Christmas Bells (11 page)

Soon after Felton departed, Henry was sinking into a doze when he realized that Annie had reappeared in the doorway. Her face was streaked with tears.

“Dear little one,” he said, holding out his bandaged arms to her. “Come. Come to Papa.” Obediently she entered the room. He patted the bed, and she drew closer, but would not sit. “I'm getting better day by day. Does my appearance distress you?”

She nodded, and then she looked at the floor and shook her head.

“What is it, then, my dear little chick?”

“I killed Mama.”

Henry felt as if he had been struck a blow to the heart with a blacksmith's hammer. “Oh, my precious girl, you did no such thing.”

“I did,” she sobbed. “I did.”

“Annie, darling, it was an accident. A terrible accident. The candle—”

“It wasn't the candle. It was me.”

He stared at her, wanting to draw her to him but powerless to move. “What do you mean?”

“Mama was cutting Edie's hair.” Annie gulped air, trembling. “She folded the paper and put the curl inside. She got out the candle. I was playing with the box of parlor matches—opening the box, closing it. One fell out onto the floor. I went to pick it up,
but it rolled under Mama's skirts and I don't know if she stepped on it or if I struck it on the floor but it lit, and then Mama's dress caught fire and she burned up and she's dead and I killed her.”

Unable to speak, Henry held out his arms to his weeping child. She came to him, and he ignored the sharp, stabbing pains to his chest and arms as he enfolded her in his embrace. “It was an accident,” he said in a voice that would allow no argument. “You are not responsible. You did not kill your mother. It was an accident.”

Annie flung her arms around him and sobbed as if her heart had shattered from grief and guilt and would never be restored.

Later that day, he woke up from a fitful sleep just as Miss Davies passed quietly by his door, which had been left ajar. He called to her, and when she entered, he asked, “Is it true that a candle ignited my wife's dress?”

“Why, yes, Mr. Longfellow,” she replied, puzzled, clasping her hands together at her waist.

“You're certain?”

“I myself heard the police captain tell Mr. Appleton so.”

Henry inhaled deeply and sank back against his pillow. “Thank you, Miss Davies.”

She nodded and departed, leaving the door ajar exactly as it had been before.

A few days after Annie's strange, disordered confession, Henry was able to rise from bed and take a few hesitant steps around his bedchamber. Soon thereafter, he attempted the stairs, and was able to sit up in the parlor. It was decided that he and the children would go to Nahant as soon as he was able, to convalesce and to find, if they could, some comfort for their broken hearts.

The day before they were to depart, Henry went to his library to search for a particular volume of Italian poetry he wanted to take on the journey. Suddenly, a few scattered objects on a table
caught his eye—a candle, a slender bar of wax, a box of parlor matches, a piece of paper folded upon a golden curl.

Henry froze in place, scarcely able to breathe. Then he forced himself to cross the room, to examine the artifacts of his beloved wife's last day.

The folded paper had not been sealed. The slender bar of wax was whole, untouched. The candle had never been lit, its wick pure white without the slightest char.

Clenching his jaw to hold back a howl of anguish, Henry struck a match, lit the candle, melted the wax, and sealed his daughter's golden curl within the paper Fanny's gentle hands had folded.

The Choirgirl's Tale

Charlotte first heard of the terrible tragedy that had struck the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's family when she was on a third-grade class field trip to the museum at Longfellow House. More than 150 years before, Mrs. Longfellow had died after her dress had caught fire in the library, and Mr. Longfellow had burned himself very badly trying to put out the flames.

“I don't see any burn marks,” her friend Emily had whispered, frowning skeptically at the library floor as the tour guide described the artifacts on display.

“Mr. Longfellow probably cleaned them up,” Charlotte had whispered back. “Would
you
want to see, every single day, burn marks on your floor from the fire that killed your wife?”

Emily had recoiled, shaking her head, and she might have replied except at that moment they had noticed Mrs. Hayes raising her eyebrows at them. Immediately Emily's expression had gone blandly innocent and she had gazed at the tour guide with rapt interest, but Charlotte had felt herself flush with shame. She had not spoken another word for the rest of the tour, and
afterward, as they were boarding the bus to return to school, Charlotte had hung back so she could speak to Mrs. Hayes alone.

“Charlotte, it's all right,” her teacher had replied, taken aback by her profuse apologies. “You and Emily weren't talking that loudly, and I trust you were discussing something about Longfellow.”

“We were, really.”

“As I thought.” Mrs. Hayes had smiled and patted Charlotte on the shoulder. “You're a good girl and an excellent student. Please don't make more of this than I intended. We all need a little reminder about the rules now and then.”

Miserable, Charlotte had nodded rather than blurt out that she didn't need to be reminded, not usually, not ever. No one knew the rules better or followed them more earnestly than she did. Her parents knew it, her friends understood it, the bullies teased her about it, and her teachers relied upon it. Everyone who knew Charlotte knew that she was trustworthy, honest, and responsible.

At least everyone had known that, until recently, until Charlotte had wound up in Mrs. Collins's sixth-grade English class and the reputation she had carefully protected since kindergarten had been shattered with one accusation.

Charlotte knew, deep down, that the trouble with the stern, mistrustful Mrs. Collins was not, as her mother would say if she knew about it, the end of the world. It was not a disaster. Alex almost burning down the neighborhood—
that
was a disaster. If her dad got wounded in Afghanistan, that would be one too. Mrs. Longfellow's suffering and death, and the terrible grief that had descended upon her husband and children—disastrous, every bit of it. Charlotte's failure and shame were nothing in comparison.

And yet her heart ached anyway.

The loss of his wife had broken Longfellow's heart and aged him almost overnight. Charlotte and Emily and thousands of
tourists could not miss the difference between his image in photos and portraits from before Fanny Longfellow's death—handsome, dark-haired, elegant—and those that followed less than a year after, in which he appeared white-haired, stoop-shouldered, thickly bearded, deeply wrinkled, and utterly weary.

Sometimes Charlotte wondered if her mom would grow old overnight if something terrible happened to her dad in Afghanistan, but the thought was too upsetting to contemplate, so she quickly shoved it aside whenever it arose, unpleasant and sinister, from the darkest recesses of her imagination where nightmares lurked.

Charlotte remembered precisely the last time they had been able to speak with him because Mrs. Collins had announced the Christmas story contest the day before their scheduled chat, and Charlotte was eager to tell him about it. But the next day, her mom couldn't get him online at the proper time, and after testing the connections and emailing back and forth with some tech-services guy somewhere between Boston and Kabul, she had told Charlotte and Alex that they wouldn't be able to chat with their father after all. She shook her head slightly as she gave them the bad news, her brow furrowing, which told Charlotte that their mom was puzzled but not worried.

“That's not fair,” protested Alex. “Dad said we could, and we waited patiently.”

Charlotte agreed, but she knew that whining to their mother wouldn't help. “Can we try again tomorrow?”

“I'll see,” their mother replied. “It can't hurt to ask.”

The next day, their mother informed them that she had been in touch with the people in charge, and they had told her that their Internet was down and they did not know when the problem would be resolved. This time her face was pale and her mouth was strangely pinched as she delivered the bad news, but while Charlotte paused to wonder about that, Alex blurted, “It
wasn't our fault we missed our turn, so they should let us go to the front of the line as soon as they're back online.”

“That's right,” said Charlotte. “Did you tell them that?”

“I did,” said their mother carefully, “but other families before us had the same problem, so we have to go after them. We may not be able to talk to your father for quite some time.”

“Wait a minute,” said Alex slowly. “Does this mean we won't get to talk to Dad on Thanksgiving?”

Charlotte could not believe Alex had figured that out before she did. “Well?” she demanded shrilly, turning an accusing look upon their mother. “Does it?”

“I'm so very, very sorry.” Her gaze dropped to her hands in her lap, and as she turned her wedding ring around her finger, Charlotte realized that she was fighting back tears, and she felt horrible for causing them. Quickly she apologized, and Alex surprisingly did the same, and their mother nodded wordlessly and held out her arms to them and they all clung to each other tightly.

At that moment, Charlotte resolved that she would try even harder not to upset their mother. Her mom missed her dad too. She wanted to chat with him as much as they did. Complaining wouldn't make the Internet expert work any faster. Charlotte would have to be patient, and she would have to remind Alex to be patient too.

“It's so hard to be patient,” she confessed to Emily over lunch on the last day of school before Christmas. “I was really counting on talking to my dad at Thanksgiving, and when I couldn't I just wanted to cry, but I didn't want to make my mom sad, so I had to pretend that I was fine. ‘Oh, this turkey is so good! Yum! Pumpkin pie! Sure, I haven't talked to my dad in forever, but who cares when I have all this food to distract me?'”

Emily shook her head, sympathetic. Charlotte trusted Emily with all her secrets. Of all her friends, only Emily knew how long
it had been since Charlotte had heard from her father. Only Emily had seen the nasty note Mrs. Collins had scrawled at the bottom of her Christmas story. And only Emily had heard Charlotte say that the only good thing—and it wasn't even that good—about the broken Internet in Afghanistan was that she could delay telling her father about her disgrace.

“Charlotte?”

“What?”

Emily drew in a breath and carefully asked, “Are you sure the Internet's broken in Afghanistan?”

“It's not broken in the entire country. Just where my dad is.”

“I know that's what you mean, but . . . are you sure that's true?”

Charlotte studied her, uncomprehending. “What do you mean? My mom says it's broken.”

“I know but . . .” Emily looked pained. “Do you think it is, really?”

“You mean you think she might be making it up?”

“I don't know. Maybe?”

“That's impossible. My mom hates lying. She never lies. Why would she lie?”

“Don't get upset,” Emily begged. “I just—it was just—I don't know. I'm just saying, it's really, really weird that no one over there has been able to fix it yet. I've seen the commercials for the Army. Don't they give the soldiers lots of training in electronics and computers and stuff like that?”

“They know how to fix it. My mom says they're probably just waiting for a part to be delivered or something.” As Charlotte heard herself say the words, she realized how ridiculous they sounded. “Oh, my gosh. I'm so stupid.”

“I shouldn't have said anything—”

“I am
so
incredibly stupid. I'm the stupidest person in the sixth grade. No, in our entire school. Our entire school
district
.”

“No, you're not.” Emily touched her arm. “Charlotte, I'm so sorry—”

“You don't need to apologize.
You're
not the liar.” The bell clanged. Charlotte bolted to her feet and seized her lunch tray. “I can't believe my mother thought I wouldn't figure it out.”

She might not have, if not for Emily. Would her mother have told her eventually? It was so insulting to be treated like a little kid—

Then her heart plummeted. She gasped and stopped in the middle of the cafeteria so abruptly that a seventh-grade boy bumped into her and knocked over her carton of milk. As it dribbled onto the floor, onto her cute, retro navy-blue Mary Janes, as Emily scrambled for napkins, Charlotte was struck by the only question that mattered.

Why had her mother lied?

Had her father been injured? Before he left, he had assured her and Alex that he would be in a safe place fixing broken trucks and equipment far from any actual fighting, but later, when they were alone and Charlotte had pressed him, he had admitted that accidents happened and the base wasn't invulnerable. Was he, even at that moment, lying in a hospital bed somewhere? Was he— Could he be—

The thought was so horrible she could not let her mind hold it.

At last the school day ended. When her mother pulled up to the curb in their blue minivan, Charlotte scrutinized her through the window, hard, but nothing in her mother's expression suggested terrible grief, just the usual worry and strain. Maybe a bit more than usual. Charlotte opened the door and slid into the front seat, dropping her heavy, overstuffed backpack onto the floor between her legs.

“Hi, sweetie.” Her mother leaned over to give her a swift kiss on the cheek, which Charlotte tolerated in silence. Her mother threw her a quizzical glance as she merged into traffic. “Rough day?”

The car was overheated; Charlotte loosened her scarf. “Same as usual.”

“How was English class?”

Charlotte felt her stomach lurch. “Fine. Why do you ask?”

“I don't know. It's always been your favorite subject, but you haven't mentioned anything lately about books you've read or papers you've written.”

“It's not my favorite anymore.” Feigning boredom, Charlotte slouched down in her seat, heart pounding. Her secret was apparently still safe.

Before long they pulled into the elementary school parking lot and spotted Alex on the snow-covered lawn, goofing around in the center of a circle of friends. When her mother beeped the horn, Alex high-fived his friends and bounded over, backpack mostly unzipped and bouncing wildly from the strap on his shoulder. “Hi, guys,” he exclaimed as he climbed into the backseat. “Mr. Donaldson said it's supposed to snow tonight.”

“I heard that too,” their mother said, reaching back to ruffle his hair as he buckled his seat belt.

Charlotte dug a book out of her backpack and read as they drove to St. Margaret's, listening to Christmas carols on the radio and trying not to cry. “You can just pull up in front and let us out, Mom,” Charlotte said when they arrived, closing her book and wedging it into her backpack.

“Thanks, honey, but I'd rather walk in with you.”

Charlotte glanced over her shoulder at Alex. “You mean, to make sure we get there.”

He scowled. “It was only that one time.”

Charlotte sighed inwardly. Of course it had been only that one time, because their mother had never again trusted them enough to drop them off at the curb. It seemed unlikely that she ever would again. Suddenly her anger flared. Her mother didn't trust
her
, but Charlotte wasn't the one who had lied. In that way
her mom was like Mrs. Collins, who punished the entire class when one student talked, who made everyone take a pop quiz when the first few students she called on didn't know the answers. Legend had it that once upon a time, a student had stolen a test from her electric typewriter and had made copies for the entire class so everyone earned an A the next day. Ever since, Mrs. Collins had expected the worst of every student she met, especially the high achievers, and she caught genuine cheaters so often that the principal accepted her judgment without question.

It wasn't fair, to use Alex's favorite phrase.

Father Ryan was sweeping the sidewalk by the side door as they approached the church. “Hi, Father Ryan,” Alex shouted, waving. “Nice hat. The Bruins are gonna crush the Penguins tomorrow.”

“You'd better believe it,” the priest said with a grin, though Charlotte noticed it faded a little as he turned to their mother. “Hey, Laurie. How's everything going?”