As soon as the prayer was finished, and the girls stretched and giggled and began to gather in conversational groups (Jada and Dawn and Darci, too, obviously talking about Harriet, arms folded across their chests, hostile stares across the clearing in her direction) Mel (in tennis visor, swipe of zinc oxide down her nose) collared Harriet. “Forget swimming. The Vances want to see you.”
Harriet tried to conceal her dismay.
“Up at the office,” said Mel, and ran her tongue over her braces. She was looking over Harriet’s head—for the glorious Zach, no doubt, worried that he might slip back to the boys’ camp without talking to her.
Harriet nodded and tried to look indifferent. What could they do to her? Make her sit by herself in the wigwam all day?
“Hey,” Mel called after her—she’d already spotted Zach, had a hand up and was threading through the girls towards him—“if the Vances get finished with you before Bible study, just come on out to the tennis court and do drills with the ten o’clock group, okay?”
The pines were dark—a welcome respite from the sun-bleached brightness of “chapel”—and the path through the woods was soft and sticky. Harriet walked with her head down.
But who knew? Maybe it was nothing. Maybe Dr. Vance just wanted to drag her off for what he called a “session” (where he repeated a lot of Bible verses about Obedience and then asked if Harriet accepted Jesus as her personal savior). Or maybe he wanted to question her about the
Or possibly she had a phone call. The phone was in Dr. Vance’s office. But who would call her? Hely?
She emerged from the woods, warily. Outside the office, beside the mini-bus, and Dr. Vance’s station wagon, was a car with dealer’s plates—from Dial Chevrolet. Before Harriet had time to wonder what it had to do with her, the door to the office opened with a melodious cascade of wind chimes and out stepped Dr. Vance, followed by Edie.
Harriet was too shocked to move. Edie looked different—wan, subdued—and for a moment Harriet wondered if she was mistaken but no, it was Edie all right: she was just wearing an old pair of eyeglasses that Harriet wasn’t used to, with mannish black frames that were too heavy for her face and made her look pale.
Dr. Vance saw Harriet, and waved: with both arms, as if he were waving from across a crowded stadium. Harriet was reluctant to approach. She had the idea she might be in real trouble, deep trouble—but then Edie saw her too and smiled: and somehow (the glasses, maybe?) it was the old Edie, prehistoric, the Edie of the heart-shaped box, who had whistled and tossed baseballs to Robin under haunted Kodachrome skies.
“Hottentot,” she called.
Dr. Vance stood by with composed benevolence as Harriet—bursting with love at the dear old pet name, seldom used—hurried to her across the graveled clearing; as Edie bobbed down (swift, soldierly) and pecked her on the cheek.
“Yes, maam! Mighty glad to see Grandma!” boomed Dr. Vance, rolling his eyes up, rocking on his heels. He spoke with exorbitant warmth, but also as if he had his mind on other matters.
“Harriet,” said Edie, “are these all your things?” and Harriet saw, on the gravel by Edie’s feet, her suitcase and her knapsack and her tennis racket.
After a slight, disoriented pause—during which her possessions on the ground did not register—Harriet said: “You’ve got new glasses.”
“Old glasses. The car is new.” Edie nodded at the new automobile parked beside Dr. Vance’s. “If you’ve got something else back at the cabin you’d better run along and get it.”
“Where’s your car?”
“Never mind. Hurry along.”
Harriet—not one to look a gift horse in the mouth—scurried away. She was perplexed by rescue from this unlikely quarter; more so because she had been prepared to throw herself on the ground at Edie’s feet and beg and scream to be taken home.
Apart from some art projects she didn’t want (a grubby potholder, a decoupage pencil-box, not yet dry) the only things Harriet had to pick up were her shower sandals and her towels. Someone had swiped one of her towels to go swimming with, so she grabbed the other and ran back to Dr. Vance’s cabin.
Dr. Vance was loading the trunk of the new car for Edie—who, Harriet noticed for the first time, was moving a little stiffly.
