As Bright as Heaven(47)

I move away from the entrance to the kitchen. Mama comes through the doorway and looks down on the baby from several feet away. Despite the motherly smile, I see exhaustion and worry and distress on her face.

“Willa’s going to be all right, isn’t she?”

Mama just nods and turns from me to head for the stairs.

? ? ?



I wait all morning and half the afternoon for Mrs. Arnold and she never comes for me. Uncle Fred finally sends me down to the church to see what is keeping her. I find Miss Heloise in the kitchen with a group of ladies who are washing up soup jars just brought back from their mercy missions. Boxes of groceries have just been delivered and more dirty jars are being brought in by old men in felt caps.

“Oh!” Miss Heloise says when I ask for Mrs. Arnold. “She’s not here. She’s home sick. I’m afraid she took ill last night.”

“She’s sick? With the flu?”

“I’m afraid so. What is it you need, dear?” She moves about the kitchen like it is on fire.

“Well, I . . .” My voice just falls away when I realize Heloise is now so busy with all Mrs. Arnold’s responsibilities heaped on her that she’s forgotten all about the baby.

“Did you come to tell me your mother can resume taking food down to South Street? We missed her today.”

“She can’t right now. My sister’s not feeling well.”

Someone calls her name. She pats my shoulder. “Oh. I see. Sorry to hear that. All right, then. I’m sure I can find someone else.”

She tells me, sweetly, to run along home, she is so very busy.

When I get back to the house, Evie is playing with the baby in the sitting room and Uncle Fred is making coffee for himself and a crew of grave diggers the city has sent over to load up a truckload of decaying bodies.

“Well?” he says, but I can tell he is too busy to talk to me about what to do with the baby, which is fine with me because the answer to the problem is clear as day. The adults are making it much too complicated.

“Mrs. Arnold wasn’t there.”

“So now what?” He pours coffee into a cup. “I haven’t heard back from the police, you know. No one’s asking about that child.”

“Mama said this morning we need to think about keeping him,” I answer. “The orphanages are all full and he probably doesn’t have any other family. We’re all that he has now.”

“I suppose,” he says, and turns from me to pour more coffee.

I can’t help smiling a teensy bit at those two words as I make my way to where Evie and the baby are.

There will be no more trips to South Street with Mrs. Arnold—or anyone else. Willa is going to get well, the flu is going to go away, the war is going to be won, Papa and Jamie will be coming home, and the baby is going to be ours.





CHAPTER 29



Willa


I’m so cold. Is it still daytime? Where’s Evie?

I want Mama.

I’m so cold.

? ? ?



Mama touches me and I don’t want her to. Her hands are like fireplace pokers.

Don’t touch me. Why is there ice in my bed?

She holds a cup to my lips, but I don’t want a drink. Leave me alone.

I want Papa.

Make it stop.

? ? ?



Someone pulls back my blanket and it hurts. My heart hurts. My arms. My neck. Someone tries to bend close to me and I push them away. My throat hurts. My heart. My head.

Flossie, how did you get in here?

She has a new parasol. Pink with lace and ribbons. She laughs and runs through the grass. I see birds.

Don’t touch me.

It is nighttime.

It is daytime.

Flossie?

Shhhh, Mama says, I’m right here.

? ? ?



I hear a baby crying.

Henry.

I try to sit up. I want to see Henry. I want to see him!

But a dragon pins me to my bed with his sharp claws. His mouth is full of fire.

Henry!

I cough out fire.

I’m the dragon.





CHAPTER 30



Pauline


Three days after falling into the abyss, Willa climbs out. She had at last heard me calling, felt my strong arms around her, and obeyed my command that she find her way back to me. I haven’t left her side except to fetch food and water and use the toilet. It was my duty to stay at the very edge of where she’d fallen and, if need be, dive in after her.

When she wakes just now, I can tell the sickness has released her. She has come back to me.

The scarlet glassy-eyed stare is gone, and her eyes once again shine clear like the sky, blue and beautiful. The gray tinge to her skin, which is now cool to my touch, is gone, too. The cough lingers, but it no longer sounds like the screeching of a wounded animal. The worst is over, and though she is as weak as a newborn kitten, my darling Willa has survived.

As I cry tears of joy at her whispered request for pancakes with blackberry syrup, I know this time I have not failed. I battled for my child and I prevailed. With Henry I had beseeched the heavens—for days on end—that he might be spared. But it was as if I had voiced no protest at all. Death had come for him anyway. Willa returned to me is the proof that I have somehow convinced my companion to leave her be. Perhaps during these months that Death has trailed me, and as I’ve labored to understand its nature, it has grown to care for me. Is such a thing even possible? It seems profane to even think it. After all this time together, and despite all that has happened, I am sure now that Death is not the enemy, but something else surely is. My companion has been suggesting to me month after month since Henry died that it spreads its reach with the tender embrace of an angel, not the talons of a demon. But I still don’t understand why.