Promises to Keep - Ann Tatlock [63]
I groaned and slowly unfolded myself from the cushions. Mom put an arm around me to guide me up the stairs. We were halfway up when the doorbell rang.
“Can you believe it?” Mom said with a small click of her tongue. “Almost ten o’clock and the ghosts are still making the rounds.”
“I’ll get it, Mom.” Wally’s voice drifted up to us from somewhere. The front door opened, a gust of cold air rushed in, then Wally’s voice again. “There’s no one . . . oh, wait a minute. Someone left a paper bag with Roz’s name on it.”
“For heaven’s sake . . .” Mom started, though her voice trailed off as Wally met us on the staircase and handed me the bag. I sat down on a step and opened it. My eyes widened at the treasure inside, every kind of candy imaginable, including at least a dozen Sugar Daddies and, on top of everything, a red silk rose.
“Who do you suppose left it?” Mom asked.
I looked up at her and lied. “Probably Mara. Who else?”
She didn’t look convinced, but I could hardly tell her our final visitor was a ghost from her past, who seemed to me at that moment like the very best daddy in the world.
chapter
25
Tillie sat alone in her room, laughing out loud and slapping the arm of her padded rocking chair with an open hand. I paused in her doorway and frowned at her. “Tillie?” I finally called.
She turned and, wiping tears from her eyes, said, “Oh, Roz, come on in. Have a seat. Butter mint?”
I moved across the room and took a mint from the candy dish. Then I pulled the desk chair over and sat down beside Tillie. “What’s so funny?” I asked. Popping the mint into my mouth, I savored its sweetness and the fact that I could swallow without pain. Ten days after surgery, I was back to normal.
Tillie laid a hand across her chest, taking a moment to catch her breath. “I was thinking about Valerie, what she said just now when I was putting her to bed.”
“Yeah? What’d she say?”
“Well, I’m teaching her to pray the ‘Our Father,’ but she hasn’t quite mastered it yet. Instead of saying ‘Our Father, who art in heaven,’ do you know what she said?”
I shook my head. I didn’t have a clue.
Tillie laughed again, a laugh so powerful I thought she might wake up not only Valerie but every other slumbering kid in the neighborhood too.
“She said – ” more wiping of tears and amused sighs – “she said, ‘Our Father, it’s hot in heaven’!”
Another shriek followed, and I tried to join her, but I could only summon up a chuckle. Valerie’s mistake didn’t seem all that hilarious to me. By now Tillie was waving one hand in front of her face like a fan, as though the heat from Valerie’s prayer were warming her.
“I told her, I said, ‘Valerie, honey, you’ve got the wrong place.’ ”
I reached for another butter mint, pressed it against my tongue, looked at Tillie in quiet admiration. I liked the way she was so easily entertained.
She took one more deep breath, sighed heavily, then smiled at me. In the next moment, though, the smile disappeared as her eyebrows met over the bridge of her nose. “Roz, you don’t know the Lord’s Prayer, do you?”
I shook my head and shrugged.
“No, I didn’t think you would, since your mother doesn’t take you to church. Pity.”
“What’s a pity, Tillie?” I mumbled around the mint.
“Why, that you don’t go to church, and you don’t know how to pray.”
“But I know how to pray.”
“You do?”
“Sure.” Every day I prayed the same prayer: Dear God, please give Mara and me our daddies back. I had promised Mara I’d do it, and I was trying to keep my promise.
“I’ve asked your mother to come to church with me and to bring you kids along, but she’ll have none of it.”
“But we used to go – ”
I stopped as a memory flashed across my mind. Mom, dressed for church, trying to get out the