The Scariest Night Page 11

  Mrs. Lindsay ran to the window and stared down at the ledge. “He couldn’t walk on that!” she sobbed. “He couldn’t! Oh, Cowper, come back here!”

  Erin’s father pulled her away from the window. “Don’t call him, Grace. If he is out there, we don’t want him walking along that ledge again, do we? I’ll open the door and get him in that way.” He gave Erin a stern look, a warning not to mention the noise they’d heard just moments ago.

  They crowded back into the hallway and stared at the chest of drawers. Mr. Lindsay squeezed into the narrow space between the chest and the wall and braced himself.

  “It’s heavy!” he groaned. “Must weigh a ton!”

  “Ken Krueger has it packed full of linens.” Erin’s mother pressed a hand against her mouth as if she were holding back screams. “Oh, hurry, please!”

  Erin crouched and pulled the bottom drawer all the way out, letting it thump to the floor. She dragged it down the hall and hurried back to pull out the next one, stumbling over Rufus on the way.

  “Smart girl!” Mr. Lindsay tried again and was able to shift the chest a few inches.

  “Let me help,” Mrs. Lindsay begged. She and Erin lifted out the third and fourth drawers together and were reaching for the next one when Mr. Lindsay motioned them away.

  “That’s enough. I can move it now.”

  One hard shove, then another, and the door behind the chest came into sight. Mr. Lindsay reached around and jerked the doorknob.

  “Locked,” he muttered. “Of course. Erin, get the toolkit on the top shelf of our bedroom closet. Hurry! I’ll push the chest farther down the hall so there’s room to work.”

  “You’ll need an ax!” Mrs. Lindsay cried. “You’ll have to break the door down!”

  “No ax,” Mr. Lindsay said grimly. “We don’t know what’s on the other side. It might make things worse.…”

  Erin ran down the hall. Her feet felt heavy, the way they did sometimes in dreams. She could hardly breathe. Cowbird, I’m sorry.… She had called him Cowbird, knowing that he hated it. She had been mean to him and cross and selfish, even when she knew he was unhappy. Now he was dead.

  The toolkit was in the far corner of the closet shelf, out of reach. Erin dragged a chair across the floor and climbed up, teetering wildly before her stiff fingers closed around the vinyl case. When she ran back down the hall, her father had pushed the chest well out of the way and was crouched in front of the lock. He snatched the kit from Erin’s trembling hands and set to work.

  Erin and her mother watched. “I just don’t see why he’d do such a thing,” Mrs. Lindsay whispered over and over. “Are you sure—”

  Erin shook her head. “Maybe he didn’t,” she said. “Maybe he went downstairs to take a walk, and you just didn’t hear him leave.” But she knew better. He went out there, and I practically told him to go ahead and do it. I’ll hate myself forever!

  She hadn’t known it was possible to feel this bad.

  “Get the flashlight,” Mr. Lindsay snapped. “I can hardly see what I’m doing here.”

  Erin ran to the kitchen, grateful for another job. When she returned, her father told her to stand behind him and hold the light over his shoulder. The doorknob was off. Working through the hole, he pushed the other knob out and then tried to release the bolt.

  “Give me the smallest screwdriver! Quick!”

  “I’ll find it.” Mrs. Lindsay snatched up the toolkit. “Maybe we should call Mr. Grady—”

  There was a click from inside the door, and Mr. Lindsay gave a grunt of satisfaction.

  “Got it! Now if the hinges aren’t too rusted …” He hooked a finger into the hole left by the doorknob and pulled. “Have to go slow,” he muttered. “Don’t want to jar anything.”

  Mrs. Lindsay began to cry again, whimpery sounds Erin knew she would hear in her dreams forever. She felt like crying herself, but no tears came, even though her chest ached.

  The door began to move under her father’s steady pressure. When it was open a few inches, he stopped. His shoulders sagged, and he stepped back with a groan.

  Erin leaned into the opening.

  “Is he there?” Mrs. Lindsay demanded in a choked voice. “Tell me!” When no one answered, she pushed her way between Erin and Mr. Lindsay and stared through the opening with horror.

  “Oh no!”

  Erin tried to step back but couldn’t. She wanted to run from the sight of the steeply tilted porch floor and the small brown pillow that was balanced on the high end. The pillow was one her mother had made for Cowper’s room in Clinton, a needlepoint piano with musical notes floating around it.

  “Get out of the way,” Mr. Lindsay said hoarsely. “I’d better look.…”

  He gripped the doorframe with one hand and leaned out, trying to see over the edge of the porch to the ground below.

  “It’s no use. I’ll have to go downstairs—”

  “I’m here.”

  For a second or two no one moved. Then they all turned together to stare at the sturdy little figure standing in the bedroom doorway.

  “Cowper?” Mrs. Lindsay threw her arms around him. “Where did you come from? Where were you? Are you all right?”

  Cowper stood stiffly, his face chalk white.

  “I’m s-sorry if I scared you,” he said shakily. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Scared us!” Mr. Lindsay shouted. “Scared us! I should think you did scare us! What were you thinking of, going out there like that.”

  Cowper took a step backward. “I won’t do it again,” he wailed. “Honest! I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I slipped and fell on the ledge when I jumped from the porch just now. I must have kicked something loose. The dumb old porch is starting to fall down. I was shaking so hard I couldn’t get up.” He began to cry.

  Erin watched dazedly as her parents comforted him. She could hardly believe that the nightmare was over and Cowper was alive. She hadn’t killed him with her silence after all.

  It took a while to get to The Question. First, Erin’s parents wanted to know why Cowper had done a terrible, dangerous thing like walking on the ledge. There had to be a reason.

  Cowper sank back into an overstuffed living room chair. “I thought about stuff out there,” he said. It was the same answer he’d given Erin earlier.

  “What kind of stuff?” Mrs. Lindsay demanded. “Did you think about playing the piano?”

  “I thought about not playing. I thought about doing lots of other things.”

  “Like what?” Mr. Lindsay demanded.

  Cowper sent a sidelong glance in Erin’s direction. “Lots of things. Skateboarding, maybe. I told you that night at the restaurant. I’m not good at anything.”

  “But that’s ridiculous!” Mrs. Lindsay was shocked. “You’re good at—”

  Erin’s father looked thoughtful. “Besides playing the piano, you mean?”

  Cowper nodded.

  “Well, we’d better talk about that,” Mr. Lindsay said. “You don’t have to sit out in space to think about it all by yourself. We’ll think about it together. I bet you’d be a good skateboarder. You just need some time to try.”

  “He might hurt his hands,” Mrs. Lindsay protested. “I thought we settled all that. I thought you wanted to work hard and become a great pianist, Cowper. It’s what your mother and father hoped would happen.”

  At the mention of his real parents, Cowper looked more unhappy than ever. “I know,” he said despairingly. “I know that.”

  Erin braced herself. Speak up, the earl of Kirby had said. It’s the only way. Margaret Mary had said it, too. “Maybe his real mom and dad wouldn’t want him to practice all the time,” Erin said. “Not if it makes him feel like moping around out on that porch.”

  She waited for the scolding that was sure to come.

  “As I said, we’d better talk about it,” Mr. Lindsay said. “You may have something there, Erin.”

  Her mother sat up straight. “Well, there’s one more thing to talk about before
we try to put this behind us,” she said sternly, and Erin knew The Question was coming at last. “How did you know Cowper was out there on the porch, young lady? Surely you weren’t aware he’d been taking this dreadful chance right along!”

  This time it was Cowper who spoke up unexpectedly. “She didn’t know,” he said. “She’s just a good guesser, that’s all. I dared her to go out once, but she was chicken.”

  Erin’s eyes widened. He was actually covering for her.

  “Well, you should have told us he was even thinking about it, Erin,” Mrs. Lindsay said tiredly. She sighed and stood up. “Next time you listen to your big sister, Cowper,” she said. “Obviously, she has a lot more sense than you have.”

  Mr. Lindsay glanced at his watch, and then he jumped up, too.

  “Good grief, Erin, your Miss Panca has been sitting downstairs waiting all this time!” he exclaimed. Then he frowned, remembering. “What brought you back up here, anyway?”

  Erin tried to think of the right words to tell them. “She’s not waiting,” she said. Haltingly, she described her meeting with Mr. Barnhart.

  When she’d finished, her mother and father put their arms around her. “We’re so sorry, dear,” her mother said. “You’ve lost a good friend. I know you’ll miss her.”

  “Darn shame!” her father said gruffly.

  Later, when Erin was alone in the living room, she went to the window and stared out. Darkness had closed in, hiding Kirby Avenue. Erin wondered if Molly’s family were at their window, too.

  I’ll remember all of you forever, she promised. And I’ll remember tonight.

  Without a single ghost or witch, without a goblin or a vampire or a werewolf, it had definitely been the scariest night of her life.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “You’ve hated that dress ever since Aunt Gina sent it to you,” Mrs. Lindsay said. “You don’t like pink and you don’t like ruffles. You didn’t even want me to pack it when we were getting ready to come to Milwaukee. Why do you want to wear it today?”

  Erin looked at herself in the full-length mirror bolted to her closet door. Molly Panca would have liked this dress. She would have loved it. And Molly would have liked the cluster of artificial lilies-of-the-valley pinned in Erin’s hair.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Just this once.”

  Mrs. Lindsay looked doubtful. “It isn’t the best choice for a funeral, dear. People usually wear dark clothes to funerals, you know. Your navy blue skirt would be more—”

  “Molly liked pink and ruffles and lots of flowers,” Erin said firmly. “She wouldn’t like navy blue at all.”

  Two days had passed since Molly’s death and Cowper’s narrow escape. Two very peculiar days, Erin thought. She’d been sad, and lonely, too, when she thought about Molly. But the rest of the time she’d felt oddly light, like a helium balloon straining to fly away.

  Today only one thing was important; she wanted to do what Molly Panca would have wanted. The Lindsays had already sent a spray of carnations and lilies to the funeral home. Molly would have appreciated that. And they were going to take Mr. Barnhart with them to the funeral. Molly would have been pleased about that, too.

  “I think I’ll sign up for the drama group at the Y,” Erin said. (The helium-balloon feeling again, only now it had escaped and was bouncing against the ceiling.) “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  Mrs. Lindsay sat down on the studio couch. “Why now?” she demanded. “After all this time?”

  “I thought you wanted me to do it,” Erin told her. “You said—”

  “I know what I said. Of course I want you to get out of the apartment and have some fun this summer. I’d just like to know what finally changed your mind. Was it Molly? Did she tell you to stop feeling sorry for yourself?”

  “She never said I was feeling sorry for myself!” Erin exclaimed hotly. “Not once!”

  “But she did want you to do something this summer, didn’t she?” Mrs. Lindsay persisted.

  She wanted Margaret Mary to do something. Erin turned away from the mirror and the pink, beruffled stranger looking out at her. “Molly never told me what to do,” she said. She was beginning to feel trapped. The idea about going to the Y had just popped out, and now she was stuck with it. Strangely, though, the prospect didn’t seem as impossible as it had before.

  “Well, whatever the reason, I’m delighted.” Mrs. Lindsay was smiling as she left the bedroom.

  A moment later Cowper stopped at the door and peered in at her.

  “You look weird,” he said. “Honest.”

  Erin stuck out her tongue at him. “Listen,” she said, “when we go home, I’ll teach you how to skateboard, okay?”

  Cowper’s face went blank the way it always did when he was thinking hard. “Why?” he asked.

  Erin smoothed a layer of pink ruffles. “Because otherwise you’ll never learn. Do you think I want every kid in the park to know my brother is a klutz?”

  “Uncle Jack and Aunt Grace won’t let me,” Cowper said. “They’ll think I’m going to break a finger or something.”

  “They’ll let you,” Erin told him. “I heard them talking after you went to bed last night. Dad said you’d better finish up the master class this summer because we’re here and everything, but when we go back to Clinton he wants you to stop lessons for a while. He says you’re depressed. He said you’re going to do just what you want to do for a year and only play the piano when you feel like it.”

  “What did Aunt Grace say?”

  “She didn’t like it, but she said okay. So do you want me to teach you or don’t you?”

  Cowper’s expression was still carefully blank, but his eyes sparkled. “I guess—if you promise you won’t wear that dress again.” He continued down the hall, ignoring the pillow Erin threw at him.

  Right then Erin knew why she felt so different, so runaway-balloon light. She’d feel the same no matter what happened to Cowper’s career. For a few minutes Friday night she’d been certain he was dead and that it was all her fault. She had wanted to die, too. And then he’d come back. She’d been given a second chance to be—well, not a perfect Sara Crewe but a pretty good Erin Lindsay. A pretty good big sister.

  There was a knock at the apartment door and murmuring voices in the front hall.

  “Erin,” Mrs. Lindsay called, “someone is here to see you.”

  Erin hurried down the hall. A tall, gray-haired woman stood just inside the door with a tissue-wrapped package in her arms.

  “This is Miss Panca—Miss Doris Panca,” Erin’s mother explained. “She’s Molly’s niece. She came all the way from Phoenix for the funeral and to see about Molly’s apartment.”

  “My aunt must have been very fond of you, Erin,” the visitor said. “She wanted you to have this.” She thrust the package into Erin’s arms with a sweet Molly-like smile.

  They went into the living room, and Erin sat on the couch to open her gift. Lily-white fabric spilled out as she lifted Margaret Mary from the tissue and set her carefully against the pillow.

  “Oh my, what a lovely doll!” Mrs. Lindsay exclaimed. “Are you sure—?”

  “There’s a note,” Molly’s niece said. “See? It’s pinned to her sleeve. ‘For Erin Lindsay, Apartment 508.’”

  Erin gulped. “Where was she?” she asked. “Was she up on the closet shelf?”

  Mrs. Lindsay frowned, but Miss Panca didn’t seem to think it was a strange question. “No, as a matter of fact she was sitting right in the middle of Aunt Molly’s bed, and all the other dolls were in a circle around her.”

  “She was telling them a story,” Erin said. “She tells wonderful stories.” She straightened Margaret Mary’s bonnet and then slipped the little white traveling case from the doll’s arm. When she opened it, a scrap of paper fluttered to the floor.

  Mrs. Lindsay scooped it up. “I do believe it’s a message for you, Erin. The handwriting is very shaky, but I can make it out: ‘Here’s a friend to talk to while you’re—’” S
he turned the paper over and looked up in dismay. “She didn’t finish it, I’m afraid. What a shame!”

  “‘Here’s a friend to talk to while you’re making good things happen,’” Erin said. “That’s how it was supposed to end.”

  It seemed to her that when she said that, Margaret Mary’s pouty lips lifted, just a little, in a smile. “Don’t be weird,” Cowper would say, but she didn’t care. The wonderful flyaway-balloon feeling was stronger than ever.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1991 by Betty Ren Wright

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-1333-8

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  BETTY REN WRIGHT

  FROM HOLIDAY HOUSE

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  In 1935, a new firm called Holiday House set up three desks in the corner of a printing plant and prepared to publish its first list of books. “The event was unique in at least one respect,” Publishers Weekly would say. “The new company was the first American publishing house ever founded with the purpose of publishing nothing but children’s books.”