This time there were two of them on the steps, under a fall of April sunshine. Miss Sarah wore jeans and one of those loose sweaters that manages to suggest how succulent is the flesh it conceals. The young man wore slacks and a crew-neck sweater. I wondered how he earned his living, to be so casual in the middle of a Tuesday morning.
Miss Sarah stood up, ostensibly to greet me and offer to take one of the grocery bags I carried. “I’ve explained everything, Gregor. He knows I’m your sister.”
The young man stood.
I wished I could sit down, somewhere solitary, to ingest this piece of information.
He held out a forthright hand and smiled. “Brad Wycliffe.”
I shifted the bag, shook his hand.
“I apologize for what I said last night. And thought. Apology accepted?”
“Accepted,” I said. Miss Sarah, taking the bag from me, looked urgently into my face.
“Although I still think she shouldn’t be living here, in Teddy Mondleigh’s house.”
“Mr. Mondleigh would never,” I assured him.
Miss Sarah stood between us, hugging the grocery bag, beaming from one of us to the other. Brad Wycliffe had three or four inches on me, a lean man, and young. He had an open face, wholesome, the bones squaring it off, a firm mouth, a firm handshake. If she had been my sister, he was just the kind of young man I’d have liked her to have taken up with. Four-square, reliable.
“Gregor would poison his soup or something if he tried anything, and he knows it,” Miss Sarah said.
“And I also admire the way you’ve taken care of Sarah, since your parents died,” Mr. Wycliffe added.
I didn’t dare say anything.
“See? I have told him all about us. Even about how I’m studying dance.”
“Even about dance? Well, I’m glad that’s cleared up.”
She smiled happily at me.
“Would you care to come inside?” I asked the young man.
He shook his head, emphatically. “Into Mondleigh’s house? Not a chance. I’ll pick you up at noon tomorrow, Sarah?”
“Yes.” Her cheeks were pink.
“Until tomorrow then,” he said. “Gregor,” and he shook my hand again.
“See you,” she called after him, watching his long stride, watching until he had turned the corner and moved out of sight.
That scene played out, she let me into the house. As I followed her into the kitchen, I debated whether I should say anything, and if so, what. She put the grocery bag down on the table. I set mine beside it.
“What kind of dance are you studying, miss? In case he asks.”
Miss Sarah giggled, did a turn around the room, concluding with a court curtsey at my feet. She raised her head to look at me. “Ballet. We’re working here to pay for the lessons. Do you mind?”
A pretty black pot myself, I couldn’t scold, but I could warn her. “You’d be wiser to tell him the truth.”
“Isn’t he wonderful? Did you notice his eyes? And he has a great laugh, but you haven’t heard it.”
Nothing I said would have gotten through to her.
“He didn’t want to come back here,” she told me. “He didn’t want to see me again. He likes me, but he doesn’t want to. At first it was because of what he thought, and now because he thinks I’m not…in his class. But I think that’s why he likes me too, because he doesn’t want to.”
She moved to give me room to work.
“He says Carlie is a real mess, and he’s right, she is. I’ll tell him the truth when the time is right. Do you think he’ll think I’m after his money? I bet he might, and if he still…likes me, in spite of everything…” The vision occupied her for a minute. “I think I’ll wear a denim jumper. That’s the kind of thing I’d wear, isn’t it? I’ll have to get one, this afternoon, with a turtleneck and flats. Where does Theo keep his old yearbooks, Gregor?”