After they finished eating their Chinese dinners, with plastic forks, straight out of the partitioned foil containers they’d been delivered in, Eliza and KayKay set about making up beds and unpacking towels and toiletries upstairs. Poppie hooked up the VCR to the television for Janie’s VHS tapes and plugged in the beta cassette playback deck Eliza had for screening professional tapes. It was nine o’clock when Eliza came downstairs to summon Janie for bedtime. She found her daughter sitting on her grandfather’s lap, both of them sound asleep in the den while Free Willy played away on the TV screen.
Paul, his mouth slightly open, snored lightly and did not stir as Eliza gingerly lifted the child from him. As she slowly mounted the stairs, carrying Janie in her arms, she passed Katharine coming down. They smiled and winked at each other and Katharine reached out to softly pat her granddaughter’s cheek.
Choosing not to wake the child by undressing her, Eliza laid Janie in her twin bed in her T-shirt and shorts and covered her with the 101 Dalmatians comforter they had brought from the apartment. As always, the sight of her sleeping little girl tucked in snug beneath the covers made Eliza inhale with the emotions she felt. Love—profound love and gratitude that she had been blessed with this perfect little girl. If Janie was all right, nothing else really mattered.
She thought of Samuel Morton and wondered how he was bearing the loss of his Sarah.
Zippy. Where was Zippy? Eliza glanced around the room. If Janie woke up in her new room during the night, she would be reaching out for her worn, comforting, stuffed monkey. Where had she seen it last?
Out by the pool this afternoon.
She pulled down the window shades that had been left behind with the house and tiptoed out of the bedroom, leaving the door ajar so light from the hallway would ensure that Janie’s room was not completely dark. Walking down the hall, she approached the room Katharine and Paul would be sleeping in and, hearing their voices, poked her head through the opened door to say good night.
Paul, sleepy-eyed, beckoned her to enter. Eliza went over to each of them and hugged them tight.
“I don’t know how much I can ever thank you both, for everything.”
“Don’t thank us, honey,” said Paul. “We want to be here. You and Janie are everything to us. Don’t you know that by now?”
“Of course I know it, but not every set of grandparents or in-laws are like the two of you. I just want to make sure you know how much I appreciate you . . . how much I love you.” Eliza’s eyes welled with the start of tears, but she blinked them back. The last thing she wanted was for Katharine and Paul to be any more worried about her than they were.
“The worst is over now, dear,” said Katharine soothingly. “You’re in your new house now. And this will be a wonderful place for Janie to grow up. Tomorrow we’ll unpack and get everything stowed away in the kitchen. We’ll put out your pictures and arrange your books in the cases in the den. Before you know it, we’ll have this place feeling like home.”
Eliza nodded and closed the door behind her as she left them, envying them for a moment that they would soon be climbing into bed, together. She wished she wasn’t going to be sleeping alone again tonight and, tiredly, she thought of Mack. She considered calling him, but it was the middle of the night in England. He knew she was moving. Why hadn’t he called to give a little moral support?
Don’t be angry, she reasoned with herself as she headed toward the master bedroom, eager to shed her clothes and step into a hot shower. You don’t know. He might have been sent out on a story and had no chance to call.
Eliza was pulling her shirt over her head when she remembered.
Zippy.
Back on went the shirt, and she hurried barefoot downstairs and out the kitchen door to the backyard. It took her just a few minutes to find the stuffed chimpanzee in the grass behind the pool.
The kitchen door was left open the entire time.