Kirsty stopped in front of the worst one. “Do you know who that is?”
“Who?”
“Governor Farriday. He looks like he’s been sucking on a pickle.”
Her father looked at the painting.
“They all look like pickle-suckers,” she told him.
He looked down the hallway at the others, then he laughed.
It was the best sound in the whole wide world. She pulled him along with her for a few steps, then he was leading the way and she had to skip a little to keep up with his long strides.
She didn’t care. She just held his hand a little tighter and remembered the sound of his laughter.
By the time they caught up with Graham, Kirsty was feeling better. And for the first time in what seemed like forever, she didn’t have that uneasy scared feeling that always seemed to be hiding in her shadow like a closet monster, ready to grab her and make her cry.
No, now she and her father and her brother were all walking down the wide stairs, side by side, Graham on their father’s left and her on his right.
“I’m still waiting for that long story, Kirsty.”
She stopped and stared down at the last two stairs. She hopped forward with her ankles and toes together. If her shoes weren’t touching when she landed, her father wouldn’t believe her tale. If her shoes were touching, then he would believe her story
She landed, staring intently down at her red leather shoes. They were touching as if they were pasted together. She grinned, then fixed her face in a more serious expression and looked up at her father. “It wasn’t our fault at all. The brick, I mean.”
He gave her a look filled with suspicion, but that didn’t stop her. They were finally in the foyer. She pulled him along toward the huge front doors of Harrington Hall, which seemed to grow larger as they walked closer and closer. Kirsty felt that same anxious bees-buzzing-in-her-stomach kind of feeling she got whenever something special was going to happen, like Christmas or her birthday or a visit from her father.
They walked toward the stack of trunks and bandboxes that held her and her brother’s belongings, and she wanted to run out those doors, run really fast, because outside, only a few short steps away, was freedom and home.
But her father stopped and looked down at her, waiting for the explanation she hadn’t thought up yet. She took a deep breath, crossed the fingers of her left hand behind her back and looked way up at the most important person in her whole world.
“You see, Father,” she told him, tugging on his hand with her free one and finally making him walk through those doors. “Everything happened because of... of...” She paused, then the excuse came to her like an epif—epit—epifunny. Phooey! She’d missed that spelling word.
They stopped outside on the front portico of Harrington Hall and she felt her father’s grip loosen. He was going to pull his hand free, probably so he could cross his arms in that “I’m-waiting-for-an-answer” kind of way he’d been doing.
She didn’t look at Graham, who had learned to stand back and let her talk, but squeezed her father’s hand really tight, clinging to his thick fingers so he couldn’t let go. Then she met his serious look with as stern a one as she could manage, and said, very seriously, “Everything happened all because of Chester Farriday...”
Chapter Nine
So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love’s shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie wither’d,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone ?
—Thomas Moore
Take it, William.” Amy held out her hand with the emerald ring which felt as if it were burning the word fool into her palm.
