Promises to Keep - Ann Tatlock [73]
“What are you thinking so hard about, Roz?” Tillie asked.
I looked up, startled. “Nothing. Why?”
“You’re frowning so, you look like the weight of the whole world is on your shoulders.”
I shrugged my shoulders in response, as though to show Tillie they weren’t weighted down by anything at all. “I don’t know. I’m not thinking about anything. Really. Nothing. I’m just busy eating.”
“Aha!” Tillie cried. “ ‘The lady doth protest too much!’ ”
“What?”
“Shakespeare!” Gramps chimed in. “She means, Roz, that if you really weren’t thinking about anything, you wouldn’t be trying so hard to convince us you weren’t.”
“What do you mean, Gramps?” By now I was really confused.
“But, Archie,” Marie interrupted, “one’s thoughts are a private affair. The child doesn’t have to tell you what she was thinking.”
Grandpa frowned and gave a small nod. “No, dear, you’re right. Then again, I’m not the one who asked her.”
“Asked me what?” I asked.
“What you were thinking. I believe that was Tillie. Wasn’t it, Tillie?”
“I was wondering why she looked so pained, is all,” Tillie said. “But of course she doesn’t have to tell us. Though, if she told us what her question is, then maybe we could give her an answer.”
Grandpa looked back to me. “Did you have a question, Roz?”
“I don’t think so. I – ”
“Archie, just leave the child alone and let her eat.”
“But, Marie, I – ”
“First, we talk about death, and then we have to badger a child just to find out what kind of insipid – ”
“Why don’t I begin to clear the table,” Mom cut in. She jumped up quickly and started gathering dirty dishes. “I’ll put the coffee on so we can have it with dessert.”
“I’ll help you, Janis,” Tillie volunteered.
“I’ll help too,” I said, pushing back my chair and standing up. “I’m ready for dessert.”
With all the jumping up and the grabbing of dirty dishes and the rush to make coffee and get dessert, the discussion about what I was thinking was dropped and forgotten. Except by me. I told myself to be more careful in the future and not to think too hard about Daddy when there were grown-ups in the room. If they could ever penetrate my thoughts to learn that Daddy was in Mills River . . . Well, it was a good thing thoughts were a private affair and no one could read my mind.
chapter
31
Mara and I sat cross-legged on my twin beds, with Valerie on the floor between us. Valerie made little cooing noises as she touched a plastic bottle to the puckered plastic lips of her doll. With the doll nestled in the crook of her arm, she rocked gently as she encouraged her baby to drink.
“What’s your baby’s name?” Mara asked.
Valerie paused and looked up. “Ginger,” she said.
“That’s a pretty name.”
Valerie nodded and went back to rocking. Mom was making supper and had asked us to watch her. Tillie was on one of her rare visits to her son Johnny’s house. Apparently discussions were underway between them as to how to help Tillie’s missionary son get settled back in Mills River after the first of the year.
Tom Barrows was downstairs in the easy chair reading the paper. Mom had invited him to have supper with us, and he’d come to our house directly from work. I took his relaxed presence in the living room as a foreshadowing of things to come, and I didn’t like it. But at the moment I was more interested in Mara than in Mom’s questionable future as Mrs. Barrows.
“So come on and tell me what your mom – I mean, Celia – said already,” I pleaded impatiently.
Mara took a deep breath and squeezed her hands together in front of her chest. I knew it was good news because her big brown eyes were shining.
“Mama got in touch with Daddy. She was able to reach him in his office at the university.”
“Yeah?” I leaned forward expectantly.
“And he said he was willing to see me.”
Squealing, we clapped and bounced on the beds. Valerie looked up at us with a frown. “Shh,” she said, one small finger on her lips. “Ginger