“It’s very early,” Lizabeth said. She sat up and swung her feet unto the floor. Her head felt foggy. She had a hazy memory of a bad dream. It had faded away with the morning light. “Can you stay neat while I get dressed?”
Tracy nodded eagerly. Then a frown appeared between her big, dark blue eyes. “I don’t want to be late.”
“Don’t worry.” Lizabeth laughed. “I promise you, the William McKinley School won’t be open for more than an hour.”
“I’m glad you still go there.” Tracy beamed. “I’m glad you’re taking me.”
For a moment Lizabeth was confused. Of course, she had just come out of a deep sleep…. Tracy was six and starting first grade today. So Lizabeth had to be fifteen and in ninth grade…. Of course. When she’d swung her feet over the side of her bed, her legs had been noticeably longer. Yes, she’d graduate from William McKinley next spring and go on to high school in Cranberry. Why was it so hard to keep track of dates? September 1908 already!
Tracy and Lizabeth walked along Lighthouse Lane and turned the corner to William McKinley Road. Well, Lizabeth was walking. Tracy, holding tight to her hand, skipped along.
Mothers and big brothers and sisters were going the same way, bringing other first graders to their first day of school. Some of the little children looked scared. Some were whimpering. One little girl stood still on the sidewalk, bawling. Her mother tried to guide her along, but she pulled back and refused to move. “Come now, Evangeline,” the mother said. “Everyone’s going to school. You’ll like it.” She pointed at Tracy going by. “Look at that little girl. See how happy she is?”
Tracy gave Lizabeth a big smile. “I’m not scared,” she said.
Lizabeth smiled back. “I know you’re not.” Pride in Tracy filled her heart. Her little sister was so full of confidence, so brimming over with joy. What a special six-year-old she was!
“I know how to read ‘cat’ and ‘hat’ and ‘mat,’” Tracy said.
Lizabeth nodded. Tracy would do well at William McKinley. She was so bright—Lizabeth was sure she was way ahead for her age—and cheerful and outgoing. Everyone would love her.
The sunshine was turning Tracy’s golden curls into a halo. “Thanks for walking me.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Lizabeth said. “I love you, pussycat.”
Then, like a cloud passing over, Lizabeth remembered her nightmare. It was still hazy. Something about illness. Scarlet fever. Father crying. Father? That was unimaginable! Tracy, burning with fever and suddenly so still. No, no, that was too horrible.
Lizabeth shook her head, shook away the images. Tracy would do beautifully in school and grow up and fall in love one day, and they’d whisper confidences and giggle like sisters do. Tracy might even have an outstanding talent…. Maybe piano, maybe art like Kat, or…There were endless possibilities.
What a cruel nightmare! The sadness of it seeped into Lizabeth’s bones and made her body feel heavy. Some part of her had lived within that horror all through the night. But now it was daylight and the Indian summer sunshine warmed Lizabeth. Thank God, this was reality! Lizabeth breathed deep. Thank you, God. Tracy’s little hand was in hers. Lizabeth squeezed it and—
Lizabeth woke up in her own lavender-and-white room on her own smooth sheets. Her bedside clock read nine o’clock. She was confused. Oh, no! She must have overslept. She was supposed to walk Tracy to school!
“Tracy!” she called.
Lizabeth bounded out of bed and her eye caught the black crepe mourning dress draped over a chair. She caught her breath.
“Tracy,” she whimpered.
Lizabeth doubled over in pain. It was the nightmare that was real! It was like losing Tracy a second time. Worse because there had been that sweet, fleeting dream of how it should have been.
fifteen
The only thing Lizabeth could hold on to for comfort was that she’d had the chance to tell Tracy she loved her. It mattered.
Late the next day, after more neighbors with hot dishes had come and gone, Lizabeth saw Chris sitting on the porch rocker in the twilight. His shoulders were slumped forward. She came out and sat on the wicker chair across from him. He looked up at her and then away. They sat in silence, staring out at the darkening evening.
“Chris…” Lizabeth said.
He turned to her. His face, in the light from the gas lamp, was full of sadness. “It’s not real to me. I can’t get it into my mind.”
“I know.”
They listened to a far-off train whistle.
“Chris, I love you,” Lizabeth said. She felt terribly awkward. “I just wanted to tell you. Out loud. I was thinking about the things we never say to each other—”
“In this family,” he finished her thought. His voice softened. “I love you, too.”
“We’re getting older now,” Lizabeth said. “We should stop sniping at each other.”
Chris nodded. “I’m not a kid anymore.” He shifted in his chair. “Everything’s different.”
“I know brothers and sisters tease and fight, but…”
“We have nothing to fight about,” he said. “It seems stupid now, doesn’t it? I remember when you were born. I remember being glad I wasn’t outnumbered by the grown-ups anymore.”
“I remember when Tracy was born. I was so happy there was another girl.” Lizabeth remembered the rest of it: her thudding disappointment when she saw the red-faced, bald, bawling infant. It took her a while to truly love Tracy.
Chris sighed.
They sat together thinking. The runners of the rocker squealed under Chris.
“Lizabeth? When it comes down to it, you know you can always depend on me.”
“I know.”
“No reason we can’t get along. We never gave credit to how much we have in common.” He mustered that crooked grin, the grin that she couldn’t help being charmed by, even when she was furious at him. “Look, we even share the same best friend.”
“Your best friend?” Lizabeth asked, puzzled. She hardly knew Michael Potter.
“Rose.”
“Oh!” Rose and Chris, best friends! “Do you…I mean, do you like her as a girl?”
“That, too,” Chris said.
“Are you—are you two a couple?”
“If she’ll have me,” he said quietly.
Lizabeth was astounded. She had never ever heard him sound so humble. This was brashly confident Chris, a great catch—and he’d always acted like he knew it. He could charm anyone, and half the girls in town had set their caps for him. And it was Rose!
“She’s sweet and fun and…” Lizabeth started.
“You don’t have to tell me. She’s…well, she’s everything!” For a moment, his face lit up.
Rose, who doesn’t follow the rules in the Girls’ Guides and the Ladies’ Home Journal, Lizabeth thought. Rose, who is always just herself.
“Father was out here a little while ago,” Chris said. “It was peculiar. He asked me how I felt about things, why I wouldn’t work in the bank, what I wanted to do instead. Even what I thought of the high school! Trying to get acquainted all of a sudden. It was the first time he listened to me.”
“He’s trying,” Lizabeth said. She had been touched by Father’s awkward attempts at affection.
“Too late,” Chris said. “He missed out on knowing his own daughter.”
“There’s a big hole in this family now,” Lizabeth said. Two out of three was a lonely number.
To her surprise, Lizabeth didn’t get sick. No sign of fever. Not even a sniffle from her walkabout in the rain. She went to Dr. Forbes’s office to be checked anyway because Mother asked her to. Mother was suddenly so frail and helpless. Lizabeth couldn’t refuse her anything.
Lizabeth sat on the examining table in Dr. Forbes’ office and looked around at all the shiny equipment and instruments and pill bottles. All those things and nothing had saved Tracy.
“I don’t know why one person catches scarlet fever and another does
n’t.” Dr. Forbes put his stethoscope aside. “Some people have resistance. You’re lucky. You seem to have some kind of natural immunity.”
Lizabeth couldn’t feel lucky.
“Couldn’t something have helped my sister?” she asked. “If we’d realized she was getting sick sooner. If we’d been in New York? Maybe in a big city or…”
Dr. Forbes shook his head. “Don’t, Lizabeth.” His long days and nights showed on his drawn face. “There is no cure for scarlet fever. Not anywhere; not yet. With all we’ve learned, we still depend on the body to heal itself.”
“You said not yet,” Lizabeth said.
“Because I have hope. Medicine has come a long way.”
“Has it?”
“At least now we know that sanitation is important. It wasn’t that long ago that surgeons didn’t even wash their hands. I have to believe that someday there’ll be a treatment, a drug for scarlet fever, cholera, diphtheria, tuberculosis….” His voice trailed off.
“A miracle drug?” Lizabeth asked in disbelief.
“If not in my lifetime, perhaps in yours.”
“Too late for Tracy,” Lizabeth said bitterly.
“But not for other children.” He drew a weary hand across his forehead. “I pray for the day when a doctor can do more than look wise and reassuring.” With an effort, he straightened his shoulders. “We have made progress.”
How terrible it must be for him, Lizabeth thought, to lose another patient. But he keeps on trying. She looked at his graying beard and metal-framed spectacles. How does he do it, she wondered. He’s some kind of hero.
When Lizabeth came home she found Mother straightening up the kitchen with Ada’s apron wrapped around her. The servants hadn’t returned to the Merchant house yet.
The lady with the sparkling jewels, elaborate hairstyle, and easy smile had disappeared, Lizabeth thought.
“What are we going to do with all of this?” Mother put yet another covered dish in the icebox. “Do people really think food will help?”
“They don’t know what else to do,” Lizabeth said.
“I suppose it’s meant as a reminder to keep on living.” Mother’s mouth twisted. “They don’t know.”
They know, Lizabeth thought. We’re not the only ones.
“We’ll never eat all of this,” Mother said, “but it seems wrong to throw it out.” She sighed.
“Wait, I know what to do with it!” Lizabeth juggled two full bowls out of the crowded icebox and put them on the counter. A chicken mixture with a crust of crumbs, and baked fish and potatoes. “I know someone who’ll want it. Oh, and I have to get something else!” She ran upstairs and found an extra blanket in the back of the linen closet. Light blue, soft wool. It won’t stay clean and sweet-smelling for long, Lizabeth thought, but it will be warm.
“Where did that blanket come from?” Mother shook her head. “I don’t remember it.”
“We don’t need it, do we?” Lizabeth gathered everything together.
“Where are you going? What’s this all about?”
“There’s something I have to do.” Mother wouldn’t want to know about that night. Lizabeth wasn’t ready to tell even Amanda, Kat, and Rose yet. It was too strange and unreal.
She managed to get the bulky bowls into the basket of her bicycle. She draped the blanket over the handlebars. Lizabeth rode slowly along Lighthouse Lane. The extra weight made the bicycle lopsided. At every bump, she put a protective hand over the basket.
She turned onto Wharf Way and came to the tumbledown hut. In daylight, it was horribly shabby: the door hanging from its hinges, broken and weather-beaten planks, shredded wood.
Lizabeth carried the bowls and the blanket into the hut. Mary was out. She placed everything on the crate next to the candles. Mary would be so surprised by this sudden windfall.
She didn’t have to know where it came from.
For the first time since Tracy’s death, Lizabeth felt good about something.
Amanda, Kat, and Rose rallied around Lizabeth. Sometimes it was all three of them together. At least one of them was always with Lizabeth, though Kat had lighthouse chores, Rose had duties at the stables, and Amanda had Hannah. Lizabeth was never alone. They seemed to have planned it that way, taking turns.
The best friends anyone could have, Lizabeth thought.
Kat and Rose did all they could to comfort her and Lizabeth was grateful. But she could speak most freely to Amanda, who knew all about loss.
“I don’t know what to do,” Lizabeth told Amanda. “I don’t know how to stop being so sad.”
They were at Amanda’s house that afternoon because she had to be at home for Hannah. Amanda had started Hannah on cutting out paper dolls in her room. Then she and Lizabeth settled into Amanda’s room. They sat side by side on the bed.
“Does it ever get better? Do you ever get over it?” Lizabeth pleaded.
“You don’t really get over it.” Amanda said slowly. “I never stop missing my mother. I choose a new dress or some little thing happens on an ordinary day—even something funny—I ache with wanting to tell her, and suddenly a stab of hurt takes my breath away.” She twisted the chenille bedspread in her hand. “I want to tell her about Jed. I want to show her my report card when I get an A. Especially now that I’m older, I want to ask her about womanly things. And it’s not Rose’s mother or Kat’s mother or yours that I want, though they’ve been so kind to me. I want my own.”
“Then you stay sad forever.” Lizabeth felt hopeless.
“No, it does get better. One day you remember how magnificent God’s world is. I was in the lighthouse tower with Kat at sunset. For a moment the sea and the sky turned red and orange and pink, and all that beauty seemed like a…like a message for me. Then I knew I’d be all right. You don’t forget, Lizabeth, but you start to enjoy all the good things again. Give yourself time.”
Hannah burst into the room almost in tears. “I cut the tab off by mistake. The coat won’t stay on!”
“Let me see,” Amanda said. She took the little blue paper coat from Hannah and bent the shoulder. “I’m bending it just a tiny bit. It won’t show.” She folded it onto the cardboard Gibson Girl. “Look, it stays on.”
“It shows!” Hannah exploded. “It does too show. The shoulder looks all funny!”
“But it still looks pretty on her.”
“No, it doesn’t! You spoiled it!”
“Look at all those pretty buttons, Hannah-banana. See if you can find the matching hat and cut it out very carefully.”
Hannah pouted and grumbled her way out of the room.
“I would have said ‘Don’t yell at me, it’s not my fault if you messed up the tab.’” Lizabeth half-smiled. “Mean old me. You’re awfully patient.”
“She has no one but me.” Amanda sighed. “Anyway, Hannah’s irritable because she can’t play with Mary Margaret today. She’s usually a sweetheart.”
Why wasn’t I more patient with Tracy? Lizabeth thought. Why? She cleared the sudden thickness in her throat. “It’s terribly hard for you, isn’t it? Hannah and running the household.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I’ve never once heard you complain, but still—”
“We do have a laundress come in and—I want to raise Hannah right and keep a nice home for my father. Honestly, I want to. After my mother…Well, it was good for me to be busy with something outside myself. It helps.” Amanda hesitated before she added, “I like to think my mother would be proud of me.”
“You know she would!”
“I want to make my father proud, too. I wish he had more time with us. He used to be home lots of evenings before. But of course, he’s doing important work, counseling and…”
“Everyone admires him,” Lizabeth said. “They say he’s the best minister Cape Light could have, always available for anyone who’s troubled. But don’t you ever tell him? I mean, that you and Hannah need him, too?”
“I can’t.” A frown crossed Amanda’
s forehead. “I think he’s driven to keep busy and lose himself in good works. Sometimes I think he’s stuck in his grief.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Don’t tell anyone I said that. Don’t ever repeat it!”
“I won’t,” Lizabeth promised. She’d never noticed before; beautiful Amanda’s nails were bitten and ragged.
“I didn’t mean it,” Amanda said quickly. “I’m lucky to have a father I respect so much. I hope to be worthy of him.”
Stuck in grief, Lizabeth thought. I don’t want to be like that, but I don’t know how to go on.
sixteen
It was the middle of June and the roses were in full bloom now, all over town. The cream and pink flowers were especially lush on the trellis in front of Lizabeth’s house. There were no blooms on the side trellis. Lizabeth must have knocked off the buds when she climbed up on those terrible nights.
Kat, Rose, and Amanda invented things to do to lure Lizabeth out of her room.
“Come on, Lizabeth, let’s go to the lighthouse,” Kat said.
“We can have a picnic on the rocks,” Rose said.
Amanda took her hand. “It’s good for you to get out and be with your friends.”
Lizabeth walked down Lighthouse Lane with them. Orange daylilies grew wild along the sides of the road. Pansies, phlox, and delphiniums brightened cottage gardens. Lizabeth averted her eyes from the glorious, hateful colors. Everything beautiful, everything growing in its own season. Except for Tracy. Lizabeth was ashamed of her urge to pull the flowers up by their roots. She understood why Mary Dellrow did that.
As if the thought of Mary had made her appear, there she was. She was walking in the opposite direction on Lighthouse Lane, toward them. Kat, Rose, and Amanda edged to the far side of the road, partway into the underbrush to get out of her path.
Rose tugged at Lizabeth. “Come on, hurry out of her way!”
Lizabeth stood still and stared. There was something way off about Mary today, even more than usual. She wore a bedraggled feathered hat that must have been discarded somewhere. Strands of her long gray hair were tied with multicolored ribbons. A wilted daisy was pinned to the lapel of her red satin jacket. The shiny fabric was badly ripped along the side. One sleeve was missing and the other hung by a thread. She walked along jauntily in spite of her oversized shoes. She was the picture of festivity gone bizarre.
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