“All right now, what else do we have?” She thought the names Terel and Charles, so the chalk wrote them in columns. Under them it wrote “can’t disturb their comfort.”
“Ah, yes, but they can get what they deserve if they’re happy with it. Charles wants a clean house, good food, and to spend as little money as possible.” The chalk wrote this under Charles’s name. “Terel wants someone to take care of her, to give her everything before she knows she wants it.”
When this was written Berni looked at the board. The obvious thing would be to show Nellie how little her sister and father cared for her, but Berni remembered the pain of hearing her own father saying he thought Berni was useless. “She never thinks of anything except clothes and how much money someone can give her,” Berni had overheard her father saying. No, she didn’t want to give that kind of hurt to anyone, and especially not to Nellie.
“So what can I do?” Berni whispered.
She leaned back in her chair, waved her wand, and began to look for the letters Jace had sent. It was so fascinating looking into people’s houses, seeing some very odd things going on, that she almost forgot her purpose. But she at last found the letters, tucked away in a drawer in some poor woman’s house. It was obvious Terel had paid her to answer Jace’s letters.
Berni waved her wand again, and then, smiling at her own cleverness, she gave the letters to a crazy old woman and imbedded in her memory a complicated story of how she’d come by them. The old woman lived with her brother and his young daughter, and it looked as though the child could benefit from a fairy godmother of her own.
“You bring the letters to Nellie, and if I know her, she’ll take care of you,” Berni said.
She smiled and looked at the other problems outlined. Now all she had to do was get Jace and Nellie together someplace romantic.
It was nearly dawn when Berni at last had her plan mapped out. One thing good about being dead, she thought, was that she didn’t need any sleep. She stood and stretched, wiggled her ears, and the chalkboard disappeared. Her plan was made and set into action now. She just had to stand back and see what happened.
Chapter Eleven
Nellie was awakened by someone throwing gravel at her window. She opened her eyes to see the early gray light of dawn, then got out of bed to go to the window. A young woman, hardly more than a girl, stood below, shivering in the early morning cold. She opened the window.
“Are you Nellie Grayson?”
“Yes,” Nellie said. “Could I help you?”
“I have to talk to you. Could you come down?”
Puzzled, Nellie wrapped a heavy shawl about her nightdress, slipped her feet into slippers, hurried downstairs, then opened the kitchen door to the girl. “I’ll have the stove going in a few minutes, and I’ll make some coffee.”
“No, please, I don’t have time.”
Nellie gave her a little encouraging smile as the girl stared at her. “You wanted to talk to me?”
“Oh, yeah. I just wanted to see you, that’s all. I mean, I wanted to see what you looked like. On account of the letters.”
“What letters?”
“These.” The girl pulled a fat bundle of letters from under her shawl and handed them to Nellie. They were all from Jace, addressed to Nellie.
“Where did you get these?” Nellie whispered.
“I live way out of town—don’t matter where, it’s just my pa and me and his daffy old sister, my Aunt Izzy. See, my pa don’t want nobody to know his sister’s crazy, so he pretends she’s not. Of course, pretendin’ don’t make her right in the head, but he pretends just the same. Anyway, one of the things my pa lets Aunt Izzy do is collect the mail when we come to town. I don’t know how she done it the first time—probably just lied, ’cause she’s a real good liar—but she told the postmaster’s stupid kid that she was Nellie Grayson, so the kid gave Aunt Izzy your letters. I think she even told him they were secret, so he hid them from his pa and saved them for Aunt Izzy. Anyway, she got ’em all. If I hadn’t cleaned her room yesterday, nobody ever would’ve known. I wanted Pa to bring me in last night so I could give you your letters, but he wanted me to burn ’em. I lied to him and told him I had, but this mornin’ I set out first thing and brung ’em to you. I didn’t wanta wake up the whole house, but I waked up that maid of yours first, and she told me which room was yours.”
Nellie listened to the story, held the letters, and looked at them. Slowly, she was beginning to realize that Jace had written her. He hadn’t abandoned her, but he’d written to her all the time he was gone.
“Them letters is important, ain’t they?” the girl said softly.
“Yes.” Nellie fumbled for a chair and sat. “The letters are very important.”
The girl smiled. “I thought so. Well, I gotta go now.” She started toward the door.
“Wait! Have you eaten? What will your father do when he finds out you’ve defied him?”
The girl shrugged. “Knock me around some. Nothin’ much. He ain’t real mean like some.”
Nellie swallowed. “What’s your name?”
“Tildy, for Matilda.”