When the Wind Blows (24 page)

“She won’t be by herself,” Bill pointed out. “Your mother will be there.”

Now there was a long silence, and when Diana spoke again, she sounded wistful.

“Can’t we include her? Please?”

Bill shrugged: perhaps they could talk after dinner.

“Okay. Shall I pick you up about six?”

“Fine. See you then.”

As he put the phone back on the hook Bill had mixed feelings. He was pleased that Diana had, for the first time in his memory, accepted an invitation without consulting her mother first. But there was something else, too. Was she afraid to leave Christie with Miss Edna? That made no sense at all. Granted, the old woman wanted Christie out of the house, but he couldn’t imagine that she would actually harm the child.

Then he remembered that only a few days ago Edna Amber had come to town by herself, for the first time in years, to talk to Dan Gurley. Why?

Checking his calendar and finding no appointments, Bill left his office and walked the two blocks to the town hall.

Dan glanced up as Bill came into his office.

“If it’s a crisis, I don’t want to hear about it,” the marshal said sourly.

“It’s not.” Bill told Dan about Diana’s apparent fear of leaving Christie with her mother. Dan, as was his habit, scratched his nose while he listened.

“Well, Miss Edna was pretty upset that day,” he said when Bill was done. “But it seemed to me that she was more worried about Diana and herself than mad at the kid. She was just pissed off that something had finally upset her applecart.”

“Did you tell her that?”

Dan grinned, remembering. “Yep. And she got downright abusive about it, too. Still thinks she runs the town. I guess she always will.”

Bill moved to the window and stood staring out into the peaceful streets of the village. “Do you think she’s any threat to Christie Lyons?” he asked, his back still to the marshal.

Dan shrugged unconcernedly. “I can’t see why she would be. But who knows? She’s an old tiger, and it seems to me like she’s defending her cub. If you can call a fifty-year-old woman a cub.”

Bill shook his head sadly. Then he brightened. “Things seem to be changing out there. Miss Edna actually called me yesterday. She caught her hand in a rattrap, which she seemed to think Christie had set specifically to catch her.”

“Getting paranoid, is she?” Dan asked.

“Looking for an excuse to force Diana to send Christie away, is more like it.”

“I’m sorry for Diana.” Dan sighed. “But it’s her own fault. She should have cleared out of there years ago.”

“Maybe she will yet,” Bill said, thinking about the evening ahead. But to himself, he admitted that he doubted it.

   Christie rummaged through her clothes and finally found a pair of jeans. As she pulled them on she thought about the night before.

Sleeping in Aunt Diana’s bed had been nice. She had awakened twice during the night, but the soft warmth of Diana’s body next to her own had made her feel safe, and when she had wiggled, Diana had pulled her closer and stroked her until she had fallen back to sleep.

She put on a T-shirt, then found her sneakers under the bed. The one good thing about the nursery, she decided, was that she didn’t have to keep it too neat—Miss Edna hardly ever came upstairs, and Aunt Diana didn’t seem to notice if she left things lying around.

Her shoes tied, she bounded down the back stairs to the kitchen.

She looked out the window. Off in the distance she saw some children playing in the field.

“Aunt Diana?” she called. She went to the diningroom door and called again. “Aunt Diana!”

“Ha!
La muchacha!”

Christie, startled, turned to see Esperanza Rodriguez coming down the stairs.

“Is Aunt Diana up there?” she asked shyly.

“No,” Esperanza replied. “But Miss Edna—she is in the parlor. Do you want to go talk to her?”

Christie shook her head. “She doesn’t like me.”

Esperanza chuckled, her large bosom heaving. “She don’t like anybody, that one. But nobody like her, either, no?”

Esperanza moved slowly into the kitchen, and Christie followed her.

“Why doesn’t she like anyone?” she asked.

Esperanza shrugged and settled herself at the kitchen table, where she began shelling peas from a bowl she held on her lap.

“Life has not been what she wanted it to be,” she said softly. “Not for Señorita Diana, either. And, since her baby, this has not been a happy house. If it ever was,” she added.

Christie stared at Esperanza, her eyes filled with puzzlement. “Aunt Diana had a baby?”

“Sí,” Esperanza said, nodding. “But it died and went to live with the children.”

Christie frowned. “What children?”

Esperanza stopped working and met Christie’s eyes. “The ones in the cave,” she said. “Up on the hill, behind the mine.”

Christie scratched her head, trying to figure out what Esperanza was talking about. Then an idea occurred to her.

“Are they the water babies?”

“Sí,” Esperanza said. She took the peas to the sink, then began peeling some carrots.

“But who are they?” Christie asked.

“Little children,” Esperanza said. “Little babies who were never alive. They wait in the cave, and someday they will live again.”

Christie stared at her, wide-eyed. “You mean they’re ghosts?” she breathed.

“Oh, no. To be a ghost you have to live. And the water babies never lived.” She paused for a moment, then, under her breath, she said something else: “Except for one.”

Suddenly another voice filled the room, and Christie whirled around to see Edna Amber’s tall form looming in the dining-room doorway.

“Esperanza, what are you telling that child?” the old woman demanded. Under Edna’s wrath Esperanza seemed to shrink.

“Nada, señora,”
she said. She dropped the carrot into the sink and scuttled out the back door. When she was gone, Edna turned to Christie.

“What was she saying?” she demanded once more.

“N-nothing,” Christie told her, desperately trying to keep from bursting into tears. “Just a story.”

“A story?” Edna asked. “What kind of story?”

Christie, her eyes darting like a rabbit’s, searched the room, but there was no refuge.

“About the children,” she whispered. “The children in the cave.”

Edna’s eyes bored into her.

“It’s a lie,” she said. “There is no cave, and there are no children. She’s an ignorant, superstitious peasant, and you mustn’t listen to her. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Miss Edna,” Christie breathed. Her eyes fastened onto Edna’s cane, which the old woman had lifted from the floor and now held hovering in the air.

“Don’t hurt me,” Christie whispered. “Please don’t hurt me.”

Edna glared at her, then her eyes softened, and she slowly lowered the cane.

“Hurt you?” she asked. “Why would I want to hurt you?” She glanced out the window and saw the children playing in the field a hundred yards away. “Go on,” she said. “Go play with your friends.”

Christie, as if released from a trap, fled out the back door.

   Today Joyce Crowley was walking out to the Ambers’, since Matt had taken the pickup truck. As she neared the driveway she stopped for a moment to watch the children playing in the field.

They were playing tag, and Christie Lyons seemed to be “it.” Jeff and Steve were there, along with Eddie Whitefawn and Susan Gillespie. Jay-Jay Jennings, if she was with them, was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly Jeff saw his mother and came running over to her.

“Hi!”

“Hi, yourself. You getting hungry?”

“Unh-hunh.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what. I’m going over to talk to Miss Diana for a few minutes. When I’m done, why don’t we take all your friends home for lunch?”

“Oh, boy! Can we?”

“Why can’t we? It’s our house!” Joyce tousled her son’s hair and watched while he rejoined his friends. Then she continued along the road.

As she approached the house she heard Miss Edna’s imperious voice, railing at Diana.

“I won’t stand for it, Diana,” Edna was saying. “I won’t have you getting involved with William Henry again! Do you understand me?”

Joyce, embarrassed at overhearing an argument, quickly crossed the porch and pressed the bell. Silence fell in the house, and a moment later Diana opened the door, her face strained.

“Who is it?” Edna called from the living room.

“Joyce Crowley, Mother,” Diana called back. She dropped her voice. “Let’s go into the kitchen.” She quickly led Joyce through the dining room and offered her a cup of coffee.

“Got any lemonade?” Joyce asked. “It’s getting hot out there.”

“Seven-Up okay?” Diana asked as she searched the refrigerator.

“Fine.” Joyce paused, then decided to plunge right into the reason for her visit. “How did it go yesterday? With Jeff being here, I mean.”

Diana brought glasses and the 7-Up to the table and sat down. Had Jeff told his mother what had happened up at the mine? “We had a good time,” she offered. As she saw the look of relief that passed over Joyce’s face, she realized that Jeff had said nothing. “And I didn’t crack under the strain,” she added, forcing herself to smile over the nervousness she was feeling.

Joyce chuckled ruefully. “Was I that obvious? Well, Matt always says I’m totally transparent.”

As Joyce’s expression turned desolate Diana suddenly laughed. “Don’t apologize to me, Joyce,” she said. “Except for Bill Henry, you’re the only person who’s ever even bothered to talk to me about my life.”

Joyce’s eyes flickered toward the kitchen door. Then she reached out to touch Diana’s hand. “Is it that bad?”

Diana was still for a moment, then shook her head. “I suppose it used to be worse. I guess it’s just that she doesn’t want me to grow up, Joyce.” Diana took a deep breath and stood up. “Well, I’d better find Christie and fix some lunch.”

Joyce, too, stood up. “She’s outside with the rest of the kids. I invited them all over to have lunch with Jeff. Christie, too. Is that all right?”

Diana’s hesitation was almost imperceptible.

“Of course,” she said. “Just make sure she comes home by four, okay?”

Joyce agreed and let herself out the back door. As she disappeared around the corner of the house, Diana slowly fingered her glass.

She wished Christie weren’t going to the Crowleys’. She had wanted to fix lunch for Christie herself. Indeed, she wanted to do everything for Christie.

She decided that Christie was spending too much time with the other children.

Entirely too much.

16

“I have an idea,” Jay-Jay Jennings said.

Jay-Jay had arrived at the Crowleys’ after lunch, and the children, six of them, were sitting in the shade of a large willow in the Crowleys’ yard. So far, Jay-Jay had said nothing about her idea that Christie might have drowned Kim, though they had spent much of the afternoon speculating on what might have happened to their friend and talking about the funeral that was to take place the following day. Jeff, however, had seen Jay-Jay staring at Christie, and when she said she had an idea, he was sure it had something to do with her.

Susan Gillespie turned to Jay-Jay eagerly. “Well, tell us,” she urged.

Jay-Jay smiled slyly at her friends. “You know how the wind’s been blowing every night?”

“Yeah,” Steve Penrose said. “So what?”

“Well, I heard that when the wind blows, you can hear the water babies crying.”

“Big deal,” Jeff muttered, knowing what was coming and remembering his own trip to the mine only the day before.

Susan, however, was intrigued. “Really?” she asked.

“That’s what I heard,” Jay-Jay said. “Why don’t we go find out tonight?”

The other children looked at each other uneasily, each of them wondering what the other was thinking.
It was finally Susan who spoke. “I’ll go. But what if there isn’t any wind?”

“Then we won’t go, stupid,” Jay-Jay replied.

“I don’t know,” Jeff said. “I’m not supposed to go up to the mine by myself.”

“You mean you’re chicken,” Jay-Jay taunted him.

“I am not!”

“Are too!”

“Me and Christie were up there yesterday,” Jeff said. “We didn’t hear any baby crying.”

“But the wind wasn’t blowing,” Christie said.

“So what?”

“Maybe that’s why you didn’t hear it. Besides, if you’re not supposed to go to the mine, why did you go yesterday?”

Jeff squirmed, but he knew he was caught. “All right, I’ll go,” he agreed reluctantly. “If my parents will let me,” he added.

“If we ask our parents, none of us will get to go,” Jay-Jay sneered. “We’ll have to sneak out.”

Suddenly the idea took on the feeling of a great adventure. It was as if an unspoken dare hung over them, and none of them was willing to be the first to back out. Christie, however, was nervously digging at the ground with a twig.

“What about you?” Jay-Jay challenged her. “Are you coming?”

Christie seized on the first excuse that came to mind. “I don’t know if I can get out,” she said unhappily.

“Anybody can get out, if they want to.” Jay-Jay smiled at her, but the smile was mean. She turned to the others. “She’s just afraid of Miss Diana.”