Free Cutler 05 - Darkest Hour by authors_sort

didn't mean to make you die."
    Of course, the smile never left her lips; it was just a picture, but in my heart of hearts I hoped she was saying, "It wasn't your fault, honey, and I'm still here for you."
    I put the framed picture on my lap and sifted through some of the other old photographs until I found one with my mother and a young man. He looked tall and broad-shouldered and had a handsome smile with a dark mustache. My mother did look very young beside him, but they looked happy together.
    These were my real parents, I thought. If they were alive, I wouldn't be so miserable. I was confident my real mother would have felt sorry for me and for Eugenia. She would have cared for and comforted me. In that moment I began to sense something that 1 would sense more and more, in bigger and bigger ways as I grew older: I sensed how much I had lost when dreadful fate was permitted to swoop down and take my real parents from me, even before I ever heard their voices.
    In my mind I heard their voices now, distant and small, but loving. My tears rolled down my cheeks and dripped into my lap. My little heart pounded with sadness. Never had I felt so alone as I felt that moment.
    Before I could look through any more pictures, I heard Louella calling. I put everything back quickly, turned out the lamp and hurried back to my room, but I knew now that whenever I was feeling terrible or very unhappy, I would go back to that room and hold those pictures in my hands and talk to my real parents who would listen and be with me.
    "Where you been, honey?" Louella asked, standing beside my tray on the table.
    "No place," I said quickly. It was going to be my secret, a secret with which I could trust no one, not even Louella, and not even Eugenia because I didn't want her to know yet that we weren't really sisters.
    "Well now, you just eat something, honey," Louella said. "And you'll feel a whole lot better." She smiled. "Ain't nothin' warm a body's heart and soul as quickly as a full stomach of good food," she said.
    Louella was right about that; and besides, I was hungry again and happy she had brought me a piece of her apple pie for dessert. At least I could eat without having to look at Emily's face, I thought, and was grateful for small blessings.
     
    The next day Henry told me he had given Cotton a Christian burial.
    "The good Lord puts a little of Himself in all living things," he declared. He took me to Cotton's grave site, where he had even erected a small marker and scribbled "Cotton" on it. When I told Eugenia, she begged to be taken out to see it. Mamma said it was too cold for her to go out, but Eugenia cried so hard, Mamma gave in and said she could go if she bundled up really good. By the time Mamma was finished dressing her, Eugenia had three layers of clothes including two blouses, a sweater and a winter coat. Mamma tied her head in a bandanna so that just her little pink face peered out at the world. She was so weighed down with garments, it was hard for her to walk. Once we left the house and stepped off the porch, Henry lifted her into his arms and carried her the rest of the way.
    He had put Cotton's grave behind the barn.
    "I wanted her to be close to where she'd lived," he explained. Eugenia and I stood holding hands and gazing at the marker. We were both very sad, but neither of us cried. Mamma said tears would give Eugenia a chill.
    "Where do cats go when they die?" Eugenia wanted to know. Henry scratched his short, curly hair and thought a moment.
    "There's another Heaven," he said, "just for animals, but not all animals, just for special animals, and right now, Cotton's strolling around, showing off her pretty coat of fur and making the other special animals jealous."
    "Did you put my hair ribbon in there, too?" Eugenia asked.
    "Surely did, Miss Eugenia."
    "Good," Eugenia said, and looked up at me. "Then my ribbon's in Heaven, too."
    Henry laughed and carried her back to the house. It took so long to undress her, I had