She was worried it had been the hospital and something about her grandmother.

"No, no," I a.s.sured her. "It was... Tyler."

"Ty? What did he want?" she signed.

I thought a moment and then, keeping my smile. I told her he called to see how her grandmother was, but also to say he was having problems at his business and he wouldn't be coming around for a while.

"When will he come?" she wanted to know, "Soon," I said. "I'll work with you until he does," I said.

She stared at me. "You're lying," she signed.

"You're lying!" She turned and ran out.

"Echo!" I cried.

I heard Rhona's laughter on the stairway.

"April Fool, don't you know she's deaf?" she screamed, and laughed even harder.

I followed Echo into her room to rea.s.sure her.

She sat on her bed, staring down at the floor, refusing to look at my signing or my lips. Her whole world was in free fall, a mad state of turmoil with Mrs.

Westington in the hospital, her mother behaving badly, and now Tyler Monahan refusing to return. I was all she had and I wasn't much. I thought.

Rhona paused at the doorway as she and Skeeter made their way to the guest room.

"Look at them. How pathetic. I want you out of my room tomorrow. April Fool, You move into the guest room until you leave, which won't be much longer, understand? I don't know why I stood for you being in there in the first place."

I didn't answer. I sat quietly, waiting for her to pa.s.s.

"C'mon," Skeeter told her. "I'm tired of all this c.r.a.p. We got a lot to do tomorrow."

"Yeah, we got a lot to do and everything we do moves you closer to being thrown out," she told me.

She lingered there. Echo looked up at her. "Don't think you can turn her against me either. She's my daughter no matter what."

"Rhona!"

"All right, d.a.m.n it, hold your water." She turned back to me. "You'll be sorry. You'll all be sorry," she said, and walked on.

Echo looked at me for some explanation.

How do you sign she's drunk? I wondered, and just improvised with gestures showing drinking and wobbling and spinning my eyes. It brought a smile to her face.

"C'mon," I told her. "You can sleep with me tonight. Bring Mr, Panda."

She liked that idea and followed me out. We both got ready for bed. I closed the bedroom door, but there was no way to lock it. For a moment I considered putting the vanity table chair up against it, but decided that was too much and I didn't want to frighten Echo any more than necessary.

Before she got into bed with me, she ran back to her room. I thought she was going for her pajamas, but instead, she returned with the dream catcher.

"Good idea,'" I told her. If there was any night we needed it. I thought, it was tonight.

She got undressed and into bed and I did the same. I saw her signing her prayer, which included her grandmother and then something about her mother. Then she turned over and went to sleep. I lay there staring into the darkness slightly brightened by the starlight coming through the windows. I heard Rhona's laugh and then her curses and eventually, what sounded like her sobbing.

Skeeter doesn't have it as good as he thinks being with her. I thought. She'll bring him bigger and bigger problems. The question was how big would the problems be that she would bring to us.

A few hours later. I had the first indication when I realized the bedroom door had been opened and Rhona was standing at the foot of my bed. She was naked and had a gla.s.s of water in her hand. Her disheveled hair flew wildly about her face masked in the darkness. There was just a small glitter of light caught in her eyes. She looked ghoulish, ghostly, the shadow of Death itself in some female form.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on here?' she demanded.

Echo didn't see her there and was in a deep sleep.

"What do you want?"

"Why isn't she in her own bed?"

"She's frightened with her grandmother in the hospital and you getting drunk and having drunken drug addict friends here messing up the house, which she has seen only respected and kept neat and clean."

"Is that the truth?"

"Look in the mirror," I replied. I was frightened, too, perhaps as frightened as Echo was, but Brenda always taught me never to show fear. Fear slows you down, weakens you, she said. The opponent gets stronger. Swallow it back, cover it up, hate it.

"You'd better be out of this room tomorrow or else," she threatened. "And don't go running to my mother for help. either. You make her sicker with your lies and stories, and I'll have you arrested. She might really have a stroke then." she added. "'You'll be responsible."

She stepped closer and more into the illumination. I could see her cold, calculating smile, her teeth like a mouth of ice. She was right, of course.

I wouldn't tell Mrs. Westington about any of this or she would insist on coming right home. For now. I was trapped. We were trapped. I said nothing. She took a drink of her water, turned and walked out, leaving the bedroom door opened.

I waited until I heard her go into the guest room and then I rose to close my door. I didn't feel safe with it open. but I knew it didn't provide much security even when it was closed. Rhona could return. She could bring Skeeter with her. Things could get very nasty and Echo wouldn't understand. If only we had enrolled her in her school before Rhona had returned.

I thought. I would have been gone by then as well and none of this ugliness would have mattered to me. I would flee my disappointment with Tyler as well, leave it behind like some piece of rotten fruit, just another bad experience to forget. I had an arm's length list of them. What difference did one more make?

Thinking like a runaway as usual, aren't you.

April? Thinking like a coward? I asked myself. When are you going to stand pat and battle the demons, face the challengees? Or are you always going to be in flight, hiding in shadows, hovering in some dark corner, shivering like some terrified bunny whenever there is any sort of conflict or disappointment in your life?

I didn't have an answer for myself.

I didn't close my eyes much before morning either. I listened and stared at the door, challenged by the urge to get up and run out of it, down the stairs, and away at the moment I heard Skeeter or Rhona in the hallway.

Echo moaned in her sleep, but it wasn't a moan of fear. It was more like a baby's moan. She had Mr.

Panda clutched in her arms and she looked years younger than she really was. I touched my teddy bear, a father's gift that now gave comfort to us both. My trembling stopped. My heartbeat slowed and my body softened and relaxed just like hers had. We were like two children who had wrapped the promise of protection around ourselves and found the security to open ourselves to sleep.

Trevor was there first thing in the morning to be sure we were all right. Echo had a hard time waking up. I rose, dressed, and went down to make us some breakfast before she had even opened her eyes.

There were no sounds coming from the guest bedroom. I was sure Skeeter and Rhona were in their morning comas as usual and I was glad for that.

Trevor took one look at Echo's sleepy face when she came down and asked about the evening.

"She was just overwhelmed by everthing," I told him. "Nothing more happened. I had her sleep with me."

Just then Mrs. Westington's cleaning lady.

Lourdes. arrived. She walked in as usual, but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the mess in the living room.

"Let me speak to her." Trevor said, and went over to her. He spoke some Spanish and told her Mrs.

Westington was in the hospital, her daughter was here with her boyfriend, and they had some messy friends over the night before. She went right to work and he returned to speak with me.

"I was thinking that for now it be best we don't tell Mrs. Westington about any of this," Trevor said. I nodded. "We'll deal with it."

"I'm taking Echo over to the hospital right after breakfast. We'll stay there as long as we can so that we'll be there whenever Rhona shows up." I explained. I had been thinking about it. "That way. I might be able to make sure she doesn't irritate her too much."

"Fat chance," Trevor said. "She just has to appear and it's an irritation, but it's a good idea. I have some things to look after here and then I'll pop over.

Too"

Feeling more optimistic because we had a strategy. I was able to get Echo into a better mood.

too. Trevor returned to the winery and Echo and I ate our breakfast. I was surprised, however. when Skeeter appeared without Rhona. He wore only a pair of jeans, no shoes and no shirt.

"Smelled the coffee." he said, and poured himself a cup. He sat back at the table and smiled at Echo. Anyone could see she was afraid of smiling too enthusiastically back, but she was sweet and innocent and in desperate need of love and affection, like a puppy that had been lifted away from its mother and siblings and dropped in some strange new place.

"Cute kid," Skeeter told me. "Shame about her hearing. Rhona never mentioned it. She just told me she had a kid back here so it came as a surprise to me."

"What kind of woman would be like that, forget to mention her daughter was deaf?" I asked.

Skeeter shrugged, a slight smile on his face.

Men like him were very difficult to understand. I wasn't all that experienced when it came to men or even women for that matter, but while traveling with Uncle Palaver. I had met men that reminded me of Skeeter, men who worked the odd jobs at the theaters and other places, who hung on to the small incomes to survive, but perhaps more to justify why they weren't doing anything substantial with their lives. Why worn, about it now? They could basically pay their rent, have what they wanted to eat and wear, and work out some entertainment for themselves. They lived on some shelf of mere existence as if they really believed they would live forever and sometime in the future, they would do something significant. Years could go by and they could miss opportunities after opportunities, but they were carefree and nonchalant about it. Sometimes. I wondered if they weren't right and the rest of us, intense, determined, focused, were somehow missing out on something important.

"Rhona's been through a lot more than you can imagine," Skeeter said. "When I met her, she was close to cashing in. She had been betrayed, abused, and neglected by almost everyone she had trusted. She wasn't going to come back here, you know. She told me about her mother, this place. and I talked her into it. Don't make it difficult, any more difficult than it has to be for her.

"Besides," he said, leaning forward to rip a piece of bread and just smear it across the b.u.t.ter as if were dipping it in gravy, "you should really move on and get on with your own life. You can't just stop somewhere and become part of someone else's family."

"You're doing it," I retorted quickly.

"Well, I'm with Rhona. We'll probably get married, maybe have another kid. The old lady isn't going to last much longer. You know," he continued after chewing and swallowing the bread. "homes, farms, land, stores, whatever, are not much different from seats in a movie. You're there for your time and then you get up and leave and someone else is there."

"That's not true. Families pa.s.s their homes and property down."

He shrugged again. "That's my point. Rhona's time has come for this. What she does with it is her decision. It certainly has nothing to do with you. Go hook up with one of your relatives, meet some guy and have your own time."

"I don't desert people."

"Yeah, you do," he said. gulping the rest of his coffee. He poured more in the cup. 'We all do. I'll take this up to Rhona and see if I can get her engine started." He smiled at Echo again and left us.

In the wake of the silence he left behind. I thought Trevor -Washington was right. It was a bad.

bad sign, that bird flying into the barn.

11.

White Lies .

Doctor Battie was with Mrs. Westington when Echo and I arrived at the hospital. We had to wait in the lobby, but the moment he stepped out of the room.

I leaped to my feet to talk to him in the corridor. He wrote same instructions for one of the nurses to carry out on Mrs. Westington and then turned to me. I didn't like the look on his face.

"I haven't been able to get that blood pressure down yet," he said. "I know she has a lot of tension, a lot on her mind, but we've got to get her calm and relaxed and I've got to get the right prescription. Don't say or do anything that would make her worry. okay?"

"I won't, but did she tell you her daughter has returned and what's happening?"

"A little. I know she's upset about it. Can you have... what's her name. Rhona?"

"Yes. Rhona."

"Rhona call me. They'll page me if she calls while I'm still making rounds in the hospital and I'll speak with her."

"Good," I said. although I wasn't optimistic about it doing any good. I think he saw it in my face.

"Let's just work on keeping her comfortable and calm. I need a few more days."

"Okay," I said.

He looked at Echo. "How is she doing with all this?"

"Not great." I said honestly.

"Well, it's a traumatic time and probably not the best time to get her enrolled in the school, but we should do it soon," he said. The way he emphasized soon put a chill in my heart.

"Yes, thank you," I said. He patted my arm and walked on to his next patient.

Echo looked to me for some information. I signed that the doctor said her grandmother was doing well, but he still needed some time to work on getting her the proper medicine. She nodded with relief. We lie to each other so much. I thought. A good deal of the time, we either tell half-truths to protect and insulate the other person or tell outright lies to avoid conflicts we know would be inevitable and hurt everyone. We even lie to ourselves for the very same reasons.

I took her into her grandmother's room. Mrs.

Westington was sitting up and spooning some soup into her mouth. She put the spoon down quickly.

"Did you bring me anything to eat?"