But Louisa shook her head. "Soon I'll be with Mama and Papa. I heard Doctor McCoy tell Aunt Viola when he thought I was sleeping."

Carrie stared at Louisa, but the little girl's eyes were already closing. Bending down, she kissed Louisa's cheek. TU always be your friend, I promise," Carrie said. "And when you're well, we'll have tea parties in the garden again and you can read to me from your fairy tale book."

Louisa lay still, her eyes closed, a little smile curving her lips. Once more Carrie touched the doll, and then without looking back she ran from the room.

Chapter 18.

A Visit to Cypress Grove THE MOONLIGHT silvered the yard as s...o...b..ll led Kristi and me out of the house. When I looked up at Louisa's bedroom window, I saw Aunt Viola peering out into the garden, but she didn't notice me. She was looking at the hedge, which was swaying as if someone had run through the gap ahead of us.

"Where's Carrie?" Kristi asked me. "We can't leave her here."

"She must have gone home without us," I said.

"Let's go." Kristi pushed past me, but I lingered a moment, watching Louisa's window. Aunt Viola was gone, but the light still glowed softly.

"Goodbye, Louisa," I whispered, knowing as I spoke that I would never see her again. She had sent s...o...b..ll to me for the last time, and she was sleeping now with Anna Maria in her arms.

"Come on, Ashley." Kristi pulled my arm. "It's scary here in the dark, and I'm cold."

Ignoring her, I stooped down and stroked s...o...b..ll's fur as he rubbed against my legs and purred. "I won't see you again either," I told him.

Tears filled my eyes as he slipped away from me and ran up the steps. Leaping to the sill of an open window, he crawled into the house. I waited and in a few seconds I saw him looking down at me from Louisa's room. Then he was gone and Kristi was pulling me through the hedge.

As we stumbled out of the shrubbery and into the afternoon's hot sunlight, we almost tripped over Miss Cooper. As old and wrinkled as ever, she was sitting on the gra.s.s in her own yard. When she saw Kristi and me, she said, "It was all true what you told me, all true."

"You gave Anna Maria back to Louisa," I said, "just like you promised."

"Yes," Miss Cooper said, "I did, didn't I?"

"And she forgave you," I added.

Miss Cooper smiled then and her wrinkles shifted and reshifted, forming new patterns. "She died peaceful," she said. "She died my friend."

Stunned, I watched Miss Cooper struggle to her feet. "She couldn't have died," I said. "She couldn't have."

Miss Cooper glanced at me and shook her head. "She died on this very day in 1912. I told you that." Then she hobbled away, leaving Kristi and me standing in the hot sunshine staring after her, too dumbstruck to speak.

"Come on." I grabbed Kristi's arm and started running. Despite the heat, we raced across the lawn and down Homewood Avenue toward Lindale Street.

"Where are we going?" Kristi cried.

"To Cypress Grove," I shouted. "It can't be true, Louisa can't be dead, not after all we did."

By the time we'd run the five blocks to the cemetery, we were panting and soaked with sweat. At the iron gates, I paused a moment, almost afraid to enter the still, green landscape ahead of me.

"You said she wouldn't die if she got her doll back," Kristi said. Her voice was so sharp with accusation you'd think I'd deliberately betrayed her.

Ignoring Kristi, I walked slowly down a gravel roadway. Unlike the memorial park where Daddy was buried with only a bra.s.s plate to mark his grave, Cypress Grove was an old cemetery, and you couldn't mistake it for anything but what it was. Many of the stones had fallen over and lay half-buried in the gra.s.s. The inscriptions were hard to make out, partly because the writing was old-fashioned and partly because the words had been almost worn away by years of rain and snow.

"If we don't find her grave, then she didn't die," I told Kristi, but even as I spoke I saw the pink stone angel Miss Cooper had told us about. It was standing in the shade of a holly tree, somberly regarding the ivy curling around its base.

It was a hot, dry July day, and leaves from the holly tree littered the ground! As we stepped into its shade, the leaves crunched under our bare feet, cutting our skin with their sharp edges. Sunlight and shadows mottled the little angel. Slowly I made out the letters caned into the stone: LOUISA ANN PERKINS.

BELOVED DAUGHTER OF ROBERT ALAN PERKINS.

AND.

ADELAIDE JOHNSON PERKINS.

JANUARY 11, 1903 a" JULY 17, 1912

MAY SHE REST IN PEACE.

WITH THE ANGELS OF THE LORD.

"She died. Louisa died," Kristi whispered.

I grabbed Kristi's hand and squeezed hard. Louisa was as real to me as Kristi, and my eyes filled with tears as I remembered the way she'd hugged Anna Maria and then fallen asleep. We'd tried so hard, Kristi and I and even Miss Cooper, but we hadn't kept Louisa from dying any more than Mom and I had kept Daddy from dying.

We'd failed, and the same anger I'd felt at Daddy redirected itself toward Louisa. Just like him, she'd deserted me. I'd never see her again; I'd never see him again. How could they just turn their backs and leave me?

Sinking to the ground beside Louisa's grave, I cried so hard my chest ached. All my tears for Daddy, the ones I'd held back so long, poured out of me. "How could you do it?" I sobbed. "How could you go?"

Kristi patted my shoulder and whispered something, but it didn't comfort me. It was Daddy I wanted. No one else would do.

Chapter 19.

Flowers for Louisa I DON'T KNOW how long I cried, but when I finally stopped, I saw Kristi sitting on the gra.s.s a few feet away knotting a chain of clover blossoms together. While I watched, she laid the flowers at the angel's feet and sat back, her head tilted, to study their effect.

Kristi glanced up, saw me looking at her, and tried to smile. Her face was still streaked with tears. "I thought she might like some flowers," she said. "Maybe we can get some nicer ones and bring them to her tomorrow."

All around us birds and insects chirped and scolded. The summer breeze rustled the leaves of the holly tree, and from outside the graveyard came the sounds of cars and the voices of children playing in the park across the street.

"Roses," I said, thinking of the fragrance of Louisa's twilight world. "She'd like roses."

At the sound of footsteps, Kristi and I looked up, startled.

"You're right. Louisa was always partial to roses," Miss Cooper said. Giving me a bouquet of pink and yellow roses, she added, "Put these on the child's grave for me."

Taking the flowers, I laid them carefully at the angel's feet next to Kristi's clover chain. Their colors brightened the ivy.

"I'd have come sooner," Miss Cooper said, "but I didn't realize how tired I was. I sat down to rest and before I knew it, I was sound asleep."

She sighed, and gazed at the little angel. "I had a dream," Miss Cooper said. "About Louisa. I was in her yard the way it used to look and she was there, too, only she wasn't sick. She was so happy, all smiles, and I could hardly speak I was so surprised. She came to me and kissed me."

Miss Cooper touched her cheek lightly and smiled. "She forgave me."

"I had a dream like that once about my father," I said.

"I think it's their way," Miss Cooper said. "Their way of telling you not to fret about them, to let them go."

We all were silent then. A bluejay scolded from somewhere in the treetops and a catbird called from the holly tree. Across the street, the children's voices rose and fell.

"Were you angry when Louisa died?" I asked.

Miss Cooper frowned and her mouth worked on the words before she spoke. "It shames me to say it," she admitted, "but I was mad at her for dying before I had a chance to give the doll back. And for leaving me without a friend."

She was silent for a moment. "Louisa died early in the morning," she went on, her voice shaking a little. "Mama told me at breakfast, and Papa said it was lucky for me that the Lord always took the good children first and left the ones like me for the devil to claim when he saw fit."

"What an awful thing to say." I stared at Miss Cooper, unable to imagine anyone having a father so cruel.

The old woman shrugged. "I was a bad girl, you know that yourself, but I've kept the devil waiting a long time, haven't I?"

She stared at the angel for a few seconds, her face softened by the shadows the holly tree cast over it. "But Louisa, she was a good little creature, and maybe Papa was right. She didn't sutler very long before the Lord took her."

Neither Kristi nor I spoke, so Miss Cooper went on, her old eyes fixed on the angel's face. "This is the first time I've been here since the burial. I couldn't come before, couldn't bear thinking about Louisa and that doll, knowing I'd made her unhappy. But now, well, she's got no cause to hate me."

The bluejay cried out over our heads and flew away, a flash of color in the shade. Miss Cooper leaned on her cane, as still as the angel she regarded. Then she looked down at Kristi and me. "I felt bad all these years," she said. "I'd see the cat, I'd hear Louisa crying even July, but I never thought I could give the doll back and make things right."

Slowly Miss Cooper reached out and touched our heads, first mine, then Kristi's. "I've got you girls to thank for showing me the way," she whispered.

Miss Cooper straightened up then and brushed a strand of white hair out of her eyes. For a second I remembered how she'd looked at Louisa's bedside, a little girl no older than I was.

"Well, it's powerful hot, isn't it?" Miss Cooper's voice rose to its normal level. "Why don't we walk on back home and have a nice cold gla.s.s of lemonade? I made it fresh before I left the house."

Silently Kristi and I looked at each other. Then we followed Miss Cooper down the gravel path and out into the sunny street.

"What kind of cookies do you like?" I heard Miss Cooper ask Kristi, but I didn't listen to her answer. I was too busy thinking about what Miss Cooper had said about her dream. Had Daddy been giving me a message, too?

Chapter 20.

At Peace IT WAS A LONG slow walk back to Homewood Road, and Miss Cooper's living room felt cool after the heat of the sun. While the old woman went out to the kitchen to fix our drinks, Kristi and I sat side by side on an antique sofa. Its cushions were hard and slippery, and I felt like a child in an old-fashioned book as I listened to the tick tock of a grandfather's clock in the corner.

Kristi brought me back to the present when she nudged me and whispered, "Where's Max?"

I looked around uneasily, but I didn't see the dog. "Maybe he's outside," I said, but as I spoke I heard the click click of Max's toenails trailing behind Miss Cooper as she entered the room carrying a tray.

When Max saw Kristi and me, his number-one enemies, sitting in his living room, he raised his lip, showing a bit of mottled gum and an ugly yellow tooth. He growled softly, and Miss Cooper nudged him with her toe.

"Shush," she warned him. "These girls are my guests today, so you behave yourself, mister."

Max roiled his eyes at her and crawled under a table. Making himself comfortable, he devoted his attention to me. One false move, he seemed to say, and I'll bite off your leg.

Ignoring Max, Miss Cooper handed Kristi and me each a gla.s.s of lemonade and offered us a plate heaped with sugar cookies. While we ate, she talked about Louisa and how they'd played in the garden together.

"She had a little tea set her Papa gave her, tiny cups and saucers made out of china so fine the light showed through when you held it up to the sun. Her aunt would fix weak tea and cookies and what a feast we'd have." Miss Cooper sighed and shook her head.

"Those were the happiest times of my fife, sitting there by the fountain, playing with Louisa. Then I had to go and ruin it all by stealing the doll. I don't feel so bad now, but I still wish I'd been nicer to that poor little child."

The grandfather's clock chimed one o'clock, and in the silence following, we heard Kristi's mother calling her.