“He says there’s going to be a fire at the school, Richard!”
“Who says?”
“Jack! Mary’s son—”
“Jack—the deaf-kid Jack?”
“She showed me a Bible verse that was horrible—”
“Bible verse? You’re not making any—”
“Fires and furnaces and gnashing of teeth! Mary’s adamant that I don’t let Anna attend the recital.”
“Since when do you let the hired help tell you what to do? I’ve got two hundred employees I have to keep in line, Liv. You’ve got three. Tell her to—”
“She’s put me in an untenable position!”
“Listen, I’ve got an angry shipbuilder in Maine looking for a shipment of a thousand—”
“Who cares about that right now, Richard! I’m talking about our daughter! Anna will never forgive me if I keep her home. All the practicing . . . the dress . . . she’s excited to play for us. . . .”
“I trust your judgment. Do what you think is best.”
“I don’t know what’s best,” she’d shouted into the phone. “But she’s left me no choice but to heed her warning. . . .”
“I don’t have time for this, Olivia. Am I meeting you at the recital or not?”
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said!”
Richard had shaken his head when he heard the hard click of the phone in his ear, and he shook it again now. He still couldn’t believe she’d hung up on him. I work like a dog six days a week for my family—and she hangs up on me?
“Who cares . . . who cares?” he sputtered aloud in the confines of the car. “You’d better care, Olivia! Those shipments keep a roof over your head—a very nice roof—and food on the table. Diamonds, furs! Nobody wants for anything—nobody does without. How ’bout a little appreciation for dear old dad? I work, I give! I’ve even made sure there won’t be so much as a hiccup in everyone’s life if I die! Who cares?!”
Preoccupied with his impassioned soliloquy, Richard didn’t immediately hear the sound of sirens roaring up behind him, but when he did, he reacted quickly and pulled to the side of the road to allow several emergency vehicles to pass. It was a rare sight in quiet Highland Park, and he wondered what poor soul was in need of so much help. Realizing the cold had crept into the car, he reached for the knob on the dashboard to crank up the heat. Just as the warm blast of air filled the car, he saw smoke rising in the distance.
“There’s going to be a fire at the school . . . a fire at the school.”
The heat in the car couldn’t take away the chill that shot up his spine as he grabbed for the gear shift, slammed his foot on the gas pedal, and sped toward Anna’s school.
Flames danced against the black sky, leaping in and out of the smoke that billowed into gray clouds even in the darkness. Lights from fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances lit up the scene with red strobes and reflected off the hood of Richard’s dark sedan as he braked to a quick stop. As he got out of his car, he became a witness to the chaos—yelling, panic, flames devouring the south wing of Anna’s school. The wing where her recital . . .
The acrid smell in the air made Richard pull out his handkerchief and put it over his nose and mouth as orange ash shimmered down in front of him—an ember came to rest just inches from his shoe. Suddenly Olivia’s ranting and raving became much more gripping— she’d said she would heed Mary’s warning. Didn’t she? Since he’d been going straight home, he assumed she wasn’t taking Anna to the recital. Olivia’s stubborn—and I goaded her. Told her not to take orders from servants . . . Please, God . . . don’t let them be in there because of something stupid I said.
He rushed toward a fireman pulling a hose from a pumper truck, and even from a distance he could feel the heat from the inferno.
“My wife and daughter might be in there!” he shouted at the fireman. But his words were lost in an earsplitting explosion of shattering glass. Richard reflexively ducked as the fireman manhandling the hose shouted to another fireman just arriving on the scene. “Start a red line from the booster tank—we’re gonna need it!”
The jaw-dropping scene spread out in front of Richard was surreal. He struggled to get his incoherent thoughts together and tried again to get the fireman’s attention as he dragged the feeder hose toward the flames.
“My family! I don’t know . . .”
But a policeman had him by the arm and was pulling him backward. “Look out, fella! Let ’im do his job.”
Richard jerked his arm away from the cop. “I’ve got to—”
“Just stay back. We don’t need more casualties!” the cop yelled over the din of sirens and the roar of the fire.
“Casualties? I could have people in there. . . .” But the sentence died on his lips as two medics came toward him with a gurney carrying a man badly burned, his features barely distinguishable. Richard cringed, swallowing down the bile that rose in his throat. As they moved past him, the man suddenly opened his mouth in an agonizing scream, his lips pulled back over clenched teeth. “There will be gnashing of teeth . . . gnashing of teeth.” Richard stumbled backward, reeling from the horrific sights and the pungent smells.
Olivia . . . Anna . . . no . . . no, he wept, his voice crackling like the flames from the fire. Please, oh-God, oh-God, oh-God . . .
Richard burst through the front door of the house into the empty foyer. The lights were on, but the house was quiet. Too quiet.
“Olivia!” he shouted, surprising even himself with the volume of his voice. “Olivia!”
He was halfway to the staircase when he called out again, “Olivia! Anna!”
“Richard! Keep your voice down!” He heard Olivia’s hiss from the top of the stairs. “Anna has finally calmed down enough to sleep, and I don’t want you to wake—”
“She’s fine, then? She’s okay?” He almost ran to the bottom of the staircase.
“No, of course she’s not okay,” Olivia said as she started down the stairs. “She’s devastated that I kept her home from her own recital.”
Richard lowered himself onto the bottom step, his legs suddenly too weak to support him.
“You don’t have to tell me how crazy I am,” she said wearily. “I don’t have the energy to hear it. But Richard . . . Richard, if you’d heard the things she told me . . . and with such conviction! Then maybe you’d have done the same thing.” She stepped past him and turned. “If there could be the slightest . . . the tiniest bit of truth to her warning,” she continued her defense, “well, then . . . I had to keep her home and have Phillip turn off the furnace, which is why it’s so cold. . . .” She looked down into his face as he wiped tears from his eyes.
“Richard? What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked. He wasn’t ready for words, so he reached out, barely moving his fingers in an effort to summon her to sit beside him. As she lowered herself to the stair beside him, he instantly pulled her into his arms. She buried her face in his coat as he hugged her tightly.
Then she pulled back enough to look up into his eyes. “Is that . . . smoke I smell?”
He nodded, trying to get his emotions in check by clearing his throat. But there was still a catch in his voice when he spoke. “It happened, Liv. Just like they told you it would.”
She shook her head. “No. Not really,” she whispered. “It couldn’t have really happened—”
“The school is in flames.”
In their room, Jack sat tapping the fingers of his right hand against his left palm with Mary’s trembling arms wrapped tightly around him. It was as if holding her son and keeping him safe would make the horror a little easier to bear. The people—the poor people who had been hurt . . . who had died. It made her tear up for the umpteenth time since she had delivered Jack’s numbers to Olivia. She knew from Matilda that Olivia had kept Anna home and was grateful. But she also knew the scope of the fire would be felt long after this night.
A knock on her bedroom door startled her out of the moment. “Come in,” she called in a shaky voice.
As soon as she saw Richard’s and Olivia’s faces, Mary knew. She released her grip on Jack and got to her feet. Richard was as white as a sheet, and she could see he was doing his best to keep his composure. Olivia wasn’t even attempting to stop the tears that ran down her cheeks.
“You saved Anna’s life,” Richard began in a voice husky with emotion. “I don’t even know how to begin to thank you.”
“Richard was there . . . saw the fire at the school,” Olivia said. “He saw people . . . burned.”
“It was horrible,” he said with a shake of his head, as if trying to clear away the vision. “Beyond horrible.”
“I called people after I decided to keep Anna home . . . they thought I was crazy.” Olivia hiccupped out a clipped laugh. “I thought I was crazy . . . but I told them I wasn’t letting Anna go. I don’t know who listened . . . and who didn’t. . . .”
“You tried,” Mary said, then admitted, “and so did I. I called the school myself and told them what was going to happen. They thought I was making a crank call.” A tear slipped down Mary’s cheek, and she quickly brushed it away.
Richard couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Jack. “How did he know? How does he do that?”
Mary shook her head. “It’s a gift . . . and we don’t always understand how gifts like this work.”
“His gift is extraordinary,” Richard said. Mary could hear the reverence and respect in his voice. She nodded.
Olivia lifted a handkerchief to her nose. “I need to make some calls. Check on friends . . . their families.” Impulsively, she reached out and wrapped her arms around Mary, hugging her close. “Thank you for making me listen! Thank you a thousand times for not giving up!”
Richard moved toward Jack and put a hand on the little boy’s shoulder. He cleared his throat. “I know you can’t hear me, son, but someday I hope you can understand how grateful we are.”
Mary closed the door behind them and looked back at her son. She noticed he was still tapping. She moved to kneel in front of him and reached out to cover his hands with her own.
“Things are going to change again, Jack, and I don’t know where the gift is going to take us.”
Chapter Fourteen
THE FACT THAT THIS WAS NOT HER WORLD was painfully obvious to Mary. She felt as if she stood with one foot in her past and another in her present, and neither felt real. Both a spectator and a participant, she observed the hustle and bustle for the dinner party in honor of the governor that evening along with being thoroughly involved herself in all the preparations. She was polishing silver that was already shining and replacing arrangements of flowers that were simply the wrong color. She tucked lemon zest and sprigs of mint discreetly in all corners of the house—It smells like an early spring —as she watched deliverymen bring in beautiful linens pressed to perfection. She answered the door to let in a photographer with his equipment, on site in time to get familiar with the lighting in the dining room, the foyer, and the staircase, where photographs would be taken throughout the evening. A brand-new maid’s uniform—this one a white blouse with gold handkerchief in the pocket and a black skirt, along with a white pleated cap—hung in her room. She would help serve dinner to the twenty hand-selected guests the Edmundses had invited by engraved invitation.
She couldn’t help but attempt a guess at the amount being spent on this one dinner alone. Money had always represented to her a lack or a need—the rent was due; the cupboard was bare; shoes were worn; Jack had outgrown his pants. Her next paycheck was spent before she ever held it in her hand. She was witnessing firsthand the beautiful things that money could buy, but it wasn’t those valuables that interested her; it was peace of mind and security. That was something to think about, to strive for. Peace of mind . . . about Jack and his future.
“That looks good—except you’re putting the salad fork just a little too close to the dinner fork,” Matilda instructed Mary from the other side of the dining room table, already sparkling with crystal goblets and three beautiful fresh-flower arrangements with gold candlesticks down the center.
Mary adjusted the small fork just a fraction and Matilda smiled her approval. “Good. Do it just like that for all twenty-two settings. I’m going to gussy up a little, and then when you’re done you should do the same. Make sure the gold hankie is folded so the three points show an inch above your pocket.”
Matilda started to shuffle out of the room, then turned back to Mary. “Did Miss Bea show you the special dessert she made for our little hero?”
Our little hero . . .
Mary nodded. “Yes, Jack’s in the kitchen with her right now eating a piece. Last time I saw him he had a chocolate mustache.”
“It was my idea to add the whipping cream to the top.” Tildy beamed proudly. “I figured it would look more like a celebration with whipping cream and a cherry on top.”
“It was so sweet of you and Miss Bea to do that for Jack,” Mary said with a smile.
“I’m thinking he should have a hero’s cake once a week forever,” the woman proclaimed loudly as she moved into the hall. She stopped again to wag a friendly finger at Mary. “Don’t forget ’bout that hankie.”
“I won’t,” Mary promised, then turned to the massive sideboard against a wall painted with a rural scene of Tuscany. She carefully picked up a stack of gold-rimmed china selected to coordinate perfectly with the gold-colored linen tablecloth. Matching covers had been draped over the chairs and tied with ropes of brown silk. Place cards had been strategically placed earlier by Mrs. Edmunds herself.
Two floor-to-ceiling cathedral-style windows on the opposite wall from the mural each framed a copse of trees perfectly. The light in the room darkened as the late afternoon sun disappeared behind a cloud. Mary reached for a switch on the wall, illuminating two crystal chandeliers hanging over each end of the long table. Prisms of light spilled across the river of gold silk stretching down the center, creating tiny rainbows of color.
Olivia entered the dining room wearing a gray silk A-line skirt and cashmere sweater set scattered with seed pearls. She looked carefully over the table where Mary had already completed half the place settings.
“It’s looking lovely,” Olivia said as she adjusted the angle of a place card.
Mary moved back to the sideboard. “I, uh, wanted to thank you,” she said to Olivia.
“Thank me?” Olivia asked with surprise.
Mary nodded. “I couldn’t help but overhear a few of the phone calls you’ve been getting. I know it must be hard not to answer directly the questions about . . . about how you knew to warn people about the fire.”
“Richard and I—and several others—owe you and Jack so much, Mary. The least everyone in the house can do is to try our best to keep your secret.”
“Pretty soon people will forget, and all the curiosity will die down.” Mary set down another plate, this one below a place card that read Governor John Flynn.
“Maybe,” Olivia said skeptically. “But things like this do fascinate people. Things they don’t understand—things they can’t do themselves. There are people who would love to have Jack’s gift.”
“What about his silence?” Mary asked without thinking.
Olivia paused, then replied with a wry smile, “I know there are times Richard wishes I had that gift.” They both laughed, then Olivia was back to business. “Matilda has explained to you about how dinner will go tonight?”
Mary nodded. “She did. And I’ll make sure Jack stays in the kitchen with Miss Bea so he won’t be in the way.”
“It’s entirely possible we owe Anna’s life to Jack, Mary. He is never in the way.”
Pockets of conversation passed back and forth across the beautiful table, where candles flickered and silverware scraped softly over china plates. Light ripples of laughter floated over the entire group whenever an amusing response or anecdote was heard. Mary and Matilda were clearing away dinner plates, moving quietly and discreetly between guests, their presence mostl
y unobserved.
Olivia had placed Governor John Flynn at the middle of the table on the side where he’d have a view of the windows and the fire in the fireplace, with every ear accessible. Handsome, in his early fifties, Flynn wore the celebrity of his office with ease. His air of confidence was impossible to ignore but actually served to highlight the surprisingly unremarkable qualities of his wife. Constance Flynn, a mousy little woman who rarely contributed anything to a conversation, was from a very wealthy family. Rumor had it that John had married the daughter to get to the checkbook of the father. As first lady of the state of Illinois, Constance had neither presence nor political clout, but she seemed content to stand dutifully by her husband’s side in photographs, cut ribbons at openings, and attend the functions and fund-raisers John deemed worthy—case in point, the Edmundses’ dinner party.
The governor was speaking to the woman seated to his left— Emily Torrent, an attractive woman who smiled at anything and everything he said. But when Mary started to serve on the opposite side of the table, she found herself feeling uncomfortable when he seemed to be staring at her. Emily, a woman who obviously didn’t appreciate being ignored, put a proprietary hand on the governor’s arm as she tried to reclaim his attention. “John, we do so appreciate all of the resources you’ve used to help us start rebuilding our school so quickly.”
“Not at all, Emily. That was such a tragedy,” he said, shaking his head. “Thank goodness more people weren’t hurt.”
Mary continued on with her duties, collecting plates, clearing the table.
“All I know is—I owe a great debt to Olivia,” Emily said sweetly as she looked across the table to their hostess. “She’s the one who warned me not to attend the recital, you know.”
Mary moved a bit faster, catching Matilda’s eye to hurry her along. Matilda gave a nearly imperceptible nod and stepped up the pace.
The Silent Gift Page 9