But Kit had acted like her calling was the most normal thing in the world (and maybe it was, considering what she must be living with) and had immediately asked what year Joanna had been a senior, how big the book was, how thick. “And you think the title is Something and Something,” she’d said. “Beginning with a V.”
“I think so,” Joanna had said. “I’m sorry I’m giving you so little to go on.”
“Are you kidding?” Kit had said. “I’m an expert at figuring out things people can’t remember. This may take a while. Uncle Pat’s got a lot of books. They used to be organized, but—”
“You’re sure you don’t mind doing this?” Joanna had asked.
“I’m delighted I can help,” Kit had said and actually sounded like she was.
“Is that Kevin on the phone?” Mr. Briarley’s voice said in the background. “Tell him I’m delighted. And congratulations.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Kit said.
Joanna wasn’t sure it would be that soon, considering how many books were in that house and how many of them were blue. If it was blue. This morning she wasn’t so sure. It seemed like the book Candy “Rapunzel” Simons had propped her hair-combing mirror against had been red. You’re confabulating, she told herself sternly, and ran up the stairs to Peds. The breakfast cart was still in the hall, and a skinny black orderly was loading empty trays onto it. Joanna waved at him and went in to see Maisie.
Her breakfast tray of scrambled eggs and toast and a glass of juice was still on the bed table pulled across her lap. “Hi, kiddo,” Joanna said, coming in. “What’s up?”
“I’m eating breakfast,” Maisie said, which was an exaggeration. Two mouselike bites had been nibbled out of the piece of toast she was holding, and the eggs and juice looked untouched.
“I see,” Joanna said, pulling a chair over to the bed and sitting down. “So, tell me all about Pompeii.”
“Well,” Maisie said, putting down her toast, “the people tried to run away from the volcano, and some of them almost made it. There was this one mother who had two little girls and a baby that made it almost all the way to the gate. It’s in my big blue book.”
Joanna obediently went over to the closet and got Catastrophes and Calamities out of the Barbie duffel bag. She handed it to Maisie, who pushed the bed table away and opened the book. “Here it is,” she said, turning to a page with a garish painting of a volcano spewing red and black on one page and a black-and-white photo on the other. Maisie put her finger on the photo and pushed it over toward Joanna.
It wasn’t a black-and-white photo. It only looked that way because it was a group of plaster casts that looked as though they were made out of the gray ash themselves. They lay where they had fallen, the mother still clutching the baby in her arms, the two girls still clutching her hem.
“This is the servant,” Maisie said, pointing to a curled-up figure lying near them. “He was trying to help them get out.” She took the book back. “Lots of little kids got trampled,” she said, flipping through the pages. “There was this one—” She looked up sharply, clapped the book shut, and shoved it under the covers. She was just pulling the bed table toward her when Barbara came in.
“Good morning, ladies.” Barbara came over to look disapprovingly at Maisie’s uneaten breakfast. “Didn’t like the eggs, huh? Would you like some cereal?”
“I’m not very hungry,” Maisie said.
“You need to eat something,” Barbara said. “How about some oatmeal?”
Maisie made a face. “I don’t like oatmeal. Can’t I eat it later? I have to tell Dr. Lander something important.”
“Which can wait till after you finish breakfast,” Joanna said, immediately standing up and starting for the door.
“No, wait!” Maisie yelped. “I’ll eat it.” She picked up the triangle of toast and took another mouselike nibble. “I can eat while I’m talking to Dr. Lander, can’t I?”
“If you eat,” Barbara said firmly. She turned to Joanna. “Half the eggs, a whole piece of toast, and all the juice.”
Joanna nodded. “Got it.”
“I’ll be back to check,” Barbara said. “And no hiding things in your napkin.” She went out.
Maisie immediately pushed the bed table away and leaned over to open the drawer of the nightstand. “Whoa,” Joanna protested. “You heard what Barbara said.”
“I know,” Maisie said, “but I have to get something.” She reached in the drawer and pulled out a folded piece of lined tablet paper like the one she’d written the Hindenburg crewman’s name on and handed it to Joanna.
“What’s this?” Joanna asked.
“My NDE,” Maisie said. “I wrote the rest of it down after you left so I wouldn’t forget anything.”
Joanna unfolded the sheet. “The fog was gray-colored,” Maisie had written in her laboring round cursive, “and dark, like at night or if somebody turns out the lights. I was in this long narrow place with real tall walls.”
“I probably forgot some stuff,” Maisie said.
“Eat,” Joanna said. She pushed the bed table over in front of her and continued to read. Maisie picked up her fork and poked listlessly at her eggs.
“If you’re not going to eat, I guess I’ll have to come back another time,” Joanna said.
Maisie immediately scooped up a forkful of eggs and popped it in her mouth. Joanna watched until she’d chewed, swallowed, and taken a sip of her apple juice, and then sat down on the chair and read through the rest of the NDE. “I don’t know if there was a ceiling. It kind of felt like the place I was in was outside, but I don’t know for sure. It kind of felt like inside and outside at the same time.”
“The walls were tall?” Joanna asked.
Maisie nodded. “They went up really high on both sides.” She raised both arms to demonstrate. “I thought some more about the coming-back part. It was different from the other time. That time it wasn’t as fast. I wrote that down.”
Joanna nodded. “Can I take this paper with me?”
“Sure,” Maisie said, and Joanna folded it up and stuck it in her pocket. “But you can’t go yet, I have lots more stuff to tell you.”
“Then eat,” Joanna said, pointing at the eggs.
Maisie picked up her fork. “They’re cold.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“Did you know they found eggs when they dug up Pompeii?” Maisie said. “They got covered up by the ash and turned into stone.”
“Four bites,” Joanna said, her arms folded. “And the juice.”
“Okay,” Maisie said and plodded through four minuscule bites, chewing laboriously.
“And the juice.”
“I am. I have to open the straw first.”
The Queen of Stallers, Joanna thought. She leaned back in the chair and watched Maisie peel the paper, stick the straw in the juice, sip daintily, waiting her out. Finally, Maisie finished, slurping to prove it was empty. “You know the dog that was chained up, and they don’t know its name ’cause it didn’t have a dog tag?” she asked. “Well, there was a little girl like that.”
“In Pompeii?”
“No,” Maisie said indignantly. “In the Hartford circus fire. She was nine years old. Anyway, that’s what they think, nobody knows, ’cause they don’t know who she was. She died from the smoke. She wasn’t burned at all, and they put her picture in the paper and on the radio and everything. But nobody ever came to get her.”
“Ever?” Joanna said. Someone would have had to identify her eventually. A child couldn’t just disappear without anyone noticing, but Maisie was shaking her blond head.