The Trespassers (15 page)

When Curtis’s mother got to Grub’s corner she immediately began to make another embarrassing fuss over him. She mussed his hair and then, putting her hand under his chin, she tried to turn his face up toward hers. Grub blushed and squirmed and tried to get away. After she finally turned him loose and teetered to the door, she turned to blow kisses in his direction before she disappeared down the hall.

As soon as Curtis’s mother had gone they all went back to what they’d been doing before. But not long afterward Curtis put down the accordion and went over to sit on the floor next to Grub. The next time Neely checked he was holding one of the animals and he and Grub were talking softly together. Neely smiled. Curtis seemed to be the one playing Farmer in the Dell, or whatever, with Grabble. The next time she checked they were getting to their feet and heading for the door.

“Curtis wants to show me something in the ballroom,” Grab said. “We’ll be right back.”

Neely might have gone, too, but she had only one more room to rearrange and she didn’t want to leave the job unfinished. She had almost completed the last room when a disturbing thought occurred to her. It was the first time she’d been in the nursery all alone. And maybe if, as Carmen seemed to think, something might happen when Grub was there all alone, perhaps it might happen to anyone who was there all by themselves.

Still holding the dollhouse baby crib in her hands, Neely began to walk slowly around the room, stopping now and then to listen for phantom voices and watch for the glowing lights or swirls of heavy mist that you always read about in ghost stories.

Nothing happened. No mists and no voices. Not even when she was standing in Grub’s favorite corner where he usually played his games of circus or farmyard with his invisible companion. She was still standing there, thinking that it was no use, that nothing was going to happen, when it suddenly occurred to her that quite a bit of time had passed and perhaps she’d better go see what Grab and Curtis were doing in the ballroom. Quickly putting the baby crib back in the dollhouse, she ran up the stairs to the third floor.

They were in the ballroom all right, standing together on the little bandstand in front of the big picture window. Curtis had his hand on Grub’s shoulder and they seemed to be looking out at the endless view. When Neely let the door slam Curtis took his hand off Grub’s shoulder and started to thump on one of the drums. Grub jumped down from the platform and ran. Dashing down the long stretch of ballroom floor as if he were in some kind of race, he skidded to a stop a few feet away from where Neely was standing.

“Hi,” Curtis called from the bandstand. “I was showing Grub the drum set. I was telling him about how we could start our own band.”

On the way downstairs Curtis babbled away about his idea to start an orchestra using the drum set and some of the instruments from the nursery. “I was showing Grub where we’d all sit on the bandstand,” he said. Grub didn’t say anything at all but, of course, there was nothing too unusual about that.

T
HAT NIGHT, PROPPED UP AGAINST THE HEADBOARD OF
her bed in a comfortable nest of pillows, Neely stared at page twenty-seven of a really interesting book for about thirty minutes without reading a single word. She stared at the page and thought, instead, about what Carmen had said about protecting Grub.

She’d hoped to see Carmen again before she left Halcyon House, to ask her exactly what she’d meant, but there was no one in the kitchen when Neely and Grub and Curtis went back downstairs. And since the rain had stopped she couldn’t very well suggest that Carmen ought to drive them home. So she’d had to go on guessing what Carmen meant when she said “watch over your little brother.”

Neely was sure—well, almost sure—that the warning concerned the nursery and Monica. Obviously Carmen believed in ghosts in general and in the Monica ghost in particular. But that didn’t explain why she thought Grub especially needed protection. Why would the Monica ghost—why would anybody, ghost or not—want to hurt Grub? And if someone or something did want to hurt him, what could Neely do to prevent it?

There were other questions too. Questions with no answers or with too many answers. So for at least half an hour Neely stared at page twenty-seven and thought and thought without coming to any conclusions, except a couple of halfway ones. One halfway conclusion was that Carmen was probably wrong about Grub being in any special danger. After all, Neely herself had been alone in the nursery and absolutely nothing had happened.

But the other conclusion was that maybe the best solution would be for her and Grub simply to stop going to Halcyon House altogether. She didn’t come to any definite decision about that—she didn’t want to, really—but it was, she told herself, something to consider.

It was the very next morning at breakfast when, right out of the blue, Mom said, “Neely, your father and I have been discussing it and we think perhaps we’d better put an end to these Halcyon House visits.”

Neely looked up from her buckwheat pancakes, stunned into silence. For a long moment she stared at her mother while she tried to decide what she was going to say.

She was feeling shocked and indignant—and more than a little surprised that she felt this way since it was, after all, exactly what she had almost decided herself. But she
was
indignant. It just wasn’t fair of Mom simply to cut things off without any warning when there were so many mysteries—mysteries about Monica and all the rest of the star-crossed Hutchinsons—yet to be solved. It just wasn’t fair. And then, glancing over at Grub, Neely was reminded of another important reason why Halcyon shouldn’t be made off-limits. Which, of course, was that it still mattered so much to Grub.

“Why?” she asked her mother in a resentful tone of voice. “Why shouldn’t we go to Halcyon when we’re asked?”

“Because,” Mom said, “your father and I haven’t met the Hutchinsons and it’s beginning to look as if we’re not going to. I called the other day and talked to their housekeeper, I guess it was—”

“Carmen,” Grub and Neely said in unison.

“Yes, Carmen. And she seemed very nice, but she said she’d ask Mrs. Hutchinson to return my call, and no one has called back as yet. And you know, Neely, that your father and I have always insisted on knowing a little about the people who spend a lot of time with our kids.”

“Dad?” Neely appealed to her father.

He shook his head, smiling. “Oh, I quite agree with your mother,” he said. “At least for the time being, until we can find out a bit more about the family.”

“Oh, is that all?” Neely said. “Well, what do you want to know about them? Maybe I can tell you.”

Mom smiled. “Well, I don’t know if that will entirely solve the problem, but there are some things I’m curious about. They do seem to be a rather strange bunch. For instance, the fact that nobody seems to work. And why has this particular part of the family come to live at Halcyon after all these years?”

Neely glanced at Grub. His eyes were wide and pleading. She gave him a reassuring smile, took a deep breath, and began. She wouldn’t lie, but she would answer carefully. Very carefully. “Well,” she said, “I don’t think there’s anything so strange about them not working. People like the Hutchinsons don’t have to, I guess. Curtis said something about a trust fund. And besides, Mr. Hutchinson has been sick. I guess he sort of moved here to rest and get well.”

“Sick?” Mom asked. “What kind of illness?”

“I’m not sure what the symptoms are,” Neely said, which was pretty much the truth. “But he sees a doctor a lot. He goes to Monterey to see a doctor.”

“It’s not catching,” Grub said. “It’s not chicken pox or diphtheria.”

Both Mom and Dad laughed, which was a good sign. And when they dropped the subject of the strange things about the Hutchinsons, Neely felt that maybe she was winning. Especially when Mom started asking about what she and Grub did when they were at Halcyon. At that point the conversation switched to pool and badminton and all the wonderful toys in the great old nursery.

Neely talked quite a bit about the beautiful dollhouse because she knew that would appeal to Mom. Mom always stopped to look at dollhouses in toy stores, and sometimes she talked about the one she’d had when she was a little girl. Houses, of all sizes, had always been important to Mom.

By the time breakfast was over the verdict was in and it seemed that Halcyon was not forbidden after all. At least not right away.

“Well, that does sound like a lot of fun,” Mom had finally said. “So we’ll see. Perhaps something can be arranged to make it possible for us to meet the Hutchinsons before too long.”

“And in the meantime...?” Neely asked.

“We’ll see,” Mom said.

Neely was on her way to her room a few minutes later when Grub dashed after her and almost knocked her down with a giant bear hug.

“Turn loose, you klutz,” Neely said, prying his arms loose and pinning him against the wall. “You trying to kill me, or what?”

“No.” He giggled. “It was just a hug.” He laughed again, a crowing, gurgling laugh like a tickled baby, then he ducked away and kind of danced into his room. Grub was like that when he was happy.

Neely stood there looking at his door for several seconds before she went on to her room and sat down on the bed. Grub was obviously out-of-his-skull delighted because she had made it possible for him to keep on going to Halcyon House. She hoped she wouldn’t be sorry. She hoped he wouldn’t be. Suddenly her shoulders lifted in a quick, sharp shiver.

T
HE NEXT TIME CURTIS CALLED UP TO INVITE NEELY AND
Grub to Halcyon there were new things to take into consideration, one of them being that any particular visit might be their last one. At any point Mom and Dad might give up on getting acquainted with the Hutchinsons and make Halcyon House off-limits forever. Or, on the other hand, they might somehow manage to meet the Hutchinsons, in which case the outcome would probably be pretty much the same. Either way it would be the end of going to Halcyon, since a successful meeting between Connie Bradford and Joyce Hutchinson was pretty impossible to imagine.

After thinking and worrying for quite a long time, Neely decided that maybe it was all for the best. The visits would stop—very soon. Just as soon, in fact, as she had one more chance to talk to Carmen. One chance to find out a little bit more about the mystery of Monica, not to mention exactly what Carmen had meant when she warned Neely to watch over Grub.

So the next Saturday when Curtis called up she said okay—for what was probably the last time. But of course she didn’t mention that fact to Curtis—or to Grub.

It was beautiful fall weather that Saturday morning and as Neely and Grub climbed up Halcyon Hill in the soft sunshine, the gentle warmth and the absolutely calm air made Neely think about the meaning of the word
halcyon
, and how it came from a myth about a beautiful bird. About a bird whose nesting season was always a time of peace and calm.

Trudging up the road through the soft fall warmth, with a humming, smiling Grub skipping along beside her, was like a brief halcyon moment. A very brief moment, since there was something she was going to have to do before the day was over that would take away a lot of peace and tranquility, at least where Grub was concerned.

She was going to have to tell him that this was their last visit to Halcyon, and the sooner the better, since he would hate it even more if he didn’t have time to say good-bye. Taking a deep breath, she began: “I’m getting a little bored with going to Halcyon. Aren’t you?”

“Bored?” Grub stopped skipping, thought for a moment, and then nodded slowly. “Yes. A little, I guess. But we can’t stop. We can’t stop going there.”

“Why not? Why can’t we?”

“Because...it would be lonely there without us.”

Neely stopped walking and stared at Grub, and he stared back, wide-eyed, smiling just a little.

Neely put her hands on her hips. “Grubbie. You say the weirdest things sometimes. Who’d be lonely?”

“Lion,” Grub said promptly, and then after a pause, “and Carmen, and Curtis and... He stopped, letting his gaze drift off into space.

Neely didn’t say “and Monica,” even though it was right at the very tip of her tongue. She didn’t know why but somehow she didn’t think she should. But even though she didn’t say “and Monica” she was certainly thinking it—and she was pretty sure that Grub knew that she was.

The next step, of course, was to tell Grub that this would be their last visit—and try to explain why. But somehow she couldn’t do it. Not now. Not in the midst of this beautiful halcyon moment. So instead of going on with what she had planned to say she suggested playing Hinky Pinky, one of Grub’s favorite word games, to get his mind off the subject. To get both their minds off the subject, really.

They had gone through the gate and were on their way up the long curve to Halcyon House, and Neely had just grabbed Grub and started to tickle him to pay him back for turning one of his Hinky Pinky answers into a kind of insult. (The clue he’d given was “a slimy girl” and his answer turned out to be “eely Neely.”) Grub was very ticklish, so he was squealing and giggling and Neely was laughing, too, when she looked up and there was Curtis watching them. He was wearing his baggy shorts and a faded blue T-shirt and carrying a pool stick. As he stared at Grub and Neely, he kept swinging the stick around in front of him.

“Oh, hi.” Neely laughed. She let go of Grub and he bounced away.

“Hi, Curtis,” Grub said. He was still giggling but Curtis stared at him without even smiling. Then he turned and walked toward the house, switching the bushes beside the road with the pool stick as he went. Grub looked at Neely and they both did a questioning shrug, and then Neely hurried to catch up. When she said, “Thanks for coming down to meet us,” Curtis only glared.

“I didn’t come down to meet you,” he said in a surly tone of voice. “I just went down to unlock the gate.”

Neely laughed. “Okay. Then thanks for unlocking the gate.”

He only shrugged but at least he looked at her for a moment. A minute later he said, “Well, my dad’s gone.”