The President's Daughter - Mariah Stewart [25]
“Is he in the same room?” Simon paused with his hand on the doorknob.
“The dayroom, yes. You remember how to get there?”
“Yes. Thanks. Through the French doors and straight ahead to the end.” Simon paused in the doorway. “Did he say what his sister’s name was?”
“Yes.” June nodded. “Dorothy.”
Simon stepped into the cool quiet of the lobby and waved to the receptionist, who never missed a beat in her telephone conversation while pointing to the sign-in book. Simon wrote his name and the date and proceeded on his own to the dayroom, where he found Miles Kendall in the same chair close to the windows.
“Hi, Mr. Kendall,” Simon said as he approached the chair.
Kendall turned and smiled. There was a life in his eyes that Simon hadn’t seen in his previous visit.
“How are you today?”
“Quite well. And you?” Kendall appeared alert and tuned in to his surroundings.
“I was just speaking to June outside,” Simon said as he pulled up a chair.
“June?”
“One of the aides.”
“Ahhh, the cute little strawberry blonde?”
“Yes.” Simon smiled. The old man may be forgetful, but he wasn’t blind. “June was saying that you’d told her about a trip you took to Chicago with your sister.”
Kendall nodded. “I met Dorothy in New York, and from there we took the train to Chicago. It was very pleasant; do you remember?”
“I wasn’t there with you,” Simon told him. “What year was that?”
“It was for Cousin Eileen’s wedding. Lovely week in May we spent there.”
Simon’s heart fell. He couldn’t even begin to guess at what year it might be in Miles Kendall’s world.
Simon dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out a box of mints. He had started to hand them to Kendall when the old man said, “Dorothy wanted to stay an extra week, but I had to get back to Washington.”
Simon’s hand froze in midair and his heart tripped at the words.
“Flying was faster, but Dorothy wouldn’t fly, so I took the train out and back with her,” Kendall added.
“Why were you going to Washington?”
Bony fingers reached out and grabbed the box of mints. “Because I worked there, of course.” He scrutinized the box, shook it, and started to bite into an end.
“Of course. I’d forgotten.” Simon took the box and opened the bottom flap before handing it back to him. “When Graham was President, you worked in the White House.”
“You do remember.” Kendall popped a mint into his mouth and sucked on it loudly. “Remember when the bagpipers were there? They always had bagpipers around Christmas. That Christmas . . . remember the Christmas Ball?”
Simon nodded and slipped a hand into his pocket to turn on his recorder. He shouldn’t, of course, record without permission, but since asking for permission might only serve to distract Kendall, Simon let it pass. After all, no one would ever know about the tape. Simon only intended to use it in place of the notes that he would normally take on paper, and who knew that even that might serve as a distraction to the old man? The last thing Simon wanted was to run the risk of stopping the flow of memories now that Kendall apparently had some.
“Wasn’t she lovely that night?” Kendall stopped chewing for a long minute and looked out the window, as if watching something that only his eyes could see.
“Beautiful.” Simon leaned forward hoping to catch every word.
“She wore that long dress of pale lavender. Matched her eyes. We danced and danced. . . .”
“She was your lady friend?”
“She danced like . . . well, light as a cloud. Everyone was watching us.” Kendall began to slip into the past. Simon wasn’t sure where it would take them, but he was happy to follow. “All the women, they all wanted to be her; you could tell by the way they looked at her. And all the men wished they were me. If they only knew . . .” He shook his head slowly; a sadness settled into the lines of his face.
“She was who, Mr. Kendall?”
“She could light up a room just by walking into it. And her laughter . . . just like those little silver bells on the tree.