“Why didn’t you trust me? Why did you all leave me out so long?”
“We did trust you. We do. Absolutely. Janet and I, at least. But Petra’s been so afraid all the time! Afraid you wouldn’t keep it from Clare. She says you belong to Green Doors—not Mary’s Field. Petra’s a grand kid but she’s stubborn.”
“Well—let’s get going.”
“To Mary’s Field?”
“Where else? Petra’s bound to be there, I should think. And I’d better see Teresa for myself before taking a specialist to her. You shut the windows, Neil, while I just write up this card for the files. I’ll have to cut out the calls I was making, for Father Morris may be right, that quick action is needed. Meadowbrook may not be the place for Teresa to stay,—but I hardly think we’ll send her so far as New Mexico—”
All the while Lewis talked, he was outlining his recent interview with the idiot boy’s parents in illegible characters on a fresh white card. His heart was shaken to its depths but his head and hand were steady.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“It’s the next turn to the right now. Go slow or you’ll miss it. It looks like a cart road—a wood road.... Here ’tis. Yes, it’s all right. My car’s gone over it hundreds of times.”
It was the roughest sort of track, cut through a beech wood, up a hill. They had driven out in Lewis’ car, leaving Neil’s parked in Marlboro Street. A quarter of a mile of rough going, a turn, and suddenly Lewis saw the farmhouse through lacings of bare branches straight ahead. It was set halfway up a sloping meadow with an orchard at its back. The little old clapboarded dwelling was the color of the branches through which Lewis was seeing it, silver-gray-black-violet. In some lights, particularly after summer rains, the clapboards would be opal.