Voice Out of Darkness by Ursula Curtiss Page B

listened to them all, saying almost nothing, missing nothing, dark eyes secret and speculative.
    Michael, at the window, was stiff-backed and remote, staring out into the dark. He had given Katy one look of pleading and then had withdrawn into himself, emerging occasionally to be polite and conversational, retreating again to some miles-away place in his mind.
    Harvey Pickering continued to be nervous. He didn’t quite like it: the eminent Mr. Pickering, dining at the home of a lady whose alarmingly moody and unpredictable husband, who had left her for another woman, had dropped in for the evening. He had an air of staying fastidiously at the edge of it, as though it were a rather murky situation in an ill-lit hotel room.
    And Cassie, thought Katy. Frightened of her father, frightened of Ilse Petersen, with whom she had made an appointment. Cassie, who had laughed and said, “Flu,” who had other reasons for the faint wash of blue under her eyes—but that, in a way, was typical of Francesca’s daughter. She was as deceptively yielding as firm foam-rubber: you probed and made a dent, and then the surface sprang gently and implacably back and in the end you hadn’t really touched her at all… would the evening never be over? It was, very shortly.
    Muffled thumpings sounded from somewhere outside. Cassie looked up sharply and Francesca moved to the window beside Michael and said, “Jeremy’s opening the cellar door. Heavens, the cars must be really stuck.”
    Within the next few minutes the men were all outside. Arnold Poole thought he might be able to get his car started and give someone a push. Michael asked brusquely if there were any ashes to be had and vanished down the cellar stairs; Jeremy could be heard shouting that he would go on up ahead and start shoveling. Cassie made more coffee and Francesca poked restlessly at the fire, sending green and gold and blue sparks raining up the chimney. The faint, fragrant scent of carnations hung in the small pretty room. Katy, grimly holding up her end of the silence, smoked cigarettes she didn’t want and clung to the reassuring thought of Lieutenant Hooper.
    Jeremy came stamping in for a moment. “God, it’s cold out there. We’re almost through. Is that coffee hot?” He drank it and went outside again. In the interval before the door closed they could hear the swish of wind and snow, a tangle of voices, the chunking of shovels.
    Why had Michael been so furious at the mention of his brother? Katy had assumed, vaguely and automatically, that he was an only child; she supposed now that Gerald Blythe was the blackest of all possible black sheep and not to be mentioned—which wasn’t like Michael. It didn’t matter. What was ridiculous was that stiff little ruffle of hurt pride because he hadn’t told her. She stopped thinking about complexities and listened to the weather report that Cassie had just turned on.
    Twelve inches of snow before midnight, with no immediate end in sight. Cars warned off the parkways, householders advised to conserve coal and oil. Electricity out in Noroton, Queenspoint, sections of Bridgeport; the Hudson tunnel closed to traffic… it went on. There followed a lengthy comparison between this and all other heavy storms in the history of the local weather bureau. Cassie shivered and snapped off the radio and smiled at Katy.
    “Remember, Katy? These used to be fun.”
    “No school,” Katy said, nodding. Could you say, “Remember, Katy?” like that if you were so dreadfully not what you seemed? But Cassie’s face was white and newly serene. Cassie had made up her mind about something.
    In the end, it was nearly midnight when they stood in the hall and said good-night to Cassie and Francesca. Arnold Poole had already left, as abruptly as he had arrived. Jeremy would drop Michael and Katy at the Inn; Mr. Pickering’s route took him to the other side of town. Cassie said, “You’re sure you’ll make it home all right, Jeremy?” and he