“How come she’s staying at the Ambers’?” Susan asked of nobody in particular.
“Because her father worked for them,” Kim replied. “Where else would she stay?”
“Well, if you ask me,” Jay-Jay offered, “anyplace would be better than out there. My mother says Miss Edna’s crazy as a loon.”
“Then why’d she let you come with us?” Steve taunted.
“Who said she knows I came?” Jay-Jay shot back. “The only reason I’m coming is that I want to see what that old house looks like inside. Mom says nobody’s been inside it for years.”
“Well, your mom’s full of it,” Jeff put in. “Dr. Henry and Marshal Gurley were there yesterday, and Christie’s dad used to go out there all the time.”
“What do you suppose is going to happen to her?” Steve asked.
“They’ll prob’ly make her go live with her uncle,” Kim suggested. “That’s what happened to Billy Simons.”
“Mom says she doesn’t have any uncles,” Jeff said. “Mom and Dad think they’ll have to adopt her out.”
“I thought they only adopted babies out.”
Now it was Jay-Jay’s turn to be scornful. “Anybody can be adopted out,” she told Kim. “That is,” she added spitefully, “if anybody wants them.”
They turned off the road and began picking columbine, daisies, and Queen Anne’s lace, until each of them was holding a large bouquet. Then, cutting cross-country, they started toward the Amber house, looming in the distance.
“What if Miss Edna answers the door?” Susan, the shyest of the group, asked.
“She won’t,” Jeff assured her. “Dad says she never does anything but sit in the parlor and boss Miss Diana around. Anyway, she’s just an old lady.”
“Well, she scares me,” Susan admitted. “She always looks like she’s mad about something, and the way she looks at you is weird. Like she wishes you were dead, or something.”
“Maybe she does,” Steve teased. “Maybe she’s just waiting to catch you by yourself, then—” He sliced his finger across his neck and hung his tongue out. Susan glared at him.
“That’s not funny, Steve Penrose,” she said, then retreated into silence as her friends all laughed.
* * *
Edna Amber stood at the parlor window, holding the lace curtains back so she could watch the children’s progress across the field. They seemed to be coming toward the house. She called out to Diana, reaching up with her cane to punctuate her words by thumping the ceiling.
“Diana? Diana, I want you!” She waited a moment, and when she failed to hear Diana’s footsteps hurrying along the upstairs corridor, thumped again. “Diana!”
A moment later Diana appeared at the door. “I was in the kitchen, Mother.”
Edna glanced at the clock standing in the corner. “It won’t be lunchtime for at least an hour.”
“I was making some cookies for Christie,” Diana said hesitantly, sure of what was going to come with the admission. Her mother didn’t disappoint her.
“I don’t want you getting attached to that child,” Edna said. “She won’t be here but another day or so, and there’s no sense you getting yourself all worked up.”
Diana sighed impatiently. “Mother, it’s only a batch of cookies. That’s hardly what I’d call ‘getting myself worked up,’ whatever that means.”
Edna glared at her. “Don’t you sass your mother, young lady,” she snapped. Then she pointed toward the window with her cane. “You’d better take care of them,” she said. “I don’t want them on the property.”
Diana went to the window and looked out. She recognized all five of the children coming through the gate. She knew Jeff Crowley best, though she had spoken to each of them at one time or another. But never before had any of them come to the house. She hurried to the door to meet them.
They stood close together on the porch, clutching their bouquets. Jeff Crowley, his face serious, finally spoke.
“We came to see Christie, Miss Diana,” he explained.
Diana’s hands, hidden in the pockets of her apron, clenched into fists, but she smiled at the children. “Well, isn’t that nice,” she said.
“Is she here?” Kim asked. “Can she come out?”
Diana’s smile dissolved into a frown. “She’s upstairs, sleeping,” she explained. She hesitated, then spoke again. “Perhaps you could come back another day. I’m afraid she’s still terribly upset, and I don’t think she wants to see anyone.”
The children glanced at one another and finally Steve Penrose offered Diana his bouquet. “Would you give her these?” One by one the other children surrendered their flowers. Then there was an uncomfortable silence.
“I’ll take them to her as soon as she wakes up,” Diana said at last. She smiled at the children once more, then quickly retreated inside the house. She leaned against the closed door for a moment, her heart pounding. Why had they come? They hadn’t been invited. Did they really only want to visit Christie? Or was it something else? Maybe they had come to spy on her. She tried to dismiss the thought.
I’m just not used to children, she told herself as she went back into the kitchen, her arms still full of the flowers the children had brought. She stood at the sink, her nose buried in the fragrant blossoms, then began hunting for a vase. But as she remembered that the flowers had been brought to Christie, she suddenly changed her mind. She slammed the cupboard shut and returned to the back porch. Her face set in bitterness, she dropped the flowers in the trash. Perhaps the children wouldn’t come back again.
From her window on the third floor Christie watched her friends retreating into the distance.
She was sure they had come to visit her, but if they had, wouldn’t Aunt Diana have called her? She decided she must have been wrong: they must have been bringing the flowers to Diana and Miss Edna.
But it was her father who had died. Why should the flowers have been brought to someone else? She sat on the bed and wondered what to do. Finally, in spite of what Diana had told her, she decided to go downstairs and find out what had happened.
She dressed quickly in the same jeans and shirt she had been wearing the day before. It occurred to her that maybe this afternoon Diana could take her home to get some of her clothes.
When she was dressed, she went down the back stairs and slipped into the kitchen. Working at the counter, stirring a bowl of batter, she found Diana.
“Aunt Diana?”
Startled, Diana whirled around and stared at Christie. “I thought you were staying in your room.”
“I saw some kids,” Christie explained. “Jeff, and some others. I—I thought maybe they were coming to see me.”
Again Diana felt her heart begin to race, but as she faced Christie she was careful not to let her nervousness show. “Why would they want to do that?” she asked.
“They’re my friends,” Christie said. “Didn’t they come to see me?”
Diana shook her head. “They were picking flowers in our field, and they came to ask if it was all right.”
“But I saw them leaving, and they didn’t have the flowers anymore,” Christie protested. “Didn’t they leave them?”
“Yes,” Diana replied. “But I threw them away. Miss Edna’s allergic to flowers.”
Christie stood still, trying to make sense of it all, but like so much that had happened since yesterday, it didn’t make any sense.
Slowly she climbed back up to the third floor and went into the nursery.
She spent the rest of the day sleeping fitfully and wishing her father would come and get her.
But she was beginning to realize that no one was going to come for her ever again.
She was all alone in the world.
5
On the day of the funeral for Elliot Lyons, nearly the whole town turned out, gathering together on the small plot of land neatly enclosed by a black wrought-iron fence, where the dead of Amberton waited patiently for their resurrection.
It was a brig
ht, clear morning that promised warmth in the afternoon, and the valley, spreading away from the village, was still a vivid green with not a hint yet of the dusty brown that would prevail as the summer wore on. Above Amberton the sky formed an immense dome that seemed to dwarf the village. It was the sort of day that made the citizens of Amberton glad to be alive, yet at the same time managed to remind them of their own mortality.
Now, as she stood in the shade of the willows that huddled over the graveyard like silent mourners, Diana Amber was glad she had not followed her impulse to leave her coat at home. But it was more than the morning air that was giving her a chill. She had never liked funerals, and it seemed to her that she had been to so many. Since she was a child her mother had insisted that it was the duty of the Ambers to attend every funeral, whether or not they had been close to those who had died. Though Edna insisted that the purpose was only to pay their respects to the dead, Diana had always silently suspected that it was also Edna’s intent to display the flag—the Amber flag—lest anyone suggest that the Ambers had stayed away out of a sense of shame over the number of deaths their own wealth had cost.
Though the mine had been closed for nearly half a century, Edna had continued her tradition of never missing a funeral, and there were those in Amberton who joked among themselves that the only proof of Edna Amber’s eventual death would be her failure to be among those present at her own funeral. Today was no exception. She stood next to her daughter, one hand grasping Diana’s arm, while the other held the head of her ever-present cane. On the other side of Diana, Christie Lyons stood, her eyes fixed on the coffin resting on planks above the open grave.
Christie’s face was placid, belying the turmoil that was inside her. More than anything right now, she wished she were in the coffin with her father, going wherever it was that he had gone. But that would mean she would be dead, and sad though she was, she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to be dead. What she wanted, she guessed, was for her father not to be dead either. She wished she could close her eyes, pray very, very hard, and then open her eyes and see her father standing there, telling her that he wasn’t dead after all and that everything was going to be all right. But that, she knew, wasn’t going to happen. Still, maybe if she prayed hard enough …
Unconsciously she squeezed Diana’s hand, and when Diana drew her closer, Christie didn’t resist. She never knew what to expect from Diana. Most of the time Diana seemed to love her, but sometimes, for reasons Christie could never quite understand, Diana seemed to be angry at her. She was starting to get used to it though, and had decided that once she learned what she was supposed to do, things would be all right. So far, today, they had been all right.
She pulled her eyes away from her father’s coffin and looked at the crowd that was gathering in the cemetery. Most of them were strangers to her, but she waved shyly to her few friends.
Crowded close together were Jeff Crowley, Kim Sandler, Steve Penrose, and Jay-Jay Jennings. As Christie waved they smiled hesitantly at her and whispered among themselves.
The funeral began, and as Reverend Jennings talked about her father, Christie began to cry. It was, at last, real. Both her parents were gone now, and she would never see them again.
Diana Amber tried to listen to the minister’s words, but as Jennings droned on in his steady monotone, her mind began to wander. Her eyes drifted to Bill Henry, standing with Dan Gurley, and for a moment their glances met. There was a warmth in Bill’s eyes that told Diana that even after all the years that had passed since their long-ago courtship, he still cared for her; it wasn’t the love she had once seen in his eyes, but something else—something that made her vaguely angry. She felt robbed of something, and she wanted it back. If it hadn’t been for her illness, she would have married Bill, despite her mother. But now it was too late.
She thought about that for a while, trying to remember what had been wrong with her. It was gone; the memory of that illness locked away with the other memories. Sometimes, when the wind blew, she would feel the fringes of the memories, like faraway voices calling to her, but they never seemed to come close enough for her to really grasp them.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the tightening of her mother’s grip on her arm, and as she shifted her attention from Bill to the woman beside her, Diana realized that it was as if Edna had known what she was thinking. Edna’s blue eyes blazed, and her face was drawn into an admonitory scowl, but as soon as she had Diana’s attention her expression cleared and her grip eased. Then both women were again listening to the words of Jerome Jennings as he eulogized the life of a man he had barely known.
Across from the Ambers, Dan Gurley nudged Bill Henry and spoke just loudly enough so only the doctor could hear.
“Still runs the whole show, doesn’t she?”
Bill nodded, feeling oddly embarrassed by the knowledge that the marshal had witnessed what had just happened. Diana had lived her life submitting to her mother’s domination, and it was no secret. Still, Bill wished she would find the strength to break away from her mother. Perhaps, he reflected, the child would do it. People would do practically anything for a child they cared about. And Diana certainly seemed to care about Christie.
“I’ll bet Miss Edna’s going to love having the reception this afternoon,” he heard Dan saying. “The whole town tramping through her house? Huh!”
“What makes you think it’s going to be in the house?” Bill whispered. Then, as Dan Gurley’s expression shifted from amusement to puzzlement, Bill began edging his way through the crowd, intent on being at Diana’s side when Reverend Jennings eventually came to the final prayer.
As the people of Amberton moved slowly past them, offering a few murmured words of sympathy to Christie and uncertain smiles to the Amber women, Diana again began to drift. A sound was coming to her, as though from within her mind. It was a sound she had lived with for many years now, though it usually came to her at night when the wind was blowing.
But today was bright and clear, and the wind was still.
And yet the sound was there.
A baby, crying out for its mother.
Instinctively Diana knelt next to Christie and took the child in her arms.
“It’s all right, baby,” she whispered. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
Christie, who had been standing silently through the service, looked into Diana’s eyes, perplexed. It almost seemed as if the woman were talking to someone else.
“I’m all right, Aunt Diana,” she whispered.
“But you were crying,” Diana whispered back.
Christie shuddered, remembering what had happened when Diana had found her crying in the nursery. She had been careful not to cry since that morning. “No, I wasn’t,” she insisted, stiffening in Diana’s arms.
“But you were,” Diana insisted. “I heard you.”
And then, with her father’s body being lowered into the ground, Christie did let herself cry. This time Diana only soothed her.
A few feet away, Bill Henry stood watching Diana comfort the child. Her love for Christie was apparent, and Bill wondered if perhaps her adopting the little girl might not be the best thing that could happen, not only for Diana, but for Christie, too.
Then his eyes locked on Miss Edna.
There she stood, both hands on her cane now, her face a study in anger as she watched her daughter hold the crying child. Whatever was to happen, Bill decided, was not going to be easy. Not for Diana, and not for Christie, either.
“It seems to me,” Edna said as Diana carefully maneuvered their ancient Cadillac out of the cemetery, “that if they want to have a reception, they should have it at the Crowleys’.”
Diana glanced across Christie to her mother, but Edna was staring straight ahead.
“We’ll talk about it when we get home, Mother,” she replied.
“There really isn’t any point in talking about it at all, is there? I mean, it’s done, and everyone in town is going to be there, and no one really
cares what I want, do they?” Edna began tapping the end of her cane against the floorboards of the car.
Instead of saying anything Diana merely gunned the engine, and the Cadillac lumbered forward, its transmission grinding at the strain.
“You’re going to ruin a perfectly good car if you’re not careful,” Edna snapped. The Cadillac, a 1934 touring car, was one of the few things Edna was willing to spend money to maintain, and it looked brand-new, its green paint shining in the sunlight, its top folded down, its fender-mounted spare tires standing proudly on either side of its long hood. For Diana, though, the car—its upkeep, and her driving of it—was only one more source of criticism, and she wished she could convince her mother to trade it in for something more practical. It was, however, one more thing she knew she would never accomplish.
Let me get home, and let me get Christie out of the car and let people start arriving before I go crazy, Diana prayed. I won’t respond. No matter what she says, I won’t respond. And then everybody will be there, and for a while I’ll have other people to talk to, and afterward it will be over, and she can start on something else.
And what she’d start on would be Christie, Diana knew. For three days her mother had been insisting that it was wrong for them to have Christie in the house; that sooner or later Diana was going to have to face reality, and reality was that the child was going to become a ward of the state. Thus far she had not weakened in her opposition to Diana’s wish to adopt the child. Over the years Edna had made it all too clear that she had no use for children, that she had done her duty in raising Diana, and that all she wanted in life was to be left alone with Diana to grow old in peace. But Diana still clung to the idea that somehow she would be allowed to keep Christie, to raise her as her own. To have Christie belong to her as she, Diana, had belonged to her mother.
Diana paused to let Edna out of the car, then drove around into the garage. Christie helped her pull the rickety sliding door closed, then followed her through the back door into the kitchen.