Awake and Dreaming (18 page)

“What's the matter, Theo?” asked Anna.

“Nothing,” said Theo, holding up her head so the tears wouldn't drip. She wiped her eyes on her nightgown as she pulled it off.

She felt better at breakfast. Dan made waffles and Theo wolfed down their comforting sweetness as fast as the others. Squished between Ben and Lisbeth, she pretended that she was part of this noisy circle every morning.

“Did you have a good sleep, Theo?” asked Laura.

“Not at first,” said Theo. “I got up and sat by the window.” Then she remembered what she'd seen. “I thought I saw someone come to the door,” she said. “A woman.”

“That's odd. Did she knock?” asked Dan.

“No—she sort of disappeared. I was too tired to see her properly.”

“You were probably dreaming,” said Laura.

“Maybe you didn't even get up,” said Anna. “Sometimes I dream I get up when I don't.”

“Sometimes I dream I have to pee and in my dream I get up and go to the bathroom—but I don't!” said Ben.

“And then you wet the bed,” said Lisbeth. “Only babies do that.”

Theo didn't listen to them argue. She thought of the strange woman and how familiar she'd looked. Then she remembered how she'd lost her quilt during the night but had been covered up in the morning. But she could have done that in her sleep, too. Maybe Anna was right and she'd dreamt she'd got up. Maybe even her wish had only been a dream.

It was a blustery, rainy day. In the morning they stood under umbrellas and watched Anna and Grace's soccer team lose their game.

After lunch Dan made a fire and they sat in the living-room. Dan read a magazine, Ben played with his Lego and John joined the girls as they continued to put together the huge jigsaw puzzle they'd started yesterday.

Laura looked up from a letter she was writing. “Isn't this nice, being in here all together like this!”

“But—but don't you usually sit in here?” asked Theo. They hadn't since she'd started visiting, she realized.

Laura laughed. “We're too busy—someone is always being picked up or driven somewhere.”

Theo sighed.
Before
they had sat in here every evening—all of them, as peacefully as they were right now.
The fire crackled, Bingo groaned in his sleep, and she tried to forget she had to go back to Sharon's in a few hours.

She lost interest in the puzzle and went over to the chair by the bookshelf. One of the books was lying face up on the floor. Theo picked it up. It was old and grimy, with a faded cover showing two children standing around a sundial. It didn't look very interesting, but she remembered how the ugliest books in school libraries were often the best ones. It was such a long time since she'd read a book; maybe she should try this one.

“What have you got there, Theo?” asked Laura.

“
In Summer Time
by Cecily Stone. I found it on the floor.”

“That's the lady who used to live here!” said Anna.

“Now, how on earth did that book get down here?” said Dan. “It's supposed to be shelved upstairs with the other Victoria writers! I
wish
this family would put books back when you've done with them.”

“It wasn't me,” said Lisbeth. “That book's too hard for
me
to read.”

“What does it matter, Dan?” said Laura calmly. She smiled at him. “You're obsessed. Books are meant to be read, not kept in neat order. Cecily Stone was a children's writer,” she explained to Theo. “She lived in this house for years.”

“She was born here,” said Dan. “She wrote two books, then she died of cancer. Her books were excellent, but they're out of print now. I have several copies of each title—I keep a lookout for them in secondhand stores.”

“I've read them both,” John told Theo. “The first one's historical and that one's a time travel.”

“They're really good,” said Anna. “I read them, too.”

“When did she live here?” asked Theo.

“Let's see…,” said Dan. “She died in 1956—so about forty years ago. Three other families lived in this house after that, before we did.”

“Would you like to read her book, Theo?” asked Laura. “You can borrow it.”

Theo looked at Dan. “Yes, take it,” he said. “I have several other copies upstairs. I'd still like to know what this one is doing here, though.”

When they all ignored him, he retreated behind his magazine and Theo opened up
In Summer Time
.

The spongy pages smelled stale. Theo read the description of the story on the front flap of the jacket—it did look good. And its author had lived right in this house! She turned to the back flap. A blurry photograph floated above a few lines of print. “Miss Cecily Stone resides in Victoria, B.C., Canada,” it said. “Besides writing for children she is an avid gardener.”

Theo looked at the picture again. A gaunt woman stared back at her.

She dropped the book on the floor so hard she looked up at Dan guiltily. He hadn't noticed. Quickly she picked it up and turned around in the armchair so her back was to the family. With trembling fingers she opened the book and examined the photograph more closely.

The face was the one she had seen last night—the face
of the woman walking across the street. And now Theo knew why she looked so familiar. It was the same woman who had been watching her on the ferry.

18

A
ll Theo could think of doing to calm her churning confusion was to read the book. Maybe it would give her a clue. She turned back to the first page and began.

The story was about two children called Edward and Susan. They discovered that when they shifted their grandmother's sundial they were taken back in time. They visited Victoria in 1881 and met Emily Carr at age ten, who demanded to know who they were and why they wore such strange clothes.

That was as far as Theo got before she had to stop for dinner. Sharon arrived to pick her up and Theo got another chapter read while her aunt stayed for coffee. Then she put the book in a plastic bag and assured Dan she would take good care of it.

“You're awfully quiet this evening,” said Sharon on the way home. “Just like a little mouse, the way you were when you first came. Is something wrong?”

“No,” said Theo, “but could I go right to bed and read?”

Sharon laughed. “Of course! I'm so glad you're reading.”

She let Theo keep her light on until nine. Theo planned to stay awake until Sharon was asleep and turn it
on again, but her eyes closed with exhaustion from the night before. She woke very early and finished the book.

It was such a good story she forgot why she was reading it. She only wondered how Emily and Edward and Susan would find their way back through the forest, and if Edward and Susan would be able to return to the present. When they did, and the plot unwound to a completely satisfying conclusion, she closed it up and sighed with pleasure.

Then she remembered who had written this book. Cecily Stone. The woman she had seen crossing the street from the cemetery, the woman on the ferry who had stared at her and Rae so avidly. But Cecily Stone was dead …

A chill went through Theo; she warmed up under her covers until Sharon called her to get up.

T
HAT MORNING
she looked for Cecily Stone's other book in the school library, but neither of her titles was there. Theo picked out two other books to take home. In the evening she asked Sharon if there was a big library in Victoria.

“There's the main branch downtown,” said her aunt.

“Can I go there tomorrow after school?
Please,
Sharon. I'll be really careful. There's something I need to find out.”

“Something for school?”

“Well … no. Just something I'm interested in.” It would have been much easier to lie, but she'd promised Sharon she wouldn't.

“Wait until Saturday and I'll take you then. It will give you something to do while your friends are away.”

The Kaldors were visiting their grandparents in Vancouver for Easter. Before this week Theo hadn't been able to stop thinking of how she was once supposed to go with them—before she started to fade.

Now she had forgotten they were going. All she could think about was Cecily Stone. She examined the photograph again and again until she knew the face from memory. Cecily's expression was intense and inward, as if she were thinking hard about something. She was standing in front of a tree, but Theo couldn't tell if it was the tree at the Kaldors'.

Saturday took years to come. Only reading helped the time go faster. Theo raced through six books and the school librarian began praising her as all the others had.

It poured on Good Friday. Sharon took Theo to a special mass in the morning. In the afternoon they cleaned out the kitchen cupboards. On Saturday Theo had to shop for a lot of food with Sharon before they could go to the library. Skye, Robin and Carol were coming for Easter dinner tomorrow; Theo had forgotten about that, too.

After lunch Sharon finally took her to a large building downtown. “I'll be in the magazine department, Theo. I'll come and get you in an hour—will that be long enough for your project?”

“I hope so,” said Theo. When Sharon had walked away, she looked around the library desperately. Where should she begin?

First she went to the children's department and found both novels by Cecily Stone. She examined them quickly, but they didn't have dust jackets and there was no author information inside. The one she hadn't read was called
The Huntleys of Hurley Hall
. Clutching it to her, Theo approached the children's information desk. “Excuse me.”

A man looked up; he was cutting out pink paper pigs and printing names on them. “Yes?”

“Do you have any information about a writer called Cecily Stone?”

“Hmmm … she sounds familiar. Is she Canadian?”

“She lived in Victoria!” said Theo indignantly. “She wrote this book.” She showed it to him.

“I'll ask the children's librarian—I'm just a clerk.” He went away and returned with a glamorous-looking woman wearing lots of make-up and jewellery. “So you want to find out about our Cecily! We're rarely asked about her. I'm afraid I can't give you much information. She wasn't very well known. I'm sure she would have been if she'd lived longer, poor woman. Follow me and I'll show you what we have.”

She took Theo to the adult reference section and sat her down with a file folder labelled STONE, CECILY and a fat book with a place marked in it. Theo looked at the book first; it contained short biographies of Canadian writers. There wasn't much more about Cecily than had been on the jacket flap, except for calling her “a promising writer for the young.” But it was exciting to read the address of the Kaldors' house as her residence.

She opened the file. It was disappointingly thin. There were a few short reviews of the books, each complimenting the author for setting stories in British Columbia. A photocopy of a newspaper clipping announced the “untimely death of Miss Cecily Margaret Stone, daughter of the prominent Victoria lawyer, the late Mr. Giles Stone. Miss Stone was a writer of children's novels, a career she began later in life. She was a member of the Garden Society and had a special interest in heritage roses.”

“It's not much, is it?” The fancy librarian was leaning over Theo, her bracelets jingling. “She didn't have any relatives and nobody published any memoirs of her. All that's left are the books. Are you doing a school project on her? I think her books are quite good, even if they are rather dated for modern kids.”

“I
loved
the one I read,” said Theo fiercely.

The librarian looked apologetic. “I'm glad. I bet Cecily would be happy to know that someone's still reading them. I hope you like the other one just as much.”

Theo found out how to get a library card. She checked out the book and she and Sharon went home.

S
HE MANAGED
to get halfway through
The Huntleys of Hurley Hall
before dinner. The story took place at the turn of the century, in a large house on the Gorge in Victoria. It was about four brothers and sisters—Frank, Louise, Perry and Gwyneth—who found a secret passage.

Theo adored it. Nothing much happened, but the children seemed so happy, like the ones in the books
about families she'd read in Vancouver. They had their bad times—there was an embarrassing episode when Gwyneth, Theo's favourite, fell into a pond at a birthday party—but they were such a secure, united family. Like the Kaldors …

Sharon called her to get ready; they were going to Mandy's for dinner. “Can I take my book?” asked Theo.

“You
are
reading a lot now, aren't you? I suppose so, but don't read at the table.”

Theo sat impatiently through the meal. Sharon and Mandy were talking about a man at work they both had a crush on, but all Theo could think about was the Huntleys. After dinner she almost reached the end of the book while Sharon and Mandy watched a video. They got home so late that Sharon made Theo put her light out right away.

She finished the book the next morning before church, nibbling on the large chocolate egg that had appeared beside her bed. After church she helped Sharon peel potatoes and set the table but her mind was still on the book. It was easy to tell it was by the same person who'd written
In Summer Time
. The stories were very different, but the same voice was relating them.

Reading both books hadn't helped Theo find out more about Cecily the person, just Cecily the storyteller. There was no hint in either one of the Kaldors' house or neighbourhood, or the woman who had once lived there.

Theo couldn't get Cecily's three faces out of her mind: her curious, sympathetic face on the ferry, her dreamy expression as she walked across the street and her intense
look in the photograph. She knew that all three women were Cecily. It wasn't possible; but lots of things had happened this year that weren't possible. This was more magic! And somehow it seemed linked to the magic time when she had lived with the family.