The thump of something heavy hitting the floor over her head sent her needles clattering to the floor with a muted shriek. Walter?
Ella raced from the kitchen up the back stairs. “Missus Rawlings!” she called as she flew down the second floor hallway. “Is everything alright?”
It wasn’t the lady of the house the old maid was worried about. Ever since his father had died, little Walter had been teetering on the edge of disaster. Up all hours of the night with bad dreams, he’d wake up screaming. Ella had moved into the room above the garage so she could watch over the boy. More than once, she’d caught him walking in his sleep. He’d tumbled down the front stairs two nights before, and the entire house stood on edge waiting for the next fall.
The maid searched door after door, looking for little Walter. He was nowhere to be seen. Ella stopped outside Georgina’s sewing room and spoke with measured caution. “Everything alright, ma’am?”
“Yes?” Georgina’s eyes skittered wildly from corner to corner, seeing things that weren’t there. “Why? Did . . . did you hear a baby cry just now, Ella?”
“Baby? What baby?” Ella glowered at her. Georgina was getting worse, frail and disconnected. “I hear something. A loud thump. Where is your son?”
“My son?” The widow shook the phantoms from her head, then scanned the room as though she’d just woken up. “I don’t know. Have you seen him?”
“I keep looking, ma’am.” Ella took off down the long hall. Things weren’t right in the house. They hadn’t been right for months. Not since she’d found Mr. Rawlings lying facedown on his desk.
Down the corridor from the sewing room, little Walter’s door stood open. Nothing inside the room was amiss. Books sat on their shelves, gathering dust. Toys were in their box. The bed was still made.
“Shavo?” she called out and checked the closet just in case. Sometimes the boy liked to play hide-and-seek without announcing the game. She’d lost him for over an hour the week before. Kneeling down, Ella checked under the bed, making a mental note to dry mop again soon. Not that Mrs. Rawlings really noticed one way or another. Ella tried daily to see the bright side of not having a stern employer barking at her about this or that. Demanding peach pie when she’d baked apple. Running her white glove along the tops of the highest shelves the way Georgina had done her first year, back when the family hadn’t been so sure about having a “gypsy” in the house. But it was unsettling the way the lady of the house had vacated the premises.
The house itself seemed vacant. Even with the three of them there at the table each night—and that was odd too, sitting at the table with them, but poor Georgina had insisted—it felt empty. Little Walter felt it. The place had gone hollow. Cold. Rawlingswood had lost its luster the moment Mr. Rawlings had expelled his final breath. The wood had begun to shrivel, and the crystal sconces had gone dull. It echoed now when she walked down the hall. Ella had taken to sneaking a nip of whiskey in the afternoons to settle her nerves.
“Walter?” Ella tried again and stepped back out into the hallway.
At the far end, Georgina’s bedroom stood empty. He never hid in there. Walter hated his mother’s inner sanctum, refusing to go in even to wake her after a bad dream. It had an air of madness after so many days of Georgina being bedridden with grief. Ella turned the other way and headed toward the attic stairs.
Another knocking sound sent her feet flying faster. Has he fallen up there? Is he trapped under those old heavy boxes? She took the steps two at a time. “Muro shavo? You there?”
She scanned the common room, muttering to herself in her own tongue. “Mi duvvaleska.”
The door to the room Mr. Rawlings used for storing his papers was shut. She tried the handle. Locked as usual. The door to her former bedroom stood open next to it. Cold air hissed through the seams of the window. It was never warm enough up there, except in summer, when it grew hot enough to steam milk.
Ella bent her stiff back to check under the mattress. Nothing was there but the suitcase she’d carried onto the steamer from Spain. She straightened herself with a small groan, keeping one eye on her luggage. Her feet itched to walk out of the house and never come back, but she was far too old for the other rich houses to take her in. Most ladies preferred young girls they could intimidate and boss around. Mr. Rawlings had only picked her because the old woman had insisted. You have child. I take care of child. You need cook. I cook. We give it two days. If no work, Dosta. I go.
She’d never received a single phone call or one scrap of mail in the four years she’d been with the Rawlings. But it was more than that. Ella couldn’t leave little Walter. Not now. Not with Georgina losing all grasp of reality, Ella mused, checking the closet for the boy. Husband gone. A big empty house. A little boy with no father. Mrs. Rawlings was quickly growing too old to remarry. She’d been forced to go find work outside the home “decorating,” whatever that meant.
Widows don’t last long on their own, the accountant had warned Georgina while Ella kept Walter busy in the kitchen. The way the country is falling apart all around us, you’ll be lucky to hold on for another six months.
Ella had taken to looking into Georgina’s teacups to see what sort of future the thinning woman had left for herself at the bottom. She eyed that suitcase under the bed again but thought of little Walter.
Another knocking sound pulled Ella back out into the main room. One of the crawl space doors was cracked open. She crouched down on her aching knees and swung it wide. “Shavo? You there?”
The smell of mouse droppings and trapped dust hit her face as she plunged her head into the unfinished attic. She felt blindly through the cobwebs until she found a metal pull chain attached to a naked bulb. Click.
“Walter!” she gasped. The boy was sitting against the knee wall, rocking back and forth as though in a trance. His eyes were open but blank. His lips were moving as though chanting silent words. “Ai, Devel! What are you doing?”
He knocked his head against the wall stud. Thump. The wood board vibrated down the length of the house like a piano string. Trapped in a dream, his face contorted inside a terrible memory.
“Are you worried about the papers, Father?”
“The papers?” His father reached for his pipe, eluding the boy’s probing gaze by focusing on the tobacco. Pinching and folding it, then puffing out a cloud to sit behind. He’d just gotten off the phone with an angry creditor, and his face was still flushed with panic.
“Mother seems very worried about the newspapers.”
His father puffed on his pipe a moment to think, hoping the picture he drew was one of calm deliberation. Something to remember him by. “News is a bit like the weather, son. Some days it’s bad. Some days it’s good. You must weigh it with wisdom. As a man, you’ll learn in time how to do this. Bad news never lasts. You can’t let it slacken your nerve.”
The boy contemplated this a moment. “So then . . . does good news ever last?”
The sad lift of the boy’s brow sent a shot through his father’s heart. The man gazed up at his custom coffered ceiling and blinked the agony from his eyes. How many shady deals had it taken to afford such luxuries? How many little betrayals and indiscretions? He shook his head at the alien cleverness of his only child and cleared his throat again. “I wish it did, son. I truly wish it did. You just . . .”