My Sweet Audrina (Audrina 1)

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” I said.

“Ah, tomorrow . . . tomorrow . . . Your father wasn’t in his right mind, I tell you. Well? Well?”

I wouldn’t answer him.

Finally, he turned onto his side, his back to me. I was trying to fall back asleep, but then he muttered, “Your sister was crying hysterically in your father’s room.”

“What?”

He didn’t respond.

“What did you say?” I sat up.

Still, he didn’t respond. In a moment, he was snoring.

I rose and found my robe and slippers. Then I went to Papa’s bedroom. The door was open again, but when I looked in, I didn’t see Sylvia. I turned on a light and even looked into Papa’s bathroom, but she wasn’t there. Arden must have imagined it in his drunken stupor, I concluded, and I turned off the lights. Instead of returning to bed, I went to Sylvia’s room.

For a few moments, I stood in her doorway and peered into the darkness. The curtains at the windows had been left open, but the sky was overcast. There wasn’t even starlight. In fact, I thought I heard the tinkling of raindrops against the glass. I stepped in and immediately realized that Sylvia was not in her bed. I checked her bathroom and then hurried downstairs.

The living room had been cleaned up halfheartedly. Spilled drinks and bits of food were everywhere; there would be a lot of work to do tomorrow. Sylvia wasn’t there.

I headed for the kitchen. Maybe she had gone down for a snack, since she had eaten nothing. There were many nights when I had found her doing just that. Sometimes Papa would be with her, and they would both be having a piece of cake or cookies with milk or tea. I assumed she recalled those nights and had gone to the kitchen, driven by memories.

But she wasn’t there, either.

“Sylvia?” I called.

I checked every room, every bathroom. Growing frantic now, I hurried up to the cupola, but that was empty, too.

The realization thundered around me. Sylvia wasn’t in the house! I thought about waking Arden to tell him, but when I looked in on him, he was snoring even louder. He’d be of no help and grumpy for sure, I thought. But where was she? Where would she go?

I went to the closet in the entryway and put on one of my overcoats. Taking an umbrella, I stepped out and looked for her on the porch.

“Sylvia?” I cried. “Where are you? Sylvia?”

The rain was coming down harder, and the wind was now icy. A thick fog had blanketed the grounds and the woods. It was late October, but fall was obviously being crushed by a heavy oncoming winter. Realizing that I was still in my slippers, I returned to the entryway closet and took out a pair of Papa’s black leather boots. My feet swam in them, but I was able to walk out and down the stairs with the umbrella shielding me somewhat. I had no idea where to look. Over and over, I called out her name. She wasn’t anywhere nearby. Where could she be?

And then a terrifying possibility seemed to rush out of the bitter darkness and wash over me.

“Oh, Sylvia,” I muttered. “Poor Sylvia.”

I hurried down the path and through the woods as fast as I could, the rain soaking my face, but I was too frightened to feel the cold now. It was a long walk, a walk I couldn’t imagine her doing, but a dozen or so yards from the cemetery, I heard it—a shovel—and I broke into a run, clomping along in Papa’s oversize boots and nearly falling a few times.

Finally, I was there and saw her, in only her night-gown, digging away at Papa’s grave, the rain soaking her so that she was as good as naked.

“Sylvia!” I screamed. “What are you doing?”

She paused and turned to me. “We can’t leave him down there,” she said. “Papa. It’s cold and dark. We can’t leave him, Audrina. Just like we didn’t leave you.”

“No . . . oh, no, Sylvia. I was never dead. Papa is dead. Papa needs to stay there. He needs to stay near Momma.”

I reached for the shovel. She held on to it tightly.

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“Please, Sylvia, leave Papa to rest in peace. You’re going to get pneumonia out here. He would be very angry at you.”

“Angry? Papa? At me?”