“Look like someone’s ready for bed.” Dulcie scooped her up and gave her a hug. “Let’s go, sleepyhead.”
“You come, too.” Emma stretched her arms toward me. “And bring Mr. Bear. He’s scared of the dark.”
Carrying the bear, I followed Dulcie and Emma to the small room at the back of the cottage. As soon as Emma was ready for bed, she found The Lonely Doll and handed it to Dulcie. “Read this one.”
“But I read that book last night and the night before and the night before that—”
“It’s my favorite,” Emma insisted. She climbed into bed and tucked the bear under the covers beside her. “I bet Ali wants to hear it—don’t you?”
“Sure.” I stretched out on the bed beside Emma and listened to Dulcie begin the story.
After she’d read a few pages, Emma interrupted her. “It’s so dark outside my window. Why aren’t there any lights or any people? I don’t even hear any cars.”
“We’re out in the country now, Em, where it’s peaceful and quiet.”
“Will you pull down the shades so I don’t have to see the dark? Ghosts could be out there, watching me.”
Before Dulcie could move, I jumped up and shut out the night with a few yanks on the blinds. Emma was right. It was dark out there. Very dark. No lights anywhere. No sounds but the lapping of the lake against the shore and the wind in the treetops. The cottage was spooky at night, dark, full of shadows, not at all the way it was in the daytime.
“There,” I said. “Is that better?”
“I guess so.” Emma’s voice was low, almost a whisper. She held Mr. Bear tightly. “Read, Mommy.”
Dulcie read three Lonely Doll books, as well as The Cat in the Hat, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Horton Hatches the Egg, and The Owl and the Pussycat. But it was Goodnight Moon that finally lulled Emma to sleep.
Leaving a night-light glowing, Dulcie tiptoed out of the room, and I followed. She closed the door softly and leaned against it for a moment.
“Let’s hope Emma adjusts to nights in the wilderness quickly,” she said. “I could barely stay awake to read those books.”
She yawned and gave me a hug. “I’m beat from all that driving, Ali. I’m going to put out the fire and get into bed.”
More tired than I’d realized, I climbed the stairs to my room. Trying to ignore the darkness beyond the bedside lamp, I snuggled under Great-Grandmother’s quilt and opened To Kill a Mockingbird, number one on my school’s summer reading list. I’d seen the movie, but I’d never read the novel. Dad said the book was even better than the movie, but Mom said nothing could beat Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.
My bed faced the casement windows, slightly open to the cool night air. Through the pine branches, I could see the moon, tipped into a crooked smile. Insects chirped, an owl hooted, the pines sighed in the breeze, and the lake washed against the shore.
With Rufus M. tucked in beside me, I tried to read, but after half an hour, I gave up. It wasn’t the book. I loved the story, and I loved the way Harper Lee wrote. I simply couldn’t stay awake another second.
I closed my eyes, expecting to fall asleep immediately. But the moon shone in my face. In the woods, the orchestra of insects chirped and thrummed and buzzed, louder and louder.
I found myself thinking of Mom and Dulcie, sharing this bed when they were younger than I was. Had they talked and giggled together? Or had they quarreled the way they did now?
I hugged Rufus. “If you could talk, you’d tell me,” I whispered to the old bear. “You were there.”
His glass eye glittered in the moonlight, giving him a slightly wicked look. But if the bear knew anything about those long-ago summers, he wasn’t telling. Like Mom and Dulcie, Rufus M. knew how to keep secrets.
6
It rained during the night. In the morning it was still coming down, darkening the lake to black and blurring the trees. The air smelled like wet earth and old leaves. A squirrel perched on the deck’s railing, his droopy tail wet and pitiful. A few sparrows hopped about here and there, looking almost as wretched as the squirrel.
After breakfast, Dulcie handed out umbrellas and led Emma and me down the steps to the dock. Flinging open the door of the small shingled building, she said, “My studio. Isn’t it marvelous?”
Large skylights let in the gray light of the rainy day. Blank canvases leaned against the walls, primed and ready to paint. A long table ran along the back wall, holding paints and brushes, stacks of drawing paper, and books. Above it, built-in shelves bulged with more art supplies and books.
A wood stove and a couch draped with a faded paisley print bedspread occupied one corner, along with a couple of well-worn easy chairs and the potter’s wheel Dulcie used to make bowls, mugs, and platters.
I breathed in the smells of paint, turpentine, and linseed oil mingled with lake water and damp, mossy woods. “It’s perfect,” I said. “I want one just like it!”
Dulcie smiled and pointed to an easel in the middle of the studio. “What do you think of my latest?”
I stared at the large oil, washed in shades of blues, greens, and grays, splashed with flashes of yellow and white. “It makes me think of water.”
Dulcie grinned. “It’s the first of a series based on the lake and its moods.” She turned to the window and stared at the water, dull and gray in the rain. “I want to capture the power in water and rocks and trees—capture it as it captures me.” She stood silently for a few moments, toying with a long strand of curly hair. Almost as an afterthought, she added, “Maybe I’ll manage to free myself.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant or even if she were talking to me, so I simply nodded.
“Mommy, can I show Ali my pictures?” Emma asked.
Without looking at either of us, Dulcie said, “Of course. Your folder’s on the table.”
Emma carefully untied the strings holding her folder closed and began spreading pictures on the table. “I made these in New York,” she explained, “and the moving truck brought them here, just like it brought Mommy’s paintings.”
I looked at the array of rainbows, birds, suns, and flowers, painted in bright reds, yellows, greens, and blues. In some, people with huge smiling faces and long stick arms and legs floated just above the ground. She’d printed her name in big sloppy letters across the top of every picture.
“These are great, Emma. I love the bright colors and all the happy people.”
“I’m going to be an artist when I grow up,” Emma said, “just like Mommy.”
“Me, too. We’ll all three be artists together.”
Emma clapped her hands. “And this will be where we paint—all three of us. And we’ll live together in the cottage. And we won’t be lonely.”
Dulcie had finally left the window and was now mixing paints on her palette. A new canvas faced her. As she lifted her brush to make the first splash of color, she turned to Emma and me. “Would you girls like to paint, too?”
Emma grabbed a box of tempera paints and handed it to me. “You open the jars,” she said, “and I’ll get the paper and the brushes.”
Soon all three of us were absorbed in painting. Rain pelted the skylights, the lake slapped the shore, the wind blew. Dulcie’s CD player was loaded with classical music, Bach and Mozart—or was it Haydn? Well, no matter who it was, the music was perfect, and so was the rain and the wind and the sound of the little waves.