“Nine-thirty,” she said, later.
“I hope they come,” said Henrietta. “After all our work.”
“Shh, listen!”
We sat up.
There in the moonlit meadows below came a whispering and a rustling as of a midsummer wind stirring all the grasses and the stars of the sky. There was a crackling sound and a gentle laughter, and as we ran on soft padding feet to our windows, to gather and freeze ourselves in expectant horror, there was a shower of demonic sparks on the grassy slope, and two misty forms moved t
hrough the shielding cover of bushes.
“Oh,” we cried, and hugged one another, trembling. “They came back, they came back!”
“If Father knew!”
“But he doesn’t. Shh!”
The night murmured and laughed and the grasses blew. We stood for a long while, and then Ann said, “I’m going down.”
“What?”
“I want to know.” Ann pulled away from us.
“But they might kill you!”
“I’m going.”
“But ghosts, Ann!”
We heard her feet whisking down the stairs, the quiet opening of the front door. We pressed to the window screen. Ann, in her nightgown, like a velvety moth, fluttered across the yard. “God, take care of her,” I prayed. For there she was, sneaking in darkness near the ghosts.
“Ah!” Ann screamed.
There were several more screams. Henrietta and I gasped. Ann raced across the yard but didn’t slam the door. The ghosts blew off, as in a wind, over the hill, gone in an instant.
“Now look what you did!” cried Henrietta when Ann entered our room.
“Don’t talk to me!” snapped Ann. “Oh, it’s awful!” She marched to the window, started to yank it down. I stopped her.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“The ghosts,” she sobbed, half angry, half sad. “They’re gone forever. Daddy scared them away. Now, tonight, you know what was down there? You know?”
“What?”
“Two people,” shouted Ann, tears rolling down her cheeks. “A nasty man and woman!”
“Oh,” we wailed.
“No more ghosts ever again,” said Ann. “Oh, I hate Papa!”
And the rest of that summer, on moonlit evenings when the wind was right and white forms moved in the half-light in the meadow, we three girls did just what we did that last evening. We got up from our beds and walked quietly across the room and slammed the window so we couldn’t hear those nasty people, and went back to bed and shut our eyes and dreamed of the days when the ghosts had drifted over, in those happy times before Daddy ruined everything.
WHERE’S MY HAT, WHAT’S MY HURRY?
2003
TELL ME, Alma, when were we last in Paris?” he said.