Myra watched her go and then set my tea down. I saw she had brought along a piece of toast and jelly as well.
“She’s a very good nurse, Clara Sue. I watched her with the boy. I could see he likes her.”
“The boy? You mean William?” I said disdainfully.
“What?”
“Didn’t Grandpa announce it today?”
“Announce what?”
“Drumroll, please. The poisoned boy has been baptized.”
Myra shook her head. “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Clara Sue.”
“Grandpa wants him to accept being called William Arnold,” I said.
I sipped some tea and studied her reaction. She was in deep thought a moment. “He told you he wanted you to call the boy Willie?” she asked.
“No. I overheard him talking to the boy and giving him Willie’s formal name, William, until he remembers his real name. He’s sorta borrowing it, borrowing everything that was my brother’s.”
“I suppose it must be pretty frightening not to remember your own name,” she offered. “Your grandfather is just trying to help.”
“Why doesn’t he call him something else, anything else? Jack? Mark? Tom? Or just keep calling him Boy. Tarzan called his son Boy, didn’t he? Maybe if everyone called him Boy, he would finally get tired of it and remember his name.”
She shook her head.
“He told him Willie’s initials are on lots of things, W.S. But he wants him to accept William Arnold. He’ll probably get the initials changed.”
“You think your grandfather would change them?”
“Yes. Lucky boy, huh?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say he’s been too lucky up to now, would you, Clara Sue?”
“I don’t care. Right now, he falls into a vat of good luck just when my brother Willie fell into a vat of very bad.”
Myra pressed her lips together. Her eyes were filling with tears. I realized that I wasn’t helping her feel less guilty about what had happened.
“None of it was your fault, Myra,” I said, now struggling to keep back my own tears. “It was just bad luck to be there at the same time some horrible drunk man was driving along our street. This all just makes it . . . makes it worse!”
She patted my hand and stood up. “We’ll see. In the meantime, try to hold down some toast and jam, and maybe you’ll be able to have My Faith’s mushy eggs for lunch.” She started to turn away.
“Bad things can happen to good people, too, Myra. I know My Faith doesn’t like to talk about it, why God lets that happen, but it’s true. And it doesn’t matter how rich you are or where you live.”
I thought she would stay and argue with me about it, but all she said before she left was “Don’t make yourself sicker over it. Stop having these thoughts. If you ever need strength in this life, it’s when you have troubles like this.”
I felt like pounding the bed and screaming. How could I stop having these thoughts? All these dark thoughts seemed to have seeped in under my door and through my closed windows. They were swirling around me. Nightmares would dance at the foot of my bed forever. What Grandpa was doing was only making everything more terrible. I wanted to scream louder, until Myra would call him and he would come rushing home from work and decide to put the boy into a clinic or something, but I choked it all back and fell asleep.
When Myra returned with another cup of tea, I felt guilty about her waiting on me like this. She wouldn’t tell anyone else to bring it up to me, and I knew she was still having trouble getting about with that cast and her aches and pains. A little while before, I had heard some voices in the hallway. One of them was Dorian Camden’s, but I didn’t know who the other person was, except that it was another woman. I asked Myra about it. I was hoping it was someone from one of those government agencies here to arrange for the boy to be taken away. She would tell Grandpa that no matter how rich he was, he couldn’t just scoop up some child and take care of him. There were rules.
“Oh, that’s the psychiatrist,” she said. “Her name is Dr. Patrick. They were very excited because the boy was speaking a little.”
I was disappointed. “Really? What did he say?” On the other hand, maybe he was finally revealing his family name, and they could contact the police and get him home.
“He wasn’t answering much about himself, but he was expressing how happy he was to be here.”
“Who wouldn’t be?” I said. “Look what he’s been given.”