Eleanor Jones - Footprints in the Sand

She sighed again and gazed out the window. At the moment, unfortunately, the security of Appletree House itself hung in the balance. Funding was changing and the modern consensus was to move children into more family-oriented environments, such as foster homes. But many of the kids at Appletree were from difficult backgrounds, and they needed more expert care. In Martha’s opinion, institutions such as hers fit the bill perfectly, combining the discipline of school with a secure home environment and professional care. Then there were children such as Bryn—well-adjusted, loving kids who’d come to Appletree because they had no one to take care of them. He might have benefited from being placed in foster care at first, but Appletree was his home now. And he was growing into a normal, caring, intelligent young man with a promising future ahead of him.

Martha looked out over the garden she’d grown to love so much. There had been talk of closing the school down altogether. It shouldn’t really affect her, of course, for she was retiring soon, but the large gray stone house had become a home to her over the past ten years, and she felt a huge responsibility to the children in her care. She closed the file, feeling unusually dispirited. In a way, she supposed, she was not unlike those children. Perhaps she, too, needed the discipline and security of Appletree.

* * *

BRYN HEARD THE TEA GONG boom as he whizzed through the air, perched on a bar at the end of a thick brown rope. He threw back his head to feel the wind in his face one last time, then pulled at the rope to slow it down, remembering that the new kid was coming this afternoon. He was on the ground before it stopped, stumbling to keep his feet, then racing across the front lawn toward the curved stone steps, taking them two at a time. The heavy oak door was already open, and children were wandering in from the garden, laughing and giggling and messing around.

“Hiya, Bryn,” gurgled little Kelly Watts. He ruffled her short dark hair and grinned.

“Hiya, Kelly.”

* * *

“ORDER!” MRS. DIBBLE YELLED, and they quickly organized themselves into a line, filing through to wash their hands and tidy up for tea, feet clomping on the shiny wooden floor.

Martha Dibble stood, as usual, in the hallway, watching them pass through with all-seeing eyes. God help a child who attempted to enter the dining room with grubby hands or untidy clothes—Bryn was probably the worst—and the most likely to get away with it. No matter how much he combed his floppy black hair, it always looked tangled, and his face, darkly tanned from a summer of sunshine, seemed to attract dirt like metal to a magnet. He spit on his hands and rubbed his cheeks as he approached the door, probably the only child in the room deliberately trying to catch Martha’s steely glare. She peered at him through her dark-rimmed glasses. He grinned, his brown eyes glowing, and despite herself, she smiled back.

Martha always liked to wait until everyone was seated around their tables before introducing a new arrival at Appletree. She firmly believed that the very act of sitting down and eating together with their future companions would make them feel more immediately at home.

* * *

BRYN TOYED WITH HIS FOOD, making patterns in his mashed potatoes, one eye fixed on the door. Lots of the children who came to Appletree were emotionally disturbed—at least they were if that meant they cried a lot—so maybe this kid wouldn’t be so bad, after all. He cut off a bit of sausage, dipped it in sauce and popped it into his mouth, biting into its hot tasty center. Hostile, though, now that was another matter.

But as soon as he saw her, Bryn realized why all those words had been used to describe her. She was only five or six, but her whole being bristled with ferocity. Mrs. Dibble held her arm, and her tight expression showed just how much trouble the little girl must have caused.

“Stay still, dear,” she said sternly as the child tried to wriggle from her grasp. The new arrival ignored her, snarling like a lion cub, and Bryn’s heart turned over. He could feel her unhappiness, her anger.

“This is Elsa May Malone, children,” Mrs. Dibble announced with a forced smile. “I hope that you will all make her feel very welcome.”

“It’ll take more than us to make her feel welcome,” Timmy Platt giggled. He was a chubby, spotty-faced boy who’d been at Appletree for about six months.

Bryn scowled at Timmy and stepped determinedly forward.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m Bryn.”

Mrs. Dibble smiled gratefully and beckoned him forward, but the little girl glowered at him with such malice that he froze. Her fierce amber eyes, sparkling with green and gold, stared out at him defiantly, her delicate face framed by a curly cloud of sun-bleached brown hair. She really did look like a lion cub, he decided, trapped and frightened, fighting for her life.

“I’m Bryn,” he repeated.

She scowled, poising herself to run.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Mrs. Dibble scolded, grabbing her arm again. The little girl twisted and turned, then stood still, bristling with anger at the entire universe.

“We have ice cream,” Bryn said, holding out his hand. She clasped hers tightly together against her chest, defying him to come closer.

“Come on,” he urged. “You can sit next to me.”

Martha Dibble looked on in amazement as Elsa followed Bryn to their table, drawing her chair very close to his as if to shut out everyone else in the room.

“It was as though they made some kind of instant connection,” Martha later told the social worker, reflecting on the moment when the openhearted little boy had somehow managed to get through to a child who had been branded totally uncommunicative by all the experts in child welfare.

The Appletree staff had been warned that Elsa was emotionally unstable, having been deeply traumatized by her father’s death. Her stay at Appletree was supposed to be a brief stopgap between the foster home that had been unable to deal with her and a unit that would provide more specialized care. After Elsa’s interaction with Bryn, however, Martha managed to persuade Social Services to rethink their plan, insisting that the girl should be allowed to stay for at least a little longer.

Before she met Bryn, Elsa had been pronounced a danger to herself, snarling and refusing to eat, or just sitting in a corner staring into space, but from the moment she followed the dark-haired, warmhearted boy across the dining room to sit at his side and eat ice cream, everything changed. She still rarely spoke, only when absolutely necessary, but she followed Bryn Evans like a shadow, keeping to herself, watching him play and dutifully doing her schoolwork.

He talked to her all the time, telling her anything that came into his head, from the feelings he’d gone through when both his parents were killed in a car crash to his love of drawing and painting and his longing for a dog of his own. It seemed as if she knew every little thing about him, but let out nothing of herself. He didn’t know where she was from, why she came to Appletree or even her likes and dislikes. But somehow none of that mattered to him as long as she was there. The feelings she had raised in him all those months ago, when he first saw her in the dining room, were still as strong as ever.

She was just his Elsa, no more or less than that. Now and forever.

CHAPTER SIX

BEFORE I CAME TO APPLETREE, first there was my dad’s funeral. Mr. and Mrs. Mac didn’t go and I stood beside Ted, holding on very tightly to his hand. Victoria stood on his other side, rigid and still. There wasn’t much singing and my dad’s coffin didn’t have shiny brass handles like Daffyd’s. I hoped he didn’t look like Daffyd, swollen and gray, and I cried because he wasn’t an angel after all.