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“I know what you’re feeling,” said Arden wearily. “Some part of us always seems diminished when someone dies. Vera gifted us with something before she died, Audrina. Three deaths from accidental falls in this house caused the police to raise some eyebrows, and they were there questioning me when Vera whispered she’d tripped and fallen … and it was her own fault.”
I turned on my side, my back toward him, and began to quietly sob. In the darkness I sensed he was starting to undress, with the notion of holding me all night, but quickly I spoke.
“No, Arden. I don’t want you in my bed. Go to another room and sleep until I have time to think this out. If Vera said she was to blame for her fall, she was, wasn’t she? Nobody pushed her… but it was she who pushed me, and as I think about it more and more, and remember the door that closed softly soon after I found my aunt dead … it had to be Vera who pushed her own mother down the stairs and took that blue check from the corkboard where I pinned it. And then there’s Billie, who fell, too. She and Papa might have married, and that would have given Papa another heir to his fortune, for all along she must have planned to do away with me.”
There was no answer from him, except when he closed the door.
Only then did I get up and pull on a robe before I went to check on Sylvia. But she wasn’t in her room. I found her in the playroom that had once been mine. Gently she was rocking to and fro, singing her strange little ditty. I knew that now as I looked around with new insight and recognized the dolls Papa had won at many a carnival from shooting the moving ducks. And all those stuffed, plushy animals, more prizes that he’d won for me.
I stared at Sylvia’s pretty young face, innocently singing like one of the witches from Papa’s tales of his ancestors. Those tales that had once made me shout a witch’s curse to stop boys who weren’t afraid …
Little dolls appeared in Sylvia’s hands, apparently taken from the pockets of her loose garment. Tiny dolls I myself had bought to please her. Neutered dolls of no sex, but somehow they seemed more boyish than girlish.
Arden had come in behind me and stood there watching. Sylvia hung back, staring at us, then slowly shuffled out of the room.
“Sit down,” Arden growled, pulling me into the playroom and shoving me into the rocking chair. He went down on his knees beside me and tried to capture my hand. I sat on them to keep them from him. He sighed and I thought of Billie and all the little hints she’d tried to give me to tell me her son wasn’t perfect. But I’d wanted him perfect.
Perhaps that was in my eyes as I glared at him, and accused him now, outraged and devastated at how he’d failed me when I needed him most. Sadness and guilt shone in his eyes so that I could almost read his thoughts. He’d put up with so much from me to make up for that shameful day. Even now I loved him, even as I scorned his weakness.
“This is the moment I’ve dreaded since that day of your ninth birthday. I was hurrying home, planning to race on to your house and be there for your party. I’d never been inside Whitefern, and it was a big day for me. On the way through the woods to the cottage, three boys hailed me and told me to hang around and enjoy some fun. I didn’t know what they meant. Time, what I had of it, was spent working, and having fun with older boys was something I’d never done. It pleased me that finally I was being invited to be one of them, so I joined them when they told me to crouch down behind the bushes. Then you came skipping along the dirt path, singing to yourself. No one said a word. When they jumped out and ran to catch you, and I heard them yell out all they planned to do to you, it was like a nightmare. My legs and arms went numb … I didn’t know what to do to stop them. I felt sick with fear for you, and weak with hatred for them … and I couldn’t move. Audrina, I forced myself to stand up … and you saw me. You pleaded with me with your eyes, with your screams before they stuffed something into your mouth … and shame for being paralyzed made me even weaker. I knew you’d despise me for doing nothing, as I still despise myself for doing nothing but running for help. That’s why I ran, for I didn’t stand a chance of winning in a fight against them. One to one, I might have had a chance, but three … Audrina, I’m sorry. It’s not enough to say, I know that. Now I wish I’d stayed and tried to defend you—and then you wouldn’t be staring at me now with so much scorn on your face and in your eyes.”
He paused and reached to gather me into his arms, and with his kisses perhaps he thought he could build another fire like he had in the graveyard, and I’d be his again, and forgiving.
“Forgive me for failing you then, Audrina. Forgive me for failing you every time you’ve needed me … give me another chance, and you’ll never need to forgive me for failing to act when I should.”
Forgive him? How could I forgive him when I could never forget? Twice he did nothing to save me from people who wanted me destroyed. I didn’t want to give him a third chance.
The Last Spin of the Web
On a fine sunny day we laid Vera to rest beside Aunt Ellsbeth. Strange that I’d be at this funeral, when I’d missed Aunt Ellsbeth’s and Billie’s. I had loved those other two, yet it was Vera’s coffin that I saw lowered into the ground. As I said goodbye to Vera, I understood her. Maybe in understanding someday I’d forgive her and remember only the moments of love I had for her.
We came home from the funeral, and immediately after I helped Sylvia out of her funeral garb, Papa suggested a game of ball in the yard would help us overcome the depression that seemed to lay on us like a thick blanket of fog, oppressive, gloomy. I had hardly spoken to Arden since the night Vera died, and now, three days later, I made my plans, while Papa sprawled in a chair across from mine and tried as always to discover my innermost secrets.
When Sylvia entered the foyer trailed by Arden her shuffling gait seemed much improved. Fresh air and sunshine were giving her a bit of color, and those lovely aqua eyes scanned to find me before she smiled.
I left before Arden had the chance to appeal to me again, and hurried up the stairs. In my bedroom I sat on my bed, trying to think ahead so I could do the right thing for myself and for Sylvia. Papa came to the door and stood there, pleading for me not to leave him. Could he read my mind?
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bsp; “You promised, Audrina, you promised. All your life you’ve sworn you’d stay with me. And what about Sylvia? Are you going to set her back and take from her the one person who’s stood by her?”
“I’m going, Papa,” I said tiredly. “I promised not to leave you when I was a child and didn’t understand what you wanted from me, but I can’t stay. There’s something wrong in this house. Something rules here that keeps everyone from being normal or happy. I want out.”
“Think of Sylvia,” cried Papa. “Though she’s better, she’ll never speak with confidence or fluency. She’ll never be normal enough to perform any difficult mental tasks—how is she going to survive if I die?”
I didn’t plan to leave Sylvia here, but I didn’t want to tell him that. Not yet.
“How will Sylvia survive when you’re gone?” His dark Arab eyes sparkled with what I took for cunning. “And so you did lose the gift, after all. They killed that specialness in you, that ability to love selflessly, the sensitivity that would always call you when someone needed you. You are no longer that special girl with the rare and precious gift.”
I said with hard scorn, “There is no gift, Papa. I don’t believe you anymore, Papa. It’s the process of sitting and rocking and sort of hypnotizing yourself into believing anything. I pity the girl I used to be for believing so wholeheartedly in you.”
“All right,” he said. Another of those long, penetrating looks he gave me, forcing me to cast my eyes downward. Then he got up to leave, staring at me from the doorway with such sadness I had to turn my back so I wouldn’t yield to his unspoken pressure.
Now it was even clearer … I had to leave this place.
He left and slammed the door shut behind him. I fell on my bed and stared at the ceiling. To sleep, I thought, never to dream again. That’s the way I wanted it to be. I didn’t need Arden now. I had Sylvia and that was going to be enough. Yet all night long Arden flitted in and out of my nightmares so that in the morning I woke up fuzzy-headed, thick-tongued. At the breakfast table Papa didn’t speak. Usually he entered the kitchen talking and went out the same way. No talent but for running his mouth all day long, I heard my mother’s ghostly whisper say. Most of the time he was full of good spirits, always undaunted by tragedy, always a winner, but I had managed to bring him low.
Finally he spoke as Sylvia shoved food into her mouth, and Arden ate silently, without appetite. “Vera must have been there the night Ellie and I had our last argument. It was Vera who dressed her in that traveling suit, and Vera who threw those clothes into the suitcase to make us think Ellie planned to leave me.”
