“No, not at all. I know how to be covert when I use the telephone.”
“Yes, of course.” Mrs. LeVine’s gaze, so like Lydia’s and yet so different, flicks up and down me. “I daresay you do.”
I flush and take a step backward. “We’ll leave you to care for Lydia now.”
“Remember, Piper,” Mrs. LeVine calls as Walter holds open the back door for me. “Not a word. Not even to Lydia.”
“Not a word,” I vow.
With a farewell nod of his head, Walter closes the door behind us.
The chill of the wind, which had been an ignorable nuisance before, whips down the alley. My right ankle is sore, and it’s no wonder, running at such a pace.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in all my life,” Walter confesses.
My knees tremble, and I lean against him as we walk along the grit of the alley. “I’m so thankful you were with me. I couldn’t have carried her.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“I learned of it only a month ago. I was at the LeVines’. Lydia and I were making fudge, and we sat a spell to rest while it cooled. And . . .” I swallow as emotion rises high in my throat. “We had been sitting there in the living room, just chatting, when Sarah came twirling through the room. And when I looked back to Lydia, she was . . .”
Her head had been angled back, as though she were trying to see the bit of ceiling just behind her view. Her hands, which had been in her lap, were now pulled against her collarbone, the wrists bent in.
“Lydia?” I had dropped my glass of iced tea, though I wouldn’t realize it until later. “Lydia?”
I must have been louder than I thought, because Mrs. LeVine had rushed into the room, Hannah and Sarah close behind her. “Get her on her side!” she ordered, even as she eased Lydia out of the chair and onto the ground. “Girls—leave the room at once.”
A scream stuck in my throat at the sight of prim and frilly Lydia biting her tongue as though it was a bit of chewing gum. Her unblinking, rolled eyes seemed inhuman.
Mrs. LeVine had glanced at her wristwatch. “Piper, get the girls out of here, and call Dr. LeVine.” But I had been frozen there. She turned, and looked up at me with a glare even more severe than Ms. Underhill’s. “Go, Piper. Piper!”
Walter’s voice blends with the memory of Mrs. LeVine’s. “Piper?”
I shake myself from the LeVines’ living room and back into the present. “That seizure lasted eight minutes, I was told. It felt like forever. When her father finally got there, Mrs. LeVine took me aside and made it clear I was to tell absolutely no one about what I had seen. Not my father, not friends at school. She asked that I not even mention it to Lydia.”
Walter’s forehead scrunches as he frowns at me.
I pitch my voice low. “They’re worried about Dr. LeVine’s practice. About what would happen if word got out that his daughter has been having unexplained seizures for several months now.”
His face doesn’t lose the serious countenance. “Can it be cured?”
“Dr. LeVine says it can. That it’s a matter of finding the right combination of medicines.” I take a deep breath. “He says the seizures don’t hurt her. That she’s sore afterward and often comes to with a headache, but doesn’t remember a thing. So I guess even if she does have pain, she doesn’t remember feeling it.”
“Well. That’s a small comfort, I suppose.”
I picture Lydia as her beautiful self. Carefully curled red hair, skin aglow, and blue eyes lively. That is Lydia. I hold the image in my mind as the Other Lydia—her arms tucked awkwardly and her eyes rolled up—tries to crowd her out.
“This is 1924, for heaven’s sake.” I infuse my voice with false bravado. “We can make automobiles, telephones, and electricity. So surely this can be solved as well.”
Walter smiles down at me. “Yes, you’re right. And Dr. LeVine is one of the best in the city. Lydia couldn’t be in better hands.”
“Right.”
We slow to a stop at the back door of our home. He glances down at his shirt, soiled with Lydia’s blood and urine.
“You can’t put that in the wash, or Joyce will ask about it. I’ll have to replace it for you. Your hat too. What are your measurements?”
“Piper, one less shirt is no problem.” He threads the buttons of his suit coat through their holes. “I’m going to get cleaned up, and then I’ll be back down.”
He disappears into the house, and I sink onto the bare wood steps. My ankle feels as though it might be swelling, and my legs quiver beneath my school skirt. I stare at the back of the brick house behind ours as my head swirls to all sorts of dangerous places.