Carla Kelly (22 page)

And that was as far as her fancy ever took her anymore. “I suppose I am stodgy, for a Hampton,” she told the ceiling as she hugged her pillow to her. “Oh, Papa, even a little dowry would make such a difference!”

She was just about asleep when she heard Wilde open the front door. She lay there smiling into the dark, then got up and padded on stockinged feet to the stairway landing that looked down on the front hall.

Papa stood there in his coat. He held out his arms automatically for Wilde to remove it, then shook his head and said good night to his butler.

Susan got no farther than the first step down. She was about to call a greeting to her father, but something in his stillness stopped the words in her throat. Scarcely breathing, she lowered herself to the top step and sat crouched in the shadows of the chilly upper landing.

She held her breath and watched him standing so motionless, his eyes riveted to the floor as though he searched for something he had dropped. She let her breath out slowly and put her hands to her mouth as he sank to his knees, pitched forward onto his elbows, then rested his forehead against the cold parquet flooring.

He didn’t cry so much as moan. It was a ghastly sound, worse than Mama’s last, long breath that had gone on and on until it seemed to blend with the breeze of a long-ago summer. That was death, and it comes to all. This was worse: it was the sound of hope gone.

Susan closed her eyes against the sight of her father groveling on the floor below. There was a pain in her as though someone had slit open her chest, ripped out her heart, wrung every drop from it, then crammed it back into her body. She opened her eyes and calmly observed her father. She rose to her feet, more steady of motion than she felt, and climbed the one step to the landing. She would not stomp on his dignity by rushing below to join her tears to his, but would wait until morning.

Bad news always keeps, she thought as she dragged herself into bed and closed her eyes again. Papa will have to tell me tomorrow, but we will deal with it. She pulled the covers up to her chin. But as for me, I will not trust another’s promises every again. And when I get up in the morning, I will have turned a page in my book of life.

***

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Carla Kelly
lives in Valley City, North Dakota. She does historical research for the North Dakota State Historical Society, writes for various publications, edits the
Confluence News,
and works for the National Park Service at Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site on the North Dakota-Montana border.

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