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Sam glanced at Cristiano, covered the phone’s mouthpiece. “Gabby wants to stay and play longer. They’re going to have a puppet show.”
“She’s doing well, then?”
“Yes. She’s having a great time.”
“Then let her stay until later this afternoon. I can pick her up before dinner.”
Sam told Gabby and then Mrs. Bishop what Cristiano had said, and then, call finished, Sam hung up and handed the phone back to Cristiano.
“I’m glad she’s having fun. Except for school, she doesn’t get to play with other children all that often,” Sam said, although on the inside she felt torn. She was glad Gabby was having fun but for Sam it was awkward and uncomfortable being alone with Cristiano. “Johann wouldn’t let her go to other people’s houses, and her friends from school weren’t allowed to come home.”
“Why?” Cristiano asked.
She looked at him, and then away, and glancing out the window, Sam noticed the first snowflake fall, and then another, and another. The flakes were scattered, slow, as if indecisive about what they were going to do. “I don’t know. But Gabby used to cry about it. Johann and I fought about it. It didn’t matter. He never changed his mind.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I am, too.” Maybe it was the delicate snow flurries, or the pale silver and pewter sky, but Sam felt a rush of emotion so strong she had to bite her lip to keep the tears from filling her eyes again.
She missed so much right now.
She missed virtually everything. Her parents. Charles. Even Gabby, although Gabby wasn’t gone yet. “I love her,” she whispered, concentrating on the view outside the car window where the snow was coming down faster and thicker now in dense white flurries. Some of the snowflakes were so big they looked like bits of lace dropping from the sky and yet they were weightless, and temperatures must have continued to drop as the snow was sticking to the ground. “Even if you take her from me, she’ll always be my girl.”
“Then make the transition easy on her.” Cristiano’s voice sounded as cold and hard as the bare limbs of the trees outside. “Help her adjust. Don’t pull her in two.”
It was still snowing as they reached the Rookery, and the small gamekeeper’s cottage never looked smaller or darker. Sam couldn’t imagine spending the rest of the afternoon alone in the dark cottage with Cristiano.
As he parked “I think I’ll go to the Rookery and see if I can’t locate some candles for tonight,” Sam said. “The pantry used to be full of them. Every now and then we’d lose electricity and we depended on candles and kerosene lamps to get us through until the backup generator came on.”
“Do you know where the lamps are?” Cristiano asked, carrying the last of the groceries into the kitchen.
“They should be in the pantry, near the candles. It’s where we kept the emergency supplies.”
“I’ll go with you, see what we can find.”
It was dark inside the Rookery. Power to the abandoned orphanage had been shut off, but once Sam got the back door open, she didn’t need lights to find her way around. She’d grown up here, spent over fifteen years here. The Rookery, for better or worse, was home.
Just as she thought, she discovered boxes of candles, matches and three old kerosene lamps in the pantry off the kitchen.
“I’ll take the lamps back to the cottage,” Cristiano said.
Sam nodded. “I’ll just have a quick look around. I’ll be back soon.”
With a candle to light her way, Sam walked through the Rookery’s high arched hallways. The old Persian carpets were threadbare and covered only portions of the stone floor and every now and then her footsteps echoed, a too-loud clatter that bounced off the vaulted ceiling.
Nothing had changed, she thought. The furniture was all here, just a few pieces like the piano and the Georgian sofa in the parlor were covered. Everything else was exactly as she remembered. The large oil landscapes still covered the walls. The back room facing the garden was still lined with tables and chairs. That was the room they studied in, reading and writing papers and doing homework.
