No, I hated the sound of laughter in that house. I even hated the sound of my own laughter. Eating well, trying to improve my education, wearing beautiful clothes, enjoying everything in that magnificent suite, suddenly felt more like a terrible betrayal. I almost wished I would never get better. I had to suffer in order to honor Mama’s memory.
Try as hard as she will, I thought, Mrs. March will not take the pain away from me. When and if she did, it would be like me burying Mama again and again. These thoughts overwhelmed me. I sat there sobbing and made no effort to stop the tears from dripping off my cheeks. It reminded me of that night when the rain came pouring down over us, pelting us so hard that it was as if the heavens were expressing their anger.
Or maybe it was meant to be a warning, to make us stay on that beach and not dare try to cross that highway, not dare try to go home.
10
Family of the Blind
Probably because Mrs. Kepler had made an issue of it, Mrs. March sent Mrs. Caro up immediately to wheel me down and onto the patio. She found me crying and rushed to me.
“What’s wrong, dearie? Are you in pain?”
“No,” I said, wiping my face quickly. Not the kind of pain you mean, I thought.
“Oh, I know,” she said. “Being brought like this to a strange house ain’t easy, I’m sure.”
I didn’t say anything, but strange seemed to be the perfect adjective.
“Well, let’s get you out in the sunshine and fresh air. It’s no good being indoors so much, anyway. People heal better and faster when they get into fresh air.”
She turned my chair toward the doorway.
“I grew up in Cork, Ireland, and I can tell you it wasn’t always easy getting into the fresh air. When I tell my family back home that I live in a place where the sun shines at least three hundred days a year without rain, they’re amazed.”
She pushed me onto the elevator.
“You always live in Southern California?” she asked.
“Yes. My mother was from Portland, though.”
“Don’t say? Weather there can be like weather in England, I hear. You have any of your people still there?”
Her question didn’t surprise me. I was sure everyone who was working there wondered why I wasn’t with family.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Yes, it’s a shame how fast we all lose track of each other in this world. I have a sister I haven’t seen in nearly twenty years now. She married a man who lives in South Africa. You know how far away that is?”
“Yes. It’s at the tip of Africa.”
“I bet you’ve been a good student. How did your schoolin’ work go today?”
“Good,” I said.
“You’ll be up and around in no time, I’m sure. Right now, it looks like forever to you. I can’t think of a better place to recuperate from anything,” she added.
I looked up at her. Was it really possible that no one in the house except the Marches knew what Kiera had done and why I was there rather than with some relatives or in an orphanage? Mrs. Caro looked sincere. I wondered if Mrs. March believed that I would never say anything, or was she so confident that even if I did, no one would risk repeating it or discussing it? From the way she described her husband and how he always excused and buried whatever wrong things Kiera did, I imagined that he had given Mrs. March strict orders to keep it all from their servants.
It didn’t take me long to understand that it was a house built on secrets and whispers. There was more living in the shadows than in the light, despite the bright chandeliers and lamps. A family that lived more in the shadows was a family of the blind.
The patio Mrs. Caro wheeled me to faced the pool and the tennis courts. There were two tables with chairs, a settee with a small table, and what looked like a pile of stones in a circle with benches around it. I asked Mrs. Caro what it was, and she said it was a fire pit to keep people warm when they sat out there on cooler nights. Right then, the sun was still high in the blue, nearly cloudless sky. It was about the same time of day as when I had seen those teenagers there. Would they return? What would happen when they saw me, if they did return?
“I’ll set you in this shady spot,” Mrs. Caro said. “Not too warm for you?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“Will you be all right here by yourself for a while? I have to check on some things in the kitchen for tonight’s dinner,” Mrs. Caro asked. “It could be twenty minutes.”