Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger 2)

"It's my time of the month," she said with her eyes downcast, "I just feel crampy in my middle three or four days before it starts."

Only the blues of the month--and when you were her age you did feel more cramps than at mine I kissed my small son good-bye while he set up a terrible wail, wanting to go with me and watch the dancers.

"Wanna hear the music, Mommy," objected Jory who knew very well what he wanted and what he didn't. "Wanna watch the dancers!"

"We'll go for a walk in the park. I'll push you in the swing and we'll play in the sandbox," said Carrie hastily, picking up my son and holding him close. "Stay with me, Jory. I love you so much and I never see enough of you. . . . Don't you love your aunt Carrie?"

He smiled and threw his arms about her neck, for yes, Jory loved everyone.

It was a terribly long day. Several times I called to check on Carrie to see if she was all right. "I'm fine, Cathy. Jory and I had a wonderful time in the park. I'm going to lie down now and take a nap--so don't call and wake me up again."

Four o'clock came, and my last class of the day, when my six- and seven-year-olds moved on out into the center of the studio. While the music played I counted, "Un, deux, plies, un, deux, plies, and now, un, deux, tendu, close up, un, deux, tendu, close up." And on and on I instructed, when suddenly I felt that prickly rise of my neck hackles to inform me that someone was staring at me intently. I whirled about to see a man standing far to the rear of the studio. Bart Winslow--my mother's husband!

The minute he saw I recognized him he came striding toward me. "You do look sensational in purple tights, Miss Dahl. May I have a moment of your time?"

"I'm busy!" I snapped, annoyed that he could ask when I had twelve little dancers I couldn't take my eyes off of. "My day will be over at five. If you care to you can sit over there and wait."

"Miss Dahl, I've had one devil of a time finding you, and you've been right here under my nose all the time."

"Mr. Winslow," I said coolly, "if I didn't mail you an adequate fee you could have written a letter and it would have been forwarded to me."

He knitted his dark, thick brows together. "I'm not here about the fee--though you didn't pay me the price I had in mind." Smiling and assured, he slipped a hand inside his jacket and pulled from the breast pocket a letter. I gasped to see my own handwriting and all the postmarks and cancellation marks on that letter that had followed my mother all about Europe! "I see you recognize this letter," he said with his keen brown eyes watching my every flicker of expression.

"Look, Mr. Winslow," I said, very much in a state of flurry, "my sister isn't feeling well today and she's taking care of my son who is hardly more than a baby. And you can see I've got my hands full here. Can we talk about this some other time?"

"At your convenience, Miss Dahl, any time." He bowed and then handed me a small business card. "Make it as soon as possible. I've many questions to ask you--and don't try skipping out. This time I'm keeping close tabs on you. You don't think one dinner date was enough, do you?"

It upset me so much to see him with that letter that the moment he was gone I dismissed my class and went into my office. There I sat down to pore over my green ledger, totaling the figures and seeing I was still in the red. Forty students I'd been assured when I bought out this school, but I hadn't been told most of them went away during the summers and didn't return until fall. All the spoiled little rich kids in the winter and the middle-class children in the summer who could only come once or twice a week. No matter how I stretched the money I earned it didn't cover all my costs of redecorating and installing new mirrors behind the long barre.

I glanced then at my watch, saw it was almost six o'clock, then changed into my street clothes and ran the two blocks to my small house. Carrie should have been in the kitchen preparing dinner while Jory played in the fenced-in yard. But I didn't see Jory, nor was Carrie in the kitchen!

"Carrie," I called, "I'm home--where are you and Jory hiding?"

"In here," she responded in a thin whisper.

All the way I ran to find her still in bed. Weakly she explained Jory was staying with the next-door neighbor. "Cathy . . I don't really feel very good. I've thrown up four or five times; I can't remember how many . . . and I'm

so crampy. I feel funny, real funny. . . ."

I put my hand to her head and found it strangely cold, though the day was very warm. "I'm going to call a doctor." No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I had to laugh bitterly at myself. There wasn't a doctor in this town who made house calls. I ran back to Carrie and stuck a thermometer in her mouth, then gasped to read the figures.

"Carrie, I'm going to get Jory and then I'm driving you to the nearest hospital. You have a temperature of one hundred and three point six!"

Listlessly she nodded, then drifted off to sleep. I rushed next door to check on my son who was happily playing with a little girl a month older than he was. "Look, Mrs. Marquet," said Mrs. Townsend, a sweet, motherly woman in her early forties who was taking care of her granddaughter, `if Carrie is sick, let me keep Jory until you come home. I do hope Carrie isn't seriously ill. She's such a dear little thing. But I've noticed she's been looking pale and miserable for a day or so."

I'd noticed the same thing and had tied it all to her romance with Alex that was going awry.

How wrong I was!

The very next day I called Paul. "Catherine, what's wrong?" he said when he heard the panic in my voice.

I spilled it all out how Carrie was sick and in the hospital where they had already made several tests, and still they didn't know what was wrong with her. "Paul, she looks dreadful! And she's losing weight fast, unbelievably fast! She's vomiting, can't keep any food down and has diarrhea too. She keeps calling for you and Chris too."

"I'll have another doctor fill in for me here and fly right up there," he said without hesitation. "But wait before you try and get in touch with Chris. The symptoms you name are so common to a number of minor ailments."

I took him at his word and didn't try and contact Chris who was enjoying a two-week tour of the West Coast before he came home and continued his residency. In three hours Paul was with me in the hospital room staring down at Carrie. She smiled weakly to see him there and held out her thin arms. "Hello," she whispered thinly, "I'll bet you didn't think you'd see me in an ole hospital bed, did you?"

Immediately he took her in his arms and began to ask questions. What were her first signs that something was wrong?