The hall was empty, and silence hung over the house. But at the far end of the hall, as she had known it would, light glowed from beneath her grandmother’s door.
Smiling, she hurried down the hall.
She paused outside her grandmother’s door, and listened. From within, she could hear the faint sounds of her grandmother moving restlessly around her sitting room, then a silence. Tracy smiled. Composing her face into a mask of worried unhappiness, she rapped softly at the door. For a moment there was no response from within, then she heard her grandmother’s voice.
“Come in.”
Tracy twisted the brass knob, and gently pushed the door open just far enough to slip through. “G-Grand- mother?” she asked, letting her voice tremble just the slightest bit. “I couldn’t sleep. I miss Grandfather so much …” She reached up and brushed at her eyes.
Her grandmother’s response, as always, was immediate.
“Tracy, darling, come in. Please.” From her chair, Abigail held her arms wide, and Tracy, after hesitating only a second, ran across the room, dropped to her knees, and buried her face in the old woman’s lap. Abigail, her own eyes flooding, gently stroked Tracy’s hair.
“What is it, child? What’s wrong?”
Tracy sniffled slightly, then looked up. “I … I just don’t know what’s going to happen to us, now that Grandfather’s …” She let her voice trail off, and held still as Abigail brushed the beginnings of a tear away from her eye.
“It’s going to be all right, my darling,” Abigail assured her. “We have to learn to accept these things. We all die sooner or later, and it was time for your grandfather to go.”
“But I didn’t
“Of course you did. We all did. But we have to understand that he’s gone now, and that our lives go on.”
“But without him, everything’s going to be different!”
“Different?” Abigail asked. “How are things going to be different?”
Tracy hesitated for a long time, waiting for her grandmother to urge her to speak.
“Go on, Tracy. Whatever it is, you know you can tell me.”
Tracy took a deep breath. “It … it’s Carolyn. What’s going to happen to me, now that Grandfather isn’t here to help me? She hates me.”
Abigail slipped her arms around her granddaughter, and drew her close. “How could she hate you? You’re a lovely child.”
Tracy allowed herself a small pout. “But she does hate me. She always tells Daddy that I’m spoiled, and that you’ve raised me wrong.” She felt her grandmother’s body stiffen.
“I’ve raised you precisely as your mother would have raised you,” Abigail replied. “And your father knows that.”
“But he married
“Everything? How?”
Tracy’s eyes clouded, and she drew a little away from her grandmother. “I … I guess I shouldn’t talk about it tonight,” she said. She stood up as if to leave, but Abigail stopped her.
“Nonsense. Whatever is upsetting you, we should deal with it. Now, what is it?”
Tracy turned to face her grandmother again. “M-my birthday party,” she stammered. “Are we still going to have it next week, like we planned?”
Abigail blinked, then remembered. Tracy’s party, planned for weeks, had slipped her mind when Conrad died. “Why — I don’t know.” Then, seeing the disappointment in Tracy’s eyes, she immediately made up her mind. “But I don’t see why we shouldn’t have it. In fact, I’m certain your grandfather would have wanted it that way.”
Suddenly Tracy brightened. “And I can invite anybody I want?”
“Absolutely,” Abigail assured her. “After all, it’s your party, isn’t it?”
“But what about—” Tracy fell silent, as if once again she was hesitant to tell her grandmother what was on her mind.
“What about what?” Abigail pressed.
“Beth,” Tracy whispered. She hesitated as her grandmother’s jaw tightened slightly, and wondered if she’d made a mistake. But when Abigail spoke a moment later, Tracy knew it was going to be all right.
“I don’t think the little Rogers girl would enjoy your party.”
“But what are we going to do?” Tracy asked. “Carolyn will make me invite her.”
“Perhaps,” the old woman said softly, but her eyes were glinting now. “Perhaps she will. But perhaps she won’t, either. At any rate, we’ll deal with it tomorrow. All right?”
Tracy came back, and leaned down to give her grandmother a hug. “I love you, Grandmother,” she whispered.
“And I love you, too,” Abigail replied. “And you mustn’t worry about anything. Just because your grandfather’s gone doesn’t mean you’re all alone. You’ve still got me.”
A few minutes later, Tracy left her grandmother’s room, and started back down the long corridor. But the smell of the room — a mixture of mustiness and too-sweet cologne as well as something else — was still with her. She took several deep breaths, trying to rid herself of that cloying scent she had always hated: it was the smell of old people.
She wondered how her grandmother could stand it. And the room, too. Though she was always careful to tell her grandmother how much she liked the old-fashioned sitting room, with its Victorian furniture and worn Oriental rugs, the truth was that she hated the look of her grandmother’s suite as much as its smell. When her grandmother finally died, and Tracy talked her father into letting her move into the big suite, she’d change it all.
Everything.
But until then, she had to go on pretending to her grandmother. Grandparents, after all, had been known to cut people out of their wills. Tracy, even though she wasn’t quite thirteen yet, wasn’t about to let something like that happen.
Suddenly she stopped, listening. From behind a closed door she could barely make out the sounds of one of her favorite rock bands. She frowned, and listened harder.
The music was coming from Beth’s room.
She listened for a moment, her body unconsciously swaying to the familiar rhythms. Then, her eyes narrowing, she strode to Beth’s door, and pushed it open without knocking.
Startled at Tracy’s sudden entry, Beth sat up in bed and stared at the other girl.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she heard Tracy hiss.
“Tracy? What … what’s wrong?”
“That music, stupid! Don’t you know we’re mourning my grandfather?”
Beth stared at Tracy for a second, trying to understand what she’d done. “But — I was playing it soft.”
“You shouldn’t be playing it at all,” Tracy said. “How can anybody sleep, with you blaring your radio?”
“But you can hardly hear it—” Beth protested.
“
Beth’s eyes widened, and she reached over to turn the knob on the clock-radio. “I’ll turn it down—”
“Turn it off!” Tracy insisted. She marched over to the night table, and punched at the button on top. The radio went silent. Beth, her eyes frightened, stared at her stepsister.
“I don’t see why I can’t listen to it if it’s so soft no one else can hear—”
“You can’t listen to it, because I said you can’t. It’s my house — not yours — and if you don’t like it here, you can just go live somewhere else!”
“But Mom said—”
“Who cares what your mother says?” Tracy demanded. “Just because your stupid mother married my father doesn’t give you the right to—”
Suddenly Beth’s anger overcame her confusion. “You take that back, Tracy Sturgess!”
Tracy, startled by the unexpected outburst, stepped back. “Don’t you talk to me like that!”
“Don’t you call my mother stupid!”
Tracy’s eyes hardened, and her mouth set petulantly. “I’ll call your mother anything I want, and you can’t
