A Heartbeat Away

She hesitated and I held my breath.

“It was just that he left your presents here, instead.”

For the rest of my life, I will remember the happiness that flooded me in that moment. Father Christmas hadn’t forgotten me after all. He just thought I was at Homewood.

“Come on, then,” said Mrs. Brown, “let’s go and find them.”

As we walked together along the hallway, she took my hand in hers.

“Does your mother know that you are here?” she asked.

I shook my head slowly, looking down at my shoes.

“They’re still asleep,” I told her, chewing on my sandwich with the pure delight that only true hunger brings.

A gust of cold air whooshed through from the kitchen as we went into the living room and I heard the back door bang.

“Shut that door, Daniel,” called Mrs. Brown. “And then come and see who’s here.”

We waited for a moment until he raced in from outside. His cheeks were bright pink from the sharp winter’s air and his warm brown eyes glowed with delight.

“I knew you’d be over,” he said simply, pointing to the bundle of yellow fur that followed him. “This is Fudge.”

“I hope you cleaned him up before you brought him in,” grumbled Mrs. Brown, but her eyes were smiling.

For a moment even my presents were forgotten as I gazed in wonder at the golden Labrador pup. The pup studied me with Daniel’s eyes, and when I pressed my face against his soft baby coat, his warm pink tongue curled across my cheek.

“Why,” I gasped, “he looks just like you.”

“That’s what my mom says,” laughed Daniel.

I loved my presents. A riding hat from Mr. and Mrs. Brown to go with the jodhpurs, and a book from Daniel called Learn to Ride. But no gift could ever be as wonderful as Fudge. Daniel knew how I felt without being told and he smiled at me.

“You can share him if you like,” he said. “Fudge can be our dog.”

“Our dog,” I repeated over and over again. “Our dog.”

After breakfast, when Mrs. Brown told me that my mother would be very worried and I really should go home, all my happiness faded. I ran to hide behind the big square kitchen table, but she gently escorted me out by my arm, stroking my thick dark wavy hair off my tear-stained face.

“Now, you know that you have to go, don’t you, Lucy?” she said, kissing me softly on the cheek.

I nodded, watching solemnly as she took her long beige coat from the peg by the door. As she fastened the buttons, Mr. Brown came in. His red hair was all wild, as if he’d forgotten to comb it that morning, and his overalls smelled of cows and silage. I thought he looked nice.

“Go and say goodbye to Daniel and Fudge,” said Mrs. Brown, ushering me toward them as she turned to talk to her husband.

“And remember that you can play with Fudge and Daniel anytime, so no sadness from you,” added Mr. Brown with one of the broad grins that seemed to fill up his whole face. Daniel smiled like that, too.

When the blue car stopped outside our house, my dad burst through the front door even before we had time to get out. His face was heated with anger, but his voice was icy-cold.

“Now then, Mrs. Brown,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “What is all this? Are you trying to steal my Lucy away?”

He stood squarely in front of us, his arms across his chest. I was pleased to see that he was wearing clean clothes and had shaved off the stubble of a beard that made him resemble a Gypsy. He looked nice, my dad, when he was all done up. Not the Mr. Brown kind of nice that had nothing to do with appearance at all, but handsome and charming like the men on TV.

Mrs. Brown was almost as tall as he when she stood very straight, and stared him in the eye without flinching. “Mr. McTavish,” she said in a fierce voice. “I cared for your wife and child when you abandoned them, so do not take that tone with me.”

His face darkened and I felt my insides shrivel.

“Well, for that I’ll say thank-you, Edna Brown, but as your services are no longer required, I suggest that you get yourself off home and leave my daughter to me.”

I felt so proud of Mrs. Brown, standing up to my dad like that. I wished with all my heart that my mom was watching, so that she, too, could learn to be strong and brave. And in that moment I made a promise to myself. Whatever happened in my life, I would never cower from it like my poor sad mom. I would never give in and turn inside myself, as she had.

“Your wife was released from the nursing home into my care,” Mrs. Brown went on. “She needs peace, no worries and plenty of rest, or else she’ll be back in there in no time at all.”

My dad’s swarthy skin turned a dull red.

“Well, she has me now. Doesn’t she, Mrs. Brown?” he retorted.

For just the slightest second, I saw Mrs. Brown’s glance waver. She placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it tight.

“Well, you damn well make sure that you look after them both,” she told him in a frosty voice. “Or else you’ll have me to answer to.”

My dad took hold of my hand then and pulled me toward him, and we watched as she walked back toward her car, head held high.

“Nosy old bag,” he murmured as she climbed into her car and started the engine. I thought she was just going to drive away, but she regarded us for a moment, then wound down her window and leaned out.

“Bye, Lucy,” she called, with a gentle smile for me. But as she turned her gaze onto my dad, her eyes went all glittery and hard.

“You can tell Mary that I’ll be along on Friday as usual to collect her allowance for her, so I’ll see her then.”

My dad’s mouth was set in a grim line and his blue eyes blazed with anger as he yanked at my arm and dragged me easily behind him into the house, despite the fact that I kept my legs stiff and straight. The front door slammed so hard behind us that I thought it might fall off its hinges.

I went back to school in the first week of January, and life gradually settled into an uneasy routine. Every Friday Mrs. Brown would stop by to visit my mom, then go to collect her money from the post office before picking Daniel and me up at school. She always brought Fudge with her, and we would play with him in the back of the car while she drove to the supermarket to buy our groceries.

My dad was never there when we got home on Fridays. I suppose he didn’t want to see Mrs. Brown. He knew he couldn’t stop her coming, so he just stayed away. And that was probably a good thing. If not for her going to the supermarket for us on Fridays, there would never have been any food to eat in our house at all.

As soon we carried all the bags into the kitchen, Mrs. Brown would put on the kettle to make a pot of tea to share with my mom. Sometimes my mom would help her, when she was having one of her “better days,” but usually she just sat in the living room and waited. I often wondered how Mrs. Brown could be so patient with her, but when I asked her about it one day, she told me that my mom was ill and I had to be patient, too. It made sense to me, and I did try, but it was hard.

Mrs. Brown always stayed for at least an hour, and Daniel and I used to go outside and throw a ball for Fudge. He never tired of running for that ball, and when we went back into the house, he’d be so exhausted he’d flop on the floor, his tongue hanging out, until it was time to go home.

One Friday in spring, when golden daffodils were blooming everywhere and the birds sang sweet songs of promise from way up in the budding treetops, we burst into the house with our grocery bags to find my mom sobbing by the unlit fire. She was on her knees with a letter in her hand and her eyes were red-rimmed.

I looked at the envelope she had discarded in the hearth and realized that it was exactly the same as all the others that had arrived lately—the ones that my dad always burned. He would run down the stairs while my mom was still in bed, pick up the mail from where it lay on the mat and throw most of the letters, unopened, into the fire.

“Damn bills,” he would curse as yellow flames licked away at the officially typed writing. Then he would grab his coat from the peg by the door and march out of the house, banging the door behind him. Sometimes after one of those outbursts he would stay away all day and all night, and sometimes he would come home in the early hours of the morning, singing and shouting his way down the street. Whatever he did, it always made my mom cry, and now that she knew about the letters, I was afraid of what she might do

I looked at her crumpled gray face, all blurry with tears, and repeated my vow—the one that I had made to myself on the day Mrs. Brown had brought me home.

Daniel and I stood open-mouthed as Mrs. Brown untangled the letter from her trembling fingers. She read it through with a grave frown on her face, and for an instant I thought she, too, was going to cry. Then her mouth set into a thin straight line and she folded the crisp white paper several times before placing it deliberately on the tabletop.