Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [75]
A bowl, a spoon, a glass of juice, and a Flintstones vitamin were set at my place at the table. I poured Cheerios into the bowl.
“You all packed?” my mother asked.
“Yup.”
“Don’t forget to say thank you,” she said.
“Mom, I haven’t even gone yet.”
“Even so,” she said. “And make your bed. Always make your bed.”
“We sleep on the floor.”
“Then roll your sleeping bag.”
“Okay,” I said.
My mother took a sip of tea. “You have your lunch money?”
“No.”
She got up and took three quarters from a paper cup in a cabinet. “We’ll pick you up at ten,” she said.
“Ten?”
“Nana and Poppy are coming tomorrow to celebrate Christmas with us early, before they go to Florida.”
I looked around. “Where’s Dad?”
“He’ll be right down. He got a late start.”
From upstairs I could hear the rapid padding of feet into the bedroom from the bathroom.
“Are your presents wrapped?” my mother asked.
“Not yet.”
“You can do that tomorrow, too.”
“Everybody stays until eleven,” I said. “Mrs. Rice makes a big breakfast for all of us.”
“Ten,” my mother said.
I remember that she stood and watered a plant on the sill over the sink. My father came down the stairs smelling of Neutrogena shampoo. He drank his coffee standing up. “You seen my keys?” he asked my mother.
“They’re on the dining room table.”
“You ready, Freddy?” he asked me, goosing me at the back of the neck.
I put on my jacket. My mother bent down to give me a hug. “Be a good girl,” she said. “I love you.”
“I always am,” I said, annoyed.
We left the house, and I didn’t look back. I didn’t notice if my mother was still standing in the doorway, holding her robe closed at the neck. Maybe she waved or maybe she went upstairs to have a shower before Clara woke up. I didn’t say I love you, too, to my mother. I didn’t say good-bye to Clara. I don’t know if my sister was sleeping on her stomach, arms and legs splayed, her diaper making a tight package under her sleeping suit, or if she had wormed her way into a corner as she sometimes did, clutching a white crocheted blanket to her chin. I don’t know if Quack-Quack was with her in the crib. I don’t even know for sure when it was I last saw Clara—at supper on my father’s knee, or in her crib as I passed by on my way to the bathroom?
I was off to school, and I didn’t look back. I had a date that night at Tara’s.
A deputy comes to the house to inform us that Charlotte has been taken to Concord in a cruiser. Charlotte’s car will be towed to the Shepherd police station. Neither of us is to leave the house. A police officer will be with us shortly to question us.
“Where’s Detective Warren?” my father asks.
“He’s gone to Concord with the young woman,” the deputy says.
My father shuts the door and stands with his hand still on the knob. This can’t be happening to us, I think. I have not said this to myself at any time since we found the baby.
“She’ll think you called the police,” I say.
My father stands rooted to the spot.
“Did you call the police?” I ask.
“No.”
“Then do something!” I yell.
He takes his hand off the doorknob.
“You know she didn’t know!” I shout. “You know she didn’t do it!”
My father turns to look at me, a question on his face.
“I overheard you talking in the kitchen,” I say.
“You heard all of it?”
“I heard every single word,” I say defiantly.
“Nicky,” he says.
“Charlotte fell asleep. She was on drugs. She didn’t know what James was doing. It’s not fair.”
“She knew what he’d done when she got home,” he says.
“She was scared,” I say. “She was sick.”
“She could have called the police.”
“Would you have done that? When you were nineteen, would you have called the police?