Free Miss Lizzie by Walter Satterthwait Page A

You’d have a bathroom all to yourself, and the restaurant’s right downstairs.” He made himself smile. “And they’ve got maids to keep the room clean. You wouldn’t have to worry about tidying up.”
    I realized that if Father were trying to appeal to my slovenliness, which within the family was legendary, he must be displeased for some reason by the idea of my staying with Miss Lizzie.
    I said, “Father, she’s my friend. I don’t know what I would’ve done yesterday, if she hadn’t been here to help me.”
    He looked at me for a long moment. Finally he said, “All right. We’ll see how it goes.” Then he gave me another forced smile. “After all, if she’s your friend, you can’t desert her, now can you?”
    â€œNo,” I said, and grinned, pretending, as the situation obliged me to, that his smile was real. “Thank you, Father. What about William? Is he staying at the hotel?”
    The smile faded and he shook his head. “No, Amanda. We can’t find him. I was hoping you might have some idea where he’s gone.”
    â€œHe said yesterday that he and Andy were going up the coast in Andy’s car.”
    He shook his head again. “The police talked to Andy. William never showed up yesterday. No one’s seen him.”

    The Council of War was to take place in Miss Lizzie’s parlor. At a quarter to twelve, we were all waiting there for the Pinkerton man to arrive.
    Father and I sat on the sofa. He was wearing his tie and suitcoat now—a gentleman did not wear shirtsleeves in mixed company—but he looked no less haggard, no less drawn.
    I had not told him yet about the argument yesterday between Audrey and William. He had received enough bad news already, I thought; and, besides, bringing it up would have meant revealing my part in it, and the secret I had been keeping from him all summer. Families are held together as much by what they do not say as by what they do.
    I was wearing a lightweight blue poplin frock trimmed along its hem and cuffs with lace. Audrey had brought it for me in Boston, before we left for the shore. It was a very pretty dress, but the hem fell only five inches from the floor, and for months I had been pleading with her to let me take it up to a more reasonable height. She had maintained that I was still growing, and that sooner or later the hem would catch up with fashion. (Which would happen, I told her, at exactly the same time the cuffs caught up with my elbows.) And so the dress, lovely as it was, had languished all summer long in the closet. I wore it today as a kind of apology for my stubbornness.
    Miss Lizzie, who wore her invariable black, sat in one of the red armchairs, a copy of Harper’s on her lap. Pincenez in place, she leafed idly through the magazine, now and then lingering over a page; but eventually, inevitably, she would look up and glare, her mouth in a thin grim line, off toward the parlor window.
    Somewhat back from the window—through whose lace curtains he could see the street without himself being seen—stood Mr. Slocum, his hands in his pockets, a small thoughtful frown upon his lips. He wore another linen suit today, this one the pale yellow of aged ivory, and with it a light-green shirt and a lime-green tie.
    Father, querulous with fatigue and tension, suddenly said, “Haven’t they got anything better to do?”
    â€œI shouldn’t think so,” said Mr. Slocum, still gazing out the window. “I should think that none of them has ever had anything better to do. Certainly nothing so soul stirring.” He turned to Father and smiled faintly. “Given what passes for souls in those circles.”
    They had begun to gather, Miss Lizzie had told me, early last evening while I was asleep. At first they had been only a silent motionless few; but gradually they had been joined by others, and at midnight, Miss Lizzie said, there