Beneath her fuzzy tam, Annaliese’s face was pallid. Was she sick, Throckmorton wondered, or just bewildered by the secret that Great-Grandmama had asked her to keep?
So many questions without any answers . . .
Did Great-Grandmama know where Olivia went and why she never came back? Did she know where Olivia was now?
If so, why wouldn’t Great-Grandmama approach Olivia herself?
If not, how would Annaliese ever find her to give her Ebenezer?
And the most pressing question of all: If the Easterling family had treated Olivia badly, did Great-Grandmama really think that she could buy forgiveness with a shiny rock?
Humans were so mysterious. Throckmorton didn’t think he’d understand them if he lived for another hundred years.
As if in a daze, Annaliese seemed to have forgotten all about her desire to see the horses again until Max the stable keeper slid open the door and waved.
Annaliese came back to the moment. “Please, Miss Pine,” she begged, “I want to visit the horses before we leave.”
Miss Pine scanned the dark swollen clouds. “No, we have to get back.”
Three or four new inches of snow already covered the ground.
Annaliese’s bottom lip quivered. “But Great-Grandmama said that I could.”
Miss Pine put her hands on her hips. “No. Not now. Not today.”
Max was suddenly beside Annaliese.
“The horses . . . ,” she said to him, pointing toward the stable.
Max stole a glance at the sky. “No, Miss Pine is right. You’d better be getting along now. This storm is going to be a real humdinger.”
“I don’t care,” Annaliese said weakly.
“After the storm passes, I’ll be taking the sleighs out for test runs. You let me know, little missy, if you’d like to ride along.”
“How about tomorrow?” Annaliese put her mouth close to Throckmorton’s ear. “Then we can visit Great-Grandmama again.”
“I’ll phone you up,” Max promised, “as soon as the weather allows.”
As they made their way back to the manor house, frosty winds whipped across the meadow. Snowflakes whirled up, down, and around in a wild dance. A pine marten scurried across the quickly disappearing path.
Annaliese slipped and skidded in her mother’s boots. She tried stepping in the indentations made by Miss Pine’s footsteps, but she couldn’t keep up. Crossing the footbridge, she took a tumble.
Miss Pine tried to help her up, but then she lost her footing too. She landed on Throckmorton and all but knocked the stuffing right out of him.
“Those boots!” Miss Pine snapped, brushing the snow off her coat. “I should have never allowed you to wear them.”
Annaliese retrieved Throckmorton and gave him a good hard shake.
They forged ahead with the wind in their faces. Annaliese’s eyebrows and eyelashes crusted with ice crystals. In the distance Throckmorton heard the clinkety-clink, clinkety-clink of tire chains turning and churning in new snow.
“Look!” Annaliese pointed as Eastcliff came into view.
A caravan of snow-covered automobiles, like igloos with amber eyes, was crawling up the lane. Tethered to his dog house, Donald the Great Dane barked and strained against his chain.
In the circular drive in front of Eastcliff, Teddy and Evan stopped shoveling when they saw Annaliese and Miss Pine coming. Teddy waved and cried out, “The aunties are coming! The aunties are coming!”
“And the storm of the century!” Evan yelled.
Evan lobbed a snowball that landed close to Miss Pine’s feet. Miss Pine laughed and lobbed one back. Then Teddy got in the game. Soon balls of packed snow whizzed back and forth above Throckmorton’s head.
A snowball, hurled with blazing speed, came straight at Miss Pine. She ducked. Annaliese, who was behind her, must not have seen it coming.
The snowball smacked Annaliese’s face. The icy ball exploded.
She screamed. Her lip split open. A spray of scarlet red blood spurted from her nose.
Miss Pine lunged to Annaliese’s side. She pressed her handkerchief onto her nose. “Tip your head back. It’s a nosebleed. A split lip, too. Don’t worry—you’re going to be fine.”
Throckmorton felt himself slip from Annaliese’s grip, his body momentarily suspended in midair.
Oh-no-Oh-no-Oh-nooooo . . .
He glided through a swirl of giant snowflakes and landed in a snowy mound dotted with blood.
Throckmorton could hear a cacophony of car doors slamming and voices shouting, “What happened? What happened? Is she all right?”
And then . . .
A long cold stretch of silence.