Gates of Paradise (Casteel 4)

characteristic reassurance. "I'll read the whole speech over the phone to you, and before I go to school that day, go to the gazebo and sit there just as if you were there, too, and pretend that none of this happened."

"What kintta talk is that?" Aunt Fanny asked, a half-curious and half-appreciative smile on her face.

"Our kind of talk," Luke said. Truth was in his eyes. Love for me was there as well. He leaned over and kissed my cheek just as Tony Tatterton reentered the room.

"Well, how are we doing?" he asked. He glanced at Luke, who snapped back and looked at him suspiciously. "I'm Tony Tatterton," Tony said quickly. He extended his hand. "And you must be . . ."

"Ma son Luke Junior," Aunt Fanny announced. "You know who I am, I assume. I'm Heaven's sister." She pronounced her words as sharply and as hatefully as I had ever heard her. I looked to Tony to see his reaction, but all he did was nod.

"Of course. Well, we've got to turn our attention to Annie now and get her started. I'll be down at the ambulance," he added, and shot a glance at Luke again. Luke's eyes were working overtime, analyzing and studying Tony critically.

"We'll be with you in Boston, too," he repeated, and then he and Aunt Fanny left. Before I had a chance to burst into tears, the hospital orderlies arrived with the stretcher and began loading me onto it as Mrs. Broadfield directed. In moments I was being wheeled out of the room and down the corridor.

And there was no one at my side holding my hand, no one I loved who loved me. All the faces around me were strange and empty, the faces of people who saw me as just a part of their job. Mrs. Broadfield tucked the blanket around my shoulders efficiently when we arrived at the doorway to the parking lot where the ambulance awaited.

Even though the sky was overcast and gray, I closed my eyes the moment the outside light struck my face. It was only seconds, though, because I was quickly lifted from the hospital stretcher to the ambulance stretcher. I opened my eyes again as the doors were closed and Mrs. Broadfield took her seat beside me. She adjusted the I.V. and sat back. I felt the ambulance jerk forward and start down the hospital driveway on its journey to the airport and the plane that would jet me away to a big-city hospital.

I couldn't help but wonder if I Would ever see Winnerrow again. Suddenly all the things I used to take for granted seemed so very precious and dear, especially this little town that Drake called "one-horse."

I wished I could sit up and look out the window as we rushed away. I wanted one last look at the village proper to take with me, and a last farewell to the broad green fields and the neat little farms with their summer crops planted. And especially I wanted one last vista of the mountains with their coal-miner shacks and moonshiner cabins dotting the hills. 1 wanted to say good-bye to the Willies.

I was being ripped out of my world, torn from the people and places I loved and cherished and identified with. There would be no magnolia trees, no sweet scents of fresh flowers blossoming on the street as I walked to school. There would be no magic gazebo, no tiny cottage music box playing Chopin. I closed my eyes and imagined Hasbrouck House at this moment. All our servants surely sat around

dumbstruck, not yet able to fully mourn my parents' deaths.

My head began to thump. Tears flowed freely from my eyes. I shook with sobs.

Never to see them again? Never to hear my father calling when he arrived home: "Where's my girl? Where's my Annie girl?" When I was little, I would hide behind the high-back blue chintz chair in the living room and press my tiny fist against my lips to suppress a giggle as he pretended to look everywhere for me. Then he would take on a worried expression and my heart would burst at the thought I could bring him any sadness.

"Here I am, Daddy," I would sing out, and he would scoop me up and cover my face with kisses. Then he would take me into the den where Mommy was sitting with Drake, listening to his school stories. We'd plop down on the leather couch with me in my daddy's lap and listen, too, until my mother said it was time we all got cleaned and dressed for dinner.

Those days seemed always full of sunshine and laughter. But now the clouds had come over us and dropped shadows like sheets of cold rain, like funeral shrouds. My mother and father were dead, my happy sunshine days colored black.

"Try to sleep, Annie," Mrs. Broadfield said, jerking me out of my reverie. "Lying there and crying will only make you weaker and weaker, and you have many big battles ahead to fight, believe me."

"Have you had a patient like me to care for before?" I asked, realizing that I needed to make friends with this woman. Oh, how I needed friends, someone to talk to, someone older, wiser, someone who could help me know what to do, who to be now. I needed someone with wisdom, but someone with warmth and loving feeling, too.

"I have had a number of accident victims, yes," she said, her voice full of arrogance.

"Did they all recuperate?" I asked hopefully.

"Of course not," she said flatly.

"Will I?"

"Your doctors are hopeful."

"But what do you think?" I wondered why someone who was supposedly dedicated to helping others, especially others in such great need, would be so cold and impersonal. Didn't she know how important warmth and tender care were? Why was she so standoffish?

Surely Tony must have known something a out this woman before hiring her. My recovery was so important to him, he would certainly have gone looking for the very best, and yet I wished he had found someone who could be more warm and confiding, perhaps someone younger. Then I remembered what Drake had said, how I should put myself into the hands of older, wiser people who were able to think more clearly than I could now.

"I think you should try to rest and not worry about it now. There's nothing we can do right now, anyway," Mrs. Broadfield said, her voice still cold, factual. "Your great-grandfather is getting you the best possible treatment money can buy. You're lucky to have him: Believe me, I've been with many a patient who had far less than you have."

Yes, I thought. How quickly he had come to my aid, and how fully committed to helping me get well again he seemed. It made me wonder even more what it could have been that had driven my mother, who was capable of such great love, away from a man who apparently had such a generous heart.

Would I ever find out, or had the answers died on that Willies mountain slope with my mother and father?

I was tired. Mrs. Broadfield was right: there was nothing to do but rest and hope.