The grandfather's clock chimed one o'clock, and in the silence following, we heard Kristi's mother calling her.
'I'd better see what she wants,' Kristi said.
Carefully we handed Miss Cooper our empty glasses and stood up to leave. 'Thank you for the lemonade and cookies,' I said as I followed Kristi to the front door.
'Come and see me again,' Miss Cooper said. 'I think we're going to get along better, you and I, but I still don't want to see that cat of yours out in the yard scaring my birds.'
She smiled at us both and stood in the doorway as we ran down the porch steps. Max barked once, but I heard Miss Cooper shush him again while Kristi and I left the yard.
Before she went into her house, Kristi turned to me. 'Miss Cooper sure has gotten friendly,' she said.
'It's because of Anna Maria,' I said.
Kristi nodded. 'She doesn't feel bad about Louisa any more.' Then she frowned and kicked at a clump of chicory. 'If only Louisa hadn't died,' she muttered.
I looked past Kristi at the sky and the clouds and the leaves of the maple tree rustling in the breeze. 'Maybe death is too big to change,' I said slowly. 'If Louisa had grown up and had children, the whole world could be different somehow. But giving a doll back, that's only a little thing. All it changed is Miss Cooper.'
'And it didn't change her whole life,' Kristi said. 'It just made her feel better, made her nicer.'
'So even though we didn't save Louisa's life, we helped Miss Cooper,' I said.
'Maybe that's what Louisa wanted,' Krisd added, saying out loud the very thing I was thinking. 'To help Carrie.'
We stared at each other, and I thought of the note Carrie had buried with Anna Maria. 'Please forgive me, I am sorrie.' All these years, had Louisa been trying to tell Carrie she was forgiven?
'Kristi, where have you been?' Brian was staring at us from the back door. 'Didn't you hear Mom calling you?'
'I'm coming, I'm coming.' Kristi ran across the grass and up the porch steps. Before darting inside, she yelled to me, 'I'll come over later, and we can do something. Okay?'
As the door slammed shut behind Kristi, I looked up and saw Mom on the porch. 'Don't you want some lunch, Ashley?'
I nodded and climbed the steps, suddenly anxious to tell Mom everything.
***
While Mom fixed tuna salad sandwiches, I filled our glasses with iced tea and thought about what I wanted to say.
'You're awfully quiet, Ashley,' Mom said as we sat down at the table. 'You haven't quarreled with Miss Cooper again, have you?'
I shook my head. 'Just the opposite,' I said. 'I think Miss Cooper and I are going to be friends now.'
Mom stared at me and I smiled at her. 'Remember the doll Kristi and I found in the garden?' I asked her.
'How could I forget something that upset you so much?'
'Well, I tried to tell you the doll didn't belong to Miss Cooper, but you gave it to her anyway.'
'I had to, Ashley. The doll was a valuable antique, and you found it in Miss Cooper's garden. I couldn't let you keep it, not when she said it was hers.' Mom took a sip of her iced tea, but her eyes didn't leave mine.
'Well, let me tell you a story, okay?' I leaned across the table toward her and took a deep breath. 'Once there was a little girl named Louisa,' I began, 'and she had a doll named Anna Maria.'
As I continued, Mom didn't say a word. Her sandwich lay on her plate, half-finished. The ice slowly melted in her glass, but she sat still and listened.
'Now Miss Cooper is free,' I finished. 'She still feels bad about Louisa dying, but she knows it isn't her fault, and she knows Louisa forgave her.' I looked at Mom, waiting for her to say something, but the only sound was the refrigerator humming behind me.
'What I've been thinking about is Daddy,' I said finally, 'and that last time I saw him in the hospital. And how bad I feel because I didn't kiss him before he died.'
I started crying then, and in a couple of seconds I was on Mom's lap and she was hugging me tight. 'Ashley, Ashley,' she whispered, 'why didn't you tell me what was bothering you?'
'I didn't want you to know I didn't kiss him,' I sobbed.
Mom held me tighter. She was crying too. 'Kissing couldn't save Daddy, Ashley,' she said. 'Nothing could. Not all the love in the world.'
'I know that now. I saw Carrie kiss Louisa, and it didn't change anything. But still, it must have hurt his feelings, Mom. He must have died wondering why I'd stopped loving him.'
'Oh, Ashley, when you said good-bye to him he was so drugged with pain killers, he didn't know what you said or did.' She stroked my hair back from my face, drying my tears with her hand. 'He knew you loved him,' she whispered, 'and he knew I loved him.'
'I was afraid to get close to him,' I said. 'He didn't look like Daddy anymore.'
Mom nodded. 'All that was left of him were his eyes. And they were so blue, bluer than the sky.'
'But Mom, the worst thing is I was angry at him. It wasn't just that I was scared, it was also because I was mad.' I started crying again. 'How could I have been so mad? He didn't die on purpose.'
Mom sighed. 'I was mad, too, Ashley.'
'You were?' I stared at her.
'Of course I was. Most people are angry when somebody they love dies.' She hugged me again. 'We should have talked more, Ashley. I should have realized you were feeling the same things I was.'
'I had a dream about Daddy a few nights ago,' I told her. 'He was happy and strong and he told me everything was all right. Miss Cooper had the same kind of dream about Louisa, and she said it was Louisa's way of telling her not to fret about her.'
'I have dreams about Daddy, too,' Mom said, 'just like that.'
'Then maybe Miss Cooper's right - maybe Daddy's telling us not to worry about him.'
'I know he wouldn't want us to worry,' Mom said. 'He loved us too much to want us to be unhappy because he's gone. And he'd understand about our being angry.'
I closed my eyes and clung to Mom. We were both silent, and I was sure she was remembering Daddy too - not the way he was in the hospital when he was dying, but in the days before he got sick. We'd be able to talk about Daddy now, I thought, without crying.
***
Much later, long after dark, long after I'd gone to bed, I woke up. Oscar was sitting on the windowsill looking out into the night. I knelt beside him and pressed my face against the screen, trying to see what he saw. Moonlight and shadow patterned the lawn with silver and ebony, and the old garden sweetened the air with the fragrance of honeysuckle and roses.
There was no sign of Snowball, though. 'You'll never see him again,' I told Oscar, knowing it was true. Like Louisa, the white cat was at peace.
Then, from the other side of the hedge, from Louisa's yard, I thought I heard a child laughing, but the sound was so faint it could have been anything—the clink of glass, a distant car radio, someone's television.
I looked at Oscar, and he looked at me, his ears pricked, his eyes wide. Then he butted his head against my face and purred, and I lay back down. Still purring, Oscar curled up beside me and I drifted off to sleep, dreaming of Louisa playing happily in the garden with Anna Maria.
