Voice Out of Darkness by Ursula Curtiss Page B

lifted out carnations, palest pink and white, crisp and fragile as starched lace.
    Carnations. Katy tightened. She said slowly, “There’s a card.”
    Francesca took the little oblong of white cardboard from its envelope. Took it and read it and changed color so swiftly that you couldn’t be sure of the retreat and rush of blood under the fine, taut skin. Head bent, shaking out the flowers, she said absently, “How sweet. By the way, Katy, could you and your Mr. Blythe come to dinner tonight? I know it’s dreadfully last-minute, but there’ll only be Cassie and Jeremy and Harvey and myself.” She lifted the devastatingly blue eyes and Katy, caught and bewildered, said, “We’d love to.”
    Francesca laid the carnations gently back in the box. She said critically, “That window’s still a mess. Would you be a saint and smoke another cigarette while I arrange a slightly tidier snow-scene?” She climbed back into the window. “Of all times… I have a girl here, you know, a very fetching little thing who takes care of the knitting part, and jumps into the breach when customers drop a stitch. She’s sick now, and I hope to God they watch what they’re doing because I can read but I can’t knit.” She sat back on her heels and looked at the shining little tree in its drifts of cottony snow. “Of course—the star on the top, I knew there was something missing.”
    “Can I get it for you?” Katy was on her feet, restless, abrupt, wanting not to look at the fragrant froth of flowers on the desk, unable to keep her eyes away.
    Francesca sounded grateful. “If you would. I’m not the mountain goat I used to be. Past that curtain and to your right there’s a disgracefully untidy closet, and the star’s in a box on the top shelf straight ahead as you go in. I saw it the other day.”
    Past the curtain. Katy fumbled her way into the dark, found the cord of an overhead light. Shelves on either side of her were piled with boxes of wool: Shetland, Ayrshire Fleece, Conant No. 3, with colors and code numbers stamped on the ends and here and there a looping strand of cyclamen or lemon or sharp olivey green. Below these were stacks of empty book cartons; straight ahead were shelves piled with what looked like record books, with a scattered miscellany fitted in wherever there was room: Francesca’s limp little toe-rubbers, a Mexican straw handbag, a tarnished silver compact, a tattered Vogue, an opened box of cheese wafers.
    Katy pulled out a set of folding steps, mounted them, and stretched cautious fingers up to the top shelf. There was the box, she could just see the edge. She levered it closer, and with it came a heavy bronze ashtray. The box with the star tumbled into her arms. The ashtray hurtled past, struck something on a shelf below, and clattered noisily out of sight among the empty cartons.
    Silence. Katy called reassuringly, “Nothing broken,” and began to descend from her shaky perch. Francesca’s voice came dimly from the front of the shop, saying something about the closet’s having to be cleaned. Katy wasn’t listening. She was on her knees, picking up the tumbled contents of the Mexican straw handbag—lipstick, handkerchief, old movie stub, matches, a tiny bottle of what looked like aspirin. And a letter, in a squarish white envelope, addressed in firm slanting black ink to Mrs. Arnold Poole.
    Her fingers were quick. They paused only long enough for her to decipher the postmark: Short Hills, Buffalo, June 28th. Then the letter itself was in her hands, was flipped over to the signature side. Brows drawn incredulously, she read, “—am so sorry that you will not be able to join us for the holiday week-end, as I would like to have Cassie meet her cousin Mabel. In hopes of seeing you both before too long, Love, Aunt Beth.”
    Aunt Beth. Cousin Mabel. It was like expecting a time bomb within a sinister and ticking package—and finding instead a lemon meringue pie.
    In another instant Katy saw why.