Awake and Dreaming - Kit Pearson [56]
Theo looked at the picture again. A gaunt woman stared back at her.
She dropped the book on the floor so hard she looked up at Dan guiltily. He hadn’t noticed. Quickly she picked it up and turned around in the armchair so her back was to the family. With trembling fingers she opened the book and examined the photograph more closely.
The face was the one she had seen last night—the face of the woman walking across the street. And now Theo knew why she looked so familiar. It was the same woman who had been watching her on the ferry.
18
All Theo could think of doing to calm her churning confusion was to read the book. Maybe it would give her a clue. She turned back to the first page and began.
The story was about two children called Edward and Susan. They discovered that when they shifted their grandmother’s sundial they were taken back in time. They visited Victoria in 1881 and met Emily Carr at age ten, who demanded to know who they were and why they wore such strange clothes.
That was as far as Theo got before she had to stop for dinner. Sharon arrived to pick her up and Theo got another chapter read while her aunt stayed for coffee. Then she put the book in a plastic bag and assured Dan she would take good care of it.
“You’re awfully quiet this evening,” said Sharon on the way home. “Just like a little mouse, the way you were when you first came. Is something wrong?”
“No,” said Theo, “but could I go right to bed and read?”
Sharon laughed. “Of course! I’m so glad you’re reading.”
She let Theo keep her light on until nine. Theo planned to stay awake until Sharon was asleep and turn it on again, but her eyes closed with exhaustion from the night before. She woke very early and finished the book.
It was such a good story she forgot why she was reading it. She only wondered how Emily and Edward and Susan would find their way back through the forest, and if Edward and Susan would be able to return to the present. When they did, and the plot unwound to a completely satisfying conclusion, she closed it up and sighed with pleasure.
Then she remembered who had written this book. Cecily Stone. The woman she had seen crossing the street from the cemetery, the woman on the ferry who had stared at her and Rae so avidly. But Cecily Stone was dead …
A chill went through Theo; she warmed up under her covers until Sharon called her to get up.
THAT MORNING she looked for Cecily Stone’s other book in the school library, but neither of her titles was there. Theo picked out two other books to take home. In the evening she asked Sharon if there was a big library in Victoria.
“There’s the main branch downtown,” said her aunt.
“Can I go there tomorrow after school? Please, Sharon. I’ll be really careful. There’s something I need to find out.”
“Something for school?”
“Well … no. Just something I’m interested in.” It would have been much easier to lie, but she’d promised Sharon she wouldn’t.
“Wait until Saturday and I’ll take you then. It will give you something to do while your friends are away.”
The Kaldors were visiting their grandparents in Vancouver for Easter. Before this week Theo hadn’t been able to stop thinking of how she was once supposed to go with them—before she started to fade.
Now she had forgotten they were going. All she could think about was Cecily Stone. She examined the photograph again and again until she knew the face from memory. Cecily’s expression was intense and inward, as if she were thinking hard about something. She was standing in front of a tree, but Theo couldn’t tell if it was the tree at the Kaldors’.
Saturday took years to come. Only reading helped the time go faster. Theo raced through six books and the school librarian began praising her as all the others had.
It poured on Good Friday. Sharon took Theo to a special mass in the morning. In the afternoon they cleaned out the kitchen cupboards. On Saturday