Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

Grandma said, You’ll be all right, poor little darling, you’ll be all right, and Aunt Lora too, hugging her tight, Forever now you’ll be all right, Aunt Lora promised. It was scary to see Aunt Lora crying: Aunt Lora never cried, did she?

Lifting little Sybil in her strong arms to carry her in to bed but it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same again.

9. The Gift

Sybil is standing at the edge of the ocean.

The surf crashes and pounds about her... water streams up the sand, nearly wetting her feet. What a tumult of cries, hidden within the waves! She feels like laughing, for no reason. You know the reason: he has returned to you.

The beach is wide, clean, stark, as if swept with a giant broom. A landscape of dreamlike simplicity. Sybil has seen it numberless times but today its beauty strikes her as new. Your father: your father they told you was gone forever: he has returned to you. The sun is a winter sun, but warm, dazzling. Poised in the sky as if about to rapidly descend. Dark comes early because, after all, it is winter here, despite the warmth. The temperature will drop twenty degrees in a half-hour. He never died: he has been waiting for you all these years. And now he has returned.

Sybil begins to cry. Hiding her face, her burning face, in her hands. She stands flatfooted as a little girl and the surf breaks and splashes around her and now her shoes are wet, her feet, she’ll be shivering in the gathering chill. Oh, Sybil!

When Sybil turned, it was to see Mr. Starr sitting on the beach. He seemed to have lost his balance and fallen — his cane lay at his feet, he’d dropped the sketch pad, his sporty golfing cap sat crooked on his head. Sybil, concerned, asked what was wrong, — she prayed he hadn’t had a heart attack! — and Mr. Starr smiled weakly and told her quickly that he didn’t know, he’d become dizzy, felt the strength go out of his legs, and had had to sit. “I was overcome suddenly, I think, by your emotion! — whatever it was,” he said. He made no effort to get to his feet but sat there awkwardly, damp sand on his trousers and shoes. Now Sybil stood over him and he squinted up at her, and there passed between them a current of — was it understanding? sympathy? recognition?

Sybil laughed to dispel the moment and put out her hand for Mr. Starr to take, so that she could help him stand. He laughed too, though he was deeply moved, and embarrassed. “I’m afraid I make too much of things, don’t I?” he said. Sybil tugged at his hand (how big his hand was! how strong the fingers, closing about hers!) and, as he heaved himself to his feet, grunting, she felt the startling weight of him — an adult man, and heavy.

Mr. Starr was standing close to Sybil, not yet relinquishing her hand. He said, “The experiment was almost too successful, from my perspective! I’m almost afraid to try again.”

Sybil smiled uncertainly up at him. He was about the age her own father would have been — wasn’t he? It seemed to her that a younger face was pushing out through Mr. Starr’s coarse, sallow face. The hooklike quizzical scar on his forehead glistened oddly in the sun.

Sybil politely withdrew her hand from Mr. Starr’s and dropped her eyes. She was shivering — today, she had not been running at all, had come to meet Mr. Starr for purposes of modeling, in a blouse and skirt, as he’d requested. She was bare-legged and her feet, in sandals, were wet from the surf.

Sybil said, softly, as if she didn’t want to be heard, “I feel the same way, Mr. Starr.”

They climbed a flight of wooden steps to the top of the bluff, and there was Mr. Starr’s limousine, blackly gleaming, parked a short distance away. At this hour of the afternoon the park was well populated; there was a gay giggling bevy of high school girls strolling by, but Sybil took no notice. She was agitated, still; weak from crying, yet oddly strengthened, elated too. You know who he is. You always knew. She was keenly aware of Mr. Starr limping beside her, and impatient with his chatter. Why didn’t he speak directly to her, for once?

The uniformed chauffeur sat behind the wheel of the limousine, looking neither to the right nor the left, as if at attention. His visored cap, his white gloves. His profile like a profile on an ancient coin. Sybil wondered if the chauffeur knew about her — if Mr. Starr talked to him about her. Suddenly she was filled with excitement, that someone else should know.

Mr. Starr was saying that, since Sybil had modeled so patiently that day, since she’d more than fulfilled his expectations, he had a gift for her — “In addition to your fee, that is.”