“Audrey Rose? Audrey Rose?”
Janice put a hand on the dresser to steady herself, then silently wheeled around and picked her way back to her own room, softly shutting the door behind her. Turning on the bed lamp, she consulted her watch. Twelve fifteen. The light from the lamp and the noises she purposely made alerted Ivy, and soon Janice heard the toilet flushing and her footsteps pattering across the floor back to bed. Janice waited a minute before opening the door and looking in on her. She lay on her side with her face to the wall and the blanket pulled tightly around her neck. Her pajamas were on the floor next to the bed.
“Are you all right?” Janice asked.
Ivy turned to her mother with a sleepy face of candid innocence and sweetness of youth.
“Umm.” She smiled. “Had to go to the bathroom.”
Sleep eluded Janice for what seemed hours. The fears, the terrors, the complexities, the tangles, the unhappy moments, the fevered pace of the past months pursued her toward dawn with a harpy’s persistence.
She was awakened by a shaft of sunlight, hot and bright, digging into her eyes. For a split second she didn’t know where she was, only that a light was burning her eyes and that a voice was shouting, “Mom! Mom!” She sat up.
“Yes—what is it?”
Struggling out of bed, she ran to the door and flung it open. And saw Ivy, standing in her pajamas in the center of the sitting room, shock and anguish splitting her face, her blond hair tousled.
“Mom, my things are gone. All my clothes—dresses, jeans, everything!”
“Gone? What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
Janice automatically moved toward the closet.
“They’ve been stolen!” Ivy persisted. “Somebody must’ve stolen them! Hairbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, everything! Even my medicine!” At which point she coughed reflexively.
“That’s impossible—”
“Well, look for yourself,” Ivy chided and, pointing to a chair overflowing with clothing, added, “The only things they didn’t take are what I wore yesterday. And my hat and coat.”
Janice opened the closet door and saw the row of divested wire hangers. Her eyes drifted down to the floor, which was barren of shoes and boots. She felt a clammy perspiration on her forehead and strove to contain her anxiety so as not to upset Ivy further. Turning to the dresser, she casually opened each drawer to assure herself they were empty.
Ivy’s lips drew into a grim line.
“Robbers must’ve come while we slept, Mom.”
Janice forced herself to smile.
“What would robbers want with your clothes?”
Even before she finished the sentence, she noticed the suitcase peeking out from under the rollaway.
“They didn’t seem to want your suitcase,” Janice idly commented, dragging it out onto the floor and finding it heavy. Releasing the clasps, the lid practically exploded under the pressure of clothes, bottles, brushes, boots, shoes, all beautifully and expertly packed.
Turning to Ivy to question her about it, Janice was stopped by the look of stunned amazement on her daughter’s face, a look that was completely genuine and spontaneous, a look no actor could have simulated.
“Who did that?” Ivy said in a tiny, stricken voice.
“One of us must have,” Janice said lightly.
“I didn’t!” Ivy exclaimed, putting all the force she could manage into the denial.
There was no doubt in Janice’s mind that Ivy had some time during the night packed the suitcase, just as certainly as there was no doubt that she had no idea she had done so.
Later, at breakfast, Ivy suggested that Bill might have packed the bag before leaving for the city.
“You know how much he wants me back home. He really doesn’t like my being up here. Maybe it was his way of saying so.”
“You mean, like a hint?”
“It’s possible, isn’t it?”
“It’s possible,” Janice managed, putting down her coffee cup which was slopping over the sides from the trembling of her hand.
The time was not quite seven, and they were alone in the breakfast room. Outside was one of those infrequent mornings in midwinter when the sun seems to shed a warm and kindly light over the whole world. Ivy thought it would be fun having a picnic on the beach, and though it meant deserting her post at the telephone, Janice was quick to agree, hopeful that the therapy of salt air and sun-baked sands would help to calm her flesh and spirit. Her mind was a tempest of thoughts and conjectures, a whirling confusion of half-formed fears centering on the eye of a single fact: Ivy had packed her bag without realizing it. Why? What did it mean? If the act was beyond Ivy’s control, then Audrey Rose must have been the motivating force behind it. If so, was it merely a symbolic statement, or did it have a practical application? A packed bag could mean but one thing. A trip. Was Audrey Rose pushing Ivy back to the city? Back to home—and Hoover? Was this her scheme? If so, how had she thought to accomplish it? A girl of ten—alone—with no money and no real knowledge of travel? The questions dizzied her, bringing a shocked, curling smile to her lips and a look of dumbstruck wonderment to her eyes. If Bill were privy to her fears, he would certainly have her locked up.
Her fears were to be confirmed later that morning.
There were gray clouds and stinging gusts of wind at the beach. Janice was sitting on the blanket, watching Ivy at the shoreline pitching shells into the boiling surf, when a sudden strong gust blew a speck of sand into her eye causing it to water furiously. Her hand felt its way to her tote bag for Kleenex, and after groping about and finding none, she looked down and discovered she was rummaging about in Ivy’s tote bag by accident.
She came upon the train schedule almost at once—a printed leaflet offered by the New York, New Haven and Hartford, listing train arrivals and departures between New York and Westport. The pain in her eye forgotten, Janice hurriedly continued to go through the tote bag, darting surreptitious glances at Ivy still at the water’s edge with her back turned, and drew out the blue satin hand-painted purse. She found the ten-dollar bill in a plastic folder tucked between two pictures, one of Janice and one of Bill.
An aura of doom closed around her as she conveyed both money and train schedule to her own purse, bringing a darkening pall to the lemon-bright day.
Janice knew that her daughter had taken both items from her purse, by her own conscious act or as the unconscious instrument of Audrey Rose’s desperate need to return to the city.
There was a way to find out, and when Ivy came walking toward her, her face ivory-pale, her eyes downcast, introspective, Janice casually asked, “Shall we go home, darling?”
“To the hotel?”
“No, to the city, to Daddy.”
“Do I have to?”
“Wouldn’t you like to?”
“No, not now, please!” she cried in a burst of passion that was obviously sincere. “I must go back to school. There are so many things happening right now that I can’t miss. Tomorrow’s the crowning, and afterward there’ll be a party in the rec room. It’s all we’ve talked about for weeks! Please, Mom, don’t take me back!”
She had slowly descended to her knees, bringing her tearful, beseeching face in close proximity to Janice’s.
“Okay, okay,” Janice soothed, reaching out to wipe a tear from the pale and worried face. “Of course, you can stay.”
Gazing into the blue eyes that met hers so candidly, the serious, yet tender mouth, she could feel no doubt at all about who the thief had been—and why.