Pawns

  Praise for Pawns

  “Roberts once again proves her craftsmanship in this tale of mystery and intrigue.”

  —SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL

  Chapter 1

  The doorbell rang.

  Teddi put down her book and gave herself a cursory glance in the hall mirror as she passed it. Looking at your own image might be a primary preoccupation for many fourteen-year-olds, but she didn’t like her looks all that much. She was too skinny, too pale, and her dishwater-blond hair was no help.

  She hesitated, hoping maybe Mamie would show up to answer the summons, but there was no indication that she was even in the house. Probably out in back, weeding the garden, Teddi thought.

  She reached for the knob and opened the door.

  A girl stood there. Older than Teddi, maybe nineteen or twenty, at a guess. Rather pretty, in a washed-out way, was Teddi’s initial evaluation. Pale brown hair, oddly pale brown eyes as well. The most notable thing about her was that she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy.

  The girl smiled a bit uncertainly.

  “Yes?” Teddi asked. “We’re not interested in buying anything.”

  The smile became tremulous. “I’m Dora,” she said, twisting her hands together over her bulging stomach.

  Teddi stared at her blankly. She’d never heard Mamie mention anyone by that name.

  “Dora,” the girl repeated nervously. And then, realizing that something more was necessary, she added, “Dora, Ricky’s wife.”

  For a few seconds the words did not register. And then, as realization slowly dawned, Teddi drew in a sharp breath.

  Ricky’s wife?

  There was a roaring in her ears, and her vision dimmed momentarily. She held on to the doorknob, bracing against the dizziness that swept over her. Her mouth was so dry, she could barely form the words.

  “Ricky’s wife?”

  Dora’s smile wavered. “I don’t think I know who you are. Ricky didn’t have a sister, did he?”

  Teddi swallowed. “No, I’m . . . I lived next door, until my father died. . . . I’m Teddi.”

  “Oh, and you’re visiting Mamie?” Dora didn’t wait for a reply, but bent her knees enough to pick up the two suitcases Teddi hadn’t noticed until now. “How nice of you. I hope Mamie—Mrs. Thrane—is here?”

  She took two steps forward, without being invited, and involuntarily Teddi stepped backward, out of her way. This allowed Dora to enter the house, where her heels clicked on the hardwood floor.

  “Teddi, have you seen my . . .”

  Behind her, Mamie’s voice faltered to a stop upon seeing that they had a visitor. “Oh. Who’s this?”

  Teddi’s vision had cleared, though she still felt she was swallowing cotton.

  Even then, she would swear later, she had a premonition of disaster in the making, though she couldn’t have explained why. Not exactly.

  Teddi tried to speak, but it was Dora who made it first. “Mrs. Thrane? Mamie?”

  “Yes,” Mamie said, approaching them, peeling off a gardening glove. A tentative smile touched her lips.

  “I’m Dora,” the girl said, moistening her lips while Teddi remained frozen, unable even to close the front door.

  “Dora?” Mamie, too, echoed the name, bewildered.

  “Ricky’s wife,” Dora asserted, allowing her smile to appear again, as if anticipating Mamie’s welcome.

  For long seconds Mamie stood there, her graying hair slightly mussed, the knees of her faded jeans revealing dirt and moisture, her own smile congealing on her lips. Her gaze swung toward Teddi, evaluating her reaction, and then her ungloved hand crept to her throat.

  It was a good thing there was a chair beside the hall table. Mamie sank onto it as the blood drained from her face.

  When Mamie, too, was stricken, Teddi threw off her own shock. “I’ll get you a glass of water,” she offered, and fled past the newcomer toward the kitchen.

  Behind her she heard Mamie say, “I’m afraid I don’t understand.” And then the girl’s voice, full of concern: “You mean he didn’t tell you about me?”

  Mamie’s words were tremulous. “I’m afraid I misunderstood you. You couldn’t have said you were Ricky’s wife.”

  “Oh, dear,” Dora said in distress. “I’m so sorry. I was sure he would have told you. . . .”

  In the kitchen, Teddi turned on the cold water tap and filled a glass, then hurried back to Mamie with it.

  The older woman seemed incapable of lifting a hand to take it, so Teddi held it for her. Mamie took only a few sips.

  Dora had put down the suitcases and was again twisting her hands together. Her eyes sought Teddi’s.

  “I didn’t expect to be a horrible surprise to her. Ricky never told me he’d written to his mother about me, but I assumed he had. . . .”

  Teddi’s response came painfully. “Ricky’s dead. He died two weeks ago in a plane crash.”

  Dora bit her lip. “Yes. Only twenty-six years old, and to be snuffed out like that, in an instant. Please, Mamie—may I call you that, or would you prefer that I call you Mother? I don’t have a mother of my own, not since I was twelve, and I—” She faltered, then deliberately firmed up her voice. “I was hoping to find a family here. . . .”

  Mamie’s throat worked before she could speak. “My . . . my other daughter-in-law calls me Mamie,” she said.

  “Mamie, then.” Dora gave them a watery smile. “It’s such a sad way to meet, isn’t it? Not at all the way I’d imagined. Well, I wonder if I could sit down? I walked the last few blocks from the bus stop, and I get tired pretty fast these days.” For a moment her hand rested protectively on her bulging stomach.

  Mamie was pulling herself together with an effort. “Yes, of course. Let’s go into the living room.” She reached out a hand to Teddi, and it was ice-cold as Teddi helped her to her feet.

  They made their way into the cozy sitting room, full of old but comfortable furniture. Teddi suddenly saw it through a stranger’s eyes. Shabby, it was. A little untidy, with her own book lying on the end of the couch, and today’s paper on the floor beside Mamie’s chair.

  Mamie almost slid into her rocker, and for once she didn’t immediately put her feet up onto the stool. It was as if the effort was too much for her.

  Dora had brought her luggage with her, putting both cases down on the edge of the rug at the doorway. She sank onto the couch at an angle from Mamie’s chair, then looked up at the hovering Teddi.

  “Thank you, Teddi, is it? I think Mamie and I can manage by ourselves now, if you want to run on home.”

  Teddi sucked in an uncomfortable breath. “I am home. I live here now.”

  “Oh.” Dora was disconcerted. “I’m sorry, I thought you were a neighbor.” She forgot about Teddi, and leaned forward to cover Mamie’s hand where it rested on the arm of the rocker. “We’ll have to comfort each other,” she said. “It’s so hard to believe, isn’t it? That Ricky’s gone. He was so . . . so vital. . . .”

  She stopped, groped in the pocket of her maternity dress for a handkerchief, and pressed it to her face, overcome with emotion.

  “We held a memorial service for him last week. Thursday,” Mamie said faintly. “At our church, where he used to go to Sunday school when he was a little boy.”

  The handkerchief came down and was twisted between Dora’s fingers. “It’s such a pity his body wasn’t recovered. That there can’t even be a grave to visit.”

  “My . . . my husband doesn’t have a grave, either,” Mamie managed. “He wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered up in the mountains, where he loved to hike.”

  “Does it bother you,” Dora asked earnestly, “that he doesn’t have a grave?”

  “No.” Mamie spoke softly. “Now I feel that he’s . . . everywhere. Anyplace I
go.”

  Dora nodded. “Yes. I can see that. How sad, to lose first a husband and now a son.” She drew in a deep breath, and again patted her belly. “I hope . . . I hope it will be some consolation to you now that you will have a grandchild. It’s a boy. We talked about naming him and decided on Daniel Richard Thrane, and I guess that’s what I’ll go with. Unless you’d particularly like his first name to be the same as his father’s? A little Ricky?”

  Teddi felt as if she were being pelted with stones, none of them big enough to knock her over, but leaving her bruised. She wanted to take Mamie off in another room, to hug her, to give her time to assimilate this unexpected turn of events.

  There was no question but that all the pain had come rushing back, the pain that had begun the moment the call had come from the airline and had lasted right on through the services at the church, where old friends from years back had hugged Mamie and squeezed her hands, and murmured words of condolence. They had brought food to the house, just as other neighbors had done when Teddi’s mother had died. And now, when the grief hadn’t even really subsided yet, it was being resurrected.

  The idea of a grandson was an unexpected one. Teddi felt rocked back on her heels, and she could see that Mamie was considerably more shaken than she was herself.

  Dora was waiting for a response, but as yet Mamie was incapable of deciding on a name for a grandchild she’d just learned about. Dora looked up at Teddi.

  “I wonder if I might use your bathroom? I’m at a stage where I need to go about every half hour. That’s normal during pregnancy.”

  “Yes, of course,” Teddi said, and led the way down the hallway.

  She decided she didn’t need to wait for Dora to relieve herself. She could easily find her way back to the living room. Teddi returned to Mamie’s side and sank onto her knees at Mamie’s feet.

  Mamie’s lips were trembling as she closed a hand around Teddi’s when it was offered.

  “Ricky’s wife,” she said. “I never dreamed he had gotten married. I can’t imagine why he didn’t write and tell me that.”

  “Ricky never wrote very often,” Teddi reminded her. Yet from the look of Dora, she was very close to delivering her baby, which meant that the marriage had probably taken place quite a while ago. And there were telephones. Wouldn’t you think Ricky would have been proud enough to have called his mother and told her that she was to become a grandmother?

  Down the hallway, the toilet flushed.

  Teddi wished desperately that she could think of something helpful to say, but all she could do was cling to Mamie’s hand.

  Clearly Dora had come to stay. The two suitcases stood as silent testimony to that. And she’d said, “I was hoping to find a family here.”

  What did that do to Teddi’s own prospects for staying here in Mamie’s house?

  Chapter 2

  Teddi had been living with Mamie for only the past four months. Before that, she’d lived next door since she was six years old.

  Mamie and Mrs. Stuart, Teddi’s mom, hadn’t been close friends. They were, after all, a generation apart in age. But they’d been cordial, calling out greetings, accepting package deliveries for one another, sometimes talking about the flowers and vegetables that Mamie raised.

  That time seemed far in the distant past. Before her mom got sick, Teddi hadn’t found it necessary to seek out another mother figure, but she and Mamie had been friendly enough. Once in a while Mamie had hired her to help pull weeds, which they had done together. After an hour or two in the hot sun, Mamie had invited her inside for a cold drink before she went home.

  When Gloria Stuart was diagnosed with cancer and became unable to do all the things she’d done earlier, however, the situation had changed.

  Everybody in the neighborhood had rallied around with casseroles and cakes and offers to run errands. Nobody was more attentive than Mamie, though she’d kept it all low-key.

  “I had extra asparagus and thought you might like some,” she’d say, popping in with a small casserole dish. Or, “I baked bread today and thought you might like a loaf.”

  Occasionally, when Teddi was coming home from school, Mamie would call out to her from the doorway, “Cookie day, Teddi. Would you like a few?”

  At first Teddi had simply eaten the cookies and gone home. Gradually milk was added to the cookies, and during periods when her mother had to be hospitalized, she joined Mamie for simple suppers because her father stayed with his wife.

  And gradually, too, they’d talked and begun to share their lives.

  Ricky was still living at home until about a year and a half ago. He was a tall, dark, good-looking guy, always joking and teasing when he saw her. He was a lot older than Teddi, so he didn’t really pay special attention to her, of course.

  She’d had a crush on him since she was about eleven, in that silly hopeless way little girls have. One day he’d given her a ride home when it was raining, and insisted on treating her to a hot chocolate because, he said, he wanted one.

  He hadn’t talked down to her because he was twelve years older. Teddi appreciated that.

  Although it didn’t happen often, Teddi was pleased when Ricky was home when she went over to see Mamie. Even with the difference in their ages, they discovered they liked a lot of the same books, though Ricky had outgrown some of them. Still, he remembered how he’d cherished the best of them, and he was willing to talk about them while Teddi was discovering them.

  Once, she sat behind him at the movies when he was with a pretty girl. She was distracted from the screen by his profile when he turned to the girl, and by his laughter, which was contagious.

  And then, during a romantic scene in glowing Technicolor, she had watched as Ricky bent his head and kissed the girl.

  Teddi felt her stomach twist with a sensation she’d never experienced before. She envied the girl. Someday, she hoped, a boy would kiss her that way.

  It was disappointing when Ricky left home, though of course she’d always known he’d never pay any real attention to her. Mamie told her he’d gotten a job in San Diego.

  Teddi remembered how happy Mamie had been to get a letter from him. “He’s not much for writing,” she confessed. “His dad was like that, too.”

  Teddi’d sort of hoped that someday he’d come back to Marysville and stay. Maybe, by then, twelve years’ difference in age wouldn’t matter so much.

  Of course he never had, and now he never would. Instead there was Dora.

  Dora was a totally unexpected development. She was rather quiet, and after she’d rested a bit there was more color in her cheeks, making her more attractive.

  She was commendably solicitous of Mamie. “Would you like to rest a bit? I guess my coming here was really a shock.”

  Mamie, who never rested in the daytime, agreed. “Maybe I will lie down for half an hour or so.”

  Dora’s smile encouraged her. “I’m tired, too. Being pregnant is exhausting. Would you show me where I’ll be sleeping?”

  The words jolted Teddi anew. Clearly Dora was taking it for granted that she was staying, moving in with Mamie.

  “I had thought maybe . . . Ricky’s old room?” Dora suggested.

  Teddi felt prickles along her arms, as if a cold wind had blown over her.

  “Well, Teddi’s in Ricky’s old room now,” Mamie said uncertainly. Mamie was almost never uncertain about anything.

  “Oh.” The word was heavy with disappointment. “Well . . .”

  Teddi didn’t want to say anything, but she didn’t want Mamie put on the spot, either. “There’s that storage room upstairs,” she said. “That could be cleaned out.”

  Dora proffered a grateful smile. “You wouldn’t mind moving up there? Stairs aren’t so handy for someone who’s pregnant. Especially with my getting up so often during the night.”

  So it was Teddi who adjusted, of course. What else could she do?

  Even before she moved out of Ricky’s room—which she had come to think of as her room—Do
ra took a nap on Teddi’s bed.

  “You don’t mind, do you? I’m just awfully tired. A nap before supper would be wonderful.”

  So Teddi went upstairs and surveyed the room that had never been intended for much more than a storage place.

  At one time Ricky and his older brother, Ned, had played up there on rainy days. In Washington State there were a lot of those.

  Today was sunny, but the windows hadn’t been washed in years, so it was gloomy enough to be a rainy day. Luckily Mamie hadn’t stored a whole lot of stuff in the room, or clearing it out would have been a problem.

  There were half a dozen cardboard cartons, marked CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS and SUMMER CLOTHES and RICKY’S STUFF. There was an old-fashioned radio in a tall cabinet, a chair with a broken leg, and a bed.

  It was Ned’s bed, dismantled and moved up after Ned had left for college, so that Ricky would have more room in the quarters they had shared downstairs.

  The mattress and springs leaned against the wall, covered with an old sheet to keep them from getting dirty. Nevertheless, when Teddi pulled off the sheet, dust rose in a cloud that made her sneeze.

  She needed dust cloths and some soap and water, she supposed, sighing. She wondered if the windows could be opened enough so she could reach outside and clean them.

  Amazingly enough, both of them slid free after only a moment of resistance, letting in some welcome fresh air.

  Teddi went back downstairs to get rags and a bucket of water and detergent. The house was quiet. Mamie’s door was closed, with only silence behind it.

  The door to her own room—now Dora’s room—wasn’t quite shut, and through the narrow crack Teddi saw Ricky’s wife stretched out on the blue-and-white spread.

  Dora looked very young and vulnerable in her sleep. Her hair drifted down over her cheek, and her mouth was slightly open. If it hadn’t been for the bulge of her belly, Teddi might have guessed her at about her own age.

  How sad it must be, to have lost the husband she loved and to be facing the birth of a baby without him. Without any family at all, apparently, except for a mother-in-law she’d only just met.