“You make sure she's safe.”
“Like the other night.” With his chin, he gestured beyond the glass. “Simonetta, she hears something in the middle of the night, and I was dead asleep. But she says, Pat, Pat, and wakes me out of the bed to come see through the window, and I don't see nothing. But she tells me there's someone out in the yard. A man? Not so much a man, she says, an ombra. A spirit, maybe? Simonetta, she's so shook up and can't sleep, so I don't know.”
He read the fear on her face, and bent down to her to speak in a low voice.
“Don't be too concerned with what she says she sees. She's from the old country, eh? Superstitious. Not important, what she thought she saw, only to say that a noise over here gets her worried. Then we see you and that boy coming through the snow. So let's go see for ourselves, and you know, everybody loves a mystery.”
She reached out and touched him on the arm. “Until the mystery is solved.”
Her touch alarmed him at first, by the overwhelming sense of rejuvenation he felt at the slight pressure of her hand. Most children dared not even approach him, and he could not place the feeling till later that night, in bed next to Simonetta, as he told her stories of the free and happy days of his own boyhood, tales he had long forgotten, and in the morning, Pat woke with shock at the wet patch on his pillowcase where his dreams had brought him to tears.
12
At dinner each night they went over the lies necessary to protect their fiction.
“You mustn't say you are an orphan,” Mrs. Quinn began that Sunday night. “You are my daughter's daughter and she has sent you here to live with me while she is trying to patch together her life after a broken marriage.”
“I will look sad when I speak of my father.” Norah bowed her head to the mashed potatoes.
“You will behave yourself, that's what you'll do. Stick to our story. Your mother is staying in New Mexico to put her affairs in order.”
“Is that what broke the marriage? Affairs?”
A wicked smile lit her face. “Yes, his affairs. No, no, you wouldn't know. You don't know, only that your mother felt it best, under the circumstances, for me to look after you for a while, and she'll send for you once she's on her feet again.”
Norah speared a broccoli floret, considered its resemblance to a tree in summer, and popped it whole into her mouth. She crunched on as Mrs. Quinn spun out the rest of her tale.
“I can't explain you without explaining her away, and I can't bring myself to say it.”
“That you never hear from her?”
“That I've heard from her exactly twice since she ran away.” She eased herself from her chair, sighing as her knees ached, and left the room. Staring at the blank space across the table, Norah buttered a biscuit, and savored every crumb. Margaret returned clutching an envelope to her bosom, and with great ceremony undid the clasp and slid two items onto the tablecloth. A postcard stood on its narrow end and flopped over, and a thin sheet of paper hit the edge of a glass and fluttered like a leaf to the floor. Margaret could have been no more startled had she dropped a vase that shattered on impact, so Norah fetched the paper and stood at the woman's shoulder to read along.
“Thank you. This postcard came a few weeks after she left, and you see it's from Memphis.” The picture on its face was labeled Historic Elm-wood Cemetery. “Why anyone would send a postcard of a graveyard, of all things, I don't know. But I was so grateful to have it, although my husband was just livid. But Erica thought she was in love, so. Paul swore he'd get on a plane and fly right out there, and it was all I could do to stop him.” A memory made her cut off the sentence. She picked up the letter and started reading it to herself. “They were long gone, you see. Nothing until this, four years later. Paul was dead by then, and I had given up all hope, well, almost beyond hoping, and then this. No return address, just a mention of the town Madrid, and of course, I thought Madrid, Spain. Who wouldn't have thought of Spain?”
“Spain sounds entirely logical.”