Wait Till Helen Comes

by Mary Downing Hahn

  The next morning, Dave called the police and told them about the skeletons in Harper House. Although he had to do a lot of explaining, he finally succeeded in convincing Officer Greene that the bones should be buried in Saint Swithin’s Churchyard, as close to Helen’s as possible. When he hung up the phone, Heather ran to his side and slipped her hand in his.

  “Will you go for a walk with me, Daddy?” she asked. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  I could hear the fear in her voice, but Dave didn’t seem to notice. “Sure, honey,” he said. “I’ve got work to do in the carriage house, but I can spare you a few minutes before I get started.”

  I stood at the back door and watched them walk across the yard together, her face turned up to his, his bent down toward hers. Mom stood behind me, looking over my shoulder.

  “I don’t know why,” she said, “but Heather seems happier this morning. And last night she really surprised me. She actually let me hug her. Maybe your adventure together at Harper House was just what this family needed to pull it together.”

  I leaned against her, enjoying the feel of her arms around me. “Would you still love me no matter what I did?”

  “What do you mean?” Mom asked.

  “Well . . .” I watched a monarch butterfly fly toward the zinnias growing in a tub near the porch. “Suppose I did something really horrible and I told you about it a long time afterward? Would you hate me?” I pulled away from her so I could see her face.

  Mom smiled, but she seemed a little puzzled. “Are you about to confess to committing a heinous crime?” She made it sound as if she were joking. “You were the one who broke your grandmother’s priceless Ming vase all those years ago!” she laughed.

  “No, Mom. I’m serious.” I studied her eyes, trying to read the expression in them. “Suppose I caused somebody to die. I didn’t mean to; it was an accident. But I was scared to tell you. What would you do if I confessed?”

  Mom brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes, her hand touching me gently. “Molly, you’re not making any sense,” she said slowly.

  “Would you still love me? Would you forgive me?” I heard my voice rise like a child’s. “That’s all I want to know. Do parents love their children no matter what they do?”

  Mom put her arm around me and hugged me. “I’ll always love you, Molly, always—no matter what. You should know that by now.”

  “But how about Dave? Would he?”

  “Dave?” Mom hesitated as if she weren’t sure how Dave fit into all this.

  “Not me. Heather. If Heather did something awful, would he still love her?”

  “Molly,” Mom said, sucking her breath in hard, her eyes darkening with concern. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “The fire—Heather started it by accident, but she thinks it’s her fault her mother died.” The words flew out of me as if a dam had burst. “She’s afraid Dave will hate her if she tells him.”

  “Oh, my God.” Mom leaned against the door frame, her hands pressed to her mouth. “That poor little girl, that poor, poor child. To keep something like that bottled up inside all these years. No wonder she’s been so closed off and untouchable.”

  “She was playing with the stove,” I told Mom. “Somehow a fire started. She hid, and her mother died looking for her, I guess. She told me about it last night when we were trapped in the cellar. I thought she should tell Dave.”

  “Is that why she wanted to go for a walk?” Mom stepped out on the porch and gazed across the lawn. “I don’t see them anywhere,” she said.

  “I gave her the right advice, didn’t I?” I looked past Mom’s still figure toward the graveyard, imagining Heather and Dave sitting near Helen’s grave as she told him about the fire.

  Mom turned back to me, embracing me fiercely. “Of course you did, Molly. Dave will understand.”

  Releasing me, she shook her head. “I never even suspected,” she said, more to herself than to me. “She must have thought we’d all hate her if we knew.”

  “That’s exactly what she did think.”

  “And the ghost—it must have been a projection of her own guilt,” Mom said.

  Before I could think of a good answer, I saw Heather and Dave walking toward us. He was still holding her hand, and they were smiling at each other. When she saw us, Heather pulled away and ran to me, her eyes shining with tears. As Mom hurried to Dave’s side, Heather smiled at me.

  “I told him everything, Molly,” she whispered, “and he still loves me. He knows it was an accident.” Burying her head in my stomach, she knotted her skinny arms around me and squeezed till it hurt.

  A few days later, Plummer’s Funeral Parlor sent a hearse to Saint Swithin’s Graveyard. For the first time in almost forty years, the crows in the oak tree had a funeral to watch.

  Mr. Simmons himself had supervised the digging of the graves. The minister from the new church was there, Bible in hand, and a number of people from Holwell, including a reporter for the Journal. It was almost a festive occasion, I thought, as I listened to the conversations around me. Most of these people knew nothing of the terrible unhappiness that the burial was bringing to an end.

  At the conclusion of the service, everyone stepped forward, picked up a handful of earth and tossed it into the graves. I heard several of them comment on Heather’s tears.

  “What a sensitive child she must be,” a stout lady observed, adjusting the angle of her large straw hat.

  Her companion nodded. “You’d think she knew the poor souls personally.”

  “She’s probably too young to be exposed to something as tragic as a funeral,” the woman in the straw hat said. “I’ve never thought little children should be told about death. Why frighten them? Let them keep their innocence as long as they can.”

  The two of them walked to their car and drove off, leaving us alone, except for Mr. Simmons. “Glad to see this settled,” he said, heaping the earth over the graves. “She’ll rest in peace now, like them.” He waved the shovel toward the Berry Patch. “She’s with her own.”

  Heather gazed at the marble angel poised on his pedestal above the Berrys, his wings uplifted. “Daddy should make Helen one of those,” she said to me. “I think she’d like to have one, don’t you?”

  “It would look very pretty,” I said, watching Mr. Simmons pat the freshly-turned earth with his shovel.

  By September, a small marble angel guarded Helen’s grave, and two stones flanked hers. Her own name, not just her initials, marked her burial place, and English ivy softened the mounds of earth over her parents’ graves. The cemetery had lost its gloom, and I no longer feared it.

  One afternoon in early October, Michael, Heather, and I were sitting in a sunny spot not far from Helen’s grave. It was a warm, sweet-smelling day, more like spring than fall. Michael was watching a huge wood beetle crawling around in its glass-jar prison, and I was reading The Borrowers to Heather.

  “Do you want me to read the next chapter?” I was sure she wouldn’t want me to leave poor Stainless facing certain capture, but when I looked at her I realized she hadn’t been paying much attention to the story.

  She was lying on her back, chewing on a blade of grass and staring up at the clouds drifting slowly across the incredibly blue sky. “Do you think she can see us from where she is?” she asked dreamily, her mind apparently far from Stainless’ plight.

  “I don’t know,” I said, guessing that she was thinking of Helen. It was the first time in weeks that she had mentioned her. “Wherever she is, though, she’s happy,” I added. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Me too,” Heather agreed. She sat up and gazed at the angel under the oak tree. He gazed back serenely, seeming to return her smile. Suddenly she grasped my arm, her nails biting through the sleeve of my shirt. “Molly,” she whispered. “Look.”

  She got to her feet and ran toward the angel, and I ran after her, seeing what she saw. Something shiny dangled from the angel’s outstretched hand: a silver locket turn
ing slightly in the breeze.

  Before I could stop her, Heather snatched the chain from the angel’s stiff fingers. As I watched, it seemed to pop open by itself in her outstretched palm. On one side was a picture of Helen. On the other was a folded piece of paper. With trembling fingers, Heather slipped it out of the frame and spread it flat. We both read the message, written in the same hand I had once seen scrawled on my bedroom wall: “With love from Helen,” it said. “Do not forget me.”

  Heather and I looked at each other. The sun warmed our backs as it shone down through the oak’s reddening leaves. Bees buzzed in the goldenrod and a grasshopper bounded away from Michael as he approached us.

  “Where did you get that old thing?” he asked, looking at the locket. “I thought you lost it last summer.”

  “Helen gave it back to me,” Heather told him solemnly. “It’s all right for me to wear it now,” she added, looking at me. “Isn’t it?”

  I nodded, but Michael rolled his eyes skyward. “Not Helen again. I thought we’d heard the last of that ghost stuff.”

  “I think we have,” I said. “Now.”

  Silently Heather fastened the chain around her neck, smiling at me as she did so. Together we walked out of the graveyard. Behind us, Michael kicked at the grass.

  “I still don’t believe it,” I heard him yell at our backs, but it seemed to me that his voice quavered a tiny bit.

  Visit www.hmhco.com to find more books by Mary Downing Hahn.

  About the Author

  MARY DOWNING HAHN, a former children’s librarian, is the award-winning author of many popular ghost stories, including Deep and Dark and Dangerous and The Old Willis Place. An avid reader, traveler, and all-around arts lover, Ms. Hahn lives in Columbia, Maryland, with her two cats, Oscar and Rufus.