Music in the Night (Logan 4)

"This weekend?" he asked hopefully.

"Yes, I would like that."

"Great," he said with relief. "I'll--we'll plan tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay, Robert. I've got to go help Mommy with dinner."

"I'll be at your locker tomorrow morning, probably before you," he said with a laugh. "I love you, Laura."

As soon as I cradled the receiver, Daddy entered. He took one look at me and then tilted his head with curiosity.

"What's going on, Laura?"

"Nothing, Daddy. I'm just going to help Mommy with dinner. Did you have a good day?"

"Fair to middling. Where's Cary?"

"Upstairs."

"In the attic again, I suppose. That boy should have been born a bat so he could live in a belfry," Daddy muttered and went to wash up for dinner.

After dinner Mommy insisted I go up and study and not waste time helping her with the cleanup.

"Besides," she said, signing to May, "May's big enough to help out by herself now."

Up in my room, I began to worry that I had lost my ability to concentrate and would do poorer than I expected on my finals. If I continued to do as well as I had, I would be my class's valedictorian next year. I knew how important that was to Mommy and especially to Grandma Olivia.

I hadn't been at my desk long before I heard the phone ring. I listened, wondering if Robert was calling again. No one called me to the phone, so I went back to my notes. Then I heard Daddy's heavy steps on the stairway. I looked up because I sensed he had stopped at my door. He knocked.

"Yes?"

He opened it and stood there, his hands on his hips.

Daddy always seemed to feel out of place in my room. My things were too dainty, too sparkling for him to touch. Even though he gave money to Mommy and approved of the gifts, the stuffed animals, the dolls, and ceramics, he looked uncomfortable around them. When I was just a little girl, not much older than May, Daddy rarely came into my room. He always said his goodnight from the doorway. Once or twice he came to my bedside when I had a fever and when I had the measles.

"Laura, where did you go today?" he demanded. "You mean after school?" I replied.

"You know what I mean, Laura," he said, his voice dripping with disappointment. I never lied to Daddy face-to-face and I wasn't about to now.

"I went to see Aunt Belinda," I admitted.

"Who took you there, Cary or Robert Royce?" "Daddy--"

"Who took you there, Laura?"

"I took her," Cary confessed from his attic doorway. Daddy spun around and glared up at him.

"You know I told you distinctly never to go there, Cary." I never knew Daddy had strictly forbidden him. It made me feel worse for asking him to do it.

"He didn't go in, Daddy. I went in to see her myself. Cary waited in the truck and he didn't want to take me. I made him."

"You can't make a young man Cary's age do anything he doesn't want to do," Daddy said.

"She didn't make me," Cary said.

"You turn those truck keys over to me, Cary. I don't want you using it until I say again, hear?"

"Okay," Cary said. "Here." He tossed them down and Daddy caught them in his right hand, which only turned up the fury in his eyes another notch. Then he looked at me.