“Who’s judging, Christopher?”
“I am.”
But he was not, she knew. He was looking for a new Authority, a new compass. He did not know how bright was his own fire. He did not trust his own wisdom.
“I know how deep it runs,” Deryn said. “I saw your father crush your confidence a hundred times by withholding his approval, by telling you how you could do better instead of how well you’d done. I remember when you were five and spent an entire afternoon creating what you called a movie—a poster covered with a dozen crayon drawings, complete with titles and credits. You were so proud. I hung it on the kitchen wall.”
“I remember,” Christopher said.
“Do you remember that when William came home, he took it down and told you to put it in your room? That he ripped off a corner in the process, and how you started to cry? That I found your ‘movie’ that night in a corner of your room, torn into pieces and crushed into a ball? That runs deep, too, Christopher.”
His face, sulky and defensive, told her that resistance had set in. “I know about my father. I need to know about me.”
She shook her head. “But you’re asking the wrong question. It isn’t who you are. It’s who you want to be.”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out—who I am at the root. What my part is. What I got from Sharron.”
“What will you do with that knowledge if you get it?”
“Then I’ll know what it will take to make me happy.” He said it with more hope than confidence.
“Will you?” There was more she wanted to say, but he had stopped listening. He so feared the responsibility of choosing for himself—so feared being wrong—he could not hear the inner voice. And that voice mattered far more than hers.
“I never told you about when I met your father,” she said at last.
“Yes, you did.” He looked puzzled. “How you heard about what he was doing from the doctor in Tacoma—and came up to the house to introduce yourself. The Mary Poppins story.”
She smiled. “That was your father’s version—official family history. And it was true, as far as he remembered. So I never contested it, and even repeated it a time or two. But I actually met William years before that. And not only William. Sharron, too.”
He gaped in surprise, his defenses breached. “You did? When?”
“It was a party on Long Beach—there still was a Long Beach then, the big Easter storm was still a few years away. ’55, I think it was. Ten years before I signed the contract to have you.”
“Please tell me about it—”
“I wouldn’t have brought it up if I didn’t mean to,” she said, and patted his hand. “There was a party with a capital p at Carl Walter’s big old place near the north end of the peninsula. I really didn’t belong—so much so that I didn’t know who all those people were, though everyone was Somebody. Carl had those kinds of contacts, all through Oregon and Washington.”
“How did you know him?”
“I was a friend of the family, Carl’s daughter’s favorite tutor, visiting for a few days on a face-to-face. I would as soon have gone up to Ledbetter Point for a few hours, but they wanted to introduce me around.
“William was there with Sharron, being William—being charming and earnest with strangers and neglecting those he could take for granted. Sharron looked as out of place as I felt, so I sat down next to her and we started talking.”
“Did you have anything to talk about?”
Deryn laughed, remembering. “More than we had time to cover. We talked for almost four hours with never a lull. No one knew us, no one bothered us, and we didn’t mind one bit. We understood each other. She felt like someone I already knew. Have you ever had that happen with someone? An acquaintance of mine calls them ‘friendly mirrors’—you see the parts of yourself that you like in them.”
Christopher was sitting forward, eager and hopeful. “Can you remember anything Sharron said?”
“Everything I remembered, I made sure I shared with you at one time or another in the house on B Street. I just let you think it came from your father,” she said. “I remember less now. Sharron told me stories about Lynn-Anne, who had just turned three. About the house they wanted to build in the woods. About the poems she was writing, and about how no one had any use for poetry unless it was set to music. She seemed very glad to have someone to talk to. I didn’t know how to read that then.”
“She was lonely,” Christopher said slowly.
“I think so. For a certain kind of company. For a certain kind of attention.”
“Did she say anything about having more children?”
“I don’t remember so,” Deryn said, slowly shaking her head. “Nothing either way. When William was finished holding court and came to collect her, she introduced me. By that time she felt like a friend. She was living a quiet life, but her heart and her mind were alive. I admired her. It seemed like she had more focus than I did, more purpose. I went away with a lot to think about. I was only five years younger than she, but I felt like a child by comparison.”
“Then later, my father didn’t remember you.”
“No.”
He shook his head. “That’s such an amazing coincidence.”
“No,” she said, smiling at his innocence. “Not coincidence. It goes deeper than that. If I had never had that conversation with Sharron, I would never have become your host. I wasn’t registered with an agency, you know. I had never thought of hosting. And it was only by chance that I even heard of what William was doing—about Sharron’s eggs. There’s the coincidence. Everything else was purely intentional.”
Realization began to light Christopher’s eyes. “You knew what he wanted already.”
“Of course. He wanted another Sharron. And that’s what I was. Or could appear to be.” She took his hand and held it tightly. “You see, in my mind, I didn’t agree to have William McCutcheon’s baby. I agreed to have Sharron’s. I did it for her, not for your father. That’s why I never wanted you to call me ‘Mother.’ Sharron had precedence. I was only finishing what she’d begun.”
He was quiet for a moment, and his face showed his struggle to grasp the meaning, the cascading implications, of what she had said. Deryn wanted to leave then and let the solvent of that revelation work at softening the bonds of his comfortably patterned thoughts. But when she stood, saying gently, “I have to leave,” he clutched at her presence like a skirt.
“Did she begin it?” he asked. “Or was it all my father, like Lynn-Anne believes?”
“I wish I could answer that,” she said, her faint smile apologetic. “But I don’t know myself. Knowing him, I have to say he was probably capable of the theft. But I also believe she was capable of the gift. In the absence of proof, I chose to think the best.”
“Thinking the best where my father is concerned isn’t the easiest thing right now.”
“I know,” she said. “Christopher, I’m expected somewhere. I’ll come back when I can.”
“I’m sorry.” He joined her standing. “Can I ask what you do here?”
“I’m a storyteller. A kind of teacher.”
He smiled in a foolishly pleased way. “Do you tell them about Coyote?”
“But of course,” she said, smiling back. “The young ones seem to like the animal stories best. Heaven knows what they understand from them, though.”
“I wouldn’t mind hearing you tell them again,” he said. “Or would that only embarrass both of us?”
Touching his cheek lightly, she shook her head. “All a good story requires is a good listener. But I’m late now. Perhaps when your petition’s been heard you can join us in the grotto—”
The intrusion of reality dispelled the nostalgic haze for both of them, reminding them where they were and why, and there was an awkward distance in their good-bye. But as Deryn passed through the corridors on the way to her home, she found herself crying for William and Christopher both, and wishing she could find a way to cut the string that joined them.