Cutler 01 - Dawn

to her throat. "I can't catch my breath."
    "Now, take it easy, Laura Sue," my father advised. I looked at him in anticipation. What was happening? He nodded and tilted his head toward the door.
    "I'd better be going," I said. "I've got to get back to work."
    "Oh . . . oh, yes, sweetheart," she said, turning back to me. "I need a little nap now anyway. Later we will talk again. Randolph, please ask Dr. Madeo to come back."
    "Now, Laura Sue, he was just here not an hour or so ago and—"
    "Please. I think I need him to change my medicine. It's not helping."
    "All right," he said with a sigh. He followed me out. I looked back once and saw her lying back with her eyes closed, her hands still pressed to her bosom.
    "She'll be all right," my father assured me as we stepped out. "Just one of her spells. They come and go. It's part of her nervous condition. Why, in a day or two, she will be up and about, dressed in one of her beautiful dresses and standing in the dining room doorway alongside Mother, greeting guests. You'll see," he said, patting me on the shoulder.
    My father assumed my sad and troubled look came from my worrying about my mother, but she was still a stranger to me. True, we looked somewhat alike, but I did not feel any warmth between us and couldn't imagine calling her Mother. She hadn't even made an effort to kiss me. Instead, she had made me feel dirty and unschooled, a wild thing brought in from the streets, someone to be made over and trained like a stray dog.
    I looked away. Not money, not power and position, not all the honor associated with being a Cutler could replace one loving moment I had lived as a Longchamp. But no one wanted to see this or under-stand, least of all my real parents.
    Oh, Momma! Oh, Daddy! I cried in the darkness of my tormented thoughts. Why did you do this? I had been better of not knowing the truth. It would have been better for all of us if that memorial stone to a stolen baby remained untouched, lingering forever in the darkness on a quiet cemetery, just another lie.
    But to me the world was full of lies, and one more now seemed not to matter.

 
    10
A NEW BROTHER, A LOST LOVE
     
    For the next few days I barely saw my father. Every time I did see him, he appeared frenzied, rushing from one place to another like a worker bee while my grandmother sauntered coolly about the hotel like the queen. Whenever my father saw me, he promised to spend more—time with me. I felt like a pebble in his shoe. He would pause to shake me out and then hurry off, forgetting from one time to the next that he had seen me and said the same things.
    My mother didn't come down from her room for days. Then one day she appeared at the dining room door, greeting the guests as they entered. She was dressed in a beautiful turquoise gown and had her hair brushed and curled so it lay just over her shoulders. She wore a diamond necklace that glittered so brightly it was blinding in the light from the overhead chandelier, and I thought she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. She looked as if she had never been sick a single day in her life. Her complexion couldn't have been more rosy, her eyes brighter, her hair more healthy and rich.
    I stood off in a corner of the lobby and watched how she and my grandmother greeted people, both of them smiling warmly, patting hands, accepting kisses on the cheeks, and kissing other women and men. It seemed as though everyone who stayed at the hotel was an old friend. Both my mother and my grandmother looked radiant and alive, energized by the crowd of guests filing past them.
    But when it was over, when all the guests had entered, my grandmother gave my mother a strange, stern look and then walked into the dining room. My mother didn't see me watching her at first. She looked as though she would burst into tears. My father came out to fetch her. Just before she turned to accompany him into the dining room, she looked my way.
    I thought she had the oddest expression, one that even frightened me a bit. She looked as though she didn't recognize me. Her eyes were filled with curiosity, and she tilted her head slightly. Then she whispered something to my father. He turned, saw me, and waved. My mother continued into the dining room, but my father came across the lobby.
    "Hi," he said. "How are you doing? You getting enough to eat?"
    I nodded. He had asked me the same question three times in two days.
    "Well, tomorrow you will have more to do and more fun.