As Ida went on, saying how after so many years she’d forgotten about the dollhouse, Suzanna thought of her own childhood and then of Annie’s; both soiled by anger and sadness, nowhere was there a memory to compare to the childhood Darla Jean had left behind. Her eyes filled with tears; then she turned and allowed her head to fall onto Ida’s comforting shoulder.
Wrapping her arms around Suzanna, Ida made the shushing sound a mother makes to a fussy baby. When the tears subsided, she held her at arm’s length and said, “Your granddaddy wouldn’t want you crying your heart out like this. He thought this would be a place of happiness, not tears.”
“I know,” Suzanna said and started sniffling again.
“Well, then, why on earth are you carrying on this way?”
“Because seeing all this makes me realize how much I missed, how empty my life and Annie’s life has been.”
“Well, if it makes you that sad, I’ll have the junk man come and cart it all away, kit and caboodle. You won’t ever have to see it again.”
“You can’t do that!” Suzanna exclaimed. “We’ll give Annie this room; it’s what Granddaddy would have wanted.”
“Allow a seven-year-old child to sleep up here with a stranger in the next room?”
“We can rent the second-floor bedrooms instead, and I’ll take the other room up here. It’ll be kind of like being where Granddaddy wanted me to be, and I’ll get to sleep in the bed that belonged to your mama.”
“Why would you want to do that? The downstairs rooms are much nicer. The furniture’s newer. They’re bigger and airier.”
Suzanna sniffed back the last of her tears. “I know, but there’s a part of Granddaddy that’s still in this room, and I want Annie to have the chance to know what a wonderful man he was.” She hesitated a moment then smiled ever so slightly. “This may sound silly, but that bed and the things in here make me feel as if I can reach out and take hold of the past. It’s like I haven’t lost anything; it’s been right here waiting for me. Being able to live with the things that meant so much to you and Granddaddy kind of makes up for all I missed out on.”
Ida’s eyes filled with water, but she held back the tears and began bustling around the room gathering the things she claimed needed washing.
That same day they threw the third-floor windows wide open, took the curtains down, and allowed the scent of the wisteria in the back yard to roll through the long-forgotten rooms.
As Suzanna rubbed lemon oil into the curves and crevices of the ornate bed, she allowed her mind to run free with thoughts of Ida as a young woman and, even further back, Ida’s mama, a young bride slipping out of her corset and gown and climbing into this bed to begin life as a wife and mother. When the headboard gleamed with a shine that reflected the smile on Suzanna’s face, she knew this truly was the beginning of a new life for her and Annie.
She may not have been born Darla Jean Parker, but she now was and she would not allow anything to change that. Nothing. Not the past, present, or future. And certainly not any lingering thoughts of her daddy or Bobby Doherty.
Changing Times
The Rental
ONCE SUZANNA AND ANNIE WERE settled in the attic rooms, the two women began readying the second floor for renters. The closets were emptied out, the furniture polished to a shine, and a stack of freshly-laundered towels placed on each dresser.
On Thursday afternoon, with the house now in pristine condition, they sat together at the kitchen table and composed an ad to run in the classified section of The Town Crier. After almost two hours of going back and forth over what was the most appealing description, they discovered the cost of the ad was based on word count and shortened it considerably. In the end, the ad simply offered two large comfortable guest rooms for rent at reasonable rates. Although they eliminated the part about an oak-lined street and charming ambiance, the ad did state that the rooms overlooked a garden and the house was within walking distance of town. At Ida’s insistence, it also indicated, “Female Preferred.”
“We’ll be sharing the hall bath,” she’d said, “and a woman can never be too careful, especially with a child in the house.”
That Sunday there was only one telephone call, and it was not an inquiry about the rooms. When Suzanna picked up the telephone, Pastor Higgins asked if Ida was ill since he’d missed seeing her at Sunday services. After that there was nothing. Not a single call.
“Weekends might not be the best for rentals,” Suzanna suggested. “Perhaps we should try the weekday edition.”
Ida agreed, and on Monday morning she telephoned the newspaper and told them to run the ad for the remainder of the week. She also tweaked a few things they thought might help. Instead of reasonable rates, the second ad gave a firm price of $17 a week and added free parking and telephone.
The next three days seemed to linger on forever, and by Thursday, when they had not received even
