All for a Sister (7 page)

“Yes, sir, Mr. Ostermann.” Celeste seemed far more pleased at the idea than did Miss Lynch, who plucked five sharpened pencils from the clay cup on her desk before holding the door to let Dana pass.

Not until she crossed the threshold did Dana realize she’d been waiting to return to this room. It was, to date, the one place in California where she felt comfortable. Celeste’s home was nothing but one wide-open space flowing into another. The streets outside were loud and crowded. Even the sky loomed too
large to feel like it could pin itself at the corners and hold creation. Ostermann’s office was small and somewhat dark. Easier for her eyes even after Miss Lynch lit the lamp in the corner where she sat. It smelled of paper and cigarettes—warmth. The chair she’d occupied before waited for her again, and without being asked, she sat down.

“You are doing well?” Ostermann asked as he settled himself behind his cluttered desk.

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Ostermann.”

“Call me Werner. And you and Miss DuFrane? You are getting better acquainted?”

Dana nodded. “She’s not . . . home, very often.”

“Youth,” he said, then immediately looked uncomfortable. “But to matters at hand. What shall we talk about today? Would you perhaps like to tell me about the night you were arrested?”

She felt herself grow cold, her blood as frigid as the rain that had pelted the windows during the storm that night. He’d asked the same question at their last meeting, and the purposefulness behind the question proved he hadn’t simply forgotten. It was some sort of a trick. A trap, maybe, but she took a familiar step aside.

“I told you already. I don’t remember much about that.” Though she did, every detail. The color felt thick upon her lips, and she dared not close her mouth lest she not be able to open it again. “Only what’s been told to me.”

“No, no. Tell me only what you know. What you remember and what you saw and what you heard. I need to see this all revealed through your eyes. Perhaps something about the trial.”

“There was no trial, Mr. Ostermann. If there had been, perhaps there’d be no story at all.”

“But there had to have been—”

“An inquest. A coroner’s inquest in the DuFrane home, because Mrs. DuFrane was too distraught to leave the house. Right there in the front parlor, where I’d been serving tea just a few days before.”

And here, finally, she would have the chance to speak.

INTERIOR:
A well-appointed parlor decorated in a lush Victorian style. Center is an ornate wooden table, long and narrow, where three distinguished men wearing dark suits sit in a line. The man on the far left is the county coroner. He is reading aloud from an official-looking dossier.

CLOSE-UP:
Typewritten certificate of death.

FOCUS:
Cause of death: suffocation.

CUT TO:
Young Dana, set apart from the gathered company.

CUT TO:
Mr. and Mrs. DuFrane, she draped in magnificent Victorian mourning clothes. She has collapsed in her chair and weeps into the handkerchief proffered by her husband.

CUT TO:
Young Dana, obviously watching, her expression inscrutable.

1904

“WE WILL NOW HEAR
the testimony of Mr. Arthur DuFrane,” the judge intoned.

Mr. DuFrane, handsome in a perfectly tailored black suit, carefully extricated himself from his wife and stood before the illustrious trio, where he was told to recount all that he could to exact detail.

“There was a horrific storm, if you remember,” Mr. DuFrane said as a lead-in to his testimony.

Mama said he was a scientist—an inventor and professor, too—something Mrs. DuFrane’s family highly disapproved of. Now he addressed the three men at the table as if they were schoolboys, and they seemed no less pleased.

“The storm is not relevant,” the judge said.

“My apologies. I was simply trying to be thorough. My recollection is somewhat handicapped, as we had hosted a social event, and my head was not entirely clear when I retired. I’m afraid that makes for a restless night’s sleep. The storm woke me, is what I meant to say.”

“And that is why you went to the girl’s room?”

“If you are referring to my daughter’s room—the nursery—yes.”

The judge acknowledged Mr. DuFrane’s clarification, but with a skeptical eye.

The man to the right of the judge had been introduced as the prosecuting attorney, and he asked his questions with a formal reserve.

“You felt a need to check on her, even though the accused occupied the same room?”

“With all due respect,” Mr. DuFrane said, though he didn’t sound like he held much respect at all, “Dana is not an experienced nanny. It is not unheard of for a father to ensure the welfare of his children.”

“Just tell us what you saw,” the judge said with an impatient check of his watch.

Mr. DuFrane looked at Dana as if begging for mercy of his own, and she wished beyond all that she could grant it. Unfortunately, she had no power to absolve him of the sort of
accusations she didn’t fully understand. In fact, she’d been forbidden to speak—in her defense or his.

In that moment of silence she felt herself back in that room, lit by intermittent flashes of lightning, but otherwise dark. She could feel the baby next to her small, bare breast, as she prayed her life would be strong enough to transfer warmth. Skin to skin, the way her own mother used to do on the coldest winter nights. But there was no warmth and there was no breath—only cold, dead weight.

Mr. DuFrane’s version was almost as cold. “She was standing near the crib. Holding the baby.”

At this, Mrs. DuFrane cried out, “She killed my baby!” calling the judge to vigorously rap his knuckles against the table.

“If you cannot contain yourself, Mrs. DuFrane, I shall have no choice but to exclude your presence from these proceedings.”

Not for the first time, Dana wished her own mother could be in attendance so that she, too, might cry out on behalf of Dana’s life. It had been explained to her, however, by the judge himself, that only those who were witnesses to the event, or who held any medical expertise, would be allowed to testify. As her mother hadn’t arrived at the house until well into the morning, after somebody had thought to send for her, she held no place in either category.

The prosecuting attorney asked, “Did the accused say anything to you?”

“She was deeply upset. Crying in an uncontrollable fashion. Nothing intelligible.”

“And did you have an occasion to examine your daughter?”

“I did.”

Dana remembered the moment. He took the baby from her so gently, as if equally afraid of hurting her as the baby. She
remembered the touch of his knuckle against her bare skin. No man had ever touched her before.

“And she was, in your opinion as a man of science, deceased at that point?”

Only the quickest clench of his jaw and a rapid succession of blinking betrayed anything other than a biological conclusion. “She was.”

“If I may interrupt,” the coroner said, looking up from a sheet of paper rife with handwritten notes, “in our initial conversation, you mentioned an unusual marking on the baby’s face. Do you recall?”

“I do.”

“Can you explain? Describe?”

He glanced at Dana again, his eyes clearly pleading for forgiveness, and she turned away, only to find Mrs. DuFrane staring at her with murderous fury. Shivering, she wished—if nothing else—she might never have to see that woman again.

“It looked like lace,” Mr. DuFrane said with a catch in his voice that made him stop midsentence and repeat himself before answering what would surely be the next question. “Like the lace of one of her pillows.”

“And where was that pillow found?”

“It was in her crib. In Mary’s crib.”

“Had it been there when the child was put to bed?”

“Honestly,” he said as if to give weight to his words, “I don’t know.”

Mrs. DuFrane could contain herself no longer. “No! No, it wasn’t!” She pointed a shaking, accusing finger at Dana, and it seared through her like a lance. “I saw her holding it, saying how unfair it was for my baby to have such pretty things! I saw it in
her
hands! And then—”

Once again, the judge pounded on his table, and Mr. DuFrane went to his wife’s side, took her in his arms, and soothed her as he would a child.

“Take her out,” the judge ordered. Mr. DuFrane complied, leaving Dana alone to face the trio in the echo of a mother’s grief.

CELESTE, AGE 6

1911

NO SNOW.
Ever, ever, never. She sat on her window seat, face pressed against the cool glass pane, and looked out over the lush, green yard. Behind her, Graciela could be heard humming a familiar tune as she spread the quilted coverlet.

“
Cómo se dice
snow
en español
, Graciela?”

“Nieve.”
She embedded the tune in her reply.

She wondered if Graciela had ever seen snow, and asked.
“Alguna vez has visto la nieve?”

“
Sí.
When I was a little girl, like you. We lived in a village in the mountains.”

“Did you make snowmen?”

Graciela chuckled, a sound as warm as the day, prompting Celeste to turn around to look at her. Her dark hair was tucked into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, wrapped by a rope of thick braid. From the number of times the woman had attended to her bedside during late-night illness and nightmares, Celeste knew it descended well below her waist and always smelled sweet.

“El coco,”
she’d said when Celeste asked. Coconut.

“El coco.”
For months she begged for the coconut-scented shampoo, but Mother would buy nothing but Canthrox. Sometimes, though, when Mother was away, Graciela would bring her brownish bottle of sweet-smelling soap and wash Celeste’s hair—even if it wasn’t a Saturday. On those nights she would sleep with her hair splayed out on the pillow, rather than her usual neat plait, and be lulled to sleep by the warm, sweet scent.

“No,
mija
,” Graciela said, arranging a few of Celeste’s favorite dolls on the pillows, “always too much work to do.”

Celeste sighed and turned back to the window. “I miss snow,” she said, though already the memories of those bitter-cold afternoons were fading. “Mother says it doesn’t feel like Christmas without it.”

Graciela made a sound reserved for conversations about Mother, something like a puff of steam, and muttered,
“Qué fría”
—something she often said even when they weren’t talking about the cold.

“How long is it until Christmas?”

“Nine days,” Graciela said.

Celeste translated
nueve
in her head but said nothing. That Graciela taught her little phrases and words was a wonderful secret they shared. She was about to ask more questions, whether Santa Claus would remember to find her here, whether or not she would really get the pony Daddy promised, or whether Graciela would take her to the store to buy a gift for her horrible brother, when movement in the backyard called her attention.

It was her father, looking handsome as always in a brown tweed jacket and a new cap pulled down over one eye. Another man followed, carrying a large, square black case, and there were also two women with bright-colored dresses peeking out from under woolen coats they clutched closed beneath their chins.

Curious, she pressed her nose against the glass, mindless of the smudge. The women stood on either side of her father, each with a gloved hand on his shoulder. One puffed at a cigarette held in a long, thin stem; the other tilted her head back in a laugh that carried itself like a galloping horse right up to Celeste’s ear.

She sensed Graciela behind her.
“Qué pasa?”

“Daddy,” Celeste said, and though her own voice coming from so far away surely could not compete with the laughter of the woman beside him, her father looked up. He touched the brim of his hat and, in so doing, shrugged the women away. They, in turn, looked to see what had called away his attention, shielding their eyes beneath their velvet hats.