Shadows on the Ivy (3 page)

“You! Why will you be Aura’s guardian?” Dorothy’s concern had suddenly changed to anger. “How did that happen? You’ve only known Sarah two months!”

Dr. Stevens backed away. “Then I’ll call you, Professor Summer. And you will keep Mrs. Whitcomb informed.”

“Of course.”

As the doctor disappeared through the emergency room’s swinging doors, Dorothy turned on Maggie. “Why would she make you Aura’s guardian? What have you got to do with Sarah?”

Everyone in the waiting room was looking at them. Maggie put her hand on Dorothy’s arm and headed her toward the door to the parking lot. She wouldn’t want the college trustee to think she had wielded undue influence over Sarah. But why should Dorothy be reacting so dramatically? Maggie spoke softly as they walked. “Most of the Whitcomb House residents made out wills after we had that legal seminar in September. Sarah has no family, and no close friends outside of Somerset College. She was worried that if anything happened to her, Aura would go into foster care.” Foster care could be wonderful or awful. Unfortunately for Sarah, her experiences in the system had been horrendous. She’d never told Maggie the details, but she’d been very clear that she never wanted Aura to be a foster child.

“I’m sure she wouldn’t have wanted Aura to have foster parents,” Dorothy agreed. “But she could have asked Oliver and me. Then Aura would have had two parents. You aren’t even married!”

Maggie swallowed hard, fighting down the urge to be defensive. “Sarah asked me to be Aura’s guardian because at the time she couldn’t think of anyone else. It was an interim decision. She was young and in good health; she hoped she’d marry in the next few years and her husband would adopt Aura. There was no reason to think her decision would mean anything immediate for Aura. It was just a way to protect her.”

Until tonight, Maggie thought. She felt a strong urge to go to Whitcomb House, to hug the little girl with the red hair. To keep her safe. She wanted so much to be a mother, and now there was a child who needed her. She felt the muscles in her shoulders tighten with stress. Aura was still Sarah’s child. Sarah would recover. Maggie must control her emotions.

“I’ll stop at Whitcomb House and talk to the other students. Maybe they’ll know more about Sarah. Something that will help the doctors figure out what’s wrong with her.”

Dorothy nodded. “Yes. Do that. But”—she reached out and took Maggie’s hand—“let me know if you hear anything.”

They separated in the parking lot, Dorothy walking toward her navy BMW sedan, and Maggie toward her faded blue van.

She lowered her head to the cold plastic steering wheel for a moment. If only Will were here. She wanted to feel safe and sheltered in his arms; to have his protection; to have him assure her that everything would be all right. A hug couldn’t protect you from the world, of course. But it could allow you to pretend for a few precious moments. Had Will written her an e-mail note in the past few hours? Maybe she’d call him when she got home. He was headed for Ohio to do an antique show. He’d probably stop at a motel for the night; it was too cold to sleep in his RV.

She blinked back her tears. She needed a friend. But she and Will had decided to limit expenses by using e-mail instead of cell phones unless there was an emergency. This might be an emergency for Sarah Anderson and her daughter, but there was nothing Will could do about it. She had to handle this herself.

And she had questions to answer. What was wrong with Sarah? Why was Dorothy so agitated? How was Aura coping with her mother’s absence? What if Sarah didn’t come out of her coma? What if…?

Whitcomb House was a large yellow Victorian trimmed in maroon that in earlier years had housed the chairman of the Somerset Savings and Loan and his large family. Its wide porch had been restored and its interior redesigned to fit the requirements of both building inspectors and single parents. The elegantly turreted building had a spacious lawn, now covered with drifted leaves. It was hard to miss in a neighborhood filled predominantly with ranch houses and small modern colonials.

The lights were still on when Maggie arrived. The combination of babies, toddlers, and homework assignments almost guaranteed that someone at Whitcomb House would be awake at most hours of the day or night. She knocked on the maroon door covered with cutouts of orange pumpkins and white ghosts.

Kendall opened it. Josette was sleeping in his arms, her black curly hair just visible under a fuzzy pink blanket. Her dad had changed from his dress-up attire of shirt and slacks into a red Somerset sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. He gestured for Maggie to come in, then headed for his room to put Josette in her crib.

Kendall, the only man living in the house, had been assigned the one first-floor bedroom, so none of the women would be in danger of being surprised in their underwear by his need to brush his teeth or dispose of a dirty diaper. Kendall was also therefore the one who usually answered the door and kept unofficial track of who was at home and who wasn’t. When Dorothy had designed the layout of the house, she’d assumed that in the evenings most of the parents would be studying at the desks she provided in their rooms. In reality they often left the doors to their rooms open and asked other parents to listen for any trouble, sharing baby-sitting duties while balancing a social life with parental and student responsibilities.

Maggie settled herself into one of the green-and-blue
-flowered chairs that matched the living room’s couch. The large TV was muted. An episode of
Law and Order
played silently. The other residents must be upstairs.

Across from her, on the long wall above the television set, hung the six Anne Pratt hand-colored engravings she’d helped Dorothy Whitcomb choose for this room, matted in green to go with the decor, and framed in gold. Dorothy had loved the idea that Pratt, who published eleven volumes of botanical prints between 1828 and 1866, was one of the first women to be a successful botanical artist.

“But,” Maggie had told Dorothy, “Anne Pratt did stop drawing when she got married for the first time—when she was sixty.”

Dorothy had laughed out loud. “Married for the first time at sixty? After spending all those years painting she was probably exhausted…. I wonder what she and her husband did for fun?”

“She or her new husband might have needed a tonic. Because when she stopped doing botanical drawing, she started a new career—as an expert in the medicinal uses of plants.”

She and Dorothy had agreed that Anne Pratt botanicals had to be a part of a single-parent dorm. It seemed such a long time ago that she and Dorothy had hung the prints. Last summer. When the idea of a dormitory for single parents had been a new, exciting concept. Not a place to look for clues to a mysterious illness.

Kendall was back in a moment. “How’s Sarah?”

“She’s in a coma.”

“I’ll call the others? Everyone will want to know.”

“In a moment. Kendall, Sarah may have had something to eat or drink either at the party or earlier that made her sick. Does she have any allergies? Does she take drugs of any sort that you know of?”

“No!” Kendall sat down heavily on a tufted ottoman. “She’s never mentioned allergies. And no drugs. She’s pretty straight. Only drinks occasionally.” He hesitated. “She does take vitamins. I heard her talking about vitamin E with Tiffany the other day. And as for food…today we shared a pot of minestrone for lunch. Heather’s mother brought it over yesterday. No one else is sick.”

“And so far as I know, she’s the only one who was at the Whitcombs’ party who’s ill. Does Sarah have any friends outside the house? Does she go out often?”

He shook his head. “She’s here most of the time. Friendly, but quiet. Keeps to herself.”

“No boyfriends?”

“Not that I’ve seen or heard of. But like I said—she doesn’t talk a lot. At least not to me.”

“Who might she have talked with?”

“She and Tiffany are roommates. Tiff might know something. And Aura and Katie play together all the time, so I know Sarah and Kayla are in and out of each other’s rooms a lot.”

“You’d better call everyone down.”

“We’re sort of family for each other here. Everyone’s been worried.”

Kendall called softly up the stairs to where Maria lived with Tony, on the second floor of the attached carriage house. Then he went up the stairs to the rooms on the second floor of the main house to alert the others. Within minutes all of the residents had joined Maggie in the living room.

Maria was wearing bright red-and-purple-striped pajamas; Heather was pulling on a white terry-cloth bathrobe that barely covered her short polyester nightgown. The tattooed vine on her leg climbed even higher than Maggie had anticipated. Kayla and Tiffany were still dressed as they’d been at the Whitcombs’.

“Sarah’s been admitted to the hospital. She’s in intensive care,” Maggie explained. “The doctors pumped out her stomach. They think she took something, or ate or drank something, that made her sick.”

“Is she going to be all right?” Kayla asked softly. “She’s not going to die, is she?”

“I hope not,” said Maggie. She wished she could promise that Sarah would be fine. Soon. “She’s in a coma. Do any of you know if she had any allergies?”

Silence.

“What did she take?” said Tiffany.

“The doctors don’t know. They’re going to test the contents of her stomach; the sooner they know what caused her problem, the sooner they can do something about it. Was Sarah taking any drugs—for medical reasons, or otherwise?”

“She took birth control pills,” said Tiffany. “I’ve seen them on her dresser. And sometimes she took aspirin, when she had a headache.”

“And vitamin C. She took vitamin C when she thought she might be getting a cold. And vitamin E sometimes,” added Kayla. “But she didn’t do drugs. Real drugs.”

“She didn’t even smoke,” Kendall added. “I mean, she didn’t smoke anything. Ever.”

Maggie wondered if that was true. Sarah’s breath had smelled like cigarettes. She also realized that drinking and drugs and smoking—anything—were probably topics these young people were more conversant with than she was. At least these days. After all, she’d been a student once herself.

“Was she depressed? Was there anything unusual about her behavior recently?”

“You mean—‘did she try to kill herself?’” Heather’s voice rose.

“She wouldn’t do anything that took her away from Aura,” Kayla said. “Aura is her world. No doubt about that. Sarah had a tough childhood. She didn’t want that for Aura.”

“Absolutely,” added Tiffany. “Sometimes she’d talk. She had plans. She wanted to teach kindergarten. She had some down days, like we all do. It’s not easy being a single parent. But she wasn’t going to take any pills to mess herself up. No way.”

Maggie looked around the room again. Their faces were serious. These young parents had already been through a lot. They knew what was at stake. Tiffany was right; it couldn’t be easy being a single parent. Maggie stood up.

“I’m keeping in touch with the doctors. I’ll let you all know if there are any changes.”

“Can we visit her?”

“Not tonight. She has to rest. And she wouldn’t know you were there. I’ll let you know when she can have visitors.” Maggie hesitated. “How is Aura doing?” She could take Aura to her home; she could give her cream of tomato soup and read her a story; she could…“Could I see her?”

“Aura’s fine. Sleeping with Katie,” said Kayla. “I don’t think we should run the risk of waking them. We’ll watch out for her.” There were nods around the room. “We’ll make sure she has a good breakfast and get her to day care tomorrow morning.”

They were right, of course. Aura needed to stay here, at least for now. “Taking care of Aura is the best thing you can do for Sarah. She’d want Aura to stay with people she knows.”

I want to have a child, Maggie thought. But not this way. Not because Sarah…Her mind refused to complete the thought, even silently. “You all have my home and office telephone numbers. If you think of anything that would help the doctors to help Sarah, call me. It doesn’t matter how late. Or if there’s any problem with Aura.”

“We’ll be fine, Professor Summer,” Maria said as Maggie turned to leave. “Just make sure they take good care of Sarah. Bring her home.”