Promises to Keep - Ann Tatlock [53]
Finally, in midafternoon, I was able to spill my secret to the one person who would understand. Recess was held outside in spite of the autumn chill, but Mara and I managed to find a small stretch of sun-baked bricks along an outer wall of the school. There, in our secluded spot, I pulled the note from my pocket and showed it to Mara.
She took it into her mittened hands and read it. I watched her eyes move slowly over the scribbled words, and when she lifted them to me, they were filled with doubt. “Are you going?” she asked.
“Of course I’m going. Why wouldn’t I?”
Mara shrugged. “I don’t know, Roz. I’ve been thinking . . .”
“About what?”
“About your dad. I mean, there must have been a good reason your mom left him.”
I snatched the note out of her hand. “He’s going to change. He promised.”
“Yeah but . . .” She didn’t finish. She looked away.
“We made a deal,” I said.
“I know.”
“We’re going to get our daddies back, and nothing’s going to stop us.”
“I know, Roz. But my father, he – ”
“He what?”
“He loved my mother.”
“My father loves my mother too. He told me so.”
She didn’t say anything for a while. Then, “Just be careful, Roz.”
Her words sent a ripple of fear through the pit of my stomach. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t know. Just . . . if he wants you to go somewhere with him, don’t go. Just stay inside the restaurant, is all. You know, where people can see you.”
I didn’t like what she was saying, and I didn’t like feeling afraid. It made me angry. “I thought you’d be happy for me, Mara.”
“I am, Roz. Really I am.” She tried to smile, but the forced upturn of her mouth didn’t fool me for a minute.
She took off her mitten and held up her pinkie. I hesitated a moment, then took off my own mitten and clasped her finger with mine. Still, not wanting to see the warning there flashing like neon lights, I couldn’t bring myself to look her in the eye.
After the final bell Mara took the school bus to the public library with me. Standing outside on the sidewalk, she pointed me in the right direction and told me to look for the dancing hot dog. From the library I walked on to the Hot Diggity Dog Café alone, clutching my schoolbooks against my chest as a shield against the cold wind. But I shivered anyway – not just from the cold, but from anxiety over seeing Daddy, and from the fact that I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to do.
I’d lied to Tillie when I called home from the office at school. “I need to go to the library to do homework with Mara this afternoon,” I’d said.
“Why don’t you girls come to the house and do your homework here?” she suggested. “I’ve just pulled a fresh loaf of banana bread out of the oven.”
“Thanks, Tillie, but we need to use some reference books that we can’t bring home.”
“Do you need me to talk to the secretary, give her permission for you to get off at the library?”
“No. Mom’s already given permission for me to get off there anytime I want to. She said I just had to let you know when I’m doing it.”
“What about Mara? Does her mother know where she is, or should I call Mrs. Nightingale and let her know?”
“No, her mother knows already. She’s allowed to go to the library whenever she wants to.”
“All right, then. Afterward, walk on over to Marie’s, and you can get a ride home with your mother. It’s too cold to be walking around very much out there.”
The small trail of lies behind me and the unknown path ahead left me feeling sick. A small ache began to throb against my brow as I bent against the wind, and it seemed to beat in time to the echo of Mara’s warning: “Be careful, Roz. Be careful, Roz.”
I found the Hot Diggity Dog Café just as Mara said I would, with its brightly painted dancing hot dog winking down at me from the plate-glass window. He was a friendly little guy, his smile encouraging people