Amber House: Neverwas (27 page)

“When I learned of his death, I almost quit the fight. But I knew

that the only way to honor his memory, the memory of all the

martyrs to our cause, was to continue to fight to bring change.

“Change is a strange thing,” she said with a small sorrowful

smile. “It demands a price, sometimes in blood, and you may not

even realize that it’s begun until you’re halfway deep into it. It

takes courage, but not the courage of leading the charge. Just

the quiet everyday courage of taking the next step, and then the

next, even though you’re afraid, even though you want to quit.

Seeing it through to the end. We’re still fighting, all of us, to

reach that end, still taking those next steps. As long as we keep

o159

moving, we are not defeated, and we must, finally, inexorably,

inevitably, prevail.”

When the service ended, the senator was mobbed, as usual.

My folks and I slipped out. Sam was asleep on Dad’s shoulder. I

wished I was still little enough to be hanging there safe and limp

in Sam’s place. It felt like months since we’d moved in. Years. I

was exhausted.

N

She — I — heard Papa talking to a man with a pleasant baritone
voice. I walked near to the library door to listen. The man was asking
Papa for a position on a ship. I pushed the door farther open to see.

He was very handsome, with vivid blue eyes and full lips. He stared at
me, startled by my entrance.

“My daughter,” Papa said.

“Forgive me for staring,” he said with a little bow in my direction. He
explained to Papa. “She is so like unto my late wife, except raven-haired,
where my Lyddie was flaxen.” He turned to me again. “She was a great
beauty.”

My cheeks warmed at the compliment.

He spoke again to Papa. “As to the matter of the position?”

Papa smiled genially. “Your own ship lost to the Crown for smuggling?

You must see where that might make me question the wisdom of turning
one of my own over to your captaincy.”

The man nodded stiffly and gathered his hat and gloves to go. But
Papa fished into his watch pocket and produced his lucky coin, holding it
up for the man to see. “Will you bring me better luck than you found for
yourself? Shall we submit the question to the judgment of chance?”

Papa flipped the shining coin into the air, where it seemed to hang,
spinning, before it dropped. The man shot out a hand and caught it
before Papa could. Then he chuckled nervously, as if to apologize for his
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impertinence. “Reflex,” he said. He made a show of slapping it onto the
back of his hand, but I saw his fingers twitch as he did so.

He lifted his hand off the coin. I could see the coin’s happy young face,
not the old grieving one, staring up from the man’s tanned skin.

My father said, “Fortune smiles — you have your ship, Captain

Foster.” Then he picked the coin off the man’s hand and returned it to his
pocket.

I wondered if I ought to tell Papa that the handsome man had secretly
reversed the coin before he revealed it. I wondered if I wanted to.

N

I sat up in the darkness, reconstructing the pieces of my dream,

knowing there was something there I needed to see, to under-

stand. The old face and the young one, alternating dizzyingly on

the spinning coin.

“
Janus
,” I said.

CH A P T ER SE V E N T EE N

K

“Get up, get up, get up,” my brother trilled far too early the next

morning, Christmas Day. “I already woke up Mommy and

Daddy and Maggie, and you’re the only one left. Get up!” He

hurled himself up on my bed and found an arm to tug on.

I lay there a minute trying to recover some notion I’d had in

the middle of the night, but it refused to surface. I finally decided that I probably should get up.

He paced outside the bathroom door until I reappeared with

clean teeth and combed hair. Then he pulled me along by two

gripped fingers. “Hur-ry UP! There are so many PRESENTS!”

I dragged my feet the whole way. I’d decided long ago it was

part of an older sister’s job to torture her younger brother a little bit on Christmas.

The tree in the parlor had a wide apron of ribboned gifts

around it. My parents always tried to tread the line between

“magical” and “overindulgent” in their gift giving, but they

tended to err on the overindulgent side. Sammy tore through a

mountain of carefully wrapped packages — a herd of resin dino-

saurs, puzzles, a model railroad, construction blocks, a toy dump

truck, and a matching bulldozer with a backhoe. For me, there

was an antique cameo, a camera, a signed first edition of my

favorite book, a gift certificate at the chic-est boutique in

Annapolis, and an unbelievable foldout box full of makeup,

imported from New York. I was a happy girl.

We did family gifts after Saint Nick’s. Sammy was excited to

watch me open mine from Maggie and him.

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“Maggie’s first,” he directed. I carefully untied the organdy

ribbon and worked up the tape, still mindful of my duty to tor-

ture. I heard him growling a hurry-up noise. I smiled and opened

the box.

“So beautiful,” I gasped. It was a lovely, vintage, black
peau de
soie
evening bag.

“Your grandmother gave that to me when I was sixteen,”

Maggie said with a shy smile. “I hope you like it.”

I gave her a big hug. “It’s gorgeous, Maggie. Thank you!”

“Now mine,” Sam said, handing me a large box. “Faster.”

Grinning, I unwrapped it to find a half-dozen smaller wrapped

gifts inside. Sammy was gleeful. One by one, I opened his bounty.

The little compass from the Advent calendar. A cigarette lighter.

A simple can opener. A brass token for the New York City sub-

way. A pack of chewing gum. I noticed after I had unwrapped a

few that Sam was tucking each item inside the black purse. “Oh,

no, Sam,” I said, glancing apologetically at Maggie and reaching

for the bag, “those don’t go in there.”

He swung his arms to one side, keeping the bag away. “Yes,”

he said firmly. “They do.”

I looked again at Maggie and she was nodding her head. So I

let him be. I unwrapped the last item — a pen-size flashlight —

and passed it to him.

“You’re welcome,” he reminded me.

“Thank you, Sam,” I said, catching him and giving him a back-

ward bear hug. “What a great bunch of stuff!”

He beamed. “Yes!” he said. “They’re, um, what was that word

she said again?”

I looked at him quizzically. “I’m not sure, bud. Who?”

“I ’member,” he said. “
Needful
.”

It prickled in my mind.
An echo.
I shoved it to one side. I did not want to be thinking about time changes this morning.

“So, did you end up having a good Christmas, Sam?”

o163

“It was great!” he said, with a little jump.

“Well, see?” I said indulgently. “I told you today was the

big day.”

“Nope,” he said. He stared intently at his fingers as he put up

one after another. He finally turned to me, holding out both

hands, three raised fingers on one and four on the other. “It’s in

this many days.”

I did the calculation. “That’s — New Year’s, Sammy.”

“That’s right!” he said. “I
knew
you knew.” He nodded enthu-

siastically. “It’s new years!”

Mom, Dad, and Maggie went in to rustle up our brunch while

Sam and I bagged torn wrapping paper. When we were done,

there was only one small present left under the tree. Sam picked

it up and shook it. “What’s this, Sarah?”

I pried it from his fingers. “It’s a present for someone else,

Sam. Stop shaking it.”

“Who?”

I felt embarrassed. “It’s for Jackson,” I said.

“How come you didn’t give it to him yet?”

“Well, Sam,” I tried to explain, “I’m not sure he got me any-

thing,” and thought to myself he’d probably sunk all his spare

change into some nice thing to hang around Helen’s neck.
Like a

snowflake, maybe.

“That’s silly, Sarah. He doesn’t have to give you something

back. Christmas isn’t about trading.”

I nodded. “Of course, you’re right, Sam.” I tucked it in the

pocket of my robe. “I’ll give it to him later,” I promised but won-

dered if I would.

At brunch, I had a helping of everything on the table: eggs,

sausage, bacon, hash browns, corn bread, blueberry muffins,

and o.j. I had just hauled my stuffed self to my feet to help with

cleanup when the phone rang. “I’ll get it,” I said. Maybe a touch

too fast.

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Richard was on the other end of the line.

“Merry Christmas, coz.”

“I thought I told you not to call me that.”

“You said ‘not in public.’ So I got license. And speaking of

license, would it be all right to cash in on that rain check you

gave me? Come with me on a little trip tomorrow? I have to go

down to Richmond, actually. Pick up a video tape for my dad. I

could sure use some company.”

I felt reluctant and I didn’t know why. This boy was — Well,

anyone would say he was perfect. And he actually seemed to
like

me. And he seemed like a genuinely nice guy — kind to Sammy,

good with the kids at the hospital. And it wasn’t like I was

attached to someone else.

He heard my hesitation. It hurt his feelings. “Look, I know it’s

pretty far away and this is the last second and all.” He was mak-

ing excuses for me.

“What? Hell, no, Hathaway, you don’t get to retract the invi-

tation before I even finish asking my mom if I can go.”

“Oh,” he said, sounding happier.

“And I can,” I said, making that executive decision for myself.

“Great,” he said.

I adopted an exaggerated tone of resignation. “A debt is a

debt,” I sighed. “Your rain check to cash.” I had the feeling that

girls didn’t tease Richard Hathaway anywhere
near
enough.

And perhaps I was right, because I could hear him grinning

through the phone. “You’re a stand-up guy, Parsons. Ten o’clock

sharp.”

It would get me out of Amber House for a day. And I was

thinking I needed a little break from Amber House. Maybe some

sightseeing, a nice lunch. Now I just needed to figure out how to

tell my parents.

I was a big girl — I’d just tell them.

o165

I pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen. Thanks to

Richard, I’d missed the worst of the cleanup. Three adult faces

turned toward me with expectant looks. Waiting, I guessed, for

some account of who I’d been talking to.

I lost my nerve. “Hey, I just remembered something I have to

do that will take about a half hour. I‘ll be back,” I ended, turning immediately and letting the door swing shut behind me.

Out of one mess and into another
, I thought as I ran up the stairs, my hand on the package in my pocket. But Sam was right.

Christmas was about giving, and this was Jackson. My old-

est friend. I shrugged mentally. I could give my oldest friend

a present if I felt like it. It was allowed. Even if he did have a

girlfriend.

I threw on a sweater, some dungarees, and a pair of boots,

anxious to complete my escape. My gloves were in the pockets

of my coat, which I grabbed before heading for the conservatory’s

staircase. I paused on the compass rose to decide my direction.

I was glad I could still find Jackson using Hotter, Colder. Part

of it was sheer “cussedness,” as my gramma would say — it satis-

fied me that even though Jackson had moved on, he couldn’t

unilaterally break my connection to him. I could still call up my

image of him, still sense his warmth. And now it was telling me

that he was where he was supposed to be: at home, with his

grandmother.

I took the path on the bluff that led to Rose and Jackson’s little

house by the river. I made my way carefully — the slush of snow

on the ground beneath the trees made the footing dangerous.

There were places where the trail came right to the lip of the

cliff that dropped down to the river. I had always been afraid of

those spots.

Rose’s small, tidy home was, in its own way, as full of history

as Amber House. Its front rooms were nearly two hundred years

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old. Its squared-off logs were gray with time and chinked with

more modern sealers than mud, but spoke of the care with which

the house had been built in that long-ago time.

I knocked on the wood-plank front door and heard Jackson

yell, “Come in.”

I pushed the door open with a cheerful “Merry Christmas,”

but instantly wished I could unsay it. The house was quiet and

dark — the only hint of holiday was a tiny tree set on a table,

hastily decorated. Jackson came out of the kitchen, carrying a

tray with a bowl of soup and a bottle of prescription medication.

He headed to the rear of the house without stopping. “Give me a

few minutes,” he said.

I sat at the table and waited, realizing I should not have

intruded this way. I was just making up my mind to leave when

Jackson emerged. “What are you doing here?” he asked.