Free Winter Shadows by Margaret Buffie

sticky, hot, and disoriented, I could hardly focus.
    “Better get into your pajamas, honey,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
    “Both ears hurt,” I mumbled around the first spoonful of soup. I wasn’t sure I could manage a second.
    “You always get an ear infection with a cold. Peter Graham says he’ll drop by on his way to the hospital tomorrow.”
    “You can head downstairs, Dad. I’ll take the pills and go back to sleep.”
    “Daisy will stay in our room. We don’t want her getting sick with the holidays starting.”
    “Oh, no,
we
wouldn’t want
that.”
    He gave me a look of weary sadness and left. The soup was salty and felt good on my throat, so I ate a few more mouthfuls.
Why did I keep dreaming about a time so long ago – a time I knew nothing about?
I wished the diary would appear again. In it, Beatrice said she was getting ready to teach at a nearby school, and clearly I’d just dreamed my own version of that very place.
What was really going on in my head? Or in this house?

9

BEATRICE
    I
stepped inside fresh footsteps in the snow to find Minty, a buffalo cape over his shoulders, standing by our back door
.
    “What are you doing out here in the cold? Come into the house.”
    “Waiting for the mister to take me home on his horse. Mine is sick.”
    “Mr. Kilgour? Where is he?” The boy shrugged. “Come in and wait by the hearth,” I said. “At least you’ll be warm.”
    He shook his head. “Mister’s mother don’t like me.”
    “Doesn’t like you,” I corrected, then added quickly, “but she must like you. She’s been your mother for years.”
    He looked away. “I am
ininiw.
Missus hates Indians. Even
âpihtawikosisânak.”
    Like me – I am a half-breed, too,
I thought. But she doesn’t hate Papa. Not that I can see, in any case
.
    I looked at the lad, his fur hat topped with snow. How could any woman not feel affection for such a gentle boy?
But this is Ivy, remember,
my inner voice murmured
.
    Minty had received some schooling in St. Anthony’s, but
he needed more now that the settlement’s society was changing so quickly
.
    Note to myself: Begin to tutor Minty right after Christmas. Ask Papa why he hasn’t done it before this, although I think I already know the answer
.
    I smiled at the boy huddling under his buffalo cape. “I won’t leave you alone with her until Mr. Kilgour arrives. Do come inside. I insist.”
    He allowed himself to be pulled through the door. I prayed Ivy was busy elsewhere in the house. But she was there – scrabbling furtively in a wooden crate on the kitchen table. As she swung around, startled, Duncan Kilgour walked in behind us
.
    “There you are, Minty. What have you got there, Mother?”
    Ivy glared at me and then at a box. “I thought it was for Gordon, so I opened it. And I don’t feel bad about doing that! I don’t!”
    “Mother, it clearly says
M iss B EATRICE A LEXANDER , O LD M APLES ,
on the outside of the crate!” I was surprised Kilgour was chastising his mother in front of me, but then it struck me that Ivy had opened something addressed to me. How could she!
    “What’s hers is her father’s,” she cried, “and what’s her father’s is mine!”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” Kilgour growled. “You’ve even opened one of the gifts.”
    I looked at him surprised. Why was he supporting me?
    Inside the box were cloth-wrapped bundles of dried fruits, peels, raisins, and unshelled nuts, tagged with paper markers. A tin of tea, small glass vials filled with spices, a crock of
Stilton cheese, and a box of sugared confections, whose wrapping was in tatters, lay alongside them
.
    I lifted up the broken lid. “I can’t see a note of any kind. Who is this from?”
    Ivy threw a small white card on the table. On one side was a little deer, with a red ribbon around its neck. On the other was written
To DEAR B EATRICE, FROM HER FRIEND P ENELOPE . H APPY C HRISTMAS!
    “How lovely!” I said. “I didn’t think I’d ever be able