Read Online Another Kind of Life by Catherine Dunne - Free Book Online Page B

stays, ma’am.’ I heard Lily whisper to Mama, but I pretended not to. Mama nodded, and allowed herself to be led from the room. She turned to face me, just
before she reached the bottom of the staircase.
    ‘I’m going to lie down for a while, dear,’ she said. ‘Lily and Katie will look after you. I’ll see you first thing in the morning.’
    I remember that I ran forward, then, and gave Mama a kiss. I felt suddenly sad for the sagging body, the ghost-like face.
    The last remains of my innocent existence were shattered for ever that April afternoon. I gave up waiting for things to return to what they had so recently been. Mama lay down
on her bed and stayed there until the following morning. I knew that she did not want company. Katie and Lily whispered together all that evening; I was no longer welcome in their kitchen. And
there was no sign of Papa’s return. I felt that jagged pieces of our former lives seemed to be all around us; nothing was whole any more.
    As for me, I spent what I think still remains the loneliest night of my life. I crept into Hannah’s bed, in between her freezing sheets. I left her door open so that I could see the low
light from the gas lamp on the landing. I knew not to ask Lily or Katie for the warming pan that evening, or for the flickering company of a candle for myself. But even in her absence,
Hannah’s bed was far more comforting than mine. I know that I cried, but more than that, I wondered and wondered what my Papa could have done for those men to take him away. He still looked
the same, had still said, ‘Goodnight, Mouse,’ the previous evening to me. His pet-name for me came from my babyhood, Mama had once told me. I was a very quiet baby, she said. Much more
placid and contented than either of my sisters.
    If someone didn’t sound any different, or look any different, then how was one ever to know whether they had done something bad? My Papa had just been arrested for embezzlement. Although
as yet I didn’t know, all I could do that night was puzzle over his disappearance: wasn’t it true that only bad people were taken away by policemen? People who broke the law? Perhaps it
was still some dreadful mistake, perhaps they really wanted some other man.
    But still, I could not ignore a strong sense that Papa had indeed done something very wrong. Mama’s tears had been tears of desperation, of grief for something lost that had once been
hers. They were certainly not the tears of a loyal, distraught wife protesting her husband’s innocence. There was no fight in her, no righteousness. Instead, she had the air of someone
enduring what was both inevitable and unthinkable at the same time.
    I remember agonizing over this well into the night. I think I expected some outward sign, some mark of Cain to indicate wrongdoing, to symbolize a state of sin for all to see. I was beginning to
learn, even then, that life is not always that simple.
    My head began to ache with the effort to understand. I needed to escape to somewhere different, somewhere bright and happy. I began to tell myself stories, about elves and shoemakers, princes
and princesses, all the myriad wonders of fairyland.
    Finally, I slept.

Sophia: Spring 1893
    S OPHIA GOT UP at half past six the following morning. The whole house was quiet and dark. Lily and Katie
had not yet risen to light the range or to prepare breakfast. She could hardly blame them. As far as they knew, they might no longer have any livelihood to speak of within this household. They
would have a genuine fear of being left, literally, at the side of the road by their employers.
    Sophia had lain awake most of the night, trying to work out how to extract all of them from the awfulness which Edward had brought on everyone’s heads. Now, this morning, she had practical
things to organize. First, she would need to visit Edward’s solicitor personally, to try and ascertain what was to become of him, of all of them. She couldn’t bear to