The Summer of Mrs. MacGregor Read online

  Don’t let them laugh at her, Caroline prayed. It was a real prayer, as heartfelt as the prayers she’d said in church last Sunday. She had a feeling that Lillina really would go crazy if anyone laughed.

  She needn’t have worried. There was nothing but outrage in the faces of the hostess and the hotel manager as they pushed through the crowd and lifted Lillina to her feet.

  “Just look what you’ve done!” the hostess scolded. “If that vase is damaged, your parents will have to pay for it. What’s your name?”

  Lillina didn’t answer. She looked around vaguely, as if puzzled to find herself the center of so much commotion.

  Caroline slipped her arm around Lillina’s waist. “My name is Caroline Cabot,” she told the hostess. “We’re very sorry about the vase. If you could let me use a telephone, I’ll call the people my friend is staying with—”

  “I want her name and address,” the manager interrupted. “Neither of you leaves here till we know who you are and find out how much damage has been done.”

  Caroline’s face burned with embarrassment. “Come on, Lillina,” she whispered. “It’ll be okay.” The crowd moved back, and the girls followed the manager across the lobby to his office.

  “I don’t want Aunt Louise to come,” Lillina wailed. “Don’t call her, Caroline. Please!”

  The manager took their names and addresses, then left them sitting on the couch in his office. When he came back, he seemed a little less glum. “The urn has a couple of small dents—nothing serious.” He looked at Lillina, who was crying softly. “You can go now,” he said. “And please don’t come back unless your parents come with you.”

  The thought of taking a bus home with Lillina in her present state was a dismaying one. “I have to call my stepfather,” Caroline said. By this time, Joe would be both worried and angry; the last thing he’d want to do was rescue Lillina from one of her “problems.” But there was no one else, and so, with the manager listening and Lillina sniffing softly in the background, she dialed her house.

  “Joe, I’m with Lillina at the mall, and we need help,” she said. The words tumbled out before Joe could start to scold.

  There was the briefest of pauses. “Are you okay, Carrie?”

  She turned away so the manager couldn’t see the tears welling in her own eyes. “Yes. But we’re at the Talbott Inn, and there’s been a sort of—sort of accident. Can you come—”

  “I’ll be right there.” The phone clicked sharply in her ear.

  “He’s coming,” Caroline said. She felt lightheaded with relief. “We’ll wait out in front for him.”

  “That’s not nesessary.” The manager was watching Lillina warily now. It had occurred to him, as it had to Caroline, that she might become hysterical again. “You’d better stay with her. Maybe she’ll feel better if she rests awhile.” He went out, with a backward glance that said as clearly as words that he wanted to be somewhere else if there was to be another explosion.

  For more than twenty minutes the girls sat quietly in the little office and waited. Lillina’s sobs gradually faded, but she spoke only twice.

  “My name really is Lillina,” she said abruptly. “It’s not just a mistake on my birth certificate, no matter what my mother and Aunt Louise say. Don’t you think it’s a lovely name, Caroline?”

  “Yes, I do.” Caroline discovered she had goosebumps, even though the office was stuffy.

  The next time Lillina spoke was when they heard Joe’s voice in the lobby, asking where his stepdaughter was. Caroline started to get up, and Lillina clung to her wrist. “You really took care of everything very nicely, dear,” she said. The smile came back, glittering through tears. “You handled that man just the way Eleanor would have done.”

  “If there were an Eleanor,” Caroline said softly.

  And Lillina said, “Of course, dear. If there were an Eleanor.”

  Chapter 18

  It was a lovely day for the homecoming—bright and warm, with a breeze that set the petunias and snapdragons dancing. Caroline and Joe ate their lunch in the new gazebo.

  “Not a bad omelet,” Joe teased. “If you like ’em a little dry.” He tried to look serious, but his eyes were shining and the corners of his mouth twitched.

  Caroline took a bite of her omelet. “I think it’s perfect,” she said firmly. “Absolutely perfect! I may go into the omelet-making business.”

  Joe shook his head. “What conceit! I never thought you were like that, kiddo. I never thought good old Caroline—” He stopped, realizing he was on dangerous ground.

  But Caroline pretended not to hear. “Do you know what else I’m going to do this fall?” she asked. “Besides learn to cook lots of new things? I’m going to enter my dollhouse furniture in the Grand River hobby fair. I never did that before. I bet I’ll get a ribbon.”

  Joe grinned. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you did,” he agreed. “You’ve had quite a summer. Not exactly boring, huh?”

  Caroline glowed. Not boring at all, she thought. This morning Mr. Jameson had called to ask her if she’d check the house each day while he was in the hospital. He had some errands he wanted her to run, too, and he suggested that she might want to come to visit him. He’d spoken as if she were a grownup. And a friend.

  “Still, that was pretty irresponsible yesterday,” Joe went on, as if he could read her mind. “Don’t you ever run off like that again without telling your mother or me where you’re going, Carrie.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You could have gotten into real trouble with that nutty girl.” Joe finished the last of his omelet and started on his cantaloupe. Caroline poured coffee from a thermos.

  “Lillina’s not nutty,” she said. “She’s my friend. I’m going to write to her when she goes home, and she’ll write to me, and we’re going to be good friends forever.”

  “My, my!” Joe tasted the coffee and leaned back. “Aren’t we prickly today!”

  “I’m not prickly,” Caroline said automatically. But thinking about Lillina cast a shadow over the day. Even Mrs. Reston had cut short her scolding and fallen silent when she’d seen Lillina in the back seat of the Chevy, her expression haughty in spite of the tear streaks on her cheeks, her head high, “Like a redheaded Joan of Arc,” Joe fumed after they’d driven away. “You’d think she was Mrs. Big Bucks and I was her chauffeur.”

  “Mrs. Reston wanted to send Lillina home right away, but now she might let her stay for a while,” Caroline said. “She’s going to take her to a psychiatrist, if her mother says it’s okay.”

  “Good idea,” Joe growled. “Somebody better put that kid in touch with the real world—help her to settle down.”

  Caroline looked out over the yard. Memories crowded around her: Lillina admiring the sandpiper in the living room; Lillina in the yellow dress; Lillina pirouetting through the darkness and calling to the moon goddess. Putting Lillina in touch with the real world was important, but Caroline decided she was glad to have known her before she “settled down.” I’m going to give her a souvenir of this summer, she decided. The room with the little blue rocker.

  As soon as they’d eaten, they cleared away the dishes and Joe carried the card table into the house. Caroline swept the floor of the gazebo so it would be spotless for the homecoming, and Joe brought out the yellow-flowered chaise longue he’d bought as a finishing touch.

  “What do you say?” He looked around proudly. “Do you think Linda’s going to like it?”

  “She’ll love it,” Caroline assured him. And then, because it seemed as good a time as any to mention it, she said, “I have nearly enough money saved up for the trip to England this Christmas, Joe. I need about twenty dollars more, but I’ll find a way to earn it this fall and—”

  Joe sat down with a thump on the end of the chaise. “You what? What trip to England? What are you talking about?”

  Patiently, Caroline reminded him of Jeannie’s invitation and of Grandma Parks’s promise to buy the airplane ticket if Caroline co
uld earn one hundred dollars for spending money.

  Joe’s eyes widened under bushy brows as he listened. “That was just a lot of talk,” he said heavily. “That was a daydream, Carrie. You don’t really expect to—”

  Keep calm. Caroline smiled at him. “Yes, I do,” she said. “I’m bringing it up now so you can help me convince Mom, okay?”

  He didn’t answer right away, but the look he gave her said clearly that, as far as he was concerned, good old Caroline had disappeared forever.

  “We’ll see,” he said finally. “We’ll think about it.”

  “Great!” That was all she’d expected, for now. Caroline looked around the gazebo that was suddenly much too small to hold her excitement. She was going to England, all by herself. She knew it, as surely as if she were already floating out over the Atlantic. And after that, there would be other adventures. She wouldn’t just dream about them—she’d make them happen.

  She threw open the screen door and pirouetted across the lawn.

  “Caroline Cabot, you can do anything,” she whispered to herself. “You really are amazingly like Eleanor.”

  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 © 1986 by Betty Ren Wright

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  ISBN 978-1-5040-1331-4

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