I looked down at my unfinished work and nodded, thinking about Mr. March, his softer tone of voice, his curiosity, and his smile.
“Now I understand, too, Mama,” I whispered.
It was truly as if she had reached from beyond the grave to speak to me through my own calligraphy. It filled my heart with warmth and gave me the strength even to face the jealous face of Kiera March.
Someday, I thought—no, vowed—I wouldn’t hate her as much as I pitied her.
But I knew that the journey to that place would be a long one and over a road full of many traps and dangers. I just didn’t know how soon it would all really begin.
15
Judgment
A few days later, I learned that despite how powerful and influential Mr. March was and despite how good his attorney was, they couldn’t put off Kiera’s court hearing again. With only a week left before school began, she would have to go to court. No one discussed it in front of me, but I overheard enough to know the details, and by now, I understood that both Mrs. Caro and Mrs. Duval knew everything. In fact, Mrs. Duval apologized to me one day when I was sitting out on the patio that faced the pool, reading. Without my asking, she brought me a glass of Mrs. Caro’s famous lemonade.
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Duval,” I said, surprised. I started to drink, expecting her to leave, but she stood there looking out at the cabana. I could tell that she wanted to say something, and I waited.
“When you were first brought here,” she began, “we all thought some organization had chosen you or singled you out for a special opportunity because of your accident and terrible loss and that Mrs. March had volunteered to take you in. She and Mr. March have done many wonderful charitable things. No one told us w
hat or who caused the accident you and your mother suffered. We had some suspicions, but no one thought it was necessary for us to know the truth, so no one asked any questions.”
I didn’t say anything.
She shook her head. “If we had known the truth, we would have treated you better when you first arrived.”
“You treated me just fine, Mrs. Duval. Everyone has.”
“Not as fine as we would have if we had known how you lost your mother and who was responsible,” she declared, and left.
I appreciated what she had told me, but I was worried that it would now cause even more friction between Kiera and me, especially now that her court hearing was scheduled. I felt the way Mama had always felt when she told me she was waiting for the second shoe to drop.
“What does that mean?” I had asked her.
“It means that when the second shoe drops, the whole ceiling comes down on you,” she had told me. “The problem is, it doesn’t happen right away, so you’re always waiting for it, and that’s nerve-wracking. That’s the way my life has been with your miserable father. Every time the phone rings or someone comes to the door, I expect trouble.”
Maybe that was why she had hated answering the phone and always made me look out the window to see who it was when someone came to the door before she would open it. I wished I had someone to do all that for me now, run interference. I had no doubt that the second shoe was about to drop.
Two days later, the Marches went to court. I practically locked myself away in my suite, reading, working on calligraphy, and watching television. The minutes went by like hours and the hours like days. Finally, a little before six o’clock, I heard footsteps in the hallway. I heard Kiera’s door slam closed, and then I heard the recognizable click-clack of Mrs. March’s stiletto heels on the tile floor as she headed in my direction.
“Well, that’s over for now,” Mrs. March said as she entered. I shut off the television. She came all the way into the sitting room and stood there looking at me. “The judge put her on probation, but only if she goes to serious therapy. If she doesn’t go, she loses her driver’s license indefinitely, so you know she’ll go. What she’ll get out of it is anyone’s guess.
“I just don’t want to think about it anymore,” she continued. “Donald will handle the arrangements with the therapist. This is what we’ve come to in this country. A child will listen to a therapist but not her own parents. At least, that is what the judge believes. I can’t say he’s wrong.”
I could see that she was waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Good? That’s all the punishment she gets? What?
“I’m telling you all this so she doesn’t tell you that the judge decided she was not at fault or something,” Mrs. March continued. “She will probably tell her friends that, the ones who know the truth, but you should know different. I don’t imagine any of this makes you feel any better, Sasha.”
I realized that she thought I wanted to see Kiera get a far more severe punishment. It certainly wouldn’t have bothered me if she had, but on the other hand, it wouldn’t have brought back my mother. At this point, I really didn’t care. I didn’t like her, and I didn’t expect that any therapist would, either. He or she would have to have a magic wand to turn Kiera into a different person, turn her into someone who wasn’t selfish and spoiled.
“Let’s just concentrate on happy new things, okay, Sasha?” Mrs. March said. She smiled, looked around the sitting room as if she was worried that something had been changed, and then left.
Kiera said nothing to me about the judge’s orders. In fact, she made more effort to avoid me, often finding excuses not to be at the table for dinner and then getting herself away from the house as much as possible so that we wouldn’t even cross each other’s path. I did learn that Mr. March had forbidden her to have any friends over to party. However, I wasn’t sure whether he did that as a punishment or out of concern for me. Ever since Kiera had given me her logic for defending herself, a logic that essentially blamed me and Mama for being there in the rain, I imagined that she used the same argument with her father and maybe even with the judge. At least I was sure the judge hadn’t accepted her excuse.
Perhaps Mr. March had ordered Kiera to avoid me so as to avoid any more conflict. After all, not only was I still there, but I had been enrolled in her school. She could no longer barge in to tell me her father was going to throw me out. I was sure that she was upset about that, as well as what happened the day after I completed my calligraphy of mother.
I brought it down to dinner the following evening, an evening when I was sure that Mr. March was going to be there. Kiera was there, too, this time. She looked as if she was going to burst out laughing when I arrived carrying the framed calligraphy, but Mr. March’s exclamation of “Wow!” stopped her dead in her tracks. He rose and came to me to take it and hold it up.
“Isn’t this something?” he asked Mrs. March.