The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [51]
The third time it happened, at number eleven, the person whose suspicions I raised was a child of perhaps eight or nine. She opened to my knock, and although I expected a parent to appear any moment, the child faced me with all the aplomb of a householder. So I told her who I was and what I wanted. She put her head to one side.
“You don't look like one.”
“One what?” I asked. How did one talk to a child, anyway? I hadn't much experience with it.
“Like a friend of the Adlers.”
“Why, what do they look like?”
“Not like you,” she said helpfully.
I looked down at my skirt, and pulled a face. “I know. I had to visit my parents today and this is how they like to see me.”
“You're too old to have to dress for your parents.”
“One never grows too old for that.”
Her shiny head tipped to the other side as she considered. “They give you an allowance, and you have to keep them happy?”
“Something like that.” My parents had been dead nearly a decade, but that did not mean I had not, at times, changed my appearance to satisfy other figures in authority.
“That's dreadful,” she stated, making it clear that I had just scotched her entire expectations for life as a free adult.
“True, but its merely on the surface. May I ask you—”
But our discussion on the merits of Bohemia was interrupted by the child's own figure of authority, as fingers wrapped around the door eighteen inches above hers and pulled it open. At last: the mother.
The girl craned her head upwards and said, “Mama, this lady is looking for 'Stella.”
“Actually,” I said, “I'm looking for Estelle's parents.”
“Why, what did they do?”
An interesting assumption. “Nothing, as far as I know. I'm a friend of Damian's, in Town unexpectedly, and I was hoping he and Yolanda would be here. But no-one answers, and I wonder if you have any idea where they might have gone?”
The eyes did their downward glance. “Frankly, you don't look like one of the Adlers' friends.”
I stifled a sigh, but the child cut in. “She's just come from visiting her parents and she's afraid of being cut off so she has to dress like that, just like us and Grandmama.”
There was humour in the woman's face at that, the sort of humour that indicates a degree of wit.
“I haven't worn the skirt since last year, and I didn't have time to adjust the hem,” I admitted. “But it's true, I've known Damian for years. I met him in France, just after the War.”
The claim either sounded real or contained a fact that she knew to be true, because she looked down at her daughter and said, “You run along and pour the tea for your dollies, Virginia. I'll be there in a moment.”
Reluctantly, the child withdrew to trudge, shoulders bent, for the stairway. When her feet were on the steps, her mother turned back to me.
“There was a gentleman here the other day, asking after Yolanda.”
I could hear the accusation in her tone, and scrambled hastily to assemble a harmless explanation. “Tall, older man?”
“Yes. You know him?”
“My father. Or rather, step-father. When I knew I'd be coming up, I asked him to call by and tell Damian and Yolanda. They weren't answering their telephone, and she's a terrible correspondent. When he didn't find them, I hoped perhaps he'd just missed them.”
“I see,” she said, accepting both the explanation and the insider's comments about the Adlers. “Normally on a Saturday evening I'd say you could find Yolanda in church, but I haven't seen either of them for some days. They may be out of town.”
“When did you last see them?”
“Let me think. You know, I don't believe I've seen her for quite a while, although I saw him more recently. Sunday, was it? Yes, he walked down the street with a valise as we were leaving for dinner at my mother's. He said hello to the children. But I haven't seen