Voice Out of Darkness by Ursula Curtiss Read Free Book Online Page B

Monica, big for her age, skating down an incredibly long, narrow, twisting runway, with statues on either side. Katy kept saying, “Come on, Monica, it’s late,” and Monica’s voice kept floating back on the cold dank air, setting up echoes among the statues, “I can’t—you’ll push me.”
    “But I won’t!” Katy cried, and woke with her own voice hanging in the bleak little room at the Fenwick Inn.
    Outside the world was blindingly, dizzyingly white with snow and sunlight no warmer than crystal and a sharp piercing blue sky. The wind drove a little mist of powdered snow past her window and jostled the laden branches of a giant fir; a thick clump of white trembled and slid and crashed softly down out of sight. Katy wondered absently if it were a good skiing surface, and caught herself in time to smile. Funny how, in the midst of everything, she could slip so easily back into Fenwick. Good skiing surface? Had the thaw ruined the ice on the ponds?… looks like snow.
    Her ring glimmered whitely in the light from the window. It was a beautiful day. Michael was coming that night. Michael had said, glancing at her ring, “Look better on the other hand.” Try and forget the snowy graveyard and the carnations glowing in the little plot under the blue spruce trees.
    The dream came back for a moment, briefly. Breakfast, thought Katy hastily, breakfast and all the hot coffee Mr. Lasky has in the house, and got up, shivering, and dressed.
    On Fridays, the Inn got itself into a miniature turmoil preparing for a handful of out-of-town week-enders. In the midst of subterranean scurryings, and to the tune of Mr. Lasky carrying on a tirade with the chef somewhere in the dim regions of the kitchen, Katy drank three cups of coffee, and when Mr. Lasky reappeared, reserved a room for Michael. She washed her hair and while it dried sat on the bed and did her nails. She had, later on, the inevitable daily encounter with Miss Whiddy.
    Miss Whiddy, hatted and coated and, incongruously, carrying a pair of large pointed black shoes in her hand, was standing in the lobby in earnest low-voiced conversation with Mr. Lasky. At the sight of Katy, bound for the desk and cigarettes, she broke off and said brightly, “—and here we are. Lovely morning, Katherine, lovely.”
    Katy said it was, and took a hopeful step away. Miss Whiddy sidled closer. “Having company for the weekend, too, I guess?” Mr. Lasky looked unhappy and melted from view. Katy, divided between annoyance and amusement, said yes. She added, because Mr. Lasky would undoubtedly have volunteered that too, “From New York. But I won’t keep you, Miss Whiddy—you were on your way out.”
    “Shoemaker,” said Miss Whiddy, waving the sedate black shoes in a vague gesture. She turned with a last searching bright-gray glance. “Have a nice lunch with that Ilse Petersen yesterday?”
    To keep anything that took place in Fenwick from her was like trying to hide a safety pin from a fluoroscope. “Not lunch, Miss Whiddy,” Katy said crisply. “Tea. That must have come through wrong.”
    “Well, really,” said Miss Whiddy, flushing even pinker. “Really, Katherine. Just because Mrs. Baker happened to see you driving Mr. Poole’s car out that way—she was taking the dogs for a run before lunch. And I only wondered…”
    Katy felt a flicker of remorse. Fenwick and its tiny unimportant comings and goings were Miss Whiddy’s whole world, and you couldn’t change the habits of a lifetime. She said, “Oh, of course. I’ve always liked Arnold, and I hadn’t seen him in so long. But I couldn’t stay, so I just had some tea.”
    “She’s a queer one, all right,” offered Miss Whiddy, mollified, and sniffed and nodded and departed, shoe-makerwards.
    It wasn’t long after that, when Katy was standing irresolutely at a window in the corner of the shadowy reading room, that a voice behind her said abruptly, “Hello, Katy. Come for a ride?”
    It was Jeremy Taylor, smiling