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Just two weeks after being installed at Mr. Carrisford’s as Sara’s companion, and still full of beaming amazement at her snugly outfitted bedroom just next door to Sara’s, Becky learned that she would be traveling abroad.
“Traveling, miss?”
Sara looked up from the map she had spread on the carpet in the small parlor that joined the girls’ rooms. Her wide eyes were thoughtful. “To France and Switzerland and then on to India, to start.”
It wasn’t possible to miss the way Becky’s cheeks paled, or the faint tremor in her hand when she pointed to a dusty pink shape on the map. “Here, miss?”
“That’s Australia,” Sara told her kindly. “Perhaps we’ll travel there, too, one day. I’ve always wanted to see a koala bear or a kangaroo.”
It wasn’t possible to leave immediately, of course. Uncle Tom was, as Mr. Carmichael had predicted, nearly a new man just weeks after Sara’s arrival, but he was hardly healthy enough to undertake a lengthy journey. Yet every day, Ram Dass nodded his approval as Mr. Carrisford’s color and appetite and strength improved in the warm glow of Sara’s company.
Becky was more than content simply to explore her new home, dressed in her comfortable and sturdy new clothes, and always with a full belly and a night of restful sleep behind her. She couldn’t quite imagine that the world beyond the square was as delightful or worthy of exploration, but it was Sara who did the supposing for both of them, as always.
Between the boisterous company of the Large Family, which Becky still liked to call them, if only to herself, and the new routines she and Sara fell into at Mr. Carrisford’s, it was easy to forget that Miss Minchin was still right across the way. And Becky, although she knew it wasn’t proper, quite liked to preen just a little bit when the missus caught her out on the sidewalk in her fine new coat and shiny boots, and the pinched look on her face threatened to swallow her up whole. The life of the academy went on as before, but the fact of it was somehow unimportant in the moments Becky didn’t spot one of its residents out in the square, a background noise that was easily overlooked when the monkey was chattering in hope of a cracker, or the Carmichael children were tumbling through the house, full of laughter and stories.
When the new “little family,” as Sara had taken to calling it, finally departed, the journey was a leisurely one. They were a cozy party of four (“Six,” Sara reminded one and all, pointing to the creature on Ram Dass’s shoulder and Boris, faithfully panting at her feet), and Ram Dass was careful to ensure that Mr. Carrisford didn’t overdo. Sara was delighted to have the time to explain everything that was new and strange to Becky, who ate up every detail as if it were a sweet morsel to be savored.
They were in Paris a few months later, strolling through one of the painting galleries in the Louvre, when Becky laid a hand on Sara’s sleeve. Ram Dass followed behind them, hands folded. He always looked strangely incomplete without the monkey on his shoulder.
“Do you ever wonder, miss, er, I mean ‘suppose,’ what Miss Minchin and them are doin’ right now, at home in the square?”
Sara stopped and looked at her friend before spotting a bench in the corner. She led Becky to it and sat down, taking Becky’s hand in hers.
“I don’t,” she said simply. “But perhaps I should. Miss Minchin and Miss Amelia are stories just as anyone else is. Who knows what might be happening to them even now, while we sit here in a different country, believing all the adventures belong to us?”
Becky’s eyes widened; she had only just begun to understand that her own life had taken a quite surprising turn for the better, and that it was most definitely not a product of Sara’s lively imagination.
With Ram Dass hovering behind them, Sara held Becky’s hand in the hush of the gallery. Supposing hadn’t been as necessary in the last few months, not with Uncle Tom to tell her about her father, and Becky to be outfitted with proper clothing, and Boris to take for lazy walks around the square, and the library in all its leather-bound riches to be explored.
In fact, supposing had taken on a rather melancholy quality that Sara had not often experienced in her short life. Suddenly, with her body well fed and her every comfort seen to, it was all too easy to suppose that she had never found Uncle Tom at all.
That she had, in fact, remained at Miss Minchin’s, drudging until she was ill with hunger and cold, and still expected to teach the youngest girls their lessons. It wasn’t a happy kind of supposing, but every now and then, on a rainy afternoon, or in the dark quiet of her bedroom when she woke from a disturbing dream, the damp and the exhaustion seemed very real. As real as they had been only months ago, before Ram Dass, before The Magic, before Uncle Tom.
Her story, no matter where it took her now, would always include a chapter that could only be enjoyed because it had ended.
In her darkest hours, when she was feeling sorely grim and too serious for her own good, she sometimes told herself stories about what would have happened if she had never been enrolled at Miss Minchin’s.
And if her papa had never died.
Those stories were a bit like a candy made of too much sugar—so sweet they nearly burn the tongue. To make those stories come true would take a kind of magic even Ram Dass couldn’t achieve, but with her eyes closed and Boris panting on the end of her bed, his head on her feet, she would taste them as long as she could stand it.
Those were the nights that Emily slept beside her on the pillow, her unblinking eyes watching as Sara wiped away her tears in shame and grief and longing. As much as she loved Becky and Uncle Tom and Ram Dass and the Large Family, her papa was irreplaceable. Sometimes it really was harder than others to be a soldier, and some days all of life seemed a long battle that one must fight simply to forget the comrades already lost.
But Becky knew nothing of these solemn thoughts, and when she squeezed Sara’s hand gently, Sara came back to herself and the grand, austere beauty of the gallery, and the shadow of Ram Dass beyond her shoulder, attentive and concerned as ever. She summoned a smile.
“What if,” she said slowly, and took a deep breath, imagining a pretty bird cage, and her supposings taking flight through the open door. “What if a circus came to the square, and Miss Amelia fell in love with the ringmaster? They met across the gate, you see, because Miss Amelia could not resist watching as the clowns tumbled and pranced for the children gathered to see the tents being put up. The ringmaster lost his first love quite some time ago, to a sad, slow illness, and his broken heart only woke when he saw Miss Amelia laughing behind her hand, her cheeks flushed with delight …”
Becky bit her lip, afraid to laugh aloud in the silence, but she held on to Sara’s hand as the girls stood up and began to walk once more. As they passed the stately pictures and the occasional pale marble sculpture, Sara continued her tale, careful to keep her voice hushed.
“Oh, miss,” Becky exclaimed when they were outside again. “I never know how you do it. Miss Amelia in the circus! I never!”
Even Ram Dass smiled at that, and Sara hooked her arm through Becky’s as they walked across the paving stones toward the street.
“You’ll learn,” she said with quiet confidence. “Everyone has stories inside them, even you.”
Becky colored with pleasure. “I don’t know, miss, I just don’t know. If I … if I should think of one, shall I tell it to you, then?”
Sara gazed across the plaza, her gaze focused on something faraway but never forgotten. “I’ll always listen, Becky , but you should share only if you wish to.” Her free hand, slender and graceful in its pale kid glove, curled into something like a heart and she rested it against the breast of her coat. “Some stories are best kept secrets.”