Dark Angel (Casteel 2)

Their sweet singing voices led me to them.

I paused in the doorway that I cracked open to listen to the song of worship sung so joyfully by many children, with only a piano for accompaniment. Soon I stepped inside the large room, where at least fifteen children, aged approximately ten to twelve, were standing, holding hymn books, and singing loudly.

The children of Winnerrow would have been shamed by this assembly in their pretty pastel summer clothes.

The two I sought were standing side by side, Keith and Our Jane, both supporting the same hymn book, both singing with rapt expressions, more for the pure delight of expressing themselves than from holy fervor, I thought, as I stood and silently cried, even as I delighted in their obvious good health and

prosperity. Oh, thank God I had lived long enough to see them again.

Once skinny little legs and arms were now strong and tanned. Pale, small faces had developed into radiant, glowing faces, with rosy lips that knew now how to smile rather than pout and droop, and eyes that weren't haunted by hunger and cold. Oh, to see them as they were now sent light through all the shadows I had deliberately kept in my mind.

The song ended. Quietly, I moved to the thick square post beside which I was to sit and shield myself from their view.

The children sat and put their hymn books in the back pocket of the chairs in front of them--front chairs where no one sat. My tears were chased by a smile when I saw Our Jane fuss with her pretty white and pink dress. Each accordion pleat had to be arranged carefully so it wouldn't later on be crinkled and fall out of place. She took great pains to see that her short skirt covered her tanned knees, which she kept together in proper, ladylike fashion. Her bright hair was artfully styled so it fell to barely brush her shoulders before it flipped upward in charming casual curls. And when she turned her head to profile, I could see the feathery fringe of bangs across her forehead. Her hair knew the kind of professional care that mine and Fanny's had never known at the age of ten. Oh, how lovely she was! How flushed with good health and vitality, so much that she appeared to glow.

Seated beside her, Keith stared solemnly ahead at the woman teacher who began to tell the story of the boy David, who had slain a giant with a stone hurled from a slingshot. Straight and true that stone had flown to find its mark, because the power of the Lord was with David, and not Goliath. It had always been one of my favorite Bible stories. But I forgot to listen as my eyes scanned over Keith, who wore a bright blue summer jacket with long white summer trousers. His dress shirt was white, and his small tie was blue. Several times I had to get up and move just so I could see them both better. He radiated the same kind of good health and vitality that Our Jane did.

The years since I'd seen them last had added inches to their heights and given both their faces more maturity and character, and yet I would have known them anywhere, for time had not changed some things. Repeatedly Keith glanced at his younger sister, checking on her comfort, on her happiness, showing a remarkable amount of manly concern for her welfare, while Our Jane habitually held on to her babyish mannerisms that had won her so much attention in the past. It was not likely she would abandon them.

Oh, Granny would be so happy to know her beauty hadn't been permanently sacrificed in the hills, for Annie Brandywine lived again in Our Jane! And beside her Keith had to resemble Grandpa more than he did any of Sarah's large, rawboned family. Once I had thought the shadowed hollows beneath both sets of their eyes would never go away, and such small, pale faces would never look as they did now, happy to be alive.

Several children just in front of me turned to stare quizzically my way. I held my breath until their stares were satisfied, and once again they pivoted to listen to their teacher. If either my younger sister or brother turned to look back in my direction, I intended to hide quickly. I prayed that no one would come to question why I was there.

The story of David ended. I listened to the question-and-answer period that followed and heard the sweet, small voice of Keith as he hesitatingly responded only after he had been directly prompted. However, Our Jane was constantly waving her small, shapely hand, eager to pipe her question or answer. "How could a tiny stone kill a huge giant?" she asked. I didn't listen to the teacher's answer.

Soon the children were standing, and prissy little girls adjusted their clothes. Our Jane clutched her small white purse more securely.

The excited chatter of the departing children might have hidden what Our Jane said next, but my ears were keened for her voice.

"Hurry, Keith!" she urged, "We're going to Susan's party this afternoon, and we don't want to be late."

I followed at a distance behind the two little ones that I dreamed of, and jealously I watched Our Jane fling herself into Rita Rawlings's waiting arms. Slightly behind his wife, Lester Rawlings stood, as fat and bald as ever. He laid a possessive hand on Keith's shoulder before he turned his head and looked directly at me. More than three years had passed since he had seen me, backed up to the wall in that mountain shack, my dress dirty and ragged, my feet bare. And yet it seemed he recognized me. I had changed a great deal from that waif, but still he knew me. It could have been the tears streaming down my face that betrayed me. He said something to his wife, who hustled the two children into a Cadillac, and then he smiled at me with genuine sympathy.

"Thank you," he said simply.

For the second time in my life I watched that lawyer and his wife drive off in a Cadillac, taking with them two parts of myself. I stood staring after them until the drizzle of rain evaporated into steam, and the sun came out hot and brilliant, and a rainbow arched in the sky, and only then did I stroll toward my own waiting car. Not yet, not yet, some small voice in me warned. Later on you can claim them.

Still, I instructed my driver to follow the dark blue Cadillac ahead, for I wanted to see the house where the Rawlingses lived. After a ten-minute drive, the Cadillac ahead turned onto a quiet, tree-lined street,

then pulled into a long, curving drive. "Stop across the street," I ordered my driver, thinking that the heavy shade and many thick tree trunks would shield the limo if the Rawlingses just happened to check and see if they were followed. Apparently they didn't check.

Theirs was a nice, colonial-style house, large, but not huge like Farthinggale Manor. The red bricks were old and partially covered with ivy, and the lawns were wide and well tended, with flowers and shrubs in full summer bloom. Oh, indeed, this was a palace in comparison to that listing shack perched high on a mountainside. There was no reason for my heart to hurt. They were better off here, they were, they were. They didn't need me. Not now. A long time ago they'd stopped speaking my name, stopped having bad dreams. Oh, the cries of hunger in the night that I used to hear coming from the floor pallet of the two small children that once I'd considered mine!

"Hev-lee, Hev-lee, are ya goin somewhere?" they had asked, after their own mother abandoned them, their shadowed eyes pleading with me never to leave them.

"Will you be driving back to the hotel now, miss?" asked my driver after half an hour had passed. I couldn't tear myself away.

On impulse I opened the door and stepped out on the shady sidewalk. "Wait for me here. be back in a few minutes."

I couldn't just drive off without seeing and knowing more, not after all the heartache I'd suffered since that horrible day when Pa sold his two youngest.

Furtively I slipped into the side yard where a colorful, heavy-duty gym set seemed to wait for the children who used it. I stole quietly onto a broad, flagstone patio where chairs and a table with a pretty striped umbrella jostled each other for closest position to the kidney-shaped swimming pool. Keeping so close to the house I was beneath the level of the many back windows, and I was soon rewarded with the sound of children's voices coming through the open windows of one room.

Soon I was crouched low behind huge masonry pots holding living shrubs, staring through the glass of French doors that opened into what had to be an enclosed sun porch.

The beautiful room was full of sunlight, and chairs and a sofa sported soft, fat cushions covered with pretty flowered chintz. Houseplants in macrame holders hung from the ceiling in healthy array, and the floor was covered with rich, sea blue rugs. On the largest blue rug Keith and Our Jane were seated, playing with glass marbles that they had arranged inside the main center oval of the rug. Both children had changed from their church outfits into dressier clothes. From the meticulous way they moved, they were obviously trying to keep themselves clean and neat for the upcoming party.

I couldn't stop staring.