The Path Through the Trees - Peggy Dymond Leavey

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for going along with Ginny’s plan. She should have fought harder against it. She could have been on her way to Ashley’s right now.

      Norah carried the suitcase to the wide sill of the window and unzipped it. She had already made up her mind that she would not unpack. Not yet, not if there was any chance of an early escape.

      Looking at her familiar old clothes, the books she had tucked in along the edge of the suitcase, and remembering her mother carefully folding everything for her, filled her with a sudden ache of loneliness. How was she ever going to put in two whole days by herself in this awful place?

      The drawers of the dresser, which Norah pulled open out of curiosity, were all lined with clean, white paper. She was relieved to discover in the bottom drawer a folded, woollen blanket. Maybe she could sleep the rest of this horrible afternoon away.

      Three

      Norah awoke to find the temperature of the room she had been assigned in Great-aunt Caroline’s house more frigid than ever. She slid off the bed, pulling the scratchy blanket around her. She dug her slippers out of a side pocket on the suitcase and shoved her feet into them.

      Opening the door to the hall, Norah was surprised to discover it was much warmer than the bedroom. Along with the heat, the unexpected aroma of cooking food wafted up the stairs. There was something comforting about the smell of food cooking, and it cheered her a little. Or perhaps it was the nap that made her feel more optimistic. By now, Aunt Caroline might be used to the idea of having a teenaged houseguest. They just needed to give each other a second chance.

      Every door along the hall, as well as the one to the right of the stairs, was closed. No wonder the hallway was so dark. A window at the far end looked down on a narrow sideyard, a wooden fence lined with the stalks of dead hollyhocks and beyond, a forest of naked trees. Creepy, Norah decided.

      She exchanged the blanket for a towel from her room and found the bathroom behind one of the closed doors. Norah let the water run into the sink until it was finally warm. Holding her hands under it, she splashed a little over her face.

      The fine braids that held the sides of her straight, brown hair back behind her ears had come undone, and she rebraided them in front of the mirror, clipping the ends together at the back of her head. She took a moment to stare in the glass at her pale face with its sharp features, the nose she thought too long, the brown eyes a little too close together.

      “Well, here you are, Norah Bingham,” she said to her reflection. “Whether you like it or not.”

      “I can’t believe you’re doing this, Mom,” she had said earlier that afternoon, as she and Ginny stood in the lineup at gate seven in Union Station, waiting for the train to points east. “You don’t even know this woman, and now you’re sending your only child off to stay with her, all by herself!”

      “Come on, Norah.” Ginny gave her a good-natured nudge. “This is your father’s aunt. I know enough about her that I’m confident you’ll be well looked after. I’m sure she’s a lovely person.”

      “You think everybody’s a lovely person,” Norah muttered. “Even that guy in the next apartment, who looks to me like a hit man for the Mafia.”

      Ginny smiled nervously at the woman sitting on her suitcase ahead of them in the line, listening to every word. “Oh, Norah, what an imagination! Try to make the best of this little setback, dear. We’re still going to have a holiday in the country.”

      Leaving the door to the bathroom open, Norah descended the stairs to the ground floor. She peeked into the room to the right of the front entrance. It contained several pieces of leather furniture, looking creased and comfortable. There was even a television set in one corner. “Well, this is better,” she said, under her breath.

      Across the hall was a formal living room, its windows covered with heavy draperies. The needlepoint seatcovers on several side chairs provided the only relief to the drab colour scheme.

      An arch connected the living room to the dining room. Light leaked from under a door to the right. Norah knew by the smells coming from that room that it must be the kitchen. Her stomach rolled with hunger.

      The dining room windows looked out over a backyard bordered by a hedge of overgrown cedar trees. Norah crossed the room to look outside.

      In the far corner of the yard, and leaning slightly to one side, was a dilapidated gazebo. Halfway along the hedge, an opening had been left to the forest behind it.

      Night was falling beyond the cedars, but the backyard itself was well lit. To Norah’s surprise, she saw that the yard was practically filled with birdfeeders. They hung from the branches of every tree, from the clothesline, the gazebo and from numerous hooks driven here and there into the ground. There were dozens of them, in every imaginable shape and size.

      Moving closer to the window for a better look, Norah was startled to see that there was someone out there.

      A figure was standing in the rain at the opening in the cedar hedge. A boy, she thought, by the size of him, and he was watching her.

      Four

      Norah took a quick step away from the window where she’d been surveying the yard and nearly collided with Aunt Caroline, who chose that exact moment to come though the swinging door from the kitchen.

      “My goodness!” exclaimed the woman, irritably. “Don’t jump out at me like that!”

      “Sorry,” said Norah. “I was just looking at your backyard. For a minute, I thought I saw someone out there.” After a second glance, she wasn’t so sure.

      “I doubt it,” Aunt Caroline sniffed. “No one comes out this far, especially in the rain.”

      Great-aunt Caroline wiped her hands on the striped apron she wore and reached behind the drapes to switch off the outside lights. Immediately, the scene beyond the window jumped back, leaving only their reflections in the glass and that of the room around them.

      Could Norah have imagined the boy she saw standing there? She had only seen him for a moment. But why would her eyes play tricks on her?

      “I’ve never seen so many birdfeeders all in one place, Aunt Caroline,” she said, remembering that she was going to start over with her great-aunt and putting on a smile. “It’s amazing!”

      “Amazing, is it? Well, it’s a fair bit of work too,” the woman admitted. “I get juncos, blue jays, cardinals.” She counted them off on long, thin fingers. “Grosbeaks, nuthatches, more varieties every year. And squirrels too, of course. I used to put up baffles to keep the squirrels off the feeders, but now I just make sure there’s enough food to satisfy all the little creatures. They know they can count on being fed here.”

      “In the morning, I’ll go out and have a look around myself,” said Norah. She wondered if the next day there’d be any way of telling whether there had been someone in the yard.

      “There’s not much to look at,” Aunt Caroline told her in a sour tone. “The only thing I grew this year were sunflowers. The birds appreciate them, anyway. The rest of the plants come up in spite of my neglect. Fortunately, I have no neighbours to complain about all the weeds.”

      “It must be a lot of work for one person,” Norah agreed. “Is there anything I could do now to help you with supper? Maybe I could set the table. Do you eat in here, or in the kitchen?”

      “I take my meals here in the dining room.” Aunt Caroline drew herself up to her full height again. “You’ll find mats for the table in the drawer of the buffet, cutlery in the top drawer on the right.”

      Since there was no invitation to join her aunt in the kitchen, where she knew it would be warmer, Norah hurried upstairs and dragged a

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