“No,” Anna said. “Hester might leave us. I hope she did. But Father would never.”
Peter let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“If they’re in the woods. .” he said. “The policemen, I mean, they might find something.”
“So what if they do? I don’t think they will. It was well-hidden.”
“It was hardly hidden at all.”
“Well, anyway, if they do find it, they still won’t know anything.”
“They might deduce things.”
“There’s no use crying about it.”
“I never cried. I’m perfectly relaxed.”
“I didn’t say you were crying. I said there’s no use in it.”
“Well, I wasn’t crying anyway.”
“If they find it in the woods. . If they find anything out there, it will lead them nowhere, and we oughtn’t get worked up about it. There’s nothing we can do, unless you want to go tramping back through the woods in the dark.”
“No,” Peter said. He was the oldest and he wasn’t supposed to believe in Rawhead and Bloody Bones, but that didn’t mean he wanted to explore the forest at night.
“Then I suppose we should sleep.”
“I can’t.”
“Virginia can. We should, too.”
“Anna?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t you think there’s something wrong with Virginia?”
“You shouldn’t say that. She’s your sister.”
“You’re my sister, too, and I don’t think anything’s too terribly wrong with you. Except when you get up to something stupid.”
“Virginia will be fine once this is all over and the policemen have left and Father has come home and it all goes back to normal.”
“Do you think it will? Go back to normal, I mean?”
“It has to, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s just one little boy. Everything can’t change because of one little boy, can it?”
“I suppose not. He was very little.”
“Very little. Hardly a speck.”
“Yes. What about what Hilde found?”
“The eye?”
“She showed it to me,” Peter said.
“She fancies you.”
“She does not.” But the idea that Hilde Rose fancied him was new to Peter, and he wondered if it was true.
“She does. She never showed it to me.”
“It was blue.” He hoped that Anna would allow him to change the subject away from Hilde and her romantic inclinations.
“Oliver’s eyes weren’t blue, were they?”
“I think they were green.”
“I think so, too.”
“And Hester?”
“No, her eyes weren’t blue. I would have noticed. Father’s weren’t, either. But I think Mother’s eyes might have been blue.”
Peter was quiet for a time, watching the candlelight reflected in the window. When he spoke, he wasn’t sure Anna would hear him across the room, but she looked up at him.
“Do you remember her?” Peter said.
“Mother? Yes, of course I do.”
“Virginia’s forgotten her, I think.”
“Well, she was a baby when Mother. . Well, anyway, she mustn’t be blamed for being young.”
“Oh, I wasn’t blaming her.”
“You shouldn’t let it bother you. We can remember her for them. For Virginia and Oliver, I mean.”
“She wasn’t Oliver’s mother.”
“Hester hardly counts as a mother. I say we should share our mother with him. The memory of her, I mean.”
“Anna. .”
Anna swallowed and her eyes went wide. Peter looked down at his bare feet, confused and embarrassed. She had spoken about Oliver as if none of the ugliness of the past several days had happened. Peter felt alone in that instant, but if Anna wanted to put it out of her head, he would let her. He looked up when Anna cleared her throat. Her face was red.
“Of course I don’t know what I meant by that. Not at all.”
“It’s all right. Really, it is.”
“Anyway, I don’t think Mother did have blue eyes, now that I think about it.”
Peter smiled. The feeling of isolation lifted a bit. “So whose eye did Hilde find?” he said.
Anna shrugged. “Perhaps it belonged to someone else. Perhaps the eye doesn’t matter in the slightest.”
“Wouldn’t that be odd,” Peter said. It wasn’t a question, and Anna didn’t answer.
She stood and crossed the room to where Peter still leaned against the doorjamb. She brushed a lock of hair from her face and smiled at him.
“Don’t worry, Peter dear. Soon this will end. The policemen will return to London and Father will come home. He’ll know what to do about Virginia.”
Peter nodded and attempted a smile, but he knew Anna wasn’t fooled by it. He was the worrier and Anna was the logical one. Between them, they had to take care of their little family, what was left of it. Even if Father did return, that wouldn’t change.
Anna opened the door and looked both ways down the hall before scooting out and closing the door behind her. Peter listened for her footsteps, but couldn’t hear whether she returned to her room or went the other way to the stairs. He knew that she sometimes slept on the rug by the fireplace when she had nightmares.
Peter returned to his bed. He arranged the covers and crawled back beneath them. There was still no sign of a spider. He left the candle burning on the table beside him and watched the ceiling until he settled into a deep and dreamless sleep.
14
Day pushed through brambles and stepped carefully over fallen logs. He was conscious of the fact that he didn’t know the local animals, had no idea whether there were actually wolves in the woods. But he hadn’t encountered anything dangerous, except the cold and the wet. He marched ahead, cautious but confident. He felt he should be coming to the tree line any time now. Lone snowflakes drifted down past him from above. Twigs crunched underfoot, and he slipped on a pile of wet leaves, but caught himself before he fell. He had no idea how much time had passed. He felt certain that he hadn’t been wandering in the forest for long, but he had read about men who got lost in the woods and were never seen again, men who spent their remaining hours tramping about in circles, wandering ever farther into the wilderness.
He hoped that the others were looking for him, that this was all a mistake. Hammersmith would come looking, he knew, but if Campbell had purposely left Day behind, then Hammersmith might be in danger too, and Day had no way of warning him.
