Distant Waves by Suzanne Weyn Read Free Book Online Page A

of note.
    Mimi once again relayed what she had just told me. "Oh," Blythe said, "I know who you mean. She was asking Madam Anushka about you. They came out on Madam  Anushka's porch as I was going by. Madam asked me to come get you."
    Mimi's hands crossed her chest in alarmed surprise. "Me?"
    Just then Mother appeared on the porch with her clients. "Thank you again, Mrs. Oneida Taylor," the woman gushed, red-eyed from crying. "Your words have been such a comfort."
    "Pleased to have helped," Mother said as the husband handed her a stack of cash. As her clients went down the path away from the house, Mother surveyed Blythe's and my serious expressions and Mimi's stricken one. "What is going on?" she asked.
    Blythe excitedly told her what had happened. As she spoke, Mother slowly grew so pale that she could have been a spirit herself. "Come inside, Mimi," Mother said firmly, bending to pull my sister up. "There's no need to see this woman. Stay home until she's gone."
    "But Madam Anushka said for her to come," Blythe protested. "What should I tell her?"
    "Tell her your sister went to Niagara Falls on a sightseeing trip," Mother replied with an agitated wave of her hand. "Tell her she'll be gone for the rest of the month."
    Mimi resisted my mother's pulls on her arm. "Mother, what is going on?" she demanded.
    "It's nothing you need to know," Mother insisted. "Nothing at all. Come inside. You, too, Jane. Inside right  now and go straight to your room. Do not come out until I say you may. And Blythe, gather Amelie and Emma, then return here as soon as you give the message to Madam Anushka."
    "Why are we being punished?" Blythe demanded. "It's not fair."
    "I have my reasons."
    Mother marched us inside. We were full of questions, but she silenced us by turning away and pointing to the stairs. We obediently ascended, though in minutes we had crawled out our window and were sitting side by side on the back porch roof outside the bedroom we shared.
    "I have to know," Mimi said, restless.
    "Mother is dead set against it," I reminded her as I wrapped my arms around my knees.
    "Why should she be?" Mimi demanded.
    I furrowed my brow thoughtfully. "I wonder why this stranger wants to see you so badly."
    "Why does Mother not want her to see me so badly?"
    Emma came out onto the roof with Amelie behind her. "There you are," said Emma, seating herself beside Mimi. At fourteen, the twins were willowy and long limbed with straight, blond brown hair that would never hold a curl no matter how long they wrapped it in rags or wound it around hot curling tongs. Their greatest beauty was their four identical, limpid, violet blue eyes, surrounded by incredibly long, dark lashes.
    After some time, Blythe climbed out to join us. "Mother is arguing with Madam Anushka," she reported. "She and her clients are in front now with Mother."
    That was it. We had to know what this was about. One by one, the five of us descended the rose trellis that was attached from the ground to the porch roof, fairly well demolishing Mother's yellow roses, and scurried along the side of the house to peer around the corner and try to see what was happening.
    "Eef it is true, she has de right to know," Madam Anushka was insisting in her thick Russian accent.
    The black woman was dressed elegantly in a yellow dress with black lace trim. She wore a quite spectacular matching hat above a dark, attractive face. Her husband seemed somewhat older than her. He, too, was dressed well in a summer suit.
    The woman spoke with a melodious French accent. "I would only like to see the girl for the briefest moment," she pleaded.
    "I have told you, she is gone." Mother held fast to her lie.
    Mimi shocked us all by stepping forward from our hiding spot. Mother placed her hand on her cheek and hung her head, beaten.
    The moment Mimi stood beside the woman in the yellow dress, I drew in a sharp gasp of surprise. Except for the difference in the color of their skin, Mimi was a younger  version of