Lightning Strikes (Hudson 2)

Afterward, in the car going home, he offered a more detailed review of my performance.

"The school is teaching you poise, control. I was impressed with your stage voice, your diction, and I thought you did rather well with your body. For an American youth performing an English classic, that is," he added.

"What a shame your parents aren't alive and here to see you," my Great-aunt Leonora added. "I'm sure their hearts would have burst with pride."

"She's too old for that sort of thing now, Leonora.

What she has to do is win over the minds and hearts of complete strangers if she is to go on with a stage career," Great-uncle Richard declared.

"Still, it's nice to have family around you at times like this," she said wistfully.

Great-uncle Richard seemed to be annoyed with her and turned away, growing silent. Still, from time to time before we arrived at Endfield Place, he stole what I thought were furtive glances at me. I could feel his gaze and when I looked at him, he always shifted his eyes and stared out the window. Once we arrived at the house, he quickly went to his den.

"I know you must be tired, dear," Great-aunt Leonora said. "These things are so emotionally exhausting. For the life of me, I don't know why anyone would want a career on the stage. Life is a stage enough?'

"That's what Shakespeare said," I told her.

"Of course it is," she said even though I was positive she didn't know what I meant. "Why did you think I said it? Well, I'll be sure to write my sister and tell her of your great success," she added, laughed nervously and went to her room.

Randall had wanted me to go out with him after the reception, but I didn't think it was proper to leave the Endfields in light of their attending the

performances. I retreated instead to my own small closet of a room, prepared for bed and then lay there, basking in my immediate memories: the applause, how I had felt on stage, the pleasure in Mr.

MacWaine's face, Randall's glee and all the wonderful comments at the reception.

Maybe I could do this. Maybe it wasn't a pipe dream after all and Grandma Hudson was right in pressuring me to come here and study. What I couldn't help but wonder is what my real father would have thought of my performance. After all, he was a Shakespearean expert, wasn't he?

I imagined that he had come to our performance and sat in the back of the audience, undetected. Afterward, he was so impressed with me that he made a point of coming to the reception to tell me so, and all this without knowing that I was his daughter.

He would invite me to have coffee or tea with him to discuss my career and to talk about the great plays. And then, in the middle of all that, I would burst out with the truth and he would be so

overwhelmed but so overjoyed that he would embrace me and be anxious to announce the news to everyone.

I felt a smile settle into my face as I lay there, staring into the darkness, dreaming. Suddenly I heard Boggs's loud footsteps in the hail. It sounded as if he was trying to poke holes in the floor with his heels. The door of my little room rattled when he passed by. I heard his door open and close and then all grew quiet. The small stow' of noise shook me out of my reverie.

What was I doing anyway but pretending and dabbling in childish make-believe. Maybe I was not so different from my Great-uncle Richard

participating in his illusions with Mary Margaret.

How long had she and my Great-uncle Richard been conducting this little drama? I wondered. Did she want to participate or was she forced to in order to keep her job? Who else knew beside Boggs? Did Great-aunt Leonora know but pretend not to? Was this why Mrs. Chester was so adamant that I mind my own business when I had asked about the cottage?

This is truly a house filled with ghosts, I thought, ghosts better left undisturbed. I would be like everyone else and pretend none of it was happening. Minding your own business seemed to be the credo for survival in this world. In a real sense it wasn't so different from the world I had been raised in when I lived in Washington. Hear no evil, see no evil and you'll get through it all was the lesson everyone learned as soon as she or he could hear, see and understand.

Maybe the stage was the safest place after all. It was like stepping through the looking glass into a wonderland where people could cry and laugh and touch each other and look at each other and worry about nothing at all except the sound of applause when the curtain came down.

Do anything you can, I told myself, to keep what my drama teacher called the invisible fourth wall between yourself and the real world. Then you'll always be safe. Then, you'll finally be safe.

There had been something magnetic about seeing my real father and his children. Try as I would, I couldn't keep the memory of it out of my mind. I didn't want to tell Randall how much I was thinking about my father because I was afraid he might rush out and do something even more dramatic. When he had forged ahe

ad and crossed the street to knock on the Wards' door, I could hardly breathe. He was determined to bring me and my father face to face, but it wasn't his life to play with or his emotions to risk.

All the next week, whenever I could, I returned to the street on which my father lived and I stood around waiting across the street to catch a glimpse of him. I saw his wife twice, once by herself and once with their little boy. Seeing her again, I was able to appreciate her good looks more. She had a reddish tint to her brown hair. The first time I saw her she wore it down and loose around her shoulders, and the second time she had it woven into a French twist.

When I looked at her the second time, she wasn't much more than a dozen or so feet away. I kept my head down but looked up quickly when we were close to each other. Her face really was angular and interesting with almond-shaped brown eyes and tiny freckles peppered on the crests of her cheeks. She had a soft, perfect mouth that relaxed into a gentle, friendly smile when her eyes met mine, even for a split second. It sent a cold electric shock into my stomach because I felt like someone who had been discovered spying.

This time she was wearing a dark gray sweater and a long, flowing skirt. She looked no older than a first- or second-year college girl to me. Her little boy held tightly to her hand, but kept his head down as if he was counting cracks in the sidewalk. It was all over in seconds, but how my heart pounded.

I never saw my father the entire week. I was either there at the wrong times to catch him or he was away. It was frustrating. I told myself I was just tormenting myself more and more by going there. Why look at something or someone who could never be what you wanted him to be? I felt like a very poor girl standing in front of the windows of an expensive department store looking in on things I could never hope to own. Wasn't it better to simply pretend the store didn't exist, to walk right by and never look inside?