Enright Family Collection (11 page)

“Is she your teacher?” India sat on the floor at the side of the tub and washed Corri’s back.

“Umm-hmm. She’s real nice. And she’s real pretty too. Not as pretty as you, but she’s fun. She let me pass out snacks this morning.”

“What was today’s snack?”

“Pretzels and juice. I just love snacktime. It’s my favorite time of the day.” She yawned mightily. “That and art.”

“Do you like to draw?”

“Umm-hmm. And I like to paint. I like fingerpaint best. It’s creamy and thick and it mooshes in your fingers and you
don’t even have to use a brush. That’s why it’s called
fingerpaint,”
she pointed out.

“I seem to recall that I liked fingerpaint when I was little too.” India smiled, suddenly recalling the way the thick cool paint had felt between her fingers.
Mooshes
, Corri had called it. The word seemed just right.

“Now we wash my hair.” Corri pointed to a bottle of shampoo on the window ledge.

India did her best to wash and rinse Corri’s long hair with the handheld shower attached to the spigot in the old-fashioned tub, Corri singing a song she’d learned in school that day—“Baby Beluga”—and chatting happily. Soon she was dried—hair detangled, dried and brushed smooth— and sporting a clean nightgown, ready to climb into bed and hear a story.

“I’ll pick out a good book, Indy,” Corri said earnestly as she scanned the bookshelves. “This is a very good good-night book. It’s called
Good Night Moon
and it’s…”

Corri stopped halfway between the bookshelves and the bed, watching horrified as Indy, who’d been plumping her pillows, found the prize Corri’d hidden and was drawing it out from under the pillow.

“Corri, what is this?”

Corri started to cry soundlessly, as India held up the long green tank top with the number
14
on the front.

“I didn’t steal it, Indy, not really,” she sobbed.

“Sweetie, was this Ry’s?” India asked gently.

Corri nodded. “But you can have it back if you want it.”

“No, no, Corri, I’m sure that Ry would have wanted you to have it.” India choked back the lump in her throat and opened her arms to the trembling child. “I’m sure there are lots of things that were Ry’s that he would have wanted you to have. And one of these days, we’ll go through some of his things and see what else you might like. But you don’t have to cry, Corri. You were Ry’s little girl, and he loved you.”

“Indy, he wasn’t my real daddy,” she whispered, “I was only adopted.”

“Sweetie, adopted is never ‘only’. When he adopted you, he became your daddy, officially. For real.” India’s fingers traced the letters spelling out
Devlin
, which marked the shirt as Ry’s. “Do you sleep with this every night?”

Corri’s little hands closed around the green shirt and gathered it to her chest. “Umm-hmm. Ry used to wear it when he played basketball at school sometimes.”

“Well, I think he would have been happy to know that you keep it close to you.” India pulled the blanket and top sheet down and coaxed Corri, still clutching the green shirt, into bed.

Halfway through the book, India looked up to see that Corri was sound asleep with the shirt under her cheek, the fingers of one hand entangled in its folds, the other arm draped around the large stuffed Tigger Indy herself had given Corri last Christmas. Quietly, India returned the book to its place on the shelf and turned out the light. In the shadow of the hall light, she straightened the blankets and leaned over to kiss the top of the sleeping child’s head. Corri’s hair was soft and silky, and she smelled like Johnson’s Baby Shampoo and bubble bath.

Stepping across the hall, Indy paused at the doorway to Ry’s room. Illuminated by the streetlight outside the window that faced the very front of the house, it was clear that the room had changed little since Ry had moved in when he was thirteen. The art was different—gone was the poster of Farrah Fawcett that every male growing up in the seventies had hung on his wall—but the furniture was the same old maple set that had been in this room for God only knew how many years. She turned on the lamp shaped like a pirate’s ship and sat on the edge of the double bed, her hands folded in her lap.

A slight breeze from an open side window carried the pungent, salty scent of the bay and moved the curtain slightly aside. India rose and drew the curtain back to look out upon the view of the water her brother had loved so dearly. Out at the edge of the inlet Devlin’s Light made a tall dark shadow across the bay. Before she left to return to Paloma, she would visit the lighthouse. She had to. It was part of her, and the longer she postponed the trip, the more difficult it would be. For her own sake—and for Ry’s—she had to go there, to stand where he had last stood on this earth. It wasn’t just a matter of sentimentality, she reminded herself. She could not investigate his death without visiting the scene of the crime.

Maybe tomorrow, she thought, maybe while Corri was in school she would go.

She smoothed over the bedspread where she had sat and rose to leave, leaning over to turn off the lamp. As she did so, her toes banged on something under the bed. She reached down with one hand and touched a cardboard box.

“I don’t believe it,” she said aloud, as she slid the box out and lifted it onto the bed.

She pulled off the lid and grinned, her fingers automatically walking through the stack of old rock and roll record albums Ry had spent years collecting. Chuck Berry. Little Richard. Elvis. The Temptations. The Four Tops. Little Stevie Wonder. Diana Ross and the Supremes. Indy’s personal favorite, the Shirelles. The Stones. Cream. Traffic. Ry had damn near every album that had been released in the sixties and seventies. Somewhere, there would be his old record player. Maybe before she left, she would find it and play a few of the albums. The thought made her smile.

“Ry, can I borrow some of your records?”

“Don’t you have a lot of these on cassette?”
he would ask, knowing full well that she did.

“Yes, but it’s not the same,”
she would plead, and he would give in with a smile, knowing she was right, that it wasn’t the same.

“Just don’t scratch them, okay?”
he’d remind her as he handed over whichever she had her heart set on listening to that night.

“I won’t, Ry,” she whispered to the night breeze. “I promise.”

Aunt August’s New England Clam Chowder

½ pound bacon, cut into small pieces

2 medium onions, chopped

2 stalks celery, finely chopped

2 8-oz bottles of clam juice

1½ A cups water

2-3 pounds of potatoes, peeled and chopped

3 6½-oz cans chopped clams

1/4 teaspoon thyme

2 cups heavy cream (light cream or half and half may be substituted)

salt to taste

freshly ground pepper to taste

2 tablespoons softened butter

1/2 cup parsley, chopped

Over medium heat, sauté bacon in large Dutch oven until light brown. Drain off fat, leaving just enough to saute the onions and celery. Add onion and celery to bacon, saute until onions are soft (about 5 minutes). Add clam juice, water and potatoes. Bring to a boil. Simmer over low heat until the potatoes are tender (20-25 minutes). Add clams, stir in thyme and continue to simmer. Heat the cream separately, almost to the boiling point, then pour it slowly into the clam mixture. Add the salt and pepper and stir in butter. Sprinkle with parsley before serving.

Serves six.

Chapter 7

“Miss Devlin?” The pert, dark-haired young woman stuck her head into the hallway from the noisy classroom. “I’m Marilyn Millet, Corri’s teacher. If you have just a minute to chat, I’ll get the children started, then we can talk for a few…”

India watched through the open door as Miss Millet organized the class of some twenty six-year-olds into early morning independent activities and returned in a flash.

“I was hoping to meet you.” The young woman smiled as she returned, stationing herself in the doorway to keep one eye on the class while seemingly giving India her undivided attention. “Corri talks about you all the time. I have, of course, met your aunt—she’s a lovely woman, we all adore her, including the children—but I think it’s clear that Corri is beginning to see you as her ‘parent’ figure.”

“Corri has had a very difficult two years, Miss Millet.”

“So I understand. First her mother, now her stepfather.” The teacher shook her head slowly. “It’s more loss than many adults could reasonably cope with. And Corri is so young.”

“Is she doing well in class?”

“Scholastically? She’s a wonderful student. She’s bright, curious, spontaneous.” She smiled and added, “Sometimes
maybe a bit too spontaneous. I have to remind her to watch her chattering, but all in all, she’s an asset to the class. Personally, I love her dearly. She’s a darling child. And she is coping well, under the circumstances.”

“But…” India sensed there was something more the teacher wanted to say.

“But I think she is developing little habits that I think are indicative of anxiety.”

“Such as?” India frowned.

“Biting her nails, going off on her own sometimes for no apparent reason—Excuse me, Miss Devlin. Courtney,” she called to a child in the back row, “please get a pencil out of the box on my desk and stop pestering Allison. … Sorry.” She turned back to India with a smile.

“Going off where by herself?”

“I’ve found her all by herself in the corner of the playground, just sitting quietly in the grass. Sometimes she stares out the window, and I can tell she’s far away.”

“Is that so unusual for a child?” India recalled many a time she herself had been caught staring out a classroom window, many a recess when she might have opted for solitude rather than a game of kickball.

“No, of course not. And first-graders have short attention spans. But sometimes it’s more than just daydreaming. I guess you’d have to see her face. I think that inside, she is a scared and lonely little girl. Let me show you a drawing she did the first week of school.”

Miss Millet went back into the classroom and stopped to speak to several children on her way to her desk, where she opened a drawer and removed a folder. Returning to the doorway, she passed the folder, open to the white construction paper that lay inside, into India’s hands.

“I told the children to draw a picture of themselves,” Miss Millet explained.

“And this is how Corri sees herself?” India’s heart nearly broke at the image, the small drawing of the child, all drawn in grays and blacks, at the very center of the paper. She had drawn nothing else.

“Here are some of the other children’s drawings.” Miss Millet opened a second folder and extracted several sheets of paper. Wordlessly, India looked through them. Whereas
Corri’s drawing held a single figure done in somber tones, the other children had drawn whole families and had dressed them in bright colors. Some had dogs or cats. Many had siblings. All had at least one parent depicted. All but Corri.

“I see,” India said softly.

“I will tell you she’s been different the past two days since you’ve been here.”

“How so?”

“She’s played more with the other children at recess. She’s clearly more focused—just watch her for a minute.” Miss Millet gestured with her head for India to observe the child, who was working diligently at her desk in the front of the third row. “I put her up front so that I could keep an eye on her. I have to reel her back so frequently. But this week she’s been fine. She made a big announcement this morning, by the way. I wanted to mention it to you because I think it is very significant.”

“What was that?”

“Corri has been refusing to use a last name. She’s registered as Corrine Devlin, which is how your brother registered her last year. But when she returned to school last month, she refused to use a last name. When I talked to her about it, she said she didn’t know how to make a capital
D
or a capital
S
, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know how to make either letter.”

“D
for
’Devlin,’ S
for ‘Steele,’ her mother’s name.”

“So I understand.” Miss Millet smiled and turned back to the classroom. “Corri, would you come here please and show us what you are working on?”

Corri beamed and bounced from her seat, a tiny munch-kin in a blackwatch plaid jumper and a short-sleeved navy turtleneck shirt.

“It’s my numbers, see? One, two, three… I’m still working on the four,” she explained earnestly.

At the top of the paper, in childish scrawl, was printed her name.
Corri D.

India’s throat tightened. “You’re doing a great job. Those are handsome numbers, Corri.”

“You may go back to your seat now.” Miss Millet patted Corri on the back.

“Looks like she’s decided who she is.” India cleared her throat of the obstructing lump.

“She tells me you’ll be leaving in a few days,” the teacher said pointedly.

“I have to get back to Paloma. I work for the district attorney’s office, and I’ll be starting a new trial the week after next.”

“No chance of taking some time off?”

“Not right now, I’m afraid. The trial that I’m assigned to is an especially important one.”

“Corri’s an important child.” The retort had been sharper than the teacher had intended, and she reddened quickly. “I’m sorry, I had no right…”

“Of course you do.” India sighed. “And of course, you are right. She is very important. I will tell you very honestly I do not know the best way to resolve this, Miss Millet. I have commitments in Paloma that I have to see through right now. As far as Corri is concerned, I really don’t know what’s best for her in the long run. I don’t know whether I should take her with me and put her in school in Paloma.”

Frustrated and defensive, India’s normally cool facade began to disintegrate rapidly.

“Perhaps you might work out an arrangement to spend some time with her on the weekends. If she knew she could count on that time with you, maybe it would be enough for now. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that Devlin’s Light is her home. She has friends here and, of course, she adores your aunt. This is all that is familiar to her. Given the fact that there has been so little security in Corri’s life, I don’t know that removing her from Devlin’s Light would be a particularly good thing.”