Free A Heartbeat Away by Eleanor Jones Page B

raced home from school the following afternoon.
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    Our school was an old gray stone building situated right on the edge of the village, only two minutes from the cottage where I lived. When we got out at three-thirty, Daniel and I would cover the short distance to my house on foot. Mrs. Brown, in the meantime, planned to drive my mom back home at lunchtime and make sure everything was tidy before Violet Gordon arrived on the two o’clock train. She even persuaded Mr. Brown to help her paint the living room, and had already washed all the curtains so that the cottage would look nice and fresh for our visitor.
    The end of school bell couldn’t arrive soon enough for me, and we ran down the lane, Daniel and I, our feet pounding on the dusty, rutted road in perfect timing. He had to shorten his stride to keep pace with me and I stretched my legs so that our footsteps landed together, until our cottage sprang into view and mine began to falter. I hung back then and fell to a walk, suddenly unsure, but Daniel turned to me with one of those smiles that seemed to take over his whole face.
    â€œCome on, Luce,” he urged. “It’ll be all right. Let’s go and see what she looks like.”
    She looked just like her writing, straight and sure, with the same steely determination in her pale blue eyes that had been apparent in the firm delivery of those pen strokes.
    She wore trousers and very shiny sensible shoes. Her graying hair was cropped close, like a cap upon her head, and although at first glance she seemed small against the towering height of Mrs. Brown, she stood so erect that she appeared to be taller than she was.
    â€œHello, Lucy,” she said with a smile that didn’t quite fit her face—in fact, I thought that she didn’t really seem used to smiling at all.
    â€œHello, Aunt Violet,” I replied, sniffing the air for the scent I expected. “You don’t smell like your name.”
    â€œTerrible name,” she barked. “Call me V. Everyone does.”
    She gazed at me with gimlet eyes, and yet behind her fierce exterior, I noticed something else, something hidden deep down, and right from that first moment we settled into a kind of unspoken comradeship.
    I don’t think anyone could ever really call my aunt a friend, for she would never let enough of herself out to share a confidence, but we learned to understand each other as the summer days slipped by. As long as I stuck to her rigid rules, she would leave me to my own devices. Supper was at five-thirty sharp, bed at eight. My shoes must always be kept shiny, I had to do my share of the housework and nothing was ever to be left on my plate. For that, I was allowed to go where I pleased, and I could disappear for hours at a time without her even asking where I’d been.
    She never told us where she was from—Daniel always said that she was running away from something, but if it was true, we never knew it. She just took over the household, cleared the bills and tried to sort out my mother.
    Mrs. Brown and she muddled along together, biting their tongues as often as not to save an argument. No two women could have had less in common, with the exception, of course, of my mother, whose sorry plight they both took to heart. The trouble was that my aunt V was of the opinion that discipline was the key to her recovery and Mrs. Brown believed that care and understanding were what my mom needed.
    At the end of the day it was aunt V who had most to do with her, so discipline, it seemed, won. Not that it made much difference to my mom. She had good spells and bad. Sometimes I could talk to her, sometimes she retreated into her own world and occasionally she went quite crazy.
    Aunt V remained undaunted no matter what. She just kept up with her rigid rules and talked to no one. Daniel said that she was a lonely person, but I didn’t agree. She had her own self for company, and I think that was