Cutler 01 - Dawn

do, Philip," I said. "I have to earn my keep," I added bitterly. "And I don't believe Grandmother. I'm not learning the business from the bottom up. I'll always be on the bottom as far as she is concerned." I gazed at him. He looked so different to me now, so cheap and pathetic since he had attacked me. To think I had almost been in love with him!
    "Dawn, you have to believe me. I had nothing to do with my grandmother's finding out about Jimmy. She doesn't know I brought him down there to hide him when he first arrived," he said, his eyes showing his fear. So that was it, I thought.
    "You're afraid I'll tell her?" He didn't reply, but his face answered. "Don't worry, Philip. I'm not like our precious younger sister. I won't deliberately get you in trouble just to get revenge, although I should," I snapped and pivoted to catch up with Sissy.
    During the rest of the morning, whenever I heard footsteps in the corridor, I expected my father or my grandmother. After our work was completed and neither had arrived, I pulled Sissy aside.
    "Take me right to Mrs. Dalton's daughter's house, Sissy. Please, before my grandmother finds more work for us."
    "I don't know why you want to go see that woman. She don't remember things that well," Sissy said, looking away quickly.
    "Why do you say that, Sissy?" I sensed the change in her attitude.
    "My granny says so," she said, looking up quickly and then looking down again.
    "You told her you were taking me and she didn't like it?" Sissy shook her head. "You don't have to go in with me, Sissy. Just point out the house. And I won't tell anyone you showed me. I promise."
    She hesitated.
    "My granny says people who dig up the past usually find more bones than they expected, and it's better to let bygones be bygones."
    "Not for me, Sissy. I can't. Please. If you don't help me, I'll just go looking anyway until I find the house," I said, screwing my face into a look of determination to impress her.
    "All right," she said and sighed. "I'll show you the way."
    We left the hotel through a side entrance and quickly went down to the street. It was strange how everything looked different to me in daylight, especially the cemetery. Gone was its foreboding and ominous atmosphere. Today it was just a pleasant, well-manicured resting place, easy to pass.
    It was a bright, nearly cloudless day with a soft, warm ocean breeze. The sea looked calm, peaceful, inviting, the tide gently combing the beach and falling back into small waves. Everything looked cleaner, friendlier.
    There was a constant line of traffic in the street, but it moved lazily. No one seemed to be in a rush; everyone was mesmerized by the glitter of the sunlight on the aqua water and the flight of terns and sea gulls that floated effortlessly through the summer air.
    This might very well have been a wonderful place in which to grow up, I thought. I couldn't help wondering what I might have been like had I been raised in the hotel and Cutler's Cove. Would I have turned out as selfish as Clara Sue? Would I have loved my grandmother, and would my mother have been an entirely different person? Fate and events beyond my control had left these questions forever unanswered.
    "There it is, straight ahead of us," Sissy said, pointing to a cozy little white Cape Cod house with a patch of lawn, a small sidewalk, and a small porch. It had a picket fence in front. Sissy looked at me. "You want me to wait here for you?"
    "No, Sissy. You can go on back. If anyone asks you where I am, tell them you don't know."
    "I hope you're doing the right thing," she said and turned back, walking quickly with her head down as if she were afraid she would set eyes on some ghost in broad daylight.
    I couldn't help trembling myself as I approached the front door and rang the buzzer. At first I thought no one was home. I pushed the buzzer again and then I heard someone shout.
    "Hold your water. I'm coming; I'm coming."
    The door was finally opened by a black woman with completely gray hair. She was in a wheelchair and peered up at me with big eyes, magnified under her thick lenses. She had a soft, round face and wore a light blue housecoat, but her feet were bare. Her right leg was wrapped in a bandage from her ankle up until the bandage disappeared under her dress.
    Curiosity brightened her eyes and drew deep creases in her forehead. She pressed her lips together and leaned forward to peer out at me. Then she raised her glasses and wiped her right eye with her small