driver was agreeable, and somehow they managed to bodily lift Aunt Jane into the back seat. Sarah watched as the car containing her family disappeared around the corner before walking the few blocks to her school. By the time she took the stage for her commencement address, she was nearly too upset to speak. But she managed. Somehow, she managed.
No one knew much about phobias in those days. And they knew less about depression. Two weeks after Sarah left home to attend nursing school in Trenton, Aunt Jane swallowed one hundred of her prescription nerve pills and died in her sleep at the age of forty. Sarah knew why she had done it. With her away at school, there was little holding her aunt to that cold house, and yet she was trapped there by her own tortured mind. Aunt Jane had held on long enough to help Sarah survive a difficult childhood, but now Sarah was on her own, a successful adult. And Jane was no longer needed.
Sarah, deeply affected by her aunt’s death, decided to become a psychiatric nurse. She read all she could in psychology, trying to understand Aunt Jane, and in the process learning a great deal about other psychiatric illnesses as her interest in the subject grew.
After getting her degree, she took a job in a psychiatric hospital in Haddonfield, New Jersey. At first, she was afraid that she would become too attached to the patients, that each of them would seem like Aunt Jane to her, and she would not be objective enough to help them. But she found she was able to separate her aunt from the others. Each patient was an individual. Each required a different sort of help from her. And each of them needed the sort of respect and compassion Sarah had learned from the aunt who would forever be a part of her life.
8
LAURA SAT PROPPED AGAINST THE HEADBOARD OF EMMA’S bed, reading one of the little girl’s oldest books to her. In the past, Emma would have been able to recognize some of the words in the familiar story. She’d point to them proudly, saying them out loud. But if she knew them now, she was not letting on. Her body was curled against Laura’s, her thumb in her mouth, and she was nearly asleep. Good. Every night it was a battle getting Emma to sleep. There were the nightmares, the wet bed, the fear of the dark, and the general wakefulness that had plagued her since Ray’s death. But she must have worn herself out playing with Cory that afternoon, because her eyes were closed by the time Laura turned the last page.
When Laura had arrived home from visiting Sarah Tolley in Leesburg, she’d found Alison Becker and Emma sitting on the front porch of the lake house, the blue plastic Barbie doll case between them on the step. After Laura let Emma into the locked house, Alison explained that her husband had arrived for the weekend. When Jim walked into the Beckers’ house, Emma dropped the doll she was playing with and ran outside. Alison had to go after her. She’d been unable to persuade Emma to return to the house, and so she’d gathered up Emma’s Barbies and walked her home.
“Her therapist says she’s having a problem with men,” Laura said, acknowledging to herself for the first time that Heather might be right. Jim was an unusual man, though. A kindhearted soul, but large and gruff. His voice vibrated in your toes.
Laura set the book she’d been reading to Emma on the nightstand, then carefully extracted herself from beneath her daughter, tucking her and the ragged bunny under the covers.
After making sure the small, fairy-shaped night-light was plugged into the wall near Emma’s bed, she turned out the light to the room, then walked down the hall to the spare bedroom. She’d been looking forward to this evening ever since her visit with Sarah Tolley that afternoon.
In the closet of the spare bedroom was a large cardboard box filled with Carl Brandon’s old papers and memorabilia. Laura had filled the box while cleaning out his apartment after he died, keeping those papers that looked important and discarding many others. Somewhere in that box there had to be a clue to his relationship with Sarah Tolley.
She’d been surprised by the wealth of details Sarah could remember. After her visit, Laura had tracked down Carolyn, Sarah’s attendant.
“She can remember so much,” Laura told her. “Are you sure about her diagnosis?”
“She remembered things from way back when, right?” Carolyn asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s where her mind is still alive,” Carolyn said. “We showed The Philadelphia Story last Friday night, and she knew all the lines. She drove everyone else crazy reciting them. But the next day, she couldn’t even tell me what movie we’d seen.”
Carolyn was right. After all, Sarah had not even remembered meeting Laura before.
There was a handsomeness about Sarah Tolley. She was not beautiful, but her face radiated warmth and there was an undeniable grace in her demeanor. Laura could see the homely child behind the dignified woman, though, and knew that Sarah had not imagined those childhood taunts.
Spreading her father’s papers out on the queen-size bed, she sorted through them, hunting for some reference to a Sarah Tolley or a Sarah Wilding. She found a copy of the contract he’d signed to move Sarah into Meadow Wood Village. His relationship to Sarah was listed merely as “friend.” There were mortgage papers for the house he’d owned before moving to the apartment, and maintenance records for the car he’d sold years ago. There were a few pictures of her father as a younger man, and she set them on the night table. She’d take them with her the next time she visited Sarah. If Sarah had known her father from some time in the distant past, the pictures might help her remember.
There was a picture of her mother and father on their wedding day, but there were no pictures of anyone else, and Laura ruefully recalled having thrown out many photographs of strangers when she’d cleaned out her father’s apartment.
She sat on the guest room bed for hours, and it was nearly midnight when she finally lay down on top of the papers and closed her eyes.
“Why, Dad?” she said out loud. “I just don’t get it.”
The phone awakened her early the next morning, when she was still lying fully dressed on the paper-strewn bed. Slowly, she got to her feet and stumbled toward her bedroom and the portable phone.
It was Madeline Shires, Ray’s literary agent.
“I have some wonderful news,” Madeline said. “We have an offer for No Room at the Inn from Lukens Press!”
What was Lukens Press? Laura’s head was foggy from waking up so suddenly. Down the hall, she could hear Emma beginning to stir in her own bedroom. “You mean…an offer to publish it?”
“Granted, they’re not one of the big players,” Madeline said, “but they’re behind Ray’s book one hundred and ten percent. And they’re ready and willing to back up their purchase with excellent promotion.”
“I didn’t realize Ray’s book was still making the rounds,” Laura said.
“Oh, sure. I never stopped submitting it. And are you sitting down?” Madeline didn’t wait for Laura’s reply. “The advance is fifty thousand dollars.”
Laura had not been sitting down, but she did so now, perching on the edge of her bed. “But,” she said, feeling dense, “Ray’s dead.”
“His work will live on, Laura. Isn’t that thrilling? Aren’t you thrilled?”
“I don’t know what I am,” she said. Her primary emotion was anger. Why the hell couldn’t this have happened when Ray was alive?
“Something we didn’t realize is that important legislation regarding the homeless is about to be introduced in Congress,” Madeline said, “so that makes Ray’s book timely. Lukens plans to push it into publication quickly to time its release to the legislation.”
Laura could hardly speak. “It’s just not fair,” she said.
“I know it’s not,” Madeline said, real sympathy in her voice. “But Ray would have wanted this. All his work won’t be in vain.”
Laura’s