My schoolwork didn't improve. I began to sleep a lot and eat poorly, too. Finally, Papa Prescott told Nana Prescott that they should "throw in the towel." I heard her cry about it, and I did feel sorry for her.
"She is a nice lady," I told Noble that night.
"The world is full of nice ladies. You need to be with family," he insisted. He wouldn't compromise.
In the end the Prescotts did give up on me, but they discovered they couldn't bring me back to the orphanage run by Madam Annjill and her husband, Homer. That orphanage was closed. Madam Annjill had suffered a massive stroke and died. All of the children living there had been transferred to other orphanages. This disturbed Nana Prescott even more.
"We're going to turn her over to a strange new place," she moaned. "How dreadful for the child."
"It's not going to be any more dreadful for her than things are for her here," Papa Prescott insisted.
"Maybe we're just too old for this sort of thing. She needs a younger pair of parents, and maybe a home with a child already there, too."
"How sad. How sad," Nana Prescott moaned.
They conferred with the children's protection agency, and a little more than a week later, they gave me the news.
"I'm sorry," Nana Prescott said. "I think we're just too old to raise a little girl like you. You need more energetic, younger people. It's not fair for us to keep you," she added to make herself feel better.
I said nothing.
I didn't shed a tear, which I knew bothered her more. It made Papa Prescott feel better about it all, however. He felt justified in his decision to give me up. I saw it in his eyes. I was far too big of a problem for them.
A new orphanage was found for me, but when the Prescotts returned me to the children's protection agency, they told them all about my conversations with Noble, and arrangements were made for me to visit with another child psychiatrist who donated his time to the needy.
His name was Dr. Sackett, and I grew to like him very much. He was very understanding about Noble.
"It's not unusual to cling so hard to someone who loved you so much," he told me. "But you have to let go, just the way any little person lets go of his or her imaginary friends. As you get stronger and more self-confident, you will," he assured me. "After all, Noble comes to you only when you're afraid or insecure, or even feeling guilty about something, right?" he gently prodded.
In time I thought he was right, and as I grew older and stronger, I did see and hear Noble less and less at this new orphanage, until he was virtually gone.
That was where I had been up until the very day, nearly six years, in fact, when I was called quite unexpectedly to meet a young man and woman apparently looking for a foster daughter my age. It was really the woman who was looking for me, who needed me even more than I needed her. The reasons for that would not be clear for a while, and when they were, I found myself in the most frightening situation in which I had ever been.
I should have paid more attention to the shadows thickening around me, perhaps, but I had promised myself I would try hard, very hard, to put all that aside and be as close to a so-called normal young woman as I possibly could be. Dr. Sackett had convinced me that the voices and visions were all corning from inside me, from my own insecurity. If I was ever to be a truly successful and independent person, I would have to shut the doors on all that.
The question was, would I be right or wrong to do so? The answer wasn't long in coming.
3 A Curtain Dropping on My Past
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"Hi, I'm Ami," a very pretty young woman said, rising quickly to greet me when I entered the office. She didn't look much older than me. We were about the same height. I was five feet five by now. Our figures were similar, too. I thought we even had the same shoe size, but what truly amazed me was how close to the color of my hair hers was.
She held out her hand, which had long, polished fingernails, a hand that obviously never performed any hard work. I took it and shook, glancing simultaneously at the slim man in a charcoal gray pinstriped suit and black tie seated beside her. He swung his soft hazel eyes to her and twisted his thin lips up at the right corner.
Ami held on to my hand and turned to
him.
"Isn't she just perfect, Wade?" she asked him, keeping her eyes on me. Then she stepped beside me to face him. She bumped her hip against mine. "Look at us. She could be my sister."
He raised his light brown eyebrows and widened his eyes. With his fingers held out stiffly, he pressed his right palm over his thin, closely trimmed dark brown hair as if he sensed a strand had fallen out of place, and then he grunted what sounded like agreement.
"You are perfect. You are," Ami insisted. "I want to know all about you. Every little thing. Nothing is unimportant. We're going to be great friends."
I turned to Mother Higgins, the headmistress of the orphanage. I saw she was amused by the young woman's outburst, but instead of smiling, she raised her eyes slightly toward the ceiling, just as she did when she was about to begin a prayer of thanks at our dining table. Then she looked at me with her most officious headmistress's face.
"Celeste," she began, "this is Mr. and Mrs. Emerson."