Family Secrets

by Ruth Ryan Langan

  Chapter Two

  Ivy stood at the upstairs window and watched Gertrude’s tall figure stride along the driveway toward the house. The old woman had been gone for more than an hour. She must have walked several miles.

  She had the gait of a woman half her age and moved with the ramrod stance of a drill sergeant. Dressed in warm tweeds, with a jaunty cap perched on her white hair, she was the picture of robust health.

  Across the hills, the fading sun slanted ribbons of shadow and light through the trees. Ivy marveled at the sounds of silence, alien to her after her years in the city. Even this house seemed steeped in silence. She’d actually heard Martha’s starched skirts swish as she went about her work in the thickly carpeted hallway outside Ivy’s room.

  She glanced impatiently at her watch. Where was the maid with her clothes? She should have insisted on taking care of her own things. If they weren’t brought up to her room in the next few minutes, she would go in search of them.