"Yep! On our way to Charlottesville," answered Chris, as, with relief, he put the two suitcases down.
"Pretty little girl you got there," said the tall mailman, sweeping his pitying gaze over Carrie, who clung fearfully to my skirt. "But if you don't mind my sayin' so, she seems kinda peaked."
"She's been sick," Chris confirmed. "But soon she'll be better."
The mailman nodded, seemingly believing this prognosis. "Got tickets?"
"Got money." Then Chris added sagaciously, practicing for less reliable strangers, "But just enough to pay for the tickets."
"Well, get it out, son, 'cause here comes the fiveforty-five."
As we rode on that morning train, headed toward Charlottesville, we saw the Foxworth mansion sitting high on the hillside. Chris and I couldn't take our eyes from it, couldn't help but stare at our prison from the outside. Especially we fixed our gazes on the attic windows with the closed black shutters.
Then my attention was drawn to the northern wing, riveted on that end room on the second floor. I nudged Chris as the heavy draperies parted, and the shadowy, distant form of a large old woman appeared there, staring out, looking for us . . . then vanished.
Of course she could see the train, but we knew she couldn't see us, just as we'd never been able to see the passengers.
Nevertheless, Chris and I slipped down lower on our seat. "Wonder what she's doing up there so early?" I whispered to Chris. "Usually she doesn't carry up our food until six-thirty."
He laughed, sounding bitter. "Oh, just another of her efforts to catch us doing something sinful and forbidden."
Maybe so, but I wanted to know her thoughts, her feelings when she entered that room and found it empty, and the clothes gone from the closet and the drawers. And no voices, or steps overhead to come running--if she called.
In Charlottesville we bought bus tickets to Sarasota, and were told we had two hours to wait for the next Greyhound heading south. Two hours in which John could jump into a black limousine and overtake that slow train!
"Don't think about it," said Chris. "You don't know that he knows about us. She'd be a fool to tell him, though he's probably snoop enough to find out."
We thought the best way to keep him from finding us, if he was sent to follow, would be to keep on the move. We stored our two suitcases and the guitar and banjo in a rented locker. Hand in hand, Carrie in the middle, we strolled the main streets of that city, where we knew the servants of Foxworth Hall came to visit relatives on their day off, and to shop, go to the movies, or pleasure themselves in other ways. And if this were Thursday, we'd have really been fearful. But it was Sunday.
We must have looked like visitors from another planet in our ill-fitting bulky clothes, our sneakers, our clumsily cut hair, and our pale faces. But no one really stared as I feared they would. We were accepted as just a part of the human race, and no odder than most. It felt good to be back in crowds of people, each face different.
"Wonder where everyone's going in such a hurr
y?" asked Chris, just when I was speculating on the same thing.
We stopped on a corner, undecided. Cory was supposed to be buried not far from here. Oh, so much I wanted to go and find his grave and put flowers there. On another day we'd come back with yellow roses, and we'd kneel and say prayers, whether or not it did any good. For now, we had to get far, far away and not endanger Carrie more. . . out of Virginia before we took her to a doctor.
It was then that Chris took the paper sack with the dead mouse and the powdered-sugar doughnuts from his jacket pocket. His solemn eyes met mine Loosely he held that bag in front of me, studying my expression, asking with his eyes: An eye for an eye?
That paper sack represented so much. All our lost years, the lost education, the playmates and friends, and the days we could have known laughter instead of tears. In that bag were all our frustrations,
humiliations, tons of loneliness, plus the punishments and disappointments--and, most of all, that bag represented the loss of Cory.
"We can go to the police and tell our story," said Christopher, while he kept his eyes averted, "and the city will provide for you and Carrie, and you won't have to run. You two might be put in foster homes, or an orphanage. As for me, I don't know. . . ."
Chris never talked to me while he kept his eyes elsewhere unless he was hiding something--that special something that had to wait until we were outside of Foxworth Hall. "Okay, Chris. We've escaped, so out with it. What is it you keep holding back?"
His head bowed down as Carrie moved closer and clung to my skirt, though her eyes were wide with fascination as she watched the heavy flow of traffic, and the many people hurrying by, some who smiled at her.
"It's Momma," Chris said in a low voice. "Recall when she said she'd do anything to win back her father's approval so she could inherit? I don't know what he made her promise, but I did overhear the servants talking Cathy, a few days before our grandfather died, he had a codicil added to his will. It states that if our mother is ever proven to have given birth to children by her first husband, she will have to forfeit everything she inherits--and return everything she's bought with the money, including her clothes, jewels, investments--everything. And that's not all; he even had it written in, that if she has children by her second marriage, she will lose everything too. And Momma thought he had forgiven her. He didn't forgive, or forget. He would keep on punishing her from his grave."
My eyes widened with shock as I added up the pieces. "You mean Momma. . . ? It was Momma, and not the grandmother?"
He shrugged, as if indifferent, when I knew he couldn't be. "I heard that old woman praying by her bed. She's evil, but I doubt she would put poison on the doughnuts herself. She would carry them up to us, and know we ate the sweets, when all along she warned us not to eat them."
"But, Chris, it couldn't have been Momma. She was on her honeymoon when the doughnuts started coming daily."
His smile came bitter, wry. "Yeah. But nine months ago the will was read; nine months ago Momma was back. Only Momma benefits from the grandfather's will--not our grandmother--she has her own money. She only brought up the baskets each day."