“Probably jealous. You liked what you saw, though, didn’t you? Ricky and Boyd and Tony? But I guess you’ve seen naked boys plenty of times in the streets, huh?”
“No.”
“You still a little virgin?”
“Now, that’s none of your business,” I fired back.
She laughed. “I forgot you’re a street kid,” she said. She said it as if she admired it.
“I’m not a street kid. We didn’t want to be living on the street.”
“We all have to do things we don’t want to do,” she replied. I waited to see what she meant, but she stopped talking, looked out the window, then turned and walked out of the bedroom quickly.
I felt like shouting something nasty after her but wheeled myself back to the table, picked up the iPod she had deliberately dropped, and looked at my workbook again. But it was harder than ever to concentrate on anything. What am I doing here? I wondered. Maybe I’d be better off in some orphanage after all. Maybe I’d be happy to have her father kick me out.
“Ready?” I heard Mrs. March ask. She returned wearing a different outfit and a wide-brim hat. “Don’t laugh at my hat,” she said, seeing where my gaze went. “It’s beautiful out there, but I’ve got to be careful in the sun. When you’re my age, it only makes you look older, makes wrinkles come faster.”
She stepped behind my wheelchair and started to turn me toward the door.
“When I was a young girl like you and like Kiera, I never thought about it. Now, when I think about all those days I spent on the beach without any protection, I shudder. How stupid we were. I tell Kiera that all the time, but does she listen? No.”
In the elevator, I wondered if she was going to ask me if Kiera had come into my bedroom again. She didn’t, and I didn’t tell her.
She smiled at me and nodded. “You’re doing a lot better, I can tell, and Dr. Milan thinks so, too. Where you are when you recuperate can make a great deal of difference.”
Mrs. Caro had said something similar. Was everything anyone said to me planned?
The elevator opened, and she pushed me out and toward the French doors that opened to the patio Mrs. Caro had taken me to the day before.
“I used to wheel Alena out here when she was bedridden. Even though the poor thing had a hard time sitting up, she looked forward to it. Those were my last beautiful days with her, and I know she lived longer because of it. Look at what a beautiful afternoon we have for you, Sasha. There’s even a breeze coming in off the ocean today. Feel it? I’ll take you for a ride to the ocean soon, too. We’ll go to lunch. I used to take Alena to lunch before she became too ill to travel.”
“Did you take Kiera, too?”
“Kiera never liked to go with us. Kiera may act tough, but she wasn’t able to deal with her sister’s illness and death. None of us really was, but we did what we had to do and for Alena’s sake tried not to show our sorrow. It was better not to include Kiera.”
“Didn’t Alena want her to come along with you?”
“Oh, yes, but I found an excuse for Kiera not to be coming with us most of the time. Neither Alena nor I would have enjoyed ourselves. Now,” she said, firmly changing the subject, “if we follow this path here, we can go around to the lake. I want you to see it close up. As I told you, Donald’s very proud of our lake. He’s always bringing someone in the construction industry here to see it, and it was featured in a prominent architecture magazine. When you are up and around, you can take one of the rowboats out. Did you ever row a boat?”
“No.”
“Well, maybe I’ll go with you the first time to be sure you’re safe,” she said. “After you start school, you’ll probably make lots of friends and ask to bring them here. We’ll ask that everyone wear a life vest, of course. The lake is seven feet deep and maybe deeper in some places.”
Friends? I thought back to when I did have friends at school and when I would go to their homes or they would come to mine. It seemed so long ago that it was more like something I had dreamed. Would I have school friends again? All of them would surely be impressed if I brought them to the March house. The very idea of doing that set off all sorts of fantasies, but then I thought about Kiera and her threats and predictions. Maybe my days there were numbered. Maybe as soon as I was up on my feet again, I’d be sent away. Why even think about it?
We stopped at the dock, and I looked out at the lake. It was so still. Down on the left, the trees were reflected in the water, giving it a greenish tint. Toward the other side, I saw terns. They were visitors from the ocean. The two rowboats tied to the dock looked brand-new. Mrs. March stepped up beside me, folded her arms, and looked out as if she had never seen it until now.
“Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Yes,” I said. I hesitated but then asked, “Does Mr. March really want me here?”
She spun around and seemed about to say, Of course. Something she saw in my face made her pause. “Did Kiera say something terrible last night about her father?”
When you first meet someone, you can’t help but wonder how much of the truth you should tell and how much you should hold back. It was something I had learned from the way Mama spoke to people, especially after Daddy had left us. Lying seemed to be an important way to protect yourself, and most people didn’t seem to know or care that she was lying.
What should I do now? I wondered. Get Kiera in more trouble?
“I just wondered,” I said.