Wednesday, December 3, 1947
WENDY KEELING WAS AS HAPPY as she could ever remember being in her mostly unhappy life. She had ushered the children outside after they had put their lunch things away, and she could hear them now, shrieking in the snow, releasing all that pent-up animal energy they had accumulated during the morning. She would try to get them all on to arithmetic in the afternoon. She would start with a puzzle they could tackle in pairs. She walked up and down the short rows to make sure all the crumbs and jam smudges were off the desks, checked inside to make sure no one had hidden a sandwich away, and then looked at the clock. They had five minutes still before they had to come in and remove their piles of now no doubt soaking outer clothes.
Taking up a piece of chalk, she drew six glasses on the board and indicated with a line that the first three were filled. Then she went outside holding the school bell and rang it, calling, “It’s time, ladies and gentlemen!”
Under the cries of protest, she stood on the porch, her arms crossed in front of her, looking benignly implacable and saying nothing. Even after only a few days, they knew the routine. Line up in front of the stairs and be allowed in quickly. The door was kept closed to keep the heat in until they were all ready to come in at once.
“What are we doing this afternoon, miss?” asked Rafe, one of Angela Bertolli’s boys, turning to give a little shove to someone trying to usurp his first-place spot in line.
“Rafe!” Miss Keeling gave a warning note, and then smiled. “It’s a great afternoon for arithmetic. Okay, everyone present and correct?” Seeing that the jostling group contained the number of students she expected, thirteen, Miss Keeling swung open the door, and watched the muffled group clamber up the stairs and into the classroom. She turned and put her head in the door. “Coats and scarves up! In your desks by the time I turn around.”
She looked again at the now-quiet yard, with its trampled snow and two nascent snowmen, and was about to come in when she saw a red knitted scarf hanging on a branch of a short spruce tree at the south side of the school. Edith. Her granny had knitted it for her, Edith had told her. She was about to call the girl to come and take responsibility for her scarf, when she thought better of disrupting the complications of removing outer clothes and rubber boots. She closed the door and went down the four stairs and stepped into the snow, wishing immediately she had her rubbers, and made for the scarf.
When she saw the black car, parked halfway down the hill, the clouds of white coming out of the exhaust, she frowned. The car was not moving, but the engine was running. Sunlight reflected off the front windshield, showing only the snow and trees around it, making it seem, she thought whimsically, as if she could see into its mind. Who was in it? It was almost as if someone were watching her, or the school, or more worryingly, the students. But who? She didn’t recognize the car. She was going to wave, but then thought, Someone has come up the wrong road and is even now looking at a map. If that person was lost, she’d not be much use to them. She’d only come to the area a short time ago herself.
Even with the door closed, she could hear the banging and laughing of the children in the little kitchen room, boots being pulled off and hurled under the coat-rack bench, and she turned back to retrieve the scarf. When she looked down the road again, she saw that the car was slowly beginning to back away. Then, in some trick of the light, the windshield stopped reflecting the peaceful world it looked out on, and she could see, for the briefest moment, the shape of the head inside turned away to look out the back window, right arm over the seat, gloved left hand on the steering wheel, as the driver backed the car nonchalantly down the hill.
She lurched up the steps, not daring to look again, some atavistic superstition urging her to ignore what she had seen. It was a bad reflection, it was nothing, a lost stranger now pulling silently back to the main road. Do not look, it seemed to be saying, because looking will make it real. But competing with that desperate hope was the cold hard nub of the truth, deep in her gut. It had been too good to be true. Somehow, they had found her.