MRS. DOCKER WAS SUCH a dear, frail, gentle old granny that it was impossible to enter her house in any way other than on tiptoes. She was quite deaf, and the silence in her head had gradually, over the years, spilled out to make a silence all around her—a silence in which the hall clock ticked, and mice scrambled in the walls, and everyone spoke in whispers—unless you spoke to Granny, that is. Then you shouted at the top of your lungs. This is what Walter did as soon as he found his grandmother in the kitchen, her deep-lined face bent close over an ironing board.
“Granny!”
“Oh!”
“It’s me, Walter!”
“Oh, Walter! You scared me. I was just ironing your shirts.”
“This is Georgina!”
“Who?”
“And Poco!”
“What?”
“My friends. You’ve met them before, remember?”
Granny peered cautiously around Walter. Suddenly her face brightened.
“Oh, Georgina. And Poco. How nice to see you. I was just ironing Walter’s shirts.”
They shook hands pleasantly. Mrs. Docker was an old-fashioned sort of granny who liked that sort of thing. She had wonderful manners, though, and was soon offering them lemonade and a jar full of homemade cookies. Then she went back to her ironing board, and for a few minutes the silence poured out of her again, and every creak and chew could be heard in the kitchen. Georgina and Poco looked nervously at Walter.
“Granny!” he shouted at last. They all jumped. More softly, but urgently, he said, “Granny, I want to see the big casserole dish.”
Something new in the tone of his voice must have come through to her, because the old woman set the iron down and stared at him. All at once, from beneath her oldness and wrinkles, a younger woman seemed to look out with anxious eyes.
“What do you want it for?” she asked. “It’s been stored away since your grandfather died.”
“Just to look.”
Granny gazed at him for a second more, then nodded. “Well, why not?” she muttered, more to herself than to him. “I’d like a look myself after all this time. It’s in the pantry,” she said, turning to Georgina, “pushed back a good way under the counter.”
The casserole was there, all right. From a distant corner came a glint, as if a large, mysterious animal had blinked in the dark. It was far too heavy for one person to pick up, or even to drag out into daylight. The efforts of all three children were necessary to hold the low pantry door open and to yank and pull the old cooking dish through. Poco lifted the huge ceramic cover off while the others hoisted the bottom part onto the kitchen table. Then she lowered the top back on and—there it stood.
“My casserole dish,” Walter announced proudly. “Not cracked or greasy at all. Just a little dusty.”
Creepy, Georgina might have said, but she kept quiet.
Walter brought a sponge from the sink and wiped the dish down a bit. The sides were a deep blue with wavy white lines painted around them. The cover matched, except that its lines were spokes that fanned out from the center knob. Walter lifted the top again and gazed inside for a long moment; then he turned to his grandmother, who seemed rooted in place.
“Who brought me, Granny?” he asked her in the quiet new tone that somehow she heard so well. “You’ll tell me, won’t you? I need to know.”
Perhaps it was having all of them there staring at her. Perhaps it was simply the casserole dish, sitting big and bold in her kitchen again after all the years gone by. Whatever did it, Granny Docker heard Walter so clearly that her hands flew up to cover her ears, as if they’d been pierced by the words he said. Then, slowly, she took her hands away.
“I made Chicken Wiggle that night,” she began, and it was a good thing the friends had been to see Miss Bone or they might have laughed and spoiled everything. Chicken Wiggle was not a dish anyone had heard of before.
“It’s a fine old recipe—boiled chicken, cream sauce, peas, and so on,” Granny said, “and I’d worked all afternoon cooking and boning. I was tired when we went to the church in the evening. Walter’s grandfather carried the casserole in. Single-handed, he did it! I remember so well.”
A fond look crept over her face, then changed to sadness. They all saw how she missed her husband. For a moment her silence threatened to pour out again, but Granny caught herself and pushed it back down.
“An ordinary church supper it was, nothing special,” she went on. “Or so we thought as we sat and ate. Later your grandfather and I went over everything, who was there that night, who might have known, who had the chance to make such a delivery. We were never able to come up with one clue.”
“What delivery?” Walter cut in. “Please tell what happened.”
“We went home early,” Granny answered. “Miss Emma Bone was to do the washing up. Next morning I was to go by the church and collect the empty dish. We’d arranged it all, but during the night …”
Granny paused and looked at Walter.
“During the night …” she began again, and got no further.
“During the night,” she said a third time, her voice beginning to tremble. “During the night … well, during the night, magic happened!”
“Magic?”
“You!” whispered Granny, touching him suddenly on his cheek. “You were there on the porch when I opened the door next morning, tucked down into this very dish. ‘Heavens!’ I cried, and nearly jumped out of my skin. Your grandfather rushed out. Then we saw the folded note. We burned it later, but I’ll never forget what it said:
For safety’s sake, tell no one how I came. Guard me and keep me. Walter is my name.”
Under his baseball cap, Walter had turned pale. If his friends had recently worried about the ghost world taking him over, now they were afraid of what the real world might do.
“Walter, don’t feel bad. We’ll be your friends, no matter who you are,” Poco said in his ear.
“After all, you could be a millionaire!” Georgina exclaimed. “Or a prince or the son of a famous person.”
Walter stared at Granny. “So you are not my real grandmother?” he asked, as if he had only now come to fully believe it.
She shook her head sadly.
“And you don’t know who my real mother was?
“No.”
“And my grandfather was never my real grandfather?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“And my parents were never killed in a terrible accident. You said that to keep me from knowing the truth,” Walter said, his voice rising.
“Well, yes, but …”
“And you never told me anything,” Walter began to shout. “Even when I asked. Even though it was my own special, one-of-a-kind life and you had no right to hide it from me all this time!”
Granny looked stricken. “I didn’t think of it that way,” she quavered. “You were so small. You needed protection. “‘Guard me,’ the note said. ‘For safety’s sake.’ We didn’t dare say a word. We pretended you were our grandson. No one ever came forward to claim you. We’d never been able to have a baby of our own. You came from the church like an answer from …”
But Walter could no longer listen to her reasons. He was angry, angrier than Georgina and Poco had ever seen him. The kitchen suddenly grew too tight to hold him. Like a small, furious rocket, he blasted into the living room, where he ran in two maddened circles around the couch. Then he exploded with a great cry of rage and ran out the front door into the yard. They heard his footsteps slam against the walk and fade down the street.
When he had gone, Granny sighed and went again into the quiet of her head. Her eyes became the old foggy ones they all knew, and her ears went as dead as if they were stuffed with cotton. She turned back to the ironing board and picked up her iron, and silence rose like thick, gray dust through the kitchen.
“Good-bye, Mrs. Docker,” Georgina murmured politely.
“Thank you for the cookies,” Poco said.
Granny did not look up, so they tiptoed through the house and let themselves softly out the front door.