“You see,” I told Cathy one night that week, “Momma hasn’t lost her love and concern for us. We’ve got to continue to help her fulfill her plan.”
With reluctance, she nodded and agreed. The only discordant note came when Momma brought real flowers to the cleaned attic, including spiky amaryllis that she said would bloom by Christmas.
“Christmas! You’re saying we’ll still be here for sure?” Cathy cried.
Momma looked at me.
“She’s not saying that,” I said, even though it was obvious to me that she was.
“What are you saying?” Cathy demanded.
“When we leave, we’ll take the plants with us for our Christmas celebration somewhere else. That’s all,” she replied.
Cathy was silent, but I could see it in her eyes. She didn’t believe a word. Maybe she could pretend and do dramatic things like become Scarlett O’Hara for a while, but Cathy was hard on fantasies when she had some skepticism.
None of this was going to easy for me. I’d have to work even harder to get her and the twins to give Momma the chance and the time she needed. I needed Momma to help me with this as much as possible.
“Can you come back to see the twins before bedtime tonight?” I asked her.
“Oh, I’ve already made arrangements to go to a movie with an old girlfriend of mine. I want my father to believe I’m back to my life the way it was.”
“What friend?” Cathy demanded.
“Her name is Elena. She has two unmarried brothers, one studying to be a lawyer. The other is a tennis pro,” she said with surprising excitement.
“You’re going on a date with one of them?” she asked.
I looked at Momma quickly. Was she?
She laughed, but I didn’t feel confident about it. It was a forced laugh. She was going to lie to us again. It felt like another needle in my chest. Whenever I knew she was lying to us, I felt that way, but I had to do my best to hide it, or Cathy would go bonkers.
“Of course not,” Momma said. “I’d rather go to sleep. I’m so tired from the work we’ve done. But it’s better not to have people, especially someone like Elena, ask questions. She was always a busybody.”
“Then why go out with her?” Cathy asked.
“I told you. We all have to make some sacrifices,” she said. She gave us quick kisses and left.
“Sacrifices?” Cathy said the moment she left. “She calls going out to a movie with friends a sacrifice?”
“I suppose in a way, it is, if you don’t like the friend that much and you’re doing it just to keep your mother and father from becoming suspicious.”
“If he’s so sick, how does he even know or care?”
“People as rotten to the bone as he obviously is come alive for a few moments when they think something’s not right. Why chance it?”
Cathy narrowed her eyes and shook her head at me before retreating to read a story to Cory and Carrie. The atmosphere around us was suddenly heavy, foreboding. Darkness seemed very attracted to this place, I thought.
And for the first time, really, I felt a darkness in my heart.
Cathy wasn’t wrong to be suspicious. I knew Momma wasn’t telling us the truth again, only this time, I didn’t think it was for our benefit.
But I wouldn’t show an iota of this fear to Cathy.
How ironic, I thought. Kane’s mother was infatuated with Gone with the Wind, and Cathy had been, too. Was it because we were all in the South, or was it a universal fantasy, especially for a woman, to be on such a big stage with all its opulence and glamour? What was it Kane had said, everyone liked to play a part?
What part did I want to play?
I closed the diary and put it under my pillow. After I turned out my bedside lamp, I lay there staring up into the darkness. Was Christopher upset because his mother was lying and he knew it, or was it that he couldn’t stomach the idea of her even hinting at another romance with another man so soon? To me, it sounded like the latter. I wasn’t about to blame him for it.