When the Wind Blows (15 page)

Diana felt a flash of anger.
This
was Christie’s house now. The other house—the house she had lived in with her father—was in the past. Almost of its own volition her hand rose to slap Christie’s face, but a soft tapping at the back door stopped her. Christie quickly slid off her chair to let her friends into the kitchen as Miss Edna appeared at the dining-room door. Seeing the old woman, the children’s greetings died on their lips, and Diana glanced nervously from her mother to the children.

“Mother, wouldn’t you like your coffee in the parlor?” she asked.

“When you have time.” Though she spoke to Diana, her eyes remained fixed on the children. Now Diana, too, shifted her attention to the youngsters.

“You’re all out early.” She made her smile welcoming, though she could feel the familiar anger building inside her.

“We’re going swimming,” Kim explained. “Can Christie go with us?”

Diana searched her mind for an excuse. “Well, I thought—”

But Christie, sensing the refusal to come, pled her case.

“Please can’t I go, Aunt Diana? We won’t go far.” She looked to her friends for support. “It’s not far, is it?”

The children shook their heads, and Kim Sandler explained: “It’s just a little ways past the mine.”

“You mean the old gravel quarry?” Diana asked.

“All the kids swim up there,” Christie assured her.

Diana searched her face, wondering if what Christie was saying was the truth. In the back of her mind she was beginning to have a suspicion that often they told you what they thought you wanted to hear. Finally she shook her head. “I don’t think so. I thought we’d go over to—” She hesitated, then decided to turn Christie’s own words against her. “—to your house today. We have to get the rest of your things.”

As Christie’s face reflected her disappointment, Edna Amber suddenly spoke. Though she hadn’t moved from her position in the dining-room door, neither had she missed a word of what had been said.

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Diana, let the child go! You and I can go get her things—there can’t be all that many of them, can there? Besides, it would be nice to be by ourselves for a while, wouldn’t it?”

Diana glared at her mother. Edna appeared not to notice. And yet, though Edna’s face was placid, Diana’s resistance crumbled. “All right. But be careful, and be sure you’re back by noon.”

Christie ran upstairs to get her bathing suit and a towel. Silence hung over the kitchen while she was gone. The children, sensing the tension, edged out the door, leaving the two women alone. Only when Christie reappeared, promised once more to be careful, and left, did Diana speak.

“Why did you do that, Mother?” she asked. “That quarry’s dangerous, and you know it.”

“You used to swim up there when you were a child,” Edna countered. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

“We don’t even know if Christie can swim!”

“Well, if she can’t, she’ll learn today,” Edna said coldly. “Either that, or she won’t come back.”

As Diana stared at her Edna Amber began sipping her coffee.

   “How far is it?” Christie asked.

They’d been walking for half an hour, and, though they’d passed the mine ten minutes ago, there was nothing around that looked to Christie like a quarry, or that seemed to hint of water. The brush and juniper of the valley floor had given way to a stand of aspen, and the road, since they’d passed the mine, had been replaced by a steep trail.

Jay-Jay looked at her scornfully. “I thought you said you were there before.”

“Well, I’ve heard you guys talk about it,” Christie said defensively. “Besides, all I said was that the kids swim there all the time. I didn’t say I ever had. Have you?”

Jay-Jay nodded. “Me and Linda Malone were up there last week. It’s really neat.” She carefully avoided mentioning how frightened they’d been when Juan Rodriguez had suddenly appeared above them. That, in fact, was why Linda had refused to come today.

They paused in the aspen grove, and Kim, the tomboy of the group, began passing around the canteen that was slung from her belt. Christie sucked at it thirstily.

“I wish I had one of these.”

“Maybe Miss Diana will buy one for you,” Kim suggested.

“I don’t like to ask for things.…” Christie replied. For a moment she was tempted to tell her friends how frightened she was most of the time. Ever since the chick had died, and Diana had made her feel like it was her fault, she had tried to be extra careful, and yet every day she seemed to make some kind of mistake.

Then, as if she’d read her thoughts, Susan Gillespie flopped down on the ground next to her and asked her a question: “What’s it like, living there?”

Christie shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess,” she said, wanting neither to admit that she was frightened most of the time, nor to say anything bad about the Ambers. Besides, she wasn’t exactly sure what Susan wanted to know.

“I heard Miss Edna’s a witch,” Susan said, cocking her head in the odd way of hers that always made people wonder if she was asking a question or stating a fact. Christie stared at her.

“A witch?”

Susan nodded. “I even heard she eats raw meat. Yuck!”

“Well, she doesn’t,” Christie said. “She eats the same thing everybody else does.”

“My mother says she’s crazy,” Kim put in. “Not crazy like the people at the loony bin. Just … strange.”

Christie looked at her curiously. “Strange how?”

“Well …” Kim began, but then hesitated.

“Well, what?” Jay-Jay demanded, her voice petulant. “If you weren’t going to tell, you shouldn’t have started to!”

Kim looked uncertainly from face to face, wishing she hadn’t begun. All her friends except Christie seemed to be challenging her. “Well,” she said again, then took the plunge. “Mom says Miss Edna used to lock Miss Diana up.”

Suddenly the attention of the group was riveted on Kim.

“Lock her up?” Susan breathed “Where?”

“In the attic,” Kim said.

Christie felt a sudden pang of fear. Each night, when Diana took her upstairs, the last thing she heard was the key turning in the lock. Was that why Diana locked her in? Because she’d been locked in, too? “Why would she do that?” Christie asked.

“How should I know?” Kim shrugged. “But Mom said when Miss Diana was a little girl, Miss Edna used to lock her in her room, and she even had to send her to the hospital once, but that was when she was already grown-up.”

“You mean Dr. Henry’s?” Jay-Jay asked doubtfully. She was sure Kim was making the whole thing up, but Kim shook her head vehemently.

“That’s not a hospital. That’s just an office. Miss Edna made them take Miss Diana to the loony bin. But Mom said they should have locked Miss Edna up. She said if Miss Diana was crazy, it was Miss Edna’s fault.”

“What was wrong with Miss Diana?” Susan asked. “I think she’s nice.”

Kim shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe Miss Edna beat her up.”

Christie frowned, remembering the spanking she’d received from Diana. “Why would she do that?”

“Search me,” Kim said. She looked at her friends and rolled her eyes. “Mom said I was too young to understand.”

The rest of the kids groaned sympathetically. “My dad always tells me that,” Jay-Jay said. Then she giggled. “Especially when I ask him about sex. Then he turns red and says it.”

Agreeing that parents were strange people, the four girls continued on their way to the quarry. But although she walked along with the rest of them, Christie soon stopped listening to their chatter. Instead she was turning over in her mind the things they had said earlier.

“Witch … weird … crazy … lock her up.”
What did it all mean?

They eventually arrived at the quarry, and for a long moment Christie could only stare at it.

The pool was nearly round, and on the far side of it the hillside rose nearly straight upward. In the stillness of the morning the water made a perfect mirror, and the trees surrounding most of the pond were reflected on its quiet surface. Here and there a boulder protruded from the water.

“You can dive off the farthest one,” Kim told her. “The others are only good for sunbathing. Come on.”

Kim led her to a clearing, where the other two girls were already putting on their bathing suits. “Last one in the water’s crazier than Miss Edna!” Jay-Jay whooped. She dashed out of the clearing, and a moment later there was a splash as she hurled her chubby body into the water. Susan followed her, leaving Christie and Kim alone in the clearing. Christie looked around uneasily.

“How do you know there isn’t anybody around?” she asked. Kim was peeling off her clothes.

“Nobody’s ever around here. Sometimes we don’t even bother with our suits. Hurry up!”

Christie started changing into her bathing suit.

“Kim?”

“What?” Kim was fidgeting and glancing out to see what the other girls were doing.

“Do you think Miss Diana could be crazy?”

“How should I know?”

“I don’t know. But sometimes she scares me.”

“How?”

Christie shrugged. “I’m not sure. Sometimes she seems to love me, but sometimes she gets mad at me for no reason.”

“My parents are like that.” Kim said. “That’s the trouble with grown-ups. You never know what they want you to do, then they get mad at you when you don’t do it. Are you coming?”

Still turning Kim’s words over in her mind, Christie got into her suit and followed Kim onto the narrow strip of beach.

The water, bubbling up from an invisible spring below, was clear and cold. Christie dipped her toes in, then jumped back.

“Chicken!” Jay-Jay taunted her from a rock a few yards from the shore. “Come on!”

With the other girls already in the water, Christie took a deep breath and plunged in after them. She came up for air, sputtering and kicking.

“It’s cold!”

“No, it’s not.” Kim told her. “In a minute you’ll turn numb, and then you won’t feel it!”

Christie struck out for the boulder on which Jay-Jay and Susan were lying and scrambled up onto the sunbaked granite. On the edge of freezing just a moment before, her feet were now suddenly burning.

“Get back in the water,” Jay-Jay told her, giving her a shove.

She went under, and when she came to the surface, Susan’s face was grinning down at her. “Splash the rock where you’re going to lie. It cools it off.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before I climbed out?”

“It’s more fun to watch people burn themselves.” Jay-Jay giggled. Christie began splashing, making sure she covered not only her spot on the rock, but Susan and Jay-Jay as well. Suddenly Jay-Jay jumped in beside her and shoved her under the surface. Her feet hit the bottom, and Christie let her knees buckle until she was crouching below the surface. Then she pushed up and burst from the water, screaming at Jay-Jay. Jay-Jay screeched and paddled frantically away. Christie started to follow her, then changed her mind and climbed once more onto the boulder. She settled down next to Susan and felt the sun begin to take the chill of the water out of her body.

“This is neat,” she said.

“Yeah,” Susan agreed. “I just hope we can keep on coming up here.”

Christie propped herself up on one elbow.

“Why shouldn’t we?”

“Well, up till today, nobody knew we came here. At least Miss Edna and Miss Diana didn’t. What if they make us stop?”

“Why would they?”

“Miss Diana didn’t want you to come with us,” Susan pointed out. “What if she says it’s too dangerous and tells us we can’t swim here anymore?”

“Then I guess we’ll have to stop,” Christie replied.

Jay-Jay, hauling her body out of the water, plopped down next to them. “Or sneak up here anyway,” she said.

When Christie stared at her, she grinned maliciously. “If we only did what our parents said we can do, we wouldn’t do anything, would we?” Then, an idea suddenly striking her, she stared at Christie. “Is Miss Diana your mother now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is she going to adopt you?”

“I don’t know.”

“’Cause if she did,” Jay-Jay went on, “someday you’d own all this. You’d own the whole ranch!”

Christie’s expression turned somber. “But she’d have to die for that to happen,” she said. “She and Miss Edna both.”

“So what?” Jay-Jay said blithely. “Sooner or later everybody has to die.” She lay down once more and soon she fell asleep in the warmth of the sun.

But Christie did not sleep. Instead she wondered.

Did everybody really have to die?

It didn’t seem fair.…

And yet her parents had died, and sometimes she had a strange feeling that she was going to, too.

   “This house used to belong to the Traverses.”

Diana glanced at her mother as she parked the Cadillac in the driveway of the house that had, until two weeks ago, been occupied by Elliot and Christie Lyons. Two hours had passed since breakfast. Diana had been feeding the chickens when Edna had come out to the coop and insisted that they follow through with Diana’s plan to collect the last of Christie’s belongings. Most of them, however, had been delivered by Dan Gurley several days ago and were already in the nursery. Diana had suggested that she finish the job with Christie some other day, but Edna had insisted.

“We’ll do it today,” she had said, “and we’ll do it together.”

Now, instead of getting out of the car, Edna was staring at the house, her mind apparently lost in some dim memory.

“The Traverses?” Diana asked. “I don’t remember them. Who were they?”

Edna’s sharp blue eyes appraised her daughter. “There are a lot of things you don’t remember, aren’t there?” she asked, her voice not ungentle. When Diana made no reply, Edna opened the car door and eased herself out. “Are you coming?”

They let themselves into the house, and Edna quickly scanned the living room. “Fakes,” she sniffed. “Cheap copies of second-rate junk, every stick of it.”

“Elliot wasn’t rich, Mother,” Diana reminded her.

“Nor did he have any taste, apparently. Which room was the child’s?”

They explored the house, finally coming to the small room at the rear, which had obviously been Christie’s. They found two suitcases in the master bedroom and began packing them. Christie’s remaining clothes fit easily into one, and her few toys into the other.