How Nancy Drew Saved My Life (26 page)

Whatever else, he was telling the truth about that.

“I love—”

But he was already gone.

It wasn't until a full five minutes after he left, as I lay there staring up at the ceiling reliving the last few hours, that I heard the sound I hadn't heard in a long time: that eerie laughing noise.

It must have just been the wind.

I
had not planned on falling in love with him.

But what are plans?

They say that man plans and God laughs, but sometimes I think it must be God just laughing at Charlotte's plans.

Life continued as normal, or rather, what was the new normal for me. My days were still filled, as they had been for months now, with Annette: her schooling, her playing, taking her to church sometimes on Sundays, even if neither of us could ever understand the services.

Only now there was a new feeling to it.

Before, I had loved her, most definitely that, but I had dealt with her from the stance of a governess, albeit a loving one, armed with the sad knowledge that even if Bebe Iversdottir did not part us with boarding school in the short term, something else would in the long. But now I saw into a future for us, one in which I might be allotted the luxury of time granted to a mother. It colored my feelings for her, made everything brighter, permitted me to take a deeper joy in her.

The one difference in my days was the driving lessons. Lars Aquavit was still intent that I should learn. The car had been repaired and returned, but I had yet to make it successfully out of the driveway. I tried to tell him that some people are just not cut out for driving, that some of us are not cut out for a lot of things: horseback riding, really anything that involved coordination with any kind of vehicle, geography. But he took it as an affront to his skills as a teacher that I would not, could not learn, and renewed his efforts. While doing so, he did however remark on the recent changes in me.

“You are…different now, Charlotte.”

See?

“How do you mean?” I asked, my mind half on what he was saying, the other half occupied with the gears. First? Fourth? What did they all mean and why did there have to be so many? I was sure if the damn car were an automatic, I'd have at least a fighting chance.

“When you first arrived here,” he said, “you did not seem…It's just that you have a new, I don't know exactly, maybe it's a joy about you. Before you seemed so very sad, so lost. And now you seem found. Yes, that's it.”

“Maybe it's because I'm getting so confident at dri—”

“Don't grind the gears like that!”

Even Mrs. Fairly commented on the apparent change in me.

“When I first hired you, you seemed like such a meek little thing,” she said, “like a bruised flower.”

“And now?” I prompted, wondering why she would ever have wanted to hire a bruised flower in the first place.

“And now you're positively blooming, Charlotte!”

“You mean like a peony?”

“Well, no, perhaps not anything as showy as all that.”

Rats.

“I think you might be more like bachelor's buttons,” she added thoughtfully.

O-
kay.

Even
Steinway
commented!

“Meow!”

“I
know!
” I crowed in the privacy of my own room. “I can't believe it, either!”

“Meow!”

“Who would have ever dreamed that
he
would love
me?
” I danced the cat around the room.

“Meow!”

“Oops, sorry.” I was embarrassed. “I forgot how you hate to waltz.”

I set the cat gently down on the bed, lay down beside him, whereupon he nuzzled my nose with his.

“I love you,” I said.

“Meow!”

“Yes, I do know,” I said as he purred. “Love is grand, isn't it?”

Of course, Gina and Britta wanted to know all the details of what was going on with me.

“You have a
man!
” Britta said when we went out drinking.

“It's
him!
” Gina added. “Isn't it?”

But I wasn't saying. I wasn't telling any of them what was going on, wasn't telling anyone what the catalyst had been for the changes in me. After all, I'd been sworn to secrecy, hadn't I? And I'd given my word, right?

Naturally, I wanted to be able to tell them, I wanted to be able to tell everybody, shout it to the world. I wanted to say that the difference in my days had to do with the difference in my nights.

At night, every night when he was at home, Edgar visited me in my room.

We made love. God, did we make love! I thought that maybe I should be thinking about a different form of birth control, what with how enthusiastically we both pursued this new endeavor of ours, but he didn't seem to mind the condoms and neither did I, so we continued as we'd begun.

And we talked. God, did we talk. A part of me cautioned myself that this was all too eerily similar to what had happened to me with Buster.

But then the newer, braver side of myself busted all those negative thoughts by pointing out the differences, the big one being that this time, there was no wife on the scene.

This time, I was going to get to have my cake and eat it, too. This time, there would be no heartache waiting for me at the end.

It was just a matter of being patient enough and biding my time.

This time, everything was going to end differently than last time.

I was sure of it.

 

And then my father came to visit.

He called from the airport.

“I know it's only November,” he said, “and that I said I wouldn't be here until Christmas, but I just couldn't wait to see you.”

That was odd, since I couldn't remember a time in my life when he couldn't wait to see me, but he sounded so eager and Edgar was out of the house for the day, so I asked Mrs. Fairly if it would be okay if he came by for lunch.

“Of course,” she said brightly. “I'd love to meet him.”

It had been a while, over a year, since I'd last seen him, but he hadn't changed much. He was still incredibly tall, lanky, his straight blond hair just beginning to dull to gray, his skin a deep tan now that would probably never leave him, not even if he one day decided to leave Africa behind for good.

He didn't look at all like me, never had. My curly black hair, my shortness—I'd gotten both from my mother.

It was awkward seeing him, just as it always was. He was a stranger, a recurring stranger in my life who just happened to be my father.

“It's so wonderful to see you, Charlotte!” he said with a parental enthusiasm I was wholly unused to.

“It's great to see you, too, Dad,” I stumbled on the words, not really knowing if I meant them.

It was too strange seeing him in Edgar's house.

He took my hands.

“Let me look at you,” he said. “You look so different. I guess it's to be expected, though,” he said wistfully, letting my arms drop. “You're not exactly my little girl anymore, are you?”

I wish I ever was.

Lunch was a bit fancier than usual. Mrs. Fairly, perhaps wanting to impress my father—although why she should care to impress the governess's father, unless it was with the fact that they weren't unduly abusing his daughter in a household that boasted at its head someone referred to as “the master”—had instructed Cook to eschew the usual sandwich fare, the result being a chilled salmon served in the dining room with real china and silverware.

“I hate salmon,” Annette pouted prettily.

“Why?” my father asked with real solicitude, the kind I would have loved if only he'd bestowed it upon me when I was her age.

“Because it is so pink,” she said.

“But you love pink!” I laughed.

“Yes,” she said, wrinkling her nose, “but not on fish.”

Lars Aquavit laughed. “So close your eyes,” he suggested, “and pretend it's cake.”

She squinched up her eyes and took a bite after only missing her mouth once with the fork. Then she chewed as we all watched.

“I guess it's not so bad,” she finally said, “but it could use some frosting.”

The meal passed with my father regaling Mrs. Fairly and Lars Aquavit with tales of Africa. I wouldn't have expected the latter to be so interested in a place so drastically different from his island home, particularly since he never mentioned any other country at all unless it was to mildly disparage Americans, and the former had never shown any interest in anything that didn't directly concern the running of the household. After all, just because they were in the employ of an ambassador, it wouldn't necessarily follow that they'd be curious about the rest of the world.

Even Annette got in on the act.

“What kind of dolls do they have there?” she asked with total seriousness.

“Actually,” he said, “Africa is a very big continent with lots of countries in it, so there are different dolls depending on where you go. Which kind of dolls do you like best?”

It took her only a half moment of deep thought.

“The kind that dances,” she said definitively.

“Oh, I'm sure I could find you one of those. Tell you what, when I go back home—” of course he thought of it as his home “—I'll find one to send here to you.”

I couldn't stifle a flare of resentment. All my life, all he'd sent me or brought me, when he sent or brought me anything at all, had been the kind of artifacts that only served to give me nightmares: big scary wooden sculptures with bared teeth and spears in their hands, looking like they couldn't decide whether to kill me first or just eat me alive.

When dessert came, it was cake, which made Annette truly happy. I'd had the pleasure of seeing her eat cake many times before. She liked to pick the frosting off a little bit at a time with her fingertips, licking them like five lollipops. None of us ever tried to dissuade her from what many would term unladylike table manners in this regard, because as her proud papa pointed out, “I'm sure that when she's sixteen and on a date, she won't still be eating like that.”

To which I'd queried, “You'll let her date when she's sixteen?”

He did seem like he'd be a very strict father.

“Did I say sixteen?” he'd laughed. “I meant thirty.”

But on this day, I wasn't destined to see Annette eat cake at all, because Mrs. Fairly had a different plan.

“You haven't seen your father in so long,” Mrs. Fairly pointed out. “And here we've been monopolizing all his time. I think it best we leave the two of you alone so you can chat a bit.”

Did I want to be alone with him?

No.

But apparently I was to be permitted no choice in the matter, as Mrs. Fairly rose, indicating that Lars Aquavit and Annette should grab their cake plates and join her for their dessert in the kitchen.

What to say, what to say…

Him: “My trip was—”

Me: “I hope your trip was—”

We both laughed, still awkward, a false tinny sound that rankled. Why couldn't he talk as naturally to me as he talked to Annette and the others? Why couldn't I talk to him as naturally as I talked to…?

Okay, there really was no right way to end that, since there was no one I talked naturally to, not ever, not really. Edgar came closest, but as close as we'd come, I still felt that shadow of a wall between us. Maybe there was one reticent part of myself that was holding back until he'd made some sort of public commitment.

“It really is great to see you,” my father said, taking a deep breath for courage as though what he was about to do, placing his hand over mine, needed great courage.

“You said that before,” I said.

“And you're so different,” he added.

“I'm pretty sure you said that, too,” I pointed out.

“Well, you can't blame your old dad for marveling at you, can you?” he asked.

He wasn't old at all, had never seemed old, but yes, I found that I could and did blame him for a lot.

He must have read some of the resentment in my eyes, because he shied back a bit. Then:

“There was someone I wanted you to meet,” he said, “someone I brought with me on this trip.”

I'll admit my curiosity was piqued.

“But,” he went on, “I thought it best I come here alone this first time and now I'm glad I did. This is quite a place you're living in.” His eyes took in the grandness of the dining room. “But are you really sure this is the place for you?”

It was a tough question to answer, particularly since I wasn't sure what he meant by that. I wanted to tell him about Edgar, tell him that now this was the most right place for me, but I couldn't do that.

So instead I asked, “What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know.”