“It’s not going to break,” Caroline assured him, unable to keep her annoyance out of her voice. They were on their way out to start shopping for the redecoration of his and Laurie’s rooms, and for the last three hours he had barely spoken at all, sullenly watching as Tony tried to interest him in measuring his room. “You have to know exactly how big the room is,” Tony had explained when he began the project. “If you find a rug you like, you have to know if it’s going to fit, don’t you? And you have to know how much wallpaper you’re going to need, and where furniture will fit and where it won’t. I’ll show you.” He’d found some graph paper, a scale rule, and a tape measure, then set to work, showing the boy how to convert the measurements he took with the tape by using the scale rule.
Ryan had watched, but his hostility toward his stepfather far outweighed whatever interest he might have had in the process, refusing to try taking over the project himself. Mostly, he’d just lain on his bed, punching his fist into the mitt Mr. Albion had given him. Or at least he had until suddenly Tony Fleming’s fingers had closed on his wrist so hard it hurt.
“Pay attention when I’m talking to you, Ryan,” he said, and though his voice was quiet there was a hardness in it that made Ryan shrink away. But Tony’s eyes locked on to his own in a grip as strong as that of the fingers that were crushing his wrist. “You and I are going to finish this project, and you are going to at least pretend you are interested. Understand?”
Ryan nodded, too shocked by the coldness of his stepfather’s voice, the hardness in his eyes, and the strength of his grip to say anything at all.
Caroline and Laurie had concentrated on Laurie’s room, and by the time they were done, so was Tony, who had armed Ryan with a manila envelope containing detailed diagrams not only of the floor plan, but of the walls as well. The closet had been included, the locations of the electrical outlets marked, and how much room the doors would take up when they were swung open. When Caroline had insisted he thank Tony for all the work he’d done, Ryan had mumbled something that didn’t sound like a “thank you” to her, but which Tony seemed willing to accept. And now, as Caroline pulled the door to the old-fashioned elevator open so they could head out to begin their shopping, her son had found yet something else to complain about.
The elevator itself!
“I’m gonna go down the stairs,” he finally decided, ignoring the scornful look his sister gave him.
“Suit yourself,” Caroline sighed, deciding that this wasn’t a battle worth fighting. “See you in the lobby.” She and Laurie stepped into the cage, and as Ryan started down the stairs, she pressed the button marked lobby. There was a whirring sound, and a couple of clanks, then the cage jerked, and for a moment Caroline was afraid Ryan might have been right. A second later it seemed to make up its mind to do what it had been told, and began grinding slowly downward. When it finally came to a stop, she fully expected to find Ryan standing at the door, grinning at her.
Instead, he was standing stock-still on the next-to-the-bottom stair, staring not at her, but into the lobby, his eyes wide, looking as if he might turn and bolt back up the stairs at any second. Her own gaze followed his, and for just a moment she had a feeling of utter disorientation, as if the elevator had taken her into the lobby of the wrong building.
Every chair and sofa in the lobby seemed to be occupied, and half-a-dozen or so more people were standing. At first Caroline recognized no one, but then she spotted Irene Delamond. Next to Irene was her sister Lavinia, seated in a wheelchair, with a shawl wrapped around her stooped shoulders.
There were two other people in wheelchairs, and as Caroline stepped out of the elevator cage, one of them haltingly propelled himself forward. The man in the chair looked as if he must be in his nineties, and as he rolled to a stop in front of Ryan he spoke in a voice that trembled almost as badly as the hand he held out to the boy, a candy bar clutched in his twisted and swollen fingers. “So here you are! And just as sturdy as Irene said you were, too!” His rheumy eyes, sunk deep in their sockets, fixed on Ryan. “You like chocolate, boy?”
Ryan shrank away from the strange apparition.
“For heaven’s sake, George, you’re frightening him,” Irene Delamond said, quickly moving forward and inserting herself between the old man and the boy. She clucked disapprovingly as she surveyed the collection of people in the lobby, then smiled ruefully at Caroline. “I told them all to just stay at home and leave you alone, but in this building, you can’t tell anyone anything.”
Caroline, still not sure what was happening, glanced uncertainly at the group of people who were now all moving closer, smiling, and reaching out with their hands.
“They just want to meet you and the children, that’s all,” Irene said.
“If we left it up to Irene, she wouldn’t have let us meet you at all,” an old woman clad in several layers of woolens interjected. “Just because she met you first, she thinks she owns you.”
“Owns us?” Caroline repeated. What was the woman talking about? What on earth was happening?
“Now just calm down, Tildie,” Irene retorted. “No one owns anyone.” She turned back to Caroline. “It’s just that they’ve all been worried about Anthony, and ever since they heard he’d gotten married again, it’s all they’ve been able to talk about.” She shook her head. “So many of them can hardly get out any more, and to have more young people in the building — well, you can’t really blame them, can you?” One by one, Irene began introducing her neighbors to Caroline, Laurie, and Ryan, and every one of them seemed to have brought some kind of treat for the children.
Treats, Caroline noted unhappily, that would not only make them sick to their stomachs if they consumed them all, but rot their teeth on the way through their mouths. “It will only happen this once, I promise,” a tall man with piercing blue eyes and thick gray hair said. “I’m a doctor, so I know these things.”
“Dr. Humphries,” Irene Delamond supplied. “I don’t know what we’d do without him.”
“You’d all get by just fine,” the doctor replied, then turned his attention back to Caroline. “Children are resilient,” he said. “Far more so than the rest of us. So let them enjoy their candy.” His gaze shifted from Caroline to Laurie and Ryan. “Strong, healthy children, both of them. They’ll be good for us all — we get old, we need some new energy around us, you know what I mean?” His hand dropped to Ryan’s upper arm, squeezing it not quite hard enough to make the boy wince. “Good strong muscles — a boy who doesn’t spend all his time in front of the TV.” He gave Caroline a slight bow. “I approve. And now I shall leave you to the mercies of our neighbors.”
Besides the doctor, Tildie Parnova, and George Burton, there was Helena Kensington, who was carrying a white cane, wore dark glasses, and asked if she could touch the children’s faces.
“You’ll frighten them, Helena,” Irene told her. “I can tell you what they look like.”
Laurie glanced nervously toward her mother, uncertain what to do, but when she saw Ryan edging around to put their mother between himself and the blind woman, she made up her mind. “It’s all right,” she said, trying not to let her voice reveal how frightened she was. She reached out and took Helena’s wrinkled hand in her own, then placed it on her face. She struggled to keep from shuddering as the old woman’s fingers began to trace the contour of her lower jaw.
“Such a pretty girl,” Helena said. “Good, strong bones.” Her fingers moved higher, and Laurie felt her skin crawl as the old woman touched her hair, then moved on to her forehead, and eyebrows. Finally Helena’s thumb and forefinger closed on the flesh of Laurie’s cheek. “So young,” she said, sighing. “Such nice firm—”