Catta?
Now Lila was trapped. Her basic plan had been to liberate the sofa by indirection, to ask for help carrying something or other out from the kitchen, but if there was some threat to Catta, her younger son, her cherished, then she would have to know.
“I think it’s real,” Diana said.
The most likely possibilities were either trivial or innocent. Last year, Catta and James, her oldest, had stolen a box of ice-cream sandwiches from the staff freezer—there was a fuss about that. The boys sometimes chased the sheep, who were already skittish. Whatever Diana knew or had seen was almost certainly not serious in itself, but Lila foresaw the danger of this unknown anecdote, whatever it was, becoming part of a defensive gambit with the Old Man. He could be harsh, and Diana would tell him some small tidbit, often fabricated, to deflect his attention. To that, Lila was sympathetic. In certain of his moods, any sign of weakness enraged the Old Man, and it was worse if the outlaw were related to him, no matter how young. At other times, of course, her father-in-law could be the sweetest man alive. For example, every year the sheep went to North Island for eight weeks of summer grazing. There was an agricultural point to the trip—the grass on North was said to be higher in protein—but one year the Old Man had turned the herd’s departure into a sort of pageant, solely to amuse James when he was little and so sick that summer. The Old Man had rallied both houses and all the staff to line the course from the pen at the top of the hill down to the dock, where the barge waited. At the word go the door to their pen swung open, and the flock ran down the hill at an absolutely frenetic pace, followed by any children big enough not to be trampled by a panicked lamb. It was festive in a small and simple way, and from those beginnings it grew into something they always did on the first weekend in July. It made her smile to think about, and Lila had never seen anyone laugh so hard as little James had that first time the sheep ran by.
“I think we should seem oblivious,” Lila said, still not knowing what Diana was talking about, but nevertheless hoping to keep her silent.
“Oh, absolutely—though no one would ever know just by looking at him,” Diana said. “To see it you have to really love him like we do.”
Not the ice cream or the sheep, then.
“I’m sure it’ll pass,” Lila said.
“You didn’t see him look at her.”
Lila’s hand leapt up from the sofa as if it were on fire.
It couldn’t be a girl.
Catta was still too young for that, Lila thought. He was only twelve—there had been no signs. And anyway, who? Someone could possibly be at the Cottage—the children’s bunkhouse always held a random assortment of the extended family’s offspring and those of the houseguests’.
“Oh, but they’re both so young—” Lila said.
“Have you seen her recently? Sheila’s not so young anymore,” Diana said.
“Sheila!” Lila said. It had just slipped out.
A wave of nausea rolled through Lila’s body, down to her fingers. Not the staff. There would be an explosion if the Old Man found out.
Suddenly she felt Jim’s hand on her shoulder. Thank God.
“For Christ’s sake, Diana—sit up,” he said.
Her husband could be caustic with his sister, and Lila tried to moderate him whenever possible, but this time she stood up and stepped away to let the full weight of his justice fall on this woman, relative or not, who would lie down at a dinner party.
“Meat makes me tired,” Diana said as she raised herself up in slow stages, like a prolonged triptych of defeat.
“You should graze in the pasture,” Jim said.
“A salad would be fine.”
“Cyrus says the North Island clover is high in protein.”
Now that they’d started, Jim and Diana would go on for a while. Lila wanted to see her children in the flesh; she wanted to see them sleeping. She touched her husband’s arm lightly as she turned and moved toward the dining room, which led through swinging doors to the pantry, which gave on to the kitchen, which in turn opened to the lawn. That roundabout path would camouflage her departure better than leaving through the front door.
“Lila!” a muffled voice trailed after her as she left the room.
“Coming,” Lila called back.
The kitchen was nominally off-limits to the family before and after meals, but Lila routinely chose to ignore this rule. As she came through the swinging door, Martha and Susan looked up from the tail end of the dishes.
“Martha, the lamb was perfection tonight,” Lila said.
“Thank you, Mrs. Hillsinger.”
“If anyone asks, I’ve gone to the garden for mint.”
“Susan can get that for you.”
“Thank you,” Lila said. “I’m halfway there already.”
Then she was out the door and into the night.
Lila turned downhill, away from the mint in the kitchen garden, carrying her shoes and walking on the grass next to the dirt road. She was happy to be free from the need to be charming, happy to see the Pleiades and to listen for the bellbuoy.