She realized she had barely listened to the service. She was agitated, too. The world was topsy-turvy and the sooner she could get her feet firmly planted on the ground, the better. One death was resolved, but the other was not.
They all filed out of the church in silence as the organist played Adelaide's favorite hymn, “Abide with Me.” Then they buried her.
Â
“Mother, you cannot keep me locked up like some princess in a tower! I want to get back to work. They need me! And nothing could be safer. I'm surrounded by hordes of little munchkins every minute I'm there. You can drive me over and pick me up. I won't even go to the bathroom by myself, I promise. But you've got to let me leave. I'm starting to go nuts here.”
The argument had begun the night before and had not been resolved by bedtime. Now, the next morning, Samantha was up bright and early, perched at the foot of her mother's bed, picking up where she had left off. Pix hadn't slept well. She knew Samantha would have to resume her schedule sometime, but why did it have to be today? She'd hoped to keep her close to home for another week at least to make sure she was all right.
“I'm fine,” Samantha argued. “The doctor said I could go back to work when I felt up to it, and I feel great. This is your problem, not mine. Would it make you feel any better to follow me around the whole morning?”
“Yes,” Pix answered immediately, “it would.”
“Oh, Mother!” was Samantha's annoyed reply as she noisily stomped off to her room.
Pix knew she was beaten and she also knew that she had to let her daughter go. Much as she wished to, she could not keep Samantha wrapped in cotton wool for the rest of the summerâor the rest of her life. She followed her down the hall.
“All right. But I drive you there and back. Plus, if you get tired or feel anything out of the ordinary at all, you call immediately. I'll be here all morning.” Sitting by the phone.
Samantha flung herself at her mother and gave her a big kiss. “I love you, Mom. Now we'd better hurry. I don't want to be late.”
Well, at least it was Mom again.
Â
Samantha felt like a bird let free from its cage. She darted into the kitchen to say hello to everyone before meeting her group down by the waterfront.
“It's great to have you back, Sam. I didn't think your mom would let you out so soon,” Arlene said after giving her friend a big hug.
“Desperate situations call for desperate measures. I had to get tough. Would you believe at the last minute she wanted me to bring the dogs? Like they would really protect me. And can you imagine how nuts the kids would be!”
They laughed and Samantha went down to the waterfront, where she was greeted with enthusiasm, Susannah dramatically throwing her skinny little body straight into Samantha's arms. “You're okay! I thought I'd never see you again!”
Susannah could be headed for a career on the stage, and living in Manhattan as she did, this might come to pass, Samantha thought. The little girl seemed constantly to be playing some sort of role. Geoff was hovering nearby. Samantha quickly got her group together and they started for the boats. The kids had been quick learners and she was taking them out on the water two at a time while the others practiced knot tying and studied the sailing manual. She'd allowed them to pick their own partners, figuring they'd work best with
someone they liked. Geoff and Susannah had chosen each other and were the fourth pair to go with Samantha. She kept quiet and let them set sail. They started off fine, but soon the sail was luffing and the boat almost at a standstill.
“All right now, what do we do?” Samantha asked.
“We did it on purpose, Samantha,” Geoff said. “We have something to tell you.” His voice was firm and serious.
Susanna had less control, or more theatrics. “It's our fault that you got hurt.”
“What!” Samantha said in amazement.
“Well, not exactly our fault,” Geoff explained, “but we kind of feel that maybe if we'd told you what we'd been doing sooner, then it might not have happened.”
“What have you been doing?” Samantha asked sternly.
“Your getting hurt was like a punishment to us.” Susannah was off and running. Geoff interrupted her.
“Let's just tell her.” He turned toward Samantha. “It started because Susannah and I were really pissed off at coming here. Maybe we kind of hoped we'd get caught and be kicked out.”
Samantha got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. The mice. She looked at the two cherubic faces in front of her.
“You're not telling me you put those dead mice in the kitchen are you?” she gasped.
“Yuck! No Way!” said Susannah. “Although it did make things more fun.”
Geoff continued patiently. “We did all the other stuffâthe short sheeting, the spoiled milk, the salt in the sugar ⦔
“Not the paint!” Again Samantha leapt to the worst.
“No, not the paint. We like sailing. But,” he had the grace to lower his head slightly, “we did screw up the parade.”
“And God punished us,” Susannah declared solemnly. “He let you get hurt and you're the most decent thing here. Besides you, Geoff,” she hastened to add.
“God doesn't work that way, but we'll talk about that some
other time. What we have to do now is tell Mr. Atherton what's been going on.”
Geoff and Susannah's expressions clearly indicated they would rather face their Maker.
“Do you think he'll send us home?” Geoff asked.
“I thought that's what you wanted?”
“Only at first, then doing stuff was fun because everybody was getting so crazed at everything else that was going on. This is the best camp I've ever been to.”
Susannah nodded agreement.
The idiots, Samantha thought as she headed the boat back to shore and proceeded to give them a talking-to that would have made her mother proud.
The rest of the group was waiting for them on the dock with puzzled expressions on their faces.
“What was taking you guys so long? There's a good wind today. Why couldn't you come about?” one of them asked. “We're going to be late for lunch.”
“You all run along and I'll put everything away. Tell Mr. Atherton that Geoff and Susannah are helping me. We'll be there as soon as we can.”
As they stowed the gear, the two children chattered happily like the reprieved felons they were. Samantha, the godess, didn't hate them. She had barely yelled.
Samantha was preoccupied. So it hadn't been Duncan who had spoiled the parade.
But that still left everything else.
Â
After lunch, Samantha called home with the news. Her mother had been surprised, amused, and ultimately sympathetic.
“So, I'm going to take them to Jim now and then I'd really like to spend the afternoon here. The counselors can use my help and I hate to leave the kids like this. I won't stay any later than five and you can pick me up at the Athertons' house, where I will stay absolutely put. I left without my paycheck
Friday, Jim told me. I didn't know I would be getting one so soon and it's at the office over there.”
“As long as you're not too tired, but swear that you'll get someone to walk you over.”
“All right, but I'm only doing this to make you happy.”
“Could there be a better reason?”
“Mother! I've got to go.”
Â
Jim reacted to Susannah and Geoff's confession almost absentmindedly. Samantha could only assume that his problems with Duncan overshadowed everything else, even the sabotage of the Fourth of July parade, one of Jim's favorite camp events. “The jewel in the crown of summer,” he called the fancy formations they dreamed up each year.
Chastised and chastened, the two children were released to their counselors. They would have to apologize to the whole camp. Jim would also inform their parents and he was firm. He didn't think he could accept them as campers again. Still, he told them they could write and plead their case this winter.
“He was really fair,” Samantha told Arlene at the end of the day as her duenna escorted her through the woods to the “Million Dollar Mansion.” “Maybe if he treated Duncan the way he treats the campers, things wouldn't have gotten so messed up.”
“Dream on! The guy is wacko. He's responsible for those stitches in your head, remember.”
“I know.” Samantha stopped in the middle of the path. “But something has to make someone like that.”
“You are too good. Remind me to call Mother Teresa and tell her to move over. Duncan is pond scum, pure and simple.”
Samantha had to laugh at Arlene's choice of imagery, from Mother Teresa to pond scum.
“All right, I agree.”
Arlene waved good-bye as Samantha knocked at the front door. Valerie opened it immediately. She was expecting her.
“Come in. How are you feeling? Are you sure you should be back at work so soon?”
“You sound like my mother,” Samantha said. “I'm fine and I was beginning to get stir-crazy.”
“Come on upstairs. Your check is in my office.”
Samantha followed her up the spiral staircase, made by one of the last practitioners of this art in the state.
The only thing that distinguished the thoroughly feminine boudoir Valerie ushered Samantha into as an office was the Macintosh on a pale green-and-white sponge-painted table underneath one of the windows. Beside it was a daybed covered by a billowy white spread and piled high with pillows. Samantha imagined how lovely it would feel to lean back into that down sea of rose chintzes and white eyelet. The rug was covered by more roses, woven against a dark green background. In contrast to the rest of the house, the walls were not painted off-white, but papered in a sage stripe with a Victorian frieze of lilacs above. Two wicker chairs with plump cushionsâyou wouldn't have marks on the back of your legs from theseâsat on either side of the French doors leading to a small secluded balcony overlooking the cove.
“I like to sunbathe there,” Valerie said, following Samantha's eye. “I let myself go in here. I do spent quite a bit of time in this room. Jim hates it. Too much froufrou, he says,” and she laughed.
“Well, I love it. I'd give anything for one like it!” Samantha enthused, forgetting her insistence two years earlier that Pix get rid of any and all vestiges of flowers, dotted swiss, and ribbon from Samantha's bedroom.
Valerie was rummaging around on the table, pulling open the drawer in the middle.
“Your check must be in Jim's study. Why don't you admire the view. I'll be back in a minute.”
Samantha dutifully sat in one of the chairs. It was as comfortable as it looked. The phone on Valerie's desk rang, then stopped. She must have answered it downstairs. Samantha
stood up and walked around the room, admiring the primitive still lifes that hung on the walls. Next to a plant stand with an arrangement of wax fruit and flowers never seasonal mates in nature, under a large glass dome, there was a closet door. Feeling slightly guilty, Samantha decided to open it after first listening carefully to make sure Valerie wasn't coming up the stairs. She just had to see what kind of leisure wear Valerie kept hereâVictoria's Secret or Laura Ashley? She giggled and wished Arlene was with her. She'd die when Samantha told her.
She quietly turned the intricately embossed brass doorknob.
The closet was huge, but instead of the negligees, tea gowns, and whatever that Samantha had expected, there was nothing except a large antique armoire. It had an ornate lock but no key. The closet smelled strongly of potpourri and Samantha sneezed. She reached into her jeans pocket for a tissue. She didn't have one. Yet, there was something else there. Down at the bottom was the key she'd found over two weeks ago, that sunny day when she and Mom had taken the dogs for a walk to see how the Fairchild's new house was coming alongâa sunny day that seemed to have had its start in another life.
All of a sudden, she felt nervous. She held the key in her hand. It had been so warm, she hadn't been wearing jeans much. This was the first time since that long-ago Sunday she'd had this pair on.
It was an ornate key, like the lock.
Before she could change her mind, she put it in, turned, and heard the click as the doors opened. When she saw what was inside, she laughed in relief. A whole shelf of plastic Mickey Mouse figures, old ones. There were also some folk art carvings of animals and one of a figure that looked like someone from the Bible. On other shelves were piles of quilts. This was obviously where Valerie kept her finds.
Samantha closed one of the doors and bent down to make sure the quilts didn't get in the way. She reached under a bunch to ease them farther into the chest and immediately pulled back, as if she'd put her hand into a blazing fire instead of a stack of linens. She closed the other door, pocketed the key, shut the closet door fast, and sat back down, looking straight out to sea. Her heart was pounding, her cheeks blazing.