"
The first day of March came roaring in like a lion on a rampage, bringing snow and sleet and all sorts of horrible weather. I couldn't go to Daphne's for a whole week. She called me a couple of times from McDonald's, though, to keep me up to date on the kitten's progress.
"It's getting warm, isn't it?" Hope asked the next time I saw them. "Soon it will be spring and Daddy will be here for sure. It's just the bad weather that's making him stay away."
Ignoring Hope's remark, Daphne looked at me. "Jessica and I are going to take a long walk, Hope."
"Can I come, too?" Hope capered about. "We could play mice. We haven't done that for a long time." She took Baby Mouse out of her pocket. "Where's Princess Heatherfern?" She walked Baby Mouse up my sleeve.
"I didn't bring her." I smiled apologetically at Hope.
"You go on home and keep Grandmother company," Daphne said to Hope.
"No." Hope shook her head vigorously and frowned. "She scares me when she talks about the crack. And she's asleep anyway. I want to go with you and Jessica."
Daphne sighed. "We're climbing up to the rocks, Hope. The last time you came with us, you fussed and complained about being tired."
"I won't get tired this time, I promise!" Hope ran ahead of us across the field. "Come on, come on! You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!" she shouted.
Daphne and I ran after her and caught her easily. "Now remember, be quiet in the woods and we might see the deer," Daphne cautioned Hope as she led us silently up the path.
Although we didn't say a word until we reached the top of the hill, we didn't see a sign of the deer. I was beginning to think they'd left the woods or that something awful had happened to them, but I didn't mention my fears. At the very thought of hunters, I knew Hope would begin to cry.
Pulling apples and sandwiches out of my pockets, I passed them around. For a long time, we sat quietly, eating and watching the clouds sail by.
"It's feels like spring today, doesn't it?" Daphne asked. "The trees in the valley look so soft. I wish I could reach out and stroke them. They'd feel like big cats."
&nbs
p; "The clouds, too," Hope said. "See that one? It's a little fluffy lamb that's lost its mommy and it's all alone." Hope looked at the sky sadly, her attention focused on one cloud drifting along all by itself near the horizon. "It's like me," she added.
"No, it's not." Daphne put an arm around Hope and hugged her. "You have me."
"I miss Mommy." Hope looked up at Daphne. "If Daddy comes back, will he bring Mommy with him?"
Daphne shook her head. "No, Hope."
Hope pulled away and sat down on a rock by herself. "Poor little cloud," she said to the sky.
Daphne stood up. "We'd better go back. Grandmother shouldn't be alone too long."
"I want to stay here," Hope said.
"Then you'll have to stay all by yourself," Daphne said. Without looking at Hope, she started down the path.
Worriedly, I took Hope's hand. "Come on. You don't want to sit here all alone."
Yanking her hand away, Hope frowned at me. "Yes, I do. I want to be all by myself. Nobody loves me anyway."
"Daphne loves you, Hope." I looked over my shoulder, but Daphne was already out of sight. "Come on." She shook her head. "No."
"Jessica," Daphne called from somewhere in the woods. "Are you coming?"
"Hope," I implored.
"Just leave her there," Daphne called again.
Uncertainly, I tried counting, a technique I'd seen mothers use at swimming pools, in department stores, at tot lots, wherever children loitered. "One, two, three." My voice rose pleadingly. "When I get to ten, I'm leaving."
"I don't care." Hope turned her back.
"Four, five..." I counted. At ten nothing happened. "Well, good-bye, Hope, I'm going."
She didn't respond, but Daphne called again. Slowly I walked across the rocks to the path, glancing back frequently at Hope. She just sat there, her back still turned to me.
When I caught up with Daphne, I smiled apologetically. "Do you think it's all right to leave her there all alone?"