Dalworth was beginning to feel more at ease. She was composed and direct. “Well, try me.”
“All right. We give it dead flies. We find them in Tommy’s attic. We helped by leaving orange peels up there...”
She smiled as she said this and Dalworth was struck with her beauty. A perfect replica of her mother, he thought, with shining dark hair cut in bangs across a forehead whose texture was like ivory with a blush of pink in it. Her eyes were startlingly blue and candid, with lashes so dark and long that they seemed like little shadows over her eyes. When she smiled, her mouth was wide and generous and clean as a small kitten’s. She was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt trimmed in red — an outfit that, even at this age, accented her trim waist and fine, square shoulders. On her feet were red sneakers over short, white socks.
“Would you like to see my room, Mr. Dalworth?”
“Yes, of course, Miss Mallory.”
Upstairs, she pointed proudly at the low table near her bed and the two place-settings of milk and cake.
“Now isn’t this nice,” Dalworth said.
“We can have our own tea party,” Jessica said. “You sit over there and I’ll sit here and I’ll pour the tea. It’s really milk, you know.”
Dalworth lowered himself into a small chair and held out a doll-sized cup to Jessica, who poured milk into it with judicious precision. Again he wondered at this performance, at what he was doing handling miniature cups and saucers and sipping tepid milk while wedged uncomfortably in the confines of a child’s rocker.
“Is your tea hot enough?” she asked him.
“Oh, yes. It’s fine, just fine.”
“Are you going to get some more horses?”
“I expect so,” he said.
“We’ll like that.”
He was as puzzled by her comment as he was by his own presence here, and he thought of Holcomb waiting for him, and the land called Easter Hill in Ireland with its vast meadows and stone barns, and the men on various boards awaiting his decision in a dozen cities, and he wondered if he could ever explain his behavior to them or to his dear wife, Anna, if she were alive... Was it some kind of illogical guilt on his part, or a stubborn need to joust with fate — to set things right in some fashion?
“I thought you’d come sooner,” Jessica said. “I kept watching from the window.”
“Didn’t Mrs. Farr tell you when she was expecting me?”
“Yes. But I knew before that.” She sighed wistfully and said, “I thought you might be here last week.”
“I don’t understand, Jessica. I wasn’t in the city then.”
“Well, I don’t understand, either. What should I call you? Should I call you Mr. Dalworth? Does ‘Andrew’ sound polite?”
He smiled and said, “I think that sounds about as polite as anything I ever heard.”
It had become dark outside and the trees created shadows that darkened Jessica’s clear blue eyes and, as he looked into them, Dalworth realized that he might never explain how he felt right now to his business associates, but he knew with a sudden confidence that he could have explained his feelings to Anna, who had dreaded so much that he would be lonely.
“Jessica, I must be going now.”
What the little girl said in reply to this was so astonishing that Dalworth, who had risen to leave, knelt beside her and stared with wonder into her eyes.
“I’m not sure I understand, dear,” he said gently. “Would you mind telling me again?”
“Yes, of course, Andrew.” She studied him solemnly. “I said you were right, that she’d understand.”
He put his hands on her slim shoulders and shook his head slowly. “How did you know I was thinking of someone else just then?”
The little girl raised her hands and let them fall gently to her sides. “I’m not sure, Andrew. It was something about seashells at first. It was as if I could hear my Mommy talking about them...”
“Yes, go on,” Dalworth said. “But you weren’t talking about your mommy when you said ‘she’d understand’, were you?”
“No, I think that was somebody else,” Jessica said.
It wasn’t guilt, logical or illogical, that stretched between them, Dalworth thought. It was a tangible link, a trembling filament he sensed without understanding...
“Who was that other person, Jessica? Who did you think would understand me?”
“I think it was—” The child frowned and put a hand on Dalworth’s arm. “Maybe it was—” Then she sighed and the curiously intense light in her eyes seemed to fade slowly away. “Will you come to see me again, Andrew?”
And Dalworth knew then that the link between them had somehow been broken.
“I’d like to visit you again, if I may.”
“We can have another party then,” Jessica said. “And we can talk about the dogs...”
As the limousine made a left turn toward the expressway, Stanley Holcomb said, “I’ve checked the airport, sir. They’ve okayed our revised flight plan. Do you want dinner at the hotel or on the plane?”
Dalworth looked out the shiny windows of the limousine, the headlights of rush-hour traffic moving over him in rhythmic intervals, like the sweep of a metronome. Ahead of them, horns were sounding. The night had dropped swiftly over the city, bringing into sharp relief the long streams of glittering cars.
“I may be staying in town for another few days,” Dalworth said. “As you know, I’ve been thinking about finalizing those negotiations on the Irish property, the Easter Hill place. This might be the time for it.”
“Right, sir. I’ll rearrange your schedule.”
Dalworth laughed. “She definitely knew what I was thinking about.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“It’s nothing, Stanley. It’s not important.”
But he wasn’t telling the truth, Dalworth knew. It was important, as important as anything in his past or future. His thoughts were turning on the Mallorys, all three of them. Jessica had known somehow about the seashells — a casual comment, words lost months ago on the winds of time — and the little girl had known... and she had known he was thinking about Anna. He had been thinking that Anna would understand how he felt about the little girl, and as if that thought had been something physical and tangible, she had taken it from his mind, saying, “Yes, she would understand.”
And Anna would, he knew. His wife would have responded with the same warmth that he had, intrigued and caught by the look of her cool blue eyes, the intensity of her expression, and the trust and urgency that emanated from her. He could still feel her light touch on his arm. And he realized there was something... a power he didn’t understand.
“Stanley, here’s what I want you to do when we get back to the hotel. Call Juvenile Hall and get me the earliest possible appointment—” There was a faint but challenging smile on Andrew Dalworth’s face. “I want to talk with Miss Elizabeth Scobey.”
Chapter Six
Several weeks after her first meeting with Andrew Dalworth — in the late winter of the year — Elizabeth Scobey sat at her desk to type out the final forms which defined the custodial arrangements Judge Harlan Williams had approved the week before in relation to Jessica Mallory and the adopter, industrialist-financier Andrew Dalworth.
Miss Scobey was sustained by a sense of euphoria as she removed the completed papers from her typewriter and affixed to them the proper stamps and seals. This was always a victorious moment, she thought, pausing for an instant to admire the view of Philadelphia’s ornate City Hall and the expanses of Fairmount Park, sparkling now in sunlight. A victory and a personal reward to find a good home for what Miss Scobey thought of as “her” children. It almost made up for the heartache she felt when she failed to find a place for the others, usually those not favored with winsome beauty or the proper skin color or eye-shape, or the twelve to fifteen-year-olds who had already developed a resentment against the world for the way it had treated and cheated them. Yet they were always “her” children, and it was difficult to find ways to assuage her disappointment at their rejection.