SHAKESPEARE’ SECRET (20 page)

Danny remained standing, looking around the room with interest. “Hey, I've never been in here before,” he said. “Cool map.”

“Yes, Australia,” Mrs. Roth called from the kitchen. “Now tell me about the diamond! Where did you find it?”

“It was in one of the lights, just like we thought,” Danny said. They could hear the piercing whine of the teakettle.

“The porch light,” Hero added. “The one we don't have a switch for. That's why no one ever found it before us.”

“Really? That was clever of Arthur. An excellent
finding place.” Mrs. Roth came into the room, carrying a tray of mugs and a plate of muffins.

“Cranberry,” she said. “They're a little tart. So what made you look there?” She nudged the books and papers aside and set the tray on the coffee table.

Hero bit into a muffin and puckered her lips at the tang of the cranberries. “We looked pretty much everywhere else first,” she said. With a twinge, she remembered the bedroom light crashing to the floor.

Danny walked behind the sofa, squinting at the array of photographs covering the wall. “We were about to give up,” he said.

Mrs. Roth sipped her tea. “But you didn't. You kept looking, as I knew you would. Neither of you is easily deterred. Tell me about finding it.”

“Well,” Hero began. “Danny was about to leave because it was so late, and my parents were coming back soon, and we—”

“We sort of thought of it at the same time. It was right above us—the light—and we looked up and figured the diamond might be there. Then Hero said it didn't have a switch—”

“And then we just knew it had to be there. So Danny helped me stand on the rail, and we got the light down—”

“And there it was. Inside the glass,” Danny finished.

Mrs. Roth shook her head in amazement. “And it's been there all along! Right under our noses. Or over them, I suppose. What did you think of it? Oh, Hero, was it beautiful?”

“Yes,” Hero said reverently. She thought of the diamond, reflecting tiny splinters of light in her hand. “It was sort of dirty, but even in the dark, it still sparkled.”

“Hey,” said Danny. They both turned to him. He was leaning close to one of the pictures, rubbing the dust off the glass with his sleeve. “Hey, this looks like my mom.”

Mrs. Roth smiled. “Does it? Is she blond, like you? That's Anna's school picture from her junior year. The last one I have of her.”

“No,” Danny said, still staring at the photo. “What I mean is ... this
is
my mom.”

Hero scrambled onto her knees and leaned over the back of the couch. For a minute, she couldn't understand what Danny was saying. But then she saw the photograph. She gasped. The girl in the picture had Danny's blond hair and, more strikingly, his eyes, though it was hard to read their expression because they glanced away from the camera. Her mouth was drawn and pinched, not Danny's wide grin. But there was no doubt. She looked so much like Danny she had to be his mother.

Mrs. Roth walked over to Danny. “You must be mistaken,” she said gently.

Danny's face was flushed. His eyes were riveted to the picture. He couldn't seem to see anything else. “No, listen. I know it doesn't make sense. But it's my mom. This is my mom.”

Mrs. Roth stared at him. “That isn't possible.”

The silence in the room filled Hero's ears. Suddenly she understood. She felt a shiver run through her whole body. Anna was Danny's mother. Of course it was true. All at once she saw that it did make sense. It made more sense than anything else.

“Mrs. Roth,” Hero whispered. “The finding place! You and Danny both called it that, but I thought it was just a coincidence.”

Mrs. Roth turned to the photo. Her voice sounded small and far away. “But how can that be?”

“And the postcard Anna sent you,” Hero continued urgently, “saying she'd had a baby. The baby was Danny!”

Mrs. Roth reached out to touch the glass, running her fingers lightly across the girl's face. Hero could tell it was something she'd done many times.

“Oh, Mrs. Roth,” she breathed. “Your Anna is Danny's mother. He's your grandson.” Her words echoed through the still room.

The color drained from Mrs. Roth's face and she reached for the back of the sofa. Hero thought for a minute she might faint. But she kept staring at the photo, at the girl whose eyes always darted away.

Hero shook her head, still puzzled. But was that
possible? Mrs. Roth and Danny's mother had lived in the same small town and never met? She turned to Danny. “But, Danny, you all lived here together, in the same town. How did you . . . why didn't you ever find one another?”

Danny dragged his gaze away from the photo and turned to Hero. “No,” he said slowly. “We used to live in D.C., right in the city. We moved out here when my mom left. The funny thing is, my dad said she picked it. The town, I mean. They'd been talking about moving out of the city, and she wanted a small town. She said it would be a good place for me to grow up. And then, after she left for California, my dad moved us here anyway.”

Hero touched Mrs. Roth's arm. She wanted somehow to connect, to make it all fit together. “Do you think she knew? Mrs. Roth, do you think Anna knew you were here?”

Mrs. Roth kept stroking the glass of the picture, her eyes shining with tears. She seemed not to hear them. “Oh, Anna,” she whispered. “You were so close. You were so close all the time. How can it be I never found you?”

Hero saw that Danny was looking at Mrs. Roth strangely. “You found me,” he said quietly.

Mrs. Roth finally turned to them, her face pale and wet. She stared at Danny, hearing him for the first time. Her whole body shook. She pulled him tightly to her, and Danny's hands rose slowly to touch her shoulders.

The rest of the afternoon had the strange feel of a dream, with people doing unexpected things that somehow seemed perfectly natural. Mrs. Roth looked happier than Hero had ever seen her, her eyes bright with pleasure, her hands reaching eagerly to pat Danny's face or squeeze Hero's arm. Danny appeared to be in shock, but Hero noticed that he put up with it all, never pulling back from her touch. Even though Hero herself was talking and eating muffins and drinking cup after cup of tea, she felt like she was watching it all from a great distance, the final scene in a play.

They sat in the darkening living room until almost suppertime, talking about what had happened. Mostly they talked about Anna. Mrs. Roth told them every small thing she could remember. She brought out two faded albums of photographs, and together they
leaned over them, peering through the yellowing cellophane at Anna eating birthday cake, Anna learning to ride a bike, Anna holding a neighbor's kitten. They watched her hair grow long and short again, watched her gap-toothed smile change, filled with teeth too big for her face. They saw dance recitals and family outings and softball games. It was strange to see Mrs. Roth embedded in this family, Hero thought. Mrs. Roth always seemed so distinctly alone.

“There aren't many of Arthur. He took all the pictures,” Mrs. Roth said. “But, look, here he is.” She pointed to a middle-aged man with curly brown hair and glasses.

Hero looked at him with interest. He was nothing like the Mr. Murphy of her imagination, the one she had pictured over and over hiding the diamond. He looked ordinary, like one of the neighbors. She realized that all of it looked ordinary, just the ordinary things families did, exactly like the photos in her parents' albums at home.

“So what happened?” she asked. “What made Anna leave?”

Mrs. Roth sat back, sliding the album deeper into her lap. She didn't say anything.

Danny frowned at Hero. “Nothing made her leave. She just left, right?”

Mrs. Roth flipped the pages back to the beginning of the album, to the little girl with white-blond hair and Danny's eyes.

“I'm not sure even Anna would know the answer to that,” she said. “I blamed myself for a while. As hard as that was, somehow it was easier than not having any reason at all.”

Danny looked at her, not saying anything.

At that moment the phone rang. Mrs. Roth handed the album to Danny and hurried into the kitchen to answer it. Hero could hear her apologizing.

“Oh, of course, I'm sorry. She's been here all day. We completely lost track of the time. She'll come right now.”

Hero stood up. “I guess I have to go.” Danny nodded, barely paying attention. He was still looking through the pictures.

Mrs. Roth walked over to a lamp and switched it on, bathing them in light. “Hero, that was your mother. Dinner is on the table.” She rested her hand on Danny's shoulder. “I suppose you should go too, Daniel, before your father starts to worry.”

“I can stay awhile longer,” Danny said quickly. “He's at the station till eight tonight.”

“Really? We can have dinner together then. That would be lovely. Let me see what I have for us.”

As Mrs. Roth returned to the kitchen, Hero picked up her sweater and tugged open the front door. “See you later, Danny.”

“See you, Hero.” He didn't look up, his eyes gliding steadily over the pages of the album. Hero smiled to herself, stepping into the cool evening air.

At the Netherfield house, Hero's mother was serving plates at the stove while Beatrice clunked batches of silverware on the table.

“Hey!” she said when Hero walked in. “What were you doing in my room?”

Hero remembered the broken light and shook her head quickly at her sister.

Their mother looked at them questioningly. Beatrice frowned at Hero and said reluctantly, “Hero's been going through my clothes.”

“Well, you do that often enough to her.”

After dinner, Hero did the dishes while Beatrice sat on the counter watching her. As soon as their parents left the kitchen, Beatrice demanded, “So what were you doing up there? You broke my light into a jillion pieces.”

Hero hesitated, scraping potatoes into the sink.

“Come on, Hero. Just tell me. What's the big
secret? You think I don't know something's going on? All the time you're spending over at Mrs. Roth's? And Danny? Something's going on with Danny.”

“Not what you think,” Hero said. “It's not what anyone thinks.”

“Then tell me.”

Hero sighed. It was over now, anyway. There was no secret to keep anymore. She stuffed a fistful of forks into the dishwasher rack and turned to Beatrice. “You can't tell.”

“I won't.”

“You can't tell anyone, not Kelly, not anyone.”

“I won't, okay? I promise.”

“It's the diamond. Danny and I ...” Hero took a deep breath. “We found the Murphy diamond.”

Beatrice looked at her blankly. “What diamond?”

Hero laughed suddenly, thinking how strange it was that the diamond had dominated her life for weeks—the only thing she could think about—and Triss didn't even know what it was. She slammed the dishwasher door, flipped the lock, and wiped her hands on her jeans.