CHAPTER 29

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The Last Day

The next morning, Crystal had a great deal of business with the post office. There were twenty or thirty boxes of stuff she’d decided to save from Greenhaven that had to be shipped back to her house in New Jersey, so much of it that she couldn’t fit it all in the car at once. It took her three trips.

While Crystal was at the post office, Nickie roamed around the empty, gleaming house. She went into every room and said goodbye to it—the front parlor, the dining room, the cleaned-up kitchen, the bedrooms, all swept and empty. In the west bedroom, she waited to see if she might feel a trace of the sadness that had washed over her great-grandfather, the grief left there from all those years ago. But all she felt was her own sadness at leaving this house behind.

Finally she went up to the third floor. Here the two trunk rooms were still crammed with the things of the past, waiting for Crystal’s decisions. The nursery was empty, but as she stood by the window seat, she could almost feel the presence of the beings she’d encountered there—the letter writers and journal keepers, those who had taken pictures and had their pictures taken, those who had made scrapbooks and saved postcards and lived their lives in this place. And, with an ache, she felt the bouncing, wriggling, eager spirit of Otis.

Down below, the doorbell rang. She was the only one here, so she’d have to answer it. She went downstairs to the front hall, and when she opened the door, there stood Amanda with her suitcase. She looked terrible. Her hair was falling out of its barrettes, her skin was broken out. On her face was the look of someone expecting to be shot in the next three seconds.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Nickie said.

“No, you have to let me,” said Amanda. Her mouth wrinkled as if she was going to cry. “I have to tell you something.”

“You killed Otis!” Nickie said. She swung the door hard, but Amanda put her hand out to stop it and took a step in through the doorway.

“But listen,” she said, and now she really was starting to cry. “I thought it was right. It was a sacrifice! It was so hard to do it, but Mrs. Beeson said the harder the better. If it’s real, real hard, you know it’s right! That’s what she said.” She looked imploringly at Nickie, but Nickie glowered at her. “And,” Amanda added, “everybody else was givin’ up their dogs, so I thought it must be right.”

Nickie turned her back on Amanda, but she didn’t try again to close the door. She went into the front parlor and sat down on the bare floor with her back to the wall beneath the windows. Amanda followed.

“I wish I hadn’t-a done it,” she said. “I been thinkin’ about him all this time, out there in the snow.” She actually said “snow-ow-ow,” because a sob came up inside the word. She lifted up the hem of her sweater to wipe her nose.

“Well, how come you changed your mind?” Nickie said.

“Because I couldn’t stop thinking about Otis,” said Amanda, “and because I found Mrs. Beeson’s list.”

“What list?”

Amanda sat down on the floor facing Nickie. She took off her jacket—the sun was warming the room now—and Nickie saw that she looked thinner than ever. “It was this piece of paper in Althea’s kitchen,” Amanda said. “A little edge of it stickin’ out from under the telephone book. So I looked at it. I shouldn’t’ve. But I did.”

“So what was it?” Nickie kept her voice cold and hard so Amanda wouldn’t think they were friends. But she was interested.

“Names,” said Amanda. “About fifty of ’em. At the top of the list it said ‘Sinners’—just that one word. Then there was names, and by each name a couple words. Like ‘Chad Morris, defiant, surly.’ And ‘Lindabell Truefoot, sluttish.’ And ‘Morton Wilsnap, queer.’ And then ‘Amanda Stokes.’ ”

“You?” Nickie forgot to stay cold and hard, she was so surprised.

“Yeah. And after my name it said, ‘disobedient.’ How could that be true?” Amanda’s voice rose in a wounded wail. “I always did every single thing she told me to do.”

“You sure did,” said Nickie, going hard again.

“Except for one thing, which was I bought a couple of those romance books I like to read. She found ’em and scolded me. They’d sway me in evil directions, she said.”

“What’s supposed to happen to the people on this list?” Nickie said.

“Bracelets. It said that at the bottom. They’re all supposed to get those bracelets. Even me!” Amanda crossed her arms over her thin chest. “Well, I’m not havin’ one. I’m leavin’ on my own, goin’ to my cousin in Tennessee. I don’t much like her, but it’s better than being here. But I had to come to you first and tell you I’m sorry. About Otis. I wish I hadn’t-a done it, I really do.”

She looked so miserable that Nickie almost felt sorry for her. But she thought of Otis out there in the melting snow, his feet wet and cold, his belly empty, and she tried to steel herself against Amanda.

“So do you forgive me?” Amanda said.

“If you could get Otis back, I might,” said Nickie.

“But I can’t. I’m catchin’ a bus in twenty minutes.” Amanda actually clasped her hands together and held them up under her chin like someone in an old-fashioned picture. “Please,” she said.

And Nickie remembered that she, too, had wanted to do whatever Mrs. Beeson told her, that she, too, had wanted very badly to be right. And also that she’d been just a hair away from pushing Amanda down the stairs. So she looked at Amanda’s tear-stained face and hauled up forgiveness out of herself. “All right,” she said. “I guess I forgive you.” It was a grudging forgiveness but the best she could do.

Amanda sprang up. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m goin’ now.”

“Right now?” said Nickie. “You mean you left the Prophet by herself?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Amanda said. “They’ll find someone else to take care of her.”

“But you left her alone? She’s alone right now?”

“She is, but it’s okay. She’s just sleeping.” Amanda picked up her suitcase and went to the door. “Bye,” she said, and she walked away.

Nickie watched as she went down the sidewalk, moving with a sideways tilt because of the suitcases. And as soon as Amanda was out of sight, she threw on her jacket and dashed out the door, heading for the Prophet’s house.