The Snow Globe by Judith Kinghorn

served promptly, and almost exactly an hour and fifteen minutes later the family rose from the table and repaired to the drawing room. As the clock on the mantelpiece struck nine, Daisy and her father stood hand in hand at the oriel window watching snowflakes fall. Behind them, the murmured voices of Daisy’s mother and grandmother, her sisters and aunt, mingled with the sound of Debussy emanating from the wireless.
    â€œMagical . . . ,” said Daisy.
    â€œLike you,” her father whispered.
    Once described as Olympian, Howard Forbes towered over hisyoungest daughter, for Daisy had taken after her mother in physical appearance, inheriting Mabel’s heart-shaped face, pale skin and gray-green eyes, and the very same five-foot-two-inch frame. Howard, on the other hand, had bequeathed his dark looks and height to his two elder daughters.
    â€œWe should make a wish,” said Daisy. “You used to tell me that if I made enough of them, one or two would undoubtedly come true. Wishes made gazing up at stars and over rainbows and birthday candles and lost teeth. Wishes made throwing your precious pennies into streams and fountains, and wishes made over my snow globe at Christmas. Do you remember?” she asked, glancing at the globe on the table beside them.
    Inside the glass orb were tiny pine trees, a replica of Eden Hall in miniature and hand-painted gold stars—each one studded with a tiny diamond at its center. A present to Daisy from her father when she was no more than five years old, the snow globe was brought out each year and placed in the same spot, its limited appearance making it a veritable treasure of Christmas. And Daisy continued to be mesmerized by it. She imagined them all—herself and her family—inside the miniature house: tiny people with giant souls and infinite love in their hearts, safe and warm beneath the glass, beneath those diamonds and gold stars.
    But tonight there were no diamonds in the sky. No silver moon, no gold or guiding star was visible. It was simply that the universe was black and the earth was white, Daisy thought, staring out through the window once more. Yet there was an unexpected alchemy to this, to the tiny white crystals dancing out of the darkness toward them and the light and the softly crackling “Clair de Lune.”
    â€œYes, a lot of wishes,” Howard conceded languidly. “And have any of them come true?”
    â€œI can’t tell you that,” she said, smiling.
    When the telephone rang, neither one of them turned.
    â€œI’ll get it!” Iris called out. “Hello . . . Yes, it’s me . . . Hello, darling!”
    â€œYou used to tell me them
all
,” Howard continued. “You used to tell me as soon as you’d made a wish what it was you’d wished for. You could never keep a secret.”
    â€œNo, not from you.”
    â€œAnd can you now?”
    â€œKeep your secrets or my own?”
    â€œYour own, of course. I wouldn’t dream of burdening you with mine.”
    Daisy laughed.
    â€œNo, darling, absolutely not,” Iris’s voice went on. “I’m stuck down here for the
whole
time.”
    â€œThe great shame of it—which I suppose is a secret in itself—is that I have no secrets . . . and yet, I’m rather longing for some,” said Daisy.
    Now her father laughed. “You shouldn’t. Secrets are invariably things one’s ashamed of, whether about oneself or another.”
    In the dim light the contours of his face were sculptural and gray, and his smile fell away a little too quickly. His silver hair was swept back from his brow and the line of his mouth—thinner, slightly downturned at the corners now—lent him a more severe look than Daisy was used to or wished to see. It struck her then, and for the very first time, that there was something more than mildfrustration locked in his features: the trace of