Child of Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

and did, and that was how I found myself being taken into a couple's home for the first time. The Prescotts, the couple who came to see me soon after I overheard Madame Annjill and her husband talking about me, had already raised their family. They had grandchildren, in fact, but their rationale for seeking to become foster parents at this late stage was that their children and grandchildren all lived far away. They needed to fill their lives with something meaningful. I think that was more true of Mrs. Prescott than it was of Mr. Prescott.
As soon as she met me, Mrs. Prescott immediately asked me to call her Nana and her husband Papa, as if they could snap their fingers and poof make me into their new granddaughter. She said I would have their daughter Michelle's old room, with my own television set and school desk. They sounded very generous, but I knew that they would be getting money from the state to use to pay for my necessities and clothes.
Unlike the other couples who had met with me, they weren't at all put off by my demeanor. Perhaps Madam Annjill had prepared and warned them about me ahead of time. Mrs. Prescott's face looked molded out of plastic. The smile sat there and never so much as twitched. Nothing I asked or said seemed to bother them, even when I asked Mrs. Prescott why her daughter or her son and their children wouldn't need the room I was to have when they visited. From the way she glanced at her husband, I did sense that they were not visited that often by their children and grandchildren, and that truly bothered both of them, perhaps Mrs. Prescott more.
Mr. Prescott was a tall, thin, balding grayhaired man with a pale complexion and watery dull brown eyes. Almost the entire time he was there, he tapped his long fingers on the arms of the chair as if he was keeping time to a marching band.
"And when they do come, we'll always find a way to accommodate everyone, dear," she told me. "Not to worry. Oh, how wonderful it will be to have a little person in our lives again! Why, I even had some clothes in the attic that would fit you, and I know I have lots of toys in the closet, lots of pretty little dolls, too," she declared.
She clapped her hands together and rubbed her palms as if she was washing them. She was stout, with a small bosom and wide hips. I imagined that long ago she had lost her waist, and the person she had once been had faded away like some very old photograph.
"Won't your grandchildren be upset about your taking me in and giving me so much of what belonged to them, especially dolls?" I asked.
Even at that young age, I could fix my eyes as a prosecutor fixed his on a witness in a courtroom. Madam Annjill always told me that was impolite, but I did it anyway. Most orphans wouldn't dare ask such a question for fear of bringing up a reason for their prospective parents to reject them.
But it was an important question for me. The last thing I wanted was to be taken somewhere else to be resented. I was already nine years old, and I knew about envy. Jealousy lived beside each orphan and could instantly turn any of our eyes green as soon as someone else had received a gift or had a prospect of being adopted. Surely it would be even worse when it came to my taking a part of the Prescott's grandchildren's world.
"Oh, no, no. No, no," she chanted.
During the whole interview, Mr. Prescott looked out the windows with an obvious longing to be out there instead of in here with me and all this adoption business. Later, I found out he lived for golf, and anything that interrupted his usual schedule was distasteful.
If Mrs. Prescott knew that, she ignored it or didn't care. She was in no rush. She talked incessantly, describing their house, which she said was a modest two-story Queen Anne with a wraparound front porch. She told me they had a pretty sizable backyard, with lots of room to exercise my little legs.
"Papa will fix the swing set in the back, too, won't you, Papa?" she asked him.
"What? Oh,