Dawn (Cutler 1)

"I don't even remember your leaving, and when I woke up this morning, I forgot where I was for a moment. Then I fell asleep again. Why did you sneak away?"

"You fell asleep pretty quickly, so I decided to let you get your rest."

"I didn't wake up again this morning until Philip arrived. That's how tired I was. I'd been traveling all day and all night for two days. I slept on the side of the road for a couple of hours night before last," he admitted.

"Oh, Jimmy, you could have been hurt."

"I didn't care," he said. "I was determined to get here. So what does a chambermaid do? Tell me about this hotel. I didn't see much of it last night. Is it a nice place?"

I described my work to him and the layout of the hotel. I went on to tell him about some of the staff, especially Mrs. Boston and Sissy, but he was mostly interested in my mother and father.

"What's exactly wrong with her?"

"I don't know for sure, Jimmy. She doesn't look sick. Most of the time she looks beautiful, even when she's in bed with her headaches. My father treats her like a fragile little doll."

"And so your grandmother really runs the hotel?"

"Yes. Everyone is afraid of her, but they're afraid to say anything bad about her even to each other. Mrs. Boston says she's tough but fair. I don't think she's been very fair to me," I said sadly. I told him about the memorial stone. He listened wide-eyed as I described what I knew of my symbolic funeral.

"But how do you know the stone's still there?" he asked.

"It was as of the time I arrived. No one's told me otherwise."

"They wouldn't. They'd just remove it, I'm sure." He sat back on the bed with his shoulders against the wall and looked thoughtful.

"It took a lot of nerve for Daddy to steal a baby right out from under the nurse's eyes," he said.

"That's what I thought," I said, happy he found trouble believing it, too.

"Of course, he might have been drinking—"

"Then he wouldn't have been as careful, and he would surely have been heard."

Jimmy nodded.

"You don't believe he would do such a thing, either, do you, Jimmy? Not deep down in your heart."

"He confessed. They had him cold, Dawn. And he didn't try to deny it to us." He lowered his eyes sadly. "I guess I should be getting on my way."

My heart stopped, my thoughts taking frantic flight, wanting to go off with Jimmy and escape this prison. I felt trapped and needed to seek out the wind so it could fan my hair and sting my skin and make me feel free and alive again.

"But, Jimmy, you were going to stay here a few days and rest up."

"I'll just get caught here and make trouble for you and Philip."

"No, you won't!" I cried. "I don't want you to go yet, Jimmy. Please stay." He lifted his eyes to gaze into mine. Swelling up in both of us was a turmoil of whirling emotions.

"Sometimes," Jimmy said in the softest, warmest voice I ever heard him speak, "I used to wish you weren't my sister."

"Why?" I said and held my breath.

"I . . . thought you were so pretty, I wished you could be my girlfriend," he confessed. "You were always after me to choose this friend of yours or that to be my girlfriend, but I didn't want anybody else but you." He looked away. "That's why I was so jealous and angry when you started getting interested in Philip."

For a moment I didn't know what to say. My first impulse was to put my arms around him and lavish a million kisses on his face. I wanted to draw his head down against my breast and cuddle it there.

"Oh, Jimmy," I said, my eyes tearing something awful again, "it just isn't fair. All this mix-up. It's not right."

"I know," he said. "But when I learned that you were not really my sister, I couldn't help feeling happy as well as sad. Of course, I was unhappy about your being taken away, but what I was hoping . . . aw, I shouldn't hope," he added quickly and looked away again.