Time Windows (22 page)

She edged backward as Helen advanced in fury. She crouched in the corner by the low bookcases under the windows, and Helen towered over her. Miranda cried out with fear, for the cold eyes that glittered at her from her mother's face were Lucinda's own.

 

Miranda remained crouched in the corner for a long time after Helen had left the attic. Despite the closeness of the oppressive heat, she was cold. Her bruised shins ached from the fall on the stairs. She circled her legs with her arms and rested her chin on her knees.

"That was like my dream," she whispered to herself. "My mother wasn't my mother." Tears began pouring down her cheeks and she wiped them away impatiently.

The sun had disappeared behind a cloud and the attic was steeped in gloom. Miranda didn't dare go out to the landing to turn on the overhead bulb; what if her mother still lurked there, waiting? No, not her mother.
Lucinda.

Behind the dollhouse she arranged the pillows and sank down onto them. Had it been Lucinda looking out from Iris Kramer's eyes that afternoon when she locked the boys in the attic? Miranda rubbed her own eyes. Nothing made sense. Aunt Belle said it was the house. Had Lucinda's mad eyes glittered on the porch that night, too? Miranda shook her head as if to clear it. The thoughts tumbled through her mind in unordered fury, leaving her exhausted.

She wanted her father. She wanted Dan. She wanted Mrs. Wainwright—anyone to help her out of this nightmare. More than anyone, she wanted her mother. Her own, real Mither. Yet she was alone. But no, not alone—the dollhouse seemed to glow softly as Miranda turned to it. On her knees, she stared through the dollhouse attic windows.

 

Dorothy pounded small fists on the door. Her petticoat hung limply around her thin frame, and her once shiny curls were in tangles around her face. She had dragged an old blanket out of one of the steamer trunks and wrapped it tightly around herself for warmth. Snow lay on the windowsill outside.

"Mama, Mama! Please come!" she wailed, but her hoarse little voice barely carried across the attic. "Daddy!" she sobbed. "I'm sorry! I'll never be bad again. Please let me out! I'm so cold!"

Miranda started to cry again, aching for the child whose mother was already dead and whose father was only across the street at the Hootons'. Poor Sigmund, grief-stricken, believing he had lost both wife and daughter in the wreck; how much more terrible it would have been for him to know that little Dorothy died of thirst and cold while he himself was soothed and comforted by his neighbors.

Miranda turned away, her tears dropping onto her cheeks. The attic room that had seemed such a haven to her lately now felt evil, angry. The black hole leading down to the secret chamber yawned at her from across the room. She trembled, resolutely tearing her eyes away again. Don't think of that. She turned back to the dollhouse.

Dorothy lay on the floor near the bookcases shivering under her blanket. Long gaspy breaths rasped from her parched throat. How many days had she been in the attic now? How long could a little girl survive without food or water or warmth?

Dorothy's hand inched out across the floorboards and loosely covered an object. The hand closed weakly around it and brought it to her side. A crayon, Miranda could see. A thick, black crayon.

The child dragged her body across the floor to the window and tried to open the sash. It slid a few inches, and she edged out a hand to bring in some more snow to eat, but the snow that had been keeping her alive had melted. Her hand dropped back inside, and she crept over toward Miranda and the dollhouse.

"You poor baby," wept Miranda, feeling somewhat crazed herself at not being able to help. "What can I do? There must be something I can do!"

Dorothy leaned her hand feebly on the dollhouse, and Miranda saw her clearly through the windows. Her blue eyes were filmy and wild-looking. Her mouth hung limp, lips cracked and bleeding. Dorothy dragged herself around the back of the dollhouse and disappeared from view.

"Now she's just where I'm sitting," thought Miranda. "What in the world can she be doing? She's too far gone to play—"

Dorothy came into view again and let the black crayon clatter to the floor, where it rolled under the bookcase. She stared fixedly at the dollhouse, stared directly through the attic windows, and for a split second Miranda's eyes met hers. Dorothy let out a tortured, choked sound and backed away in fright.

"She's seen me!" cried Miranda in wonderment. "She's seen me!"

Dorothy staggered backwards across the attic until she hit the far wall, then seemed to gather the remnants of her strength and knelt to pry open the heavy trapdoor. She propped it up with a small piece of wood, then seemed to lose her balance and fell straight into the hole. Her foot knocked the wooden brace as she fell, and the trapdoor slammed shut. There was no sound in the attic.

Miranda closed her eyes. "No, no, no!" Dorothy had fallen into what would become her grave, and Miranda was powerless to help her.

Did Dorothy hope the secret room would hide her from the face she had seen in the dollhouse? Had her fear of Miranda sent her to her death? Miranda clenched her fists. So it was not as she and Dan had figured. Dorothy had not smothered while playing Underground Railroad—nor had Lucinda murdered her and hidden her in the room. By some bizarre twist of reality, Miranda herself had sent Dorothy fleeing into the airtight chamber.

"She fell in because of me!" The realization ripped through Miranda's head, sending waves of nausea into the pit of her stomach. "Dan and I got it wrong. We never realized how horrible it really was." She sank back onto the cushions and closed her eyes. She felt utterly sick.

 

Maybe she slept. Or maybe her mind had grown numb from the shock; but Miranda sat up some time later feeling groggy. Her stomach rumbled. The sky outside the attic windows was growing dark.

Something made her turn back to the dollhouse. Lucinda sat at the vanity table in the master bedroom, smoothing her delicately arched brows and pinking her cheeks with soft color. She fluffed back her shiny hair and smiled into the mirror. "Hello, beauty," she murmured to her reflection.

"You witch," wept Miranda. "Little Snow White is dead now, and you didn't even need a poisoned apple!" She watched Lucinda apply the magnolia-scented perfume to her long, slender neck, and the thought struck her that this wicked queen had not lived even as long as Dorothy that day. She tried to feel sorry about that and failed.

"Mama? Can I come with you?"

"Your grammar, Dorothy. You'll never get ahead in life if you don't speak properly."

"
May
I come with you? Please?" There was Dorothy again, sweet in her flouncy lace petticoat, dimpling at her mother in an attempt at persuasion.

It was like watching the rerun of a horror movie. Miranda already knew the end, yet she felt compelled to watch again as Dorothy was spanked with the hairbrush for spilling the magnolia perfume and dragged up to the attic. Miranda winced, her slapped face and bruised shins a stinging reminder of her own mother's assault. Lucinda locked the door and slipped the key into the pocket of her gown.

She returned to the vanity and began pinning up her hair. Finally, after a last satisfactory inspection in the mirror, she started downstairs, calling up the attic steps to Dorothy: "I want you quiet up there, young lady. An afternoon in the cold will teach you to mind your mother!" She sailed off downstairs.

Miranda caught the scent of burning bread early this time and waited impatiently at the kitchen window, watching Donald and staring at the calendar on the wall until Lucinda hurried into the room. January 1904. The sleigh scene. "Sigmund to New York" on the 19th.

"Damnation!" cried Lucinda, jerking off her coat and swishing her gown angrily. The
pinging
noise sounded sharply as Lucinda dropped her coat onto a chair and hurried to draw the charred loaves from the oven. Miranda fastened her attention on the sound. This time the insignificant little noise rang with importance. How could she have missed it before?

Something had dropped to the floor. But what? Something Lucinda was carrying—or something that fell out of ... a pocket. Out of her coat pocket when she threw it on the chair—a coin, perhaps? Or out of her dress pocket when she angrily swished her skirt at the delay—could it be the
key?

Miranda stared into the kitchen long after Lucinda and Donald departed, laughing, into the snow. The floor under the chair was bare. Yet Lucinda had not picked up whatever it was she had dropped. The thing, whatever it was, must have fallen between the floorboards.

A plan began to form at the back of Miranda's mind. She ran to the attic door, opening it quietly. She steeled herself to meet her mother. Dorothy's life was at stake. She crept down the stairs, hugging the walls to avoid the creaking steps.

At the foot of the stairs, she stopped to listen. The door to her parents' room was closed. A radio played faintly. She hoped the radio would cover any sounds she made. She hung on to the banister as she tiptoed down to the first floor. Still, the last step squeaked, and she waited motionless in the front hall, poised to run.

But the house was still, except for the soft music from the radio. Miranda glided soundlessly across the dim hallway, through the dining room, and to the kitchen. So far, so good.

She scooped a flashlight off the pantry shelf and switched it on, then tried to orient herself. There were the windows she looked through when at the dollhouse. The iron stove had stood there in the corner; the calendar had hung on that wall above the breakfast table. And the chair where Lucinda had thrown her fur coat had stood ... here. Miranda crossed the room and knelt on the floor, sucking in her breath. She had forgotten the stained linoleum. That stupid Iris Kramer! Why had she bothered modernizing the kitchen? The wide floorboards of the Galworthys' kitchen must lie under the yellowed sheet of linoleum. Miranda scanned the room. What could she use as a tool to pry the linoleum up?

Just then the hall light blazed, scattering the shadows. She could hear Helen's footsteps coming down the stairs. Miranda stood stock still, looking around wildly for an escape route.

The cellar! She opened the door just enough to squeeze through and, turning off her flashlight, scuttled down the cement steps into darkness. The cellar was cool, but too quiet. She couldn't hear what was going on in the rest of the house. Was her mother in the kitchen? There was no way to tell. She crouched under the stairs, biting the inside of her cheek when something crawled over her bare arm in the dark.

She sat there rubbing her bruised shins, waiting for what seemed like hours but was, according to the lighted face of her wristwatch, only fifteen minutes. Then she crept back up the cellar steps and opened the door a crack. The kitchen was empty, and no light shone in from the hall. The coast was clear; now to get that linoleum up.

Working in the glow of the flashlight, she used a kitchen knife as a combination saw and lever, digging it into the cracked floor covering. Eventually a torn edge loosened, and she grabbed hold of it with her fingers and pulled with all her might. The sound of the old glue ripping away from the floorboards beneath tore through the quiet kitchen. She froze, poised to leap back down the cellar steps at the first sound from the rooms beyond. She felt as if she were trapped with a dangerous stranger.

When no sound came, Miranda inched her fingers along the floorboards beneath the linoleum. There was a deep crevice between the wide boards. She held her flashlight over the crack, hoping to catch the gleam of silver in its light. She could see nothing.

"Damnation!" The syllables hung in the air as they had when Lucinda shrieked them almost a century ago in that very room. But this time
Miranda
had uttered the expletive. She was certain the key had fallen here. Could someone else have found it already? When Iris Kramer remodeled the kitchen, had the key been found by workmen? But who would look down into cracks in the floor unless they knew something had been lost there?

In angry desperation, Miranda ripped back another section of linoleum, revealing two more wide floorboards. She stabbed her knife deep into the cracks. She had been so sure she was on the right track—but there was nothing.

She pulled back more of the floor covering, her breath coming in short sobs. This time her knife met with resistance, and she twisted it sideways to scoop out whatever blocked the blade. Slowly she levered out of the crack a small round disk. She could have broken down in tears right then and there when she saw it was only a coin, but her sense of urgency was too great. She couldn't afford the time a good cry would take. She rubbed the coin on her shorts, and as the grease and grime changed surfaces, she saw she held a quarter. She squinted to make out the date: 1898. It might have fallen into the crack years before Lucinda dropped the attic key. Or maybe Lucinda had dropped a coin that day—not a key, after all!

Miranda leaned back on her hands and closed her eyes, straining to remember every detail of the scene she had watched. Lucinda threw her coat down and swirled her skirt. The key must have landed under the chair she was standing beside. But what if it bounced and landed somewhere else? What if it had been found decades ago and thrown away as worthless?

There was only one crack left to check. Miranda bit her lip. She felt the sweat running down under her thin T-shirt and the throb of the darkening bruises on her shins as she worked to scrape through the old dirt.

Then she heard it at last—the beautiful scraping sound of metal touching metal.

"Careful," she cautioned herself. "It could be just another coin." But she dug frantically, just the same.

And at last, there it was, retrieved from its narrow grave after so many years: a large, tarnished key. Clenching it in her fist, Miranda threw both arms high in a victory V.

She stowed the key safely in her pocket, then set about pressing the stained linoleum sheet back into place. She couldn't imagine what her parents would say when they noticed it had been pulled up. She placed a kitchen chair over the mutilated section, laid the knife in the sink, and turned off her flashlight. Now to get back to the attic without being seen.