The most important consequence took the longest to bring about. I don’t know why it wasn’t as clear to them as it was to me what should be done. But Aunt Constance always believes in thinking carefully about things. My father finally persuaded her to marry him, which had always seemed to me the obvious step. When I chide either of them with this, they remind me that I am a child and do not understand everything. I suspect I understand more than they think, but do not tell them that. For instance, I suspect that Aunt Constance was afraid he would ask her to give up the school, which he would never dream of doing. He does not want a dependent female making demands on him. I also suspect that she was embarrassed, after so many years of proud spinsterhood, to marry at all.
My father persevered, as he puts it, cautiously and carefully. When I told him, that first winter we spent together in Cambridge, that she had once said they were two of a kind, he first roared with laughter and then fell silent. “I see,” he said. I think he did see. We think alike, my father and I.
Books by Cynthia Voigt
Homecoming
Dicey’s Song
Winner of the 1983 Newbery Medal
A Solitary Blue
1984 Newbery Honor Book
Tell Me If the Lovers Are Lovers
Elske
The Vandemark Mummy
Building Blocks
The Runner
Jackaroo
Izzy, Willy-Nilly
Come a Stranger
Stories About Rosie
Sons from Afar
Tree by Leaf
Seventeen Against the Dealer
On Fortune’s Wheel
First Aladdin Paperbacks edition March 2000
Text copyright © 1983 by Cynthia Voigt
An imprint of Simon & Schuster
Children’s Publishing Division
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All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Designed by Steve Scott
The text for this book was set in Adobe Garamond
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Voigt, Cynthia.
The Callender papers.
Summary: In nineteenth-century Massachusetts, orphan Jean, employed to sort out the family papers of a reclusive artist, becomes curious about the mysterious, long-ago death of his wife and the subsequent disappearance of their young child.
[1.Mystery and detective stories. 2. Orphans—Fiction. 3. Massachusetts—Fiction] I. Title.
PZ7.V874Cal 1983 [Fic] 82-13797
ISBN 978-0-689-30971-7 (hc.)
ISBN 978-0-689-83283-3 (Aladdin pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-4424-8924-0 (eBook)