Graham yanked his hand away. “What do you mean? Why didn’t anyone wake me up?”
“Calm down. It was in the middle of the night. She started having some sort of seizure. But don’t worry—the doctor says she’ll be all right.”
“When will she be back?”
“I hope by the summer, when you come back.”
“When I come back? From where?”
Graham adored his father, had always looked up to him. Tanned and rugged from working out on the tugboat, he had strong arms from heaving towlines. He wore his dark hair parted on the side, just as Graham did, and his steady hazel eyes turned green in the sunlight. Today those eyes didn’t look steady. Instead, they looked as if they were saying one thing and meaning another.
“I have to go away on an extended job down the river. I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“Queenie can take care of me.”
“Queenie has a family of her own, son. She can’t be with you all the time. I’ve spoken with the headmaster at St. Stanislaus, a boarding school over on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I’m bringing you there first thing tomorrow.”
“What?” Graham sat up on his knees. “No!”
“Listen, son.” Norwood pushed him back down on the bed against the headboard. “I don’t have a choice. I’m sorry. But for the time being, this is the way it’s going to be.”
The next morning at daybreak, Queenie woke Graham. She helped him get dressed and packed a breakfast for him. She handed him a small suitcase and waved goodbye as Norwood backed the car out of the driveway.
Graham looked out the back window of the car, wondering if he would ever come back to the house on Prytania Street again. And if he did, would things ever be the same?
Would his mother ever love him the way she had before Balfy died?
He wasn’t so sure.
“Did it happen in this room?” Ibby asked.
Doll nodded. “That’s why that window is all boarded up. Been that way since the accident.”
“One of the locked rooms on the second floor—is one of them Balfour’s?”
“Yes, Miss Ibby. Fannie had Queenie lock it up that night. No one been in there since.”
“I wonder why Daddy never told me about his brother.”
Doll shook her head. “’Cause, Miss Ibby, the day Master Balfour died, something in your daddy died, too. He thought his mother blamed him for the accident. He thought that was why his parents sent him away to boarding school. He never said as much, but I could always see it in his eyes. Think that may have been one reason he ran away with your mother. But Miss Fannie, she never blamed him. All she wanted was for him to stay here in this house with her, so they could be a family. She tried to talk to him, tried to show him how much she loved him, but after the accident, Master Graham, he kept pushing her away. I think he had so much hurt inside that he just didn’t know how to let it go. Broke Miss Fannie’s heart watching him suffer like that.”
“I wish he’d told me about it. I could have tried to help.”
That explained the sadness she saw in her daddy’s eyes sometimes. Ibby used to think that she was the one that made him sad. She thought perhaps he wasn’t proud of her, or maybe he wished she’d been a boy. Now she understood. He was hurting inside from something that had happened a long time ago. Still, she wished he would have told her about the accident. Maybe she could have made it better for him somehow.
Doll let out a big sigh. “Some things too broke to fix sometimes. All you can do is make the best of it.”
“Doll?”
“Yes, baby?”
“Is Fannie too broke to fix?”
Doll flicked one of her fingernails several times before answering. “Just remember that she loves you, no matter what,” Doll said. “Now try to get some rest.” When she got to the door, she turned around. “Tell you what, Miss Ibby. Tomorrow, first thing, I’m gone get Crow to take them boards off that window. Make it a lot more comfortable once we get some air circulating. About time we got some life back in this room.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The next morning Ibby stopped by her father’s room and held the urn for a while. She’d stayed awake all night, thinking about him. There was so much she never knew about him, so much he’d never told her. She remembered the way he had looked at the photo of Fannie the day it fell out of his wallet at the school fair, as if he wanted to say something to her but couldn’t. She hadn’t understood the pain in his eyes then, but she did now. He had wanted to tell his mother that he loved her, just as she wished she could tell her father at this very moment how much she loved him.
As she closed the door to his room, she knew it was too late to help her father, but maybe it wasn’t too late to help Fannie. Somehow.
Queenie was taking some biscuits out of the oven when she went into the kitchen. “You look all tuckered out, Miss Ibby. What’s the matter? Didn’t you get any sleep?”