As if sensing her eyes on him, Anthony looked up, spotted her, and waved.
Then, as he stepped through the front door of the Rockwell, she left the window, went to the phone, and dialed the number of the doorman’s booth. “Tell Mr. Fleming not to go up,” she instructed. “I shall be down in a few moments.”
She looked in on her sister, who was still asleep, then put on a light poplin coat in her favorite shade of purple. Picking a walking stick from the umbrella stand by the front door, she left her apartment, not bothering even to lock the door, let alone bolt it. In all the considerable number of years she’d lived in the Rockwell, she’d never had reason to lock her door, and saw no reason to begin now. The elevator, sent up from the lobby by Rodney, clanked to a stop just as she arrived at its gate, and she slid the accordion gate open, stepped inside, re-closed the gate, and reached for the button that would send her to the lobby. But then she suddenly changed her mind, and went up four floors instead. She left the door of the cage open, and walked down the hall to Max and Alicia Albion’s door. Alicia answered almost instantly, and the worry in her eyes was enough to tell Irene what she’d come to find out. “Rebecca’s no better?” she asked. Rebecca Mayhew was the foster child Max and Alicia had taken in four years ago, a tiny waif of a child who had looked far less than her eight years. “It’s just that she’s never been fed properly,” Alicia had assured Irene when the older woman had asked if there was something wrong with the child. Irene hadn’t quite believed her, since Alicia’s response to any problem invariably involved food. But in Rebecca’s case, it appeared Alicia was right, for as time went by, the girl had managed to grow and fill out, without ballooning the way Alicia and Max had. But over the last few weeks the child had begun looking tired, and not only Irene, but some of the other neighbors started to worry about her. “I was hoping maybe she’d be feeling good enough to go to the park with me.”
Alicia shook her head. “Dr. Humphries is coming — that’s who I thought you were. Maybe another day?”
“Of course,” Irene assured her. “Give Rebecca my love, and tell her I might just bake up something special for her tomorrow.” Returning to the elevator, she pressed the button for the lobby. As the elevator rattled toward the ground floor through the shaft created by the staircase that wound all the way to the top of the eight-story building, Irene balefully eyed the panel of buttons that had several years ago displaced Willie from his job operating the elevator. Since her neighbors had voted to make the elevator self-service, she’d never quite felt safe. In the pre-button days, she’d always known that if anything went wrong, Willie would take care of it. But what would she do now? Call down to Rodney, who would come up the stairs, chat with her, but have no idea what to do? Well, perhaps it wouldn’t happen.
More likely, she decided darkly, it would. Then, as the elevator rattled safely to a stop and released her from its cage, she put the thought out of her mind. “You’re taking me for a walk,” she announced to Anthony Fleming, who was looking at her with a bemused expression that told her he probably wouldn’t argue with her. “It’s a beautiful day, and it would be a shame to waste it.”
“And suppose I had other plans?” Fleming asked, putting on a severe expression that Irene saw through in an instant.
“Then you would cancel them,” she announced. “How much older than you do you think I am?”
Fleming shrugged noncommittally. “A few years.”
“A few decades, you mean,” Irene shot back tartly. “At least that’s how I feel today. And since that’s how I feel, I’m going to demand the privilege of age, and let you take me for a stroll through the park. We shall observe nature in its full bloom, and the vigor of youth. Perhaps it will make me feel better.”
Anthony Fleming shrugged helplessly at Rodney, who was grinning from his kiosk, and held the front door open for Irene. “Where are we going? Or are we just wandering?”
“Children,” Irene said, turning south. “Whenever I start feeling this old, I always like to watch children.”
“Maybe you should have had some of your own,” Fleming observed.
“Wanting to watch children is one thing. Wanting to have them is entirely another.” She sighed heavily. “And if my child got sick, I don’t know how I’d handle it.”
“You’d handle it like everyone else does,” Anthony assured her. “You’d get through it.”
“But it must be so hard.”
There was a long silence, but then Anthony Fleming nodded in assent. “It is,” he agreed. “It’s very hard indeed.”
Caroline and Laurie were still a couple of hundred yards from the playground when a voice called out from behind them. “Laurie? Laurie! Wait up!”
Turning, Caroline saw Amber Blaisdell hurrying toward them. A blonde girl whose even-featured face was framed in the same pageboy haircut her mother wore, Amber was clad in Bermuda shorts and a white blouse with a sweater tied over her shoulders — exactly the same preppy uniform that half the girls at Laurie’s former school habitually wore when they weren’t wearing the school uniform itself.
“Hey, Amber,” Laurie said as the other girl caught up with them.
“A bunch of us are going to the Russian Tea Room for lunch! Want to go?”
Caroline saw a flash of anticipation cross Laurie’s face, but it faded almost as quickly as it came. “I–I don’t think so,” she said. “I think I’m gonna hang with my mom.”
“Oh, come on!” Amber urged. “It’ll be fun.” Her voice took on a slight edge. “Since you changed schools, we hardly ever see you anymore.”
A look of uncertainty passed over Laurie’s features. “It’s not that.”
“What is it?” Amber pressed. “You never want to do anything anymore.” She glanced at the small group of girls who were watching the interaction between herself and Laurie. “Some of the kids are starting to talk.”
Laurie’s eyes flicked toward the group of her former classmates. “Talk about what?”
Amber hesitated, as if not sure she should repeat what her friends were saying, but then decided to face it head on. “It just seems like you don’t want to be our friend anymore, that’s all.”
“I want to be,” Laurie began. “I just—”
But before she could finish, someone called out to Amber. “Are you coming? We’re going to be late.”
Amber looked at Laurie one last time. “Come on,” she urged. “Come with us.”
But still Laurie shook her head, and a second later Amber had disappeared into the gaggle of her friends. Caroline was almost certain she saw Laurie’s chin tremble slightly as she watched the girls who had been her best friends only a few short months ago now go off without her, and she slipped a comforting arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said as they set off once more toward the baseball diamond, where Ryan had already plunged into the milling group of boys who were just starting to choose up sides for their softball game. “Maybe we can find a way for you to go back to the Academy next year.”
“No,” Laurie replied a little too quickly, with a note in her voice that warned Caroline not to push it. But a moment later as they found an empty bench close enough to the baseball diamond to offer a good view but far enough away not to embarrass Ryan, she suddenly spoke again. “It’s just — I don’t know — even if we could afford for us to go back to the Academy, I couldn’t do the things we used to do.”
Caroline looked squarely at her daughter, and, in contrast to Ryan a few minutes earlier, Laurie seemed suddenly to have matured beyond her years. “You really don’t mind not going to the Academy?”