“You do?” said Grover. Not being yelled at surprised him so much that he answered as if they were having a normal conversation.
“As well as anyone,” said Hoyt.
“Well,” said Grover, “what does the universe have in store?”
“Ceaseless marvels,” said Hoyt McCoy. “Infinite astonishment. But only for those who care to pay attention.”
“I saw a crack of light over your house,” Grover said.
“Aha,” said Hoyt. He narrowed his eyes and looked hard at Grover. “Never mind about that,” he said.
“Why?” said Grover. “Is it a secret?”
Hoyt McCoy ignored his question. “If you were to simply ring my doorbell like a civilized person instead of sneaking around my property, I might show you a few things. Assuming you were interested.”
But Grover wasn’t nearly interested enough for that. “Maybe sometime,” he said. “But right now I have to go.” He moved backward a few steps.
“Let me tell you one more thing,” said Hoyt, raising his voice. “You may tell this to your Mrs. Beeson, if you like, who likes everything to be neat and clean and normal. I am not particularly neat or clean; I am certainly not what anyone would call normal. But I am as good as anyone else.”
And very loony, thought Grover. He murmured a few more polite words and made his exit, trotting down the gravel drive and heading home with a great sense of relief.
Grover couldn’t sleep that night. Thoughts swarmed through his mind; he couldn’t shut them off. So he got up, being quiet so he wouldn’t wake his brothers. He put his clothes on and went outside. He would take a short, fast walk—just up the hill to Main Street, down a few blocks, and back home. He’d done it before when he couldn’t sleep, and it usually helped.
He wasn’t afraid. There was nothing in Yonwood that could hurt him, unless that terrorist was roaming around town again. And if he was, Grover could watch him from some safe place and see what he was up to and turn him in. The thought was invigorating. Grover started off. He climbed the hill at a rapid pace, breathing in cold night air, looking up at the stars, wondering why he didn’t do this more often. Being out alone at night made him feel free.
He went up Trillium Street, around behind the Cozy Corner (no terrorists there tonight), and down Main Street, where the streetlamps were out, as they were all over town. He saw nothing stirring—not a night watchman or an alley cat or even a spider—until, as he passed the dark windows of the grocery store, he happened to glance up Grackle Street and saw someone about a block away. Whoever it was didn’t walk purposefully but drifted a little this way, a little that way, as if lost or looking for something. Was it a sleepwalker? Grover stopped and stared. He was too far away to be sure who he was seeing, but suddenly he thought he knew. It must be her; it was the right street. Why would she be outside? She seemed to be wearing—what? A nightgown? Something pale and floaty. He started in that direction. But before he’d gone more than a few steps, another figure appeared, a skinny girl, who dashed up behind the lost-looking one and took her arm and led her back into the house.
Grover turned downhill and headed for home. What he’d seen had given him a sad, shaky feeling. Poor Prophet, he thought. It must be awful to have God speak to you and turn your mind to ashes.
CHAPTER 19
__________________
Blue Envelopes
Nickie woke on Tuesday morning to the sound of rain roaring on the roof and slashing against the window glass, coming in gusts as the wind blew one way and then another. It was the sort of day when you want to stay inside, make a fire, and sit by it with your cup of hot chocolate. But of course Nickie had given up hot chocolate, so she drank mint tea that morning instead. She actually felt quite virtuous doing it, because it was so hard. She could tell that her willpower was being exercised, like a muscle. This didn’t make her happy, exactly. She missed the chocolate. But it made her feel strong. Could it be that the more things you gave up, the stronger you would feel?
Crystal went out early to talk with Len about plans for the open house. “Meet me at the café at six,” she said as she went out the door. “We’ll have dinner together and you can tell me all about your adventures.”
Otis’s outing was very short that morning. He stood on the threshold of the back door and looked doubtfully at the rain. Nickie had to push him outside. Once there, he did his duty in record time and dashed back in. Nickie took him upstairs.
The nursery room was especially cozy that morning, with the sky so dark outside, and the sound of the rain on the windows, and the pools of golden light from the lamps. Nickie set Otis up on the window seat and gave him a new bone to chew. She propped up some cushions to lean against, and then she looked around for something to read. Her eyes fell on the books that Amanda had left behind. Why not try one of those? She picked the one with the dark-haired beauty on the cover and opened it at random:
In the candlelight, Blaine’s eyes glittered like jewels. Clarissa caught her breath as he leaned toward her. What a magnificent man he was! His square jaw, his thick glossy black hair, his wide shoulders—her heart raced. When he reached out and stroked her cheek, she trembled all over. “Blaine,” she said. “You must never leave me. I want to be with you always.”
Nickie raised her eyes to the rain-spattered window. She tried to imagine feeling this way about someone. First she pictured Martin, with his hazel eyes and short red hair. Did she think he was magnificent? Not really. He seemed nice, and he was on the side of goodness. But he didn’t make her heart race. She pictured Grover instead. His hair was cute, in a floppy sort of way. He was smart and interesting. He had a sense of humor, if you liked that kind of humor. But he was also a bit peculiar. She had no idea if he was on the side of goodness or not. And she certainly wouldn’t say he was magnificent. If he stroked her cheek, would her heart race? No. She would think it was weird and creepy. Did she want to be with him always? Definitely not. It was hard to imagine wanting to be with anyone always. There’d be times when you wanted to be alone, or with someone else.
She turned a few pages and read some more:
Clarissa fled down the stone steps to the windswept beach, her raven tresses flowing out behind her. She scanned the empty sands, and when she saw no sign of Blaine, a great cry of anguish escaped her lips. She could not live without him! She would sooner die!
Nickie shut the book. There was no doubt about it: if that was love, she was not in love with Martin or Grover. She could live without either of them perfectly well.
She looked out the window, where the rain was still pelting down. At the end of the block, she noticed someone approaching, wearing a wide-brimmed pink rain hat and carrying a canvas tote bag. When the person came closer, she saw who it was: Mrs. Beeson! How perfect. If she ran fast downstairs, she could catch her and ask her what had happened to horrible Hoyt McCoy.
She didn’t bother to grab an umbrella—she just threw on her jacket and ran out into the rain. Rivers of water streamed through the gutters. All along the street, bare tree branches flailed against house walls and shut-tight windows. She ran to meet Mrs. Beeson, who smiled when she saw Nickie coming.
“Hi!” said Nickie. “I saw you from the window, and I was wondering—”
“I was just thinking of you,” Mrs. Beeson said. She looked a little frazzled around the edges. Her lipstick was slightly crooked, and her ponytail, beneath the rain hat, was damp and drooping. “You’ve been such a help. Walk with me, if you’d like. I’m delivering a few notices.”
“Notices?” said Nickie.
“Yes, urgent ones. I’m getting a little impatient. Here we have such a miraculous chance to save ourselves, and a few people are about to ruin it for everyone. Such selfishness! I have to make them understand. We have a terrorist in the woods! The Crisis gets worse all the time! In three days we might face war!” Mrs. Beeson shook her head at people’s foolishness. “So I’ve decided it’s time to take some drastic action. I’ve done the downhill o
nes and most of the uphill; only one more to go.” She drew Nickie in next to her, under the umbrella. Her sugary smell enveloped them both.
“What are the notices about?” Nickie asked.
But Mrs. Beeson was already on a different subject. “It was just too bad about Hoyt McCoy,” she said, “wasn’t it? About your mistake, I mean, honey. But I still feel sure that he has something to hide. Don’t you?”
Nickie was puzzled. “I don’t know what happened with Hoyt McCoy,” she said. “That’s what I wanted to ask you. Didn’t you arrest him? Did I make a mistake?”
Mrs. Beeson looked at her in surprise. “You didn’t know?” She explained about the police action and the rifle that was really a telescope. “However,” she said, “I’m sure we were right essentially. He just reeks of wrongness. I can feel it, and doing this work makes me trust my feelings more every day. It’s just a matter of catching him in the act, that’s all. But never mind. Here’s the last house.”
Nickie was so stunned by this news about Hoyt McCoy that she could hardly breathe. A telescope! And the police had gone out and aimed guns at him! Because of her.
They had stopped at a brick house with a collapsing woodshed next to it. Mrs. Beeson opened the mailbox. She reached into the canvas bag and took out a blue envelope. In the upper left corner were the words “Urgent: From B. Beeson.” She put it in the mailbox, and they moved on.
Nickie started to ask again what was in the envelopes, but Mrs. Beeson was already talking. “Sometimes I’m sorry this ever happened,” she said. “That vision of Althea’s, and then the instructions afterward. Some parts of it are very hard. The punishment part, for instance.”
“Punishment?” said Nickie.
Mrs. Beeson turned a corner and headed up Fern Street, walking so quickly that Nickie kept getting left behind. “Yes, for people who just won’t cooperate,” Mrs. Beeson said. “We can’t allow that, can we? It would be letting down everyone else in Yonwood.”
“What’s the punishment?” Nickie asked.
But Mrs. Beeson must not have heard her over the splash of the rain. “It’s such a responsibility,” she went on. “I’ve agonized over it, I must admit. Some of the things she says—I don’t know. I hate to think she really means—” She shook her head, staring down at the wet sidewalk. “I just hesitate to—”
Then suddenly she stopped, and a little rush of water flowed off the top of her pink hat onto Nickie’s head. Her voice became strong again. “What am I saying? I hesitate? Just because something is hard? Just because it means making a sacrifice? No, no, no. That’s what faith is, isn’t it? Believing even when you don’t understand.”
Nickie looked up at her. She was gazing at the sky, her eyes shining, paying no attention to the rain falling on her face. “It is?” Nickie said.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Beeson. “It is.” And with that, she hurried away.
Back at Greenhaven, Nickie went upstairs, passing some men who were polishing the floors with a roaring machine. Mrs. Beeson, she thought, seemed more fired up than ever, like an engine revved to a higher level. Nickie had the feeling something was going to happen.
In the nursery, Otis greeted her energetically. “Oty-Oty-Otis!” she cried. She rolled him over and scratched his pink tummy, and he paddled his feet and stretched his head out so she could scratch his throat, too. “You are a darling, Otis,” she said. She lifted him up onto the window seat, and she turned on the lamp. As the rain pounded down outside, she started in again on the stack of papers she’d taken from the big trunk.
She found some letters written to “Mommy and Daddy” from a girl at summer camp in 1955, and an article cut from a newspaper’s social pages about an elegant birthday party held at Greenhaven in 1940. After setting aside still more bent postcards and ancient Christmas cards and faded photographs, she came upon a fragile old envelope with a strange-looking letter inside that she thought at first was just a page of crazy scribbling. But when she looked at it closely, she could see that it was writing after all. It was a sort of double writing. The letter writer (someone named Elizabeth) had written on the page in the usual way and then had turned the paper and written right across what she’d written before! The result looked totally unreadable—like two barbed-wire fences laid on top of each other. But she found that if she held the paper in a certain way, slightly tipped, the writing going one direction faded into the background, and the writing going the other direction became clear.
The letter was dated January 4, 1919. Most of it wasn’t really worth the trouble it took to read. Elizabeth wrote about ordinary things: visitors who’d arrived, a party, new clothes, a new horse. One bit was intriguing, though: “I hope your dear mother is not so terribly sad as she was. I see as I write this that it’s been a year today since the fever took darling baby Frederick. Such a great sorrow! But time must have healed her a little by now.”
Nickie imagined the mother, young and beautiful and wearing one of those long, slender dresses she’d seen in the photographs, sitting in anguish at the bedside of her baby, not able to give him the right medicine because it hadn’t been invented yet. It would be dreadful to watch your baby die. No wonder she was still sad a year later.
She decided to keep this letter because of the strange way it was written. She set it on the shelf with the picture of the twins.
It was time to meet Crystal for dinner. Nickie walked toward downtown. Overhead, she heard the fighter jets again, roaring across the sky, above the clouds. She shivered, thinking of the president’s deadline. Only three days left.
The whole town had a gloomy, closed-in look tonight. Nearly all the houses were dark, their blinds and curtains drawn. A small house on Birch Street had lighted windows, though, and as Nickie passed she saw a police car draw up in front of it. Good, she thought. They’re going to make those people follow the rules.
When she got to the Cozy Corner and pushed open the door, warm food-scented air greeted her. The restaurant was dim because its lights were off, but candles on each table made it seem cozy anyhow. She spotted Crystal right away: she was sitting with her back to Nickie, at a table beside the window, and across from her sat a tall man with a little mustache. It must be Len, the real estate agent. Why was he here? Crystal hadn’t said she was meeting Len for dinner. She’d said she and Nickie would have dinner together and Nickie would tell about her adventures. Not that she had any adventures she wanted to tell about.
Len saw her standing there. He said something to Crystal, and she turned around and called, “Nickie! Here we are!”
When Nickie sat down, Crystal said, “I talked to your mother today. She got a card from your father. Didn’t say where he was or what he was doing, but he said he might have a surprise for her pretty soon.”
“He must be coming home!” Nickie said. “Oh, I hope he is.” She missed her father with a terrible ache all of a sudden. He called her his chickadee and made paper airplanes for her. She wished he were here right now.
She wanted to ask if her mother had said anything else, but Crystal had moved on to another subject. “We’ve been planning,” she said. “We’re thinking this Saturday for the open house.”
“Crossing our fingers for good weather,” said Len, grinning, and holding up two sets of crossed fingers and wagging them at Nickie.
“That means a lot of work has to get done during the next three days,” said Crystal. She sounded quite cheerful about it. She took her notebook out of her purse, and she and Len started in on still another to-do list as if it were the most fun thing in the world.
Nickie ordered her soup and stared out the window. The last of the sunlight edged the top of the mountain in gold. Someone in a “Don’t Do It!” T-shirt walked by, and someone else with a cell phone clapped to her ear. Across the street, a black car pulled into the gas station. Hoyt McCoy got out of it. Just the sight of him made Nickie feel guilty. She watched as he filled up his gas tank, and she was glad when he drove off, heading down the road that led to the
highway.
Dinner took forever. Crystal’s to-do list got longer and longer, and every item had to be discussed in tedious detail. Now and then Nickie commented on something, but no one paid attention to her. She was just about to say she was going back to Greenhaven when there was a loud tap on the window next to her. Startled, she turned. Outside stood Grover, his eyes round and worried-looking.
“Who’s that?” said Crystal.
“The handyman’s son,” Nickie said. “I sort of know him.” She laughed, thinking he was joking around as usual. But instead of breaking into a smile or a maniac face, Grover shook his head and beckoned to her. His mouth moved, making exaggerated words: “Come out.” Nickie’s smile froze on her face. What was wrong?
She stood up from the table. “I have to go ask him something,” she said, and before Crystal and Len could say a word, she dashed out the door and hurried after Grover.
CHAPTER 20
__________________
Orders
He was waiting for her a few steps farther up the block, outside a shoe store.
“What’s the matter?” she said. “Why were you looking at me like that?”
“Something bad has happened,” he said. “You know my snakes?”
She nodded.
“They told me I have to get rid of them.”
“What? Who told you?”
“Brenda Beeson. I went home for lunch and there was a note for me in the mailbox. It said snakes are touched with evil and it isn’t good to keep them and I have to get rid of them.”
“Oh,” said Nickie, with a shock of dismay.
“Someone must have told her,” Grover said. “I think I know who: my so-called friend Martin.”
Nickie didn’t answer. She stared at a man taking the display tables of on-sale shoes inside for the night. She didn’t want to meet Grover’s eyes.