The Doll In The Garden Part 5

Watching Miss Cooper, I tried to see the freckle-faced little girl Louisa had described, but all I could sec was the old woman she had become. Nothing of the child Louisa had known remained.

Suddenly Miss Cooper got to her feet. "You get my doll," she said to Mom. "And bring her down to me, or I'll have you out of my house tomorrow."

Refusing to let Mom help her, Miss Cooper opened the back door and began making her way down the steps.

I ran after her but stopped at the edge of the porch. Looking down on her, I could see her scalp through her wispy hair. "I have a message for you," I called softly, hoping Mom wouldn't hear me. "Louisa wants Anna Maria back. You Ye had her long enough."

Miss Cooper ignored me till she reached the ground. Scowling up at me, she said, "Either you're a lying little hussy or you're the devil's child." Then she vanished around the side of the house.

The screen door opened and shut behind me, and Mom touched my arm. "Maybe you'd better tell me what's going on," she said. "Do you have Miss Cooper's doll?"

As tears welled up in my eyes, I tried to wipe them away with the back of my hand. "It's not hers, Mom," I said. "It belongs to somcbody else."

"But you have it?"

I nodded.

"May I see it, please?"

I led Mom back to my room and carefully lifted Anna Maria out from under my sweaters. Wordlessly I laid her in Mom's arms.

"What a lovely doll," Mom said. "Did you really find her buried in the garden?"

"Kristi and I dug her up when we were trying to pull out a thistle. Its roots had gone down deep and it left a big hole in the ground. Kristi saw the corner of the box sticking out of the dirt."

"But why would Miss Cooper have buried her?"

"Because she stole her from somebody else a long time ago."

"How do you know that, Ashley?"

"I just do." I reached for Anna Maria but Mom cradled her against her chest and shook her head.

"I'm sorry, but that's not a good enough answer," she said.

Oscar rubbed against me, purring to get my attention. As I stroked his fur, I let the silence between Mom and me grow until it became impossible to speak. Too often, when I was little, I'd made up stories about fairies and elves and unicorns and sworn they were true. "True make-believe," Mom used to say. If I told her the truth now, she'd never believe me. In fact, more than likely she'd be angry. So, keeping my face hidden, I said nothing.

"You'll have to return the doll to Miss Cooper," Mom said after a while. "You found it on her property."

"No, please don't make me!" Pus.h.i.+ng Oscar aside, I threw my arms around Mom, begging her, in every way I knew, to understand.

Mom sat silently on the bed beside me for a few minutes. Finally she said, "Miss Cooper isn't very pleasant and you might not like her very much, but she's old and frail and we're living in her house."

She paused and rubbed my back gently. Outside I could hear Max barking and a lawnmower roaring into life.

"Why don't I take the doll to Miss Cooper?" Mom asked. "Then you won't have to face her."

Taking my silence for a yes, Mom stood up. With my eves squeezed shut to hold in my tears, I heard her open the back door and walk slowly down the steps. I hoped Krisd was watching. Maybe now that it was too late, she'd be sorry she had told Miss Cooper about Anna Maria.

Chapter 12.

Anna Maria Is Lost I STAYED IN my room reading until Mom called me for dinner.

"Not The Hobbit again," she said when I sat down at the table with my book. "This must be the fourth time you've read that."

"I like it," I told her without looking up from the page. Couldn't she tell I was angry with her?

For a few minutes the only sound was the clink of forks against our plates. Then Mom said, "Miss Cooper didn't even thank me for returning the doll. She just s.n.a.t.c.hed it and shut the door in my face."

"What did you expect?" I asked, still not looking at her.

"I know you wanted to keep the doll, Ashley," Mom said, "but surely you're mature enough to realize I had to give it to Miss Cooper."

Instead of looking at Mom, I turned a page, but a big tear plopped down on it, making the words blur. I sniffed and watched the tear flatten out and slowly sink into the paper. Bilbo had just left the s.h.i.+re to go on his journey with the dwarves, and I wanted to read about his adventures, not talk about Anna Maria.

"This whole business is very strange," Mom said. "I have a feeling you're keeping something from me." She leaned across the table and gently pulled my book away. "Please talk to me."

Again I felt the hated tears rise up and film my eves. Ignoring the hand Mom laid on mine, I shook my head. There was so much I wanted to tell her, I just didn't know where to begin.

"You've been so brave since Daddy died," Mom continued, "almost too brave. But you're not happy, not the way you were before."

"You're not happy either," I said. "You cry at night - I hear you - and you never laugh."

There was a long silence. The kitchen was slowly darkening and the things around us were losing their outlines and color. It was the time of day I always felt saddest, the gray time when nothing seemed real or solid.

I looked at Mom and she looked at me. Daddy was gone, gone forever from our world, but was there another world where he, like Louisa, still lived his life and made Mom and me laugh at his jokes and stories?

If only s...o...b..ll could take me to Daddy, I thought, back to the days before he got sick. But he was Louisa's cat, not Daddy's, and he could only take me to her.

The touch of Mom's hand on my shoulder brought me back to the present, to the table and my uneaten dinner. Even though I couldn't tell her why I was crying, she did her best to comfort me.

Long after I went to bed, I lay awake worrying about Louisa. She was counting on me to bring back her doll. Suppose something happened to her before I got Anna Maria away from Miss Cooper? She'd told me she would die before autumn, but I couldn't believe she really would. She was just a little girl. Surely she'd get better.

But I'd thought Daddy would get better, too, and he hadn't. I scowled at the photograph of him I kept on my dresser. In the moonlight, I could see the smile on his face. Turning my head, I tried not to let the terrible anger I felt overwhelm me. It wasn't his fault he died, I told myself. He hadn't done it on purpose; but sometimes I wanted to throw his picture against the wall and scream at him. He'd deserted Mom and me, he'd left us all alone and sad. He'd ruined everything.

When I fell asleep at last, I dreamed about Daddy. He was standing in the yard of our old house in Baltimore. The sun was s.h.i.+ning on the gra.s.s, and he was tan and healthy and he was laughing.

"Daddy, Daddy," I cried, running toward him. "I thought you were, I thought..." But I couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't tell him I thought he was dead.

He hugged me and laughed louder. Then he opened his s.h.i.+rt and showed me his chest. The scar from his operation was gone, his skin was smooth. "You see, Ash? I'm fine. Tell Mommy not to worry. Everything is going to be all right."

I woke up then, and the sunlit lawn was gone and Daddy was gone, and I was lying in the dark in a strange house far from Baltimore, a house Daddy had never seen. And outside in the night Louisa was crying, and there was nothing I could do to comfort her.

Chapter 13.

Kristi Comes Too AS SOON AS I finished breakfast, I ran next door. I was so angry at Kristi, I wasn't sure what I'd do when I saw her. Beat her up maybe. Throw her to Max and let him chew her to bits. Force her to get the doll back.

When I finally found her hiding in her treehouse, Kristi glared at me. "What are you doing on my property?" she asked fiercely. "I didn't invite you up here."

"Why did you tell Miss Cooper about Anna Maria?" I shouted at her. "She has her now, and we'll never see her again. I hope you're satisfied!"

"You shouldn't have taken her," Kristi said. "Anna Maria was supposed to be our secret. We were going to share her!"

"Well, n.o.body's going to share her now. She's gone for good, you little baby." I had to clench my fists to keep from slapping her.

"I'm not a baby!" Kristi crouched inches away from me, ready to defend herself. "And you better not hit me cither. Brian taught me how to fight, so you watch out what you say to me!"

"I didn't come over here to beat you up," I said. "I just want Anna Maria back!"

"I want her too!" Kristi glared at me, her eyes as hard as little stones. "You're the one who took her and hid her in your house. It serves you right Miss Cooper has her!"

"You don't even know what you've done, do you?" I took a deep breath and decided to tell Kristi everything. She'd be sorry then, wouldn't she?

"It's not for myself I want Anna Maria," I told her. "For your information, she doesn't belong to me or you or Miss Cooper. She belongs to a little girl named Louisa who used to live over there." I waved my hand toward the field, and Kristi stared at the empty lot.

"What are you talking about?" she said scornfully. "There's no house over there. Never has been."

"Just shut up and listen, will you? What I'm going to tell you sounds really weird, but it's true, I swear it." I paused and watched Miss Cooper come outside with Max. She sat down on her porch, opened a book, and started reading. There was no sign of Anna Maria.

"Remember what you said about s...o...b..ll being a ghost cat?" I asked.

Kristi sighed. I could tell she didn't want to believe a thing I said. "Yes, but I didn't really mean it," she muttered.

"Well," I said, "you were right."

That got Kristi's attention, and she actually listened to every word I said about s...o...b..ll and Louisa. "So you see why you shouldn't have told Miss Cooper we found Anna Maria?" I asked at the end of my story. "I was going to give her back to Louisa and now, thanks to you, I can't."

"Even if you're telling the truth, which I doubt, that old witch won't let us have Anna Maria." Krisd leaned over the edge of the platform and watched Miss Cooper get up and go back into her house.

As the door thunked shut behind the old woman, s...o...b..ll appeared in the shade on the edge of the garden. When he approached the tree, I turned to Kristi.

"Suppose s...o...b..ll takes us both to Louisa. Will you believe me then?"

Krisd stared at the cat as I started climbing down the ladder. By the time I reached the ground, she was right behind me. "If I go, will you hold my hand?" she asked me.

Although I was still angry, I took her hand. I wanted her to come, to see Louisa herself, to feel really bad about what she'd done.

Together we ran across Miss Cooper's lawn and followed s...o...b..ll through the hedge. As before, the sunlight dimmed, and I s.h.i.+vered as I found myself standing once more in the twilight, staring at Louisa's house. It had happened again; I hadn't imagined it. My own world had vanished, and all I could do was hope s...o...b..ll would lead us back.

Kristi clung to me, and I could feel her trembling. "I'm scared," she whispered. "Let's go home, Ashley."

"First we have to see Louisa," I said firmly.

Kristi glanced over her shoulder at the hedge behind us. Like me, she saw Miss Cooper's house as it had looked before the porch and stairs to our apartment had been built.

"My tree house is gone," Kristi whimpered. "There's no tree at all, and it's getting dark. Are you sure my mother's there?"

"I've done this before," I told her.

"Why is it so dark? I can see the moon."

"Time is different here," I said, but I wondered myself why it was darker than it had been yesterday.

"I'm cold." Kristi's hand sought mine again as s...o...b..ll brushed against us. "Can't we go home now? I don't like this place."

"You have to meet Louisa." I gripped her hand tightly to keep her from trying to bolt back through the hedge.

"I'm afraid of ghosts." Kristi was close to tears.

"Louisa's not a ghost," I said. "When we hear her crying at night in our world, she's a ghost, I think. But here in her world we're the ghosts, not Louisa."

"You're real," Kristi insisted, "and so am I. I can feel you and you can feel me. Besides you have to be dead to be a ghost, and we're not dead."

s...o...b..ll meowed then and circled our legs. I picked him up and handed him to Kristi. "He's real, isn't he?"

"He feels real," she said, but she put s...o...b..ll down quickly. He meowed again and nudged us toward the path.

"Come on," I said. "He wants to take us to Louisa."

"You won't tell her I gave Anna Maria to Miss Cooper, will you?" Kristi asked, still hanging back.

I shook my head and followed s...o...b..ll down the shadowy path. Reluctantly, Kristi stumbled along behind me. I knew she was still scared, but I wasn't sorry for her. If she hadn't been such a tattletale, I'd have Anna Maria in my arms right now. Instead, I was returning to Louisa empty handed, and Carrie was once again in possession of the doll.

Chapter 14.

Please Give Her Back RELUCTANTLY, KRISTI let me lead her down the path to the bench under the dogwood tree. When Louisa saw us coming, she stood up slowly.

"Who have you brought with you?" She peered into the shadows behind me. "Is it Carrie?"