“She took what jewelry I had, too,” said my aunt in a flat voice, “and also my best coat. I only bought that coat last winter. The first new coat I’ve had in five years, and Lord knows when I’ll have another.”
“Papa will buy you another.” But I wasn’t so sure he would.
All day long, while I tried to concentrate on what the teachers said, I kept thinking of Vera and how she’d slipped away in the night like a thief, not caring whom she hurt. As soon as the schoolbell rang at the end of the last session, I was out the door and running to plead a ride with a friendly girl I knew.
The little cottage where I’d studied music for three years looked deserted. I stood on the front porch and pounded on the door as the wind behind me whistled and tore at my hair. “Hey, you, kid,” called the lady next door. “Won’t do you no good to keep hitting the door like that. He’s gone. Heard him drive off in the middle of the night. Took some woman with him.”
“Thank you,” I said, turning away and not knowing what to do now. Arden would be home from his school by this time and preparing to deliver his papers, but I didn’t have a dime to call him and tell him where I was. I hadn’t asked my aunt for change when I left home, since her purse had been emptied by Vera.
With my stomach growling, I began the long fifteen-mile trek to my home. It began to rain long before I reached home. The wind whipped the trees along the roadside and tore at my wet hair, and soon I was so cold, despite my heavy coat, that I began to sneeze. Men slowed their cars and offered me rides. I felt wild with panic as I pretended not to hear them. I speeded my steps. Then a car pulled to a stop and a man got out as if to catch me and drag me into his car. Wild with terror, I screamed as I raced on. It was like a rocking chair nightmare.
A hand grabbed my arm and spun me about. Screaming still, I struck out at him. Then he had my other arm, and I was captured even as I continued to kick and struggle. “What the devil’s wrong with you, Audrina?”
It was Arden who had me. His amber eyes came closer as he pulled me into his arms. His hair was pasted down on his forehead. “You’re all right. It’s only me. Why are you trembling? You shouldn’t be out here on the highway, you know that. Why didn’t you call?”
My teeth chattered so that I couldn’t speak. What was wrong with me? It was only Arden. Why did I feel like I wanted to slap him? Shaking his head in puzzlement, he led me to his car. I huddled on the front seat, cringing to the far side, not wanting to be near him. He turned up the heat so high that he soon said he felt he was cooking—but I was having chills.
“You’re going to be sick,” he said as he glanced my way. “You’re already feverish looking. Audrina, why did you go to the village? I heard in the village that Mr. Rensdale left last night for New York.”
“He … he … did.” I sneezed, then told him about Vera. “I think she’s the woman he took with him. Papa’s going to throw a fit. He knows she’s run away, but he doesn’t guess she ran away with my music teacher.” I shivered and felt all the goose bumps on my arms under the coat.
“Take care,” said Arden as he let me out. Swiftly, he leaned to brush a kiss over my cheek. That kiss made me want to scream again. “Don’t you go worrying about Vera. She knows how to look out for herself.”
I was sick in bed with a terrible cold that gave me four days to think about nothing much but Vera and Lamar Rensdale. “Do you think he’ll marry her?” I whispered to my aunt one night soon after dinner.
‘No,” she said with authority, “men don’t marry girls like Vera.”
The new year started, and though Vera was gone from our lives now, she was far from forgotten. “Damian,” began my aunt one morning, “why don’t you ask about Vera? Do you miss her? Do you worry about where she is and what’s happening to her? She’s only sixteen. Don’t you feel any concern for her?”
“All right,” said Papa, neatly folding the morning paper and putting it beside his plate. “I don’t want to ask about Vera because I don’t want you to tell me something I might not want to hear. I don’t miss her. This house is a much nicer place to come home to now that she’s gone. Nor do I worry about her, or feel concern for her. She’s given me just cause to despise her. If she did what I think she did, what I have a very good reason for believing she did, I could take her neck and gladly wring it. But you protected her even then, and tried to convince me she couldn’t have been that cruel. I was a fool to have let you protect her. Now pass the butter. I think I’ll have another English muffin and another cup of coffee.”
I wanted to ask what Vera might have done that made him want to wring her neck. But already I’d learned that neither he nor my aunt ever answered questions, except by asking me questions about what I remembered. I couldn’t remember Vera when she was younger than ten, or twelve, or whatever age she’d been when my memory began again.
“No doubt she ran off with that good-for-nothing piano player,” said Papa with his mouth full. “Rumors are all over the village, speculating on the woman who left with him in the middle of the night.” He gave me a quick surveying glance, then smiled approvingly. “Audrina, I know you know what can happen when you fool around with boys. And if you never believe another word I say, believe this—you’d better not try the same trick. I’d follow you to the ends of the earth to bring you back where you belong.”
In some ways life was much better without Vera in the house. Still, I wondered how Vera was faring with a man who hadn’t wanted her.
Every day I asked my aunt, “Have you heard from Vera?” Every day she told me the same thing. “No. I don’t expect to hear from her. I made the worst mistake of my life the day I came back here. But now that I’ve made my bed, I’m going to make the most of it. That’s the winning attitude in life, Audrina, remember that. Once you decide what you want, stick with it until you have it.”
“What is it you want?”
She didn’t answer, just plodded about the kitchen in floppy shoes that made slip-slop sounds—shoes that she took off before Papa came home. An hour before he was due, she raced upstairs, bathed, dressed, arranged her hair, which she’d had trimmed so it hung loose sometimes. She looked years younger, mostly because she’d found a smile to wear.
Without Vera our lives took on a certain sameness, an unexciting routine that was comforting. I turned thirteen, then fourteen. Sylvia grew but did not progress. She took up all my spare time, but still I saw Arden every day. Papa had resigned himself to Arden, confident I’d see so much of him that I’d soon be bored with the sameness. I was filled with sadness when Arden told me that next fall he’d be going away to college. I didn’t want to think of life without Arden.
“Oh, Audrina,” cried Arden suddenly, picking me up by my waist and swinging me around so my white skirt flared wide. His amber eyes were on a level with mine now. “Sometimes when I look at you and see how lovely you’ve become, it makes my heart hurt. I’m so afraid while I’m gone you’re going to find someone else. Audrina, please don’t fall in love with anyone else. Save yourself for me.” Somehow or other my arms had gone around his neck, and I was clinging to him. “I wake up in the night,” he went on, “thinking of how you’ll look when you’re fully grown, and I think as your father does then, that you’ll feel toward me like a brother. That’s not what I want. I’ve heard my mom say she changed her mind about boyfriends three times a week when she was your age.”
Suddenly I was very conscious of being in his arms, and I squirmed until my toes were on the ground, though he still held me. “I’m not your mother.” How serious I felt, how adult and wise, when I wasn’t adult or wise.
Something soft and wonderful happened in his eyes
, making his pupils enlarge, grow darker. The light that grew in them told me even before his head inclined that at the tender age of fourteen I was going to be kissed by the only boy I’d allowed into my life. How tender his lips were on mine, so tentative and light I felt shivers both hot and cold race up and down my spine. Joy and fear combined as I tried to decide if I liked that kiss or not. Why should I fear? Then he kissed me again, a bit more passionately, and I was filled with apprehension as the rainy day in the woods came back to haunt me. It belonged to the First Audrina, that awful day—why was it tormenting me, and punishing Arden?
“Why are you trembling?” Arden asked, looking hurt.
“I’m sorry. I just couldn’t help but be a little alarmed. I’ve never been kissed like that before.”
“I’m sorry if I shocked you—but I just couldn’t help myself. A million times I’ve held back … this time I couldn’t.”