Gilly sat up and put her arms as far as they could go around Trotter. “I’m not going to go,” she cried. “They can’t make me!”
Trotter quieted at once. “No, baby. You got to go. Lord forgive me for making it harder for you.”
“I’ll come back and see you all the time.”
Trotter stuck her big warm hand underneath Gilly’s pajama top and began to rub her back, the way Gilly had often seen her rub W.E.’s. “No, Gilly, baby. It don’t work that way. Like I tried to tell you at supper. Once the tugboat takes you out to the ocean liner, you got to get all the way on board. Can’t straddle both decks.”
“I could,” said Gilly.
The big hand paused in its healing journey around and up and down her back, then began again as Trotter said softly, “Don’t make it harder for us, baby.”
Perhaps Gilly should have protested further, but instead she gave herself over to the rhythmic stroking under whose comfort she wished she could curl up her whole body like a tiny sightless kitten and forget about the rest of the whole stinking world.
She could almost forget, lying there in the silence, letting the soothing warmth of the big hand erase all the aching. At last, overcome with drowsiness, she slid down into the bed.
Trotter pulled the covers up around Gilly’s chin and patted them and her.
“You make me proud, hear?”
“OK,” she murmured and was asleep.
JACKSON, VIRGINIA
The ride in Mrs. Hopkins’s ten-year-old Buick station wagon to Jackson, Virginia, took just over an hour. To Gilly it seemed like a hundred years. Every other time she’d moved, she’d been able to think of the destination as a brief stop along the way, but this one was the end of the road. Always before she had known she could stand anything, because someday soon Courtney would come and take her home. But now she had to face the fact that Courtney had not come. She had sent someone else in her place. Perhaps Courtney would never come. Perhaps Courtney did not want to come.
The heaviness dragged her down. What was she doing here in this old car with this strange woman who surely didn’t want her, who had only taken her out of some stupid idea of duty, when she could be home with Trotter and William Ernest and Mr. Randolph who really wanted her? Who—could she dare the word, even to herself?—who loved her.
And she loved them. Oh, hell. She’d spent all her life—at least all of it since the Dixons went to Florida and left her behind—making sure she didn’t care about anyone but Courtney. She had known that it never pays to attach yourself to something that is likely to blow away. But in Thompson Park, she’d lost her head. She loved those stupid people.
“Would you like to turn on the radio?”
“No, that’s all right.”
“I’m not familiar with the latest music, but I don’t really mind, as long as it’s not too loud.”
Can’t you just leave me alone?
There were several miles of silence before the woman tried again: “Miss Ellis seems like a nice person.”
Gilly shrugged. “She’s OK, I guess.”
“She—uh—seems to think I got a rather wrong impression of that foster home she’d put you in.”
Something dark and hot began to bubble up inside of Gilly. “They were all sick last week,” she said.
“I see.”
How in the hell could you see?
“Miss Ellis tried to tell me that you had really liked it there—despite everything. From your letter—”
That damn letter. “I lie a lot,” Gilly said tightly.
“Oh.” A quick side glance and then back to the windshield. The woman was so short she was almost peering through the top of the steering wheel. Gilly saw her small hands tighten on the wheel as she said, “I’d hoped you’d be glad to come with me. I’m sorry.”
If you’re sorry, turn this old crate around and take me back. But, of course, the woman didn’t.
The house was on the edge of the village. It was a little larger, a little older, and considerably cleaner than Trotter’s. No horses for W.E. Oh, well, she hadn’t really expected any.