Chapter Thirty-Two

THE CALENDAR TURNED TO OCTOBER, and Celia’s mama made plans without ever asking Celia’s opinion.

Each night they listened to Miss Lill’s radio—Dick Tracy and The Lone Ranger—before tuning in the news. Reports from the outside world sometimes confounded Celia, but Miss Lill explained all she could. The latest was that children in Moscow were working to enforce air raid precautions—children! In occupied areas children, even young ones, gathered intelligence and secretly carried messages. Older children fought Germans alongside their mothers and partisans.

In comparison, Celia knew that her life in No Creek was safe, tame, and boring. Still, she’d sooner deliver secret messages to cutthroat partisans in the woods than do what her mama had in mind.

To compensate for all that lay ahead, Celia packed the new Nancy Drew mystery Miss Lill had ordered for the library. Her mama insisted she pack clean socks and underwear for overnight.

Celia wasn’t sure why she and Chester needed to scrub from head to toe and wear their Sunday best to visit their daddy in jail. After all, he’d be wearin’ jailbird clothes, Celia was certain, and she doubted, after Miss Lill told her the plight of Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, that any warden insisted on baths more than once a week. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to see her daddy, but her mama said he longed to see her and Chester, and that it was important so they wouldn’t forget him.

Except for the photograph her mama kept on her nightstand, Celia would have forgotten what he looked like, what he smelled like, even the color of his eyes. It wasn’t as though he’d been gone a short time for a family visit; it was as though he was long gone and Celia, for most intents and purposes, had written him out of her life.

Life as Fillmore Percy’s daughter was humiliating at best. She was the girl mothers didn’t want their daughters to sit with at lunch or bring home for overnights. Life at Garden’s Gate with Miss Lill was not only a high step from where they’d lived before, but a genuine leap up the community ladder. Celia had no desire to return to the way things had been.

But on her last visit, her mama had applied for and received special permission for the children to see their daddy. “It’s a next step in his rehabilitation and an opportunity to begin to reestablish our family bonds. It’s been over a year since either of you’ve seen him. It’s time.”

Celia wondered if her daddy had changed at all. Reformed was her new word. She wasn’t counting on her daddy being reformed.

“Lilliana, there’s cold chicken in the icebox and tomato aspic. There’s a slice of apple pie and a little cheese in—”

“Gladys, I won’t starve before you get back, and truth to tell, I do know how to cook. Not like you, granted, but I do, and I won’t mind having a go in the kitchen. If I don’t soon, I’m bound to forget how.”

“I very much doubt that, but I know what you mean. It’s good to keep your hand in. We’ll be back tomorrow night. I believe we can just catch the last train.”

“Just you take care of one another. Take my flashlight. I’ll leave the porch light on tomorrow night, and I’ll be glad to see you back, safe and sound.” Miss Lill ruffled Chester’s head of thick dark-brown hair and smiled at Celia. “Enjoy the train ride, Celia, and don’t keep your nose in that book the whole time. The leaves are glorious now. You’ll want to watch out the window.”

“I will!” piped Chester, not to be outdone by Celia. But Celia ignored him.

They were nearly out the front door when Celia heard her mama turn and whisper to Miss Lill, “Are you sure you feel safe here, all alone?”

“I’ll be fine. Stop fussing. There’s been no trouble since Ruby Lynne stopped teaching Marshall.”

“But we’ve been a house full. I don’t like you stayin’ in this big ole house all alone.”

“Aunt Hyacinth did it for years and years.”

“She wasn’t young and good-looking. She taught every hooligan in No Creek when they were boys, so they respected her, and she didn’t go about stirring up trouble. You just have a knack for it.”

Miss Lill smiled good-naturedly, if a little nervously. “I’ll be fine. I always am.”

Celia knew that was a lie.