My Dearest Friend by Nancy Thayer Read Free Book Online Page B

over the sounds of Alexandra’s banging, roared out in the quiet living room. Alexandra had abruptly stopped playing. She was staring, her adorably rosy face rapt with delight, at something on top of the piano.
    Many valuable things were on top of the piano. This house was so small that Daphne had of necessity used the top of the baby grand as a surface for the certain objects of her life she wanted to have near her, available to sight and touch every day. Mostly there were pictures: of herself as a young graduate student, a picture that had been taken for the school newspaper and that showed her as she had really been at that time in her life—devoted, studious, profoundly serious, and radiantly beautiful. It was almost her favorite picture of herself, and it was in a silver frame. There were pictures of her with Cynthia at different stages of their lives together, when Cyn was a baby, when they were at the Cape or riding horses, and then a huge azurite-framed picture of Cynthia incostume as Maria in
West Side Story,
which the local high school had put on last year and in which she had been cast in the lead role even though she was only a sophomore. Cynthia had dyed her long blond hair black for the part, and in this photo she looked devastatingly beautiful and utterly
dramatic.
Daphne still was amazed to think, every time she looked at the picture, that this creature was her daughter.
    There were other objects on the piano top too—it held so much. An alabaster box trimmed in brass, fading from emerald green to pearl. A large Chinese vase, a reproduction, but costly—for Daphne—nonetheless, which Daphne had filled with multicolored zinnias from the back garden.
    It was the flowers that Alexandra was focused on.
    “Pretty fwower, Mommy!” the little girl said.
    And in a flash she was clambering up from the piano bench, and then onto the piano keyboard. For a moment she stood with both feet in their tiny pink rubber sneakers, balanced on the piano keys. The piano plinked and plonked as she shifted forward, reaching for the flowers.
    Daphne looked at Carey Ann, who was calmly watching her daughter with adoration on her face. “I don’t think it’s wise for her to stand on the piano keyboard,” Daphne said. But the words were scarcely out of her mouth when Alexandra, unable to reach the flowers, stepped on the music rack and crawled up onto the piano lid. Then, scooting along on her knees, she made her way toward the vase of flowers, knocking picture frames to the left and right as she went. The picture of Daphne’s parents, poised rigidly inside an old gilded wooden frame, thwacked to the floor. The alabaster box, struck by the child’s knee, flew to the edge of the piano and hovered there. Alexandra reached out for the flowers, and Daphne took three giant strides and grabbed the vase just before it toppled, as Carey Ann raced across the room and scooped up her daughter.
    “Oh, sweetie,
be careful
!” she said. “You could fall and hurt yourself!”
    Daphne stood, the vase of flowers in her arms, staring at Carey Ann. Carey Ann turned, holding Alexandra in her arms, and, at Daphne’s expression, her own turned immediately into one of childish alarm.
    “Is something wrong?” she asked. Her daughter was trying to squirm away from her to get back to the piano; her arms were waving frantically and she was kicking her feet.
“Fwower!”
she screamed.
    Daphne took a deep breath. “Carey Ann, I think you need to learn to control yourdaughter more, at least when she’s in someone else’s home. She almost broke several valuable things of mine, irreplaceable objects.”
    Carey Ann gasped at Daphne’s words, and Alexandra must have felt the shock waves in her mother’s body, for the little girl went quiet suddenly and stared up at her mother’s face.
    “Oh!” Carey Ann said. Suddenly she was trembling all over, and her face had gone white, drained of all color. “Oh! No wonder your daughter won’t live with