by P. G. Forte
“Wait a minute,” she’d demanded of Robyn, when the subject had come up earlier in the evening. “How many cats are we talking about here, anyway?”
“Eight.” Robyn’s brow creased as she thought about it. “Well, nine if you count the mother cat, but to tell you the truth, I’m not even sure which one she is. They were already here when I moved in. She was a stray and I guess already pregnant when she turned up.”
“Some stray cat has kittens here and Caroline couldn’t be bothered to find them homes? She just kept them all?”
Robyn looked surprised. “Well, yeah, kinda. You know what she was like. She was always taking in strays. She could never bear to turn anything away. And she was way too softhearted to turn them over to Animal Control. You wouldn’t have expected her to get rid of them, would you?”
“Oh, no. No, Christ, of course not. Whatever was I thinking?” Scout resisted the impulse to mention that Caroline hadn’t been so soft-hearted when it had come to getting rid of her.
Of course, to be fair, Caroline must have been devastated by the loss of her daughter. And believing it had been Scout’s fault – enduring her presence must have been unbearable. But what Scout had never been able to forgive, or even understand, was that Caroline blamed her, not just for Lisa’s absence, but for her father’s death, as well.
The night before her father’s funeral, Caroline had marched into Scout’s room and ordered her to start packing.
“I’ve made arrangements for you to stay with your grandfather,” she’d told her in a voice that brooked no argument. “You have a flight out the day after tomorrow.”
What? For an instant Scout had been too stunned to respond. No! “But... I don’t want to go away. Why can’t I stay here?”
“Please don’t make this more difficult than it already is,” Caroline said quietly. Her face betrayed no emotion; she held herself rigidly erect. Only her hands, twisting restlessly together at her waist, gave any sign of her inner agitation. “You just can’t stay here anymore, Scout. That’s all there is to it.”
“Why are you doing this? This is my home.”
“There have been far too many problems with you lately. So much has gone wrong. It’s not safe having you here. After your father’s death, I realized—”
“But what does... that... have to do with me?”
“Because it should have been you,” Caroline hissed, her icy control slipping suddenly. “Don’t you understand that? It was your car. You were the one who should have been driving it, who should have died, who – Not Gil. You!” Her voice broke, and she hurried from the room.
Scout stared after her in dismay. Far down the hall, she could hear the slam of Caroline’s door closing behind her. She felt as if another door, this one deep in the recesses of her heart, had slammed shut as well. Up until that moment, she’d always believed Caroline loved her.
A high-pitched keening split the silence, snapping Scout back to the present. She shivered. Somewhere, a window had been left open. The damp night air pushed its way into the house. Heavy, moist and loamy, it carried the scent of roses in from the garden, along with the fretful, seesaw whine of myriad night insects. Somewhere, two cats challenged each other. Their eerie cries abraded Scout’s overworked nerves like nails on a blackboard.
Caroline’s cats, she thought as she teetered on the brink of panic. Caroline’s cats. Caroline’s roses. Caroline’s garden. Caroline’s dog. Caroline’s house.
All hers now. A wave of guilt washed through her. Hers and Lisa’s. If Lisa was still alive. And if she could be found.
A foghorn sounded in the distance, low and mournful. Scout shivered once again.
Lisa had been seventeen when she ran away, following an argument between them. Scout had always taken it for granted that Lisa had been found, or returned on her own. After all, what purpose had her banishment been meant to serve, if not to bring Lisa back?
In a letter mailed to Lucy a few days after her disappearance, Lisa had made it clear that she blamed Scout for everything that had gone wrong in her life recently. It had been a very popular opinion, Scout thought sadly. Everyone seemed to feel that, with the possible exception of her math teacher’s murder, Scout was to blame for pretty much everything that had gone wrong in everyone’s life.
Well, okay, she’d told herself. She would find a way to live with that. It was mostly true, anyway. Not the part about her father’s death, though. She refused to accept the blame for that. And not the part about her having seduced Lisa’s boyfriend, either. Glenn had pretty much jumped at the chance to go to bed with her. Just as she knew he would.
She sank wearily down on the couch in front of the fireplace and considered some of the choices she’d made in her life. Sleeping with Glenn Gilchrist had definitely not been one of her brighter ideas. Blond, blue-eyed, with the face of an angel and a surfer’s tan, Glenn had looked like the quintessential California beach boy back then. Every teenage girl in Oberon was half in love with him. And, at first, Scout was no exception. But Glenn had been Lisa’s boyfriend for almost a year. Scout had seen how he treated her. Under normal circumstances, he was one of the last people she would have chosen to go to bed with. But circumstances that spring were anything but normal.
In a town the size of Oberon, it’s hard to keep a secret for very long, even a small one. And as far as secrets went, Scout’s was pretty big. Her friends had already begun to suspect she was involved with someone, but no one had a clue who that someone might be. Scout had done what she had to, to keep things that way, even though it meant lying to everyone – including her mysterious new boyfriend, who had no idea the girl he was seeing had only just turned sixteen.
Nick Greco was exciting and dangerous, devastatingly attractive and totally unobtainable, with unruly, thick, brown waves of hair and eyes the color of warm honey. Eyes that were even more unsettling than the mirrored sunglasses he was seldom without.
At twenty-two, he should have been completely off-limits, but Scout had been ready to test every limit she could find that spring. The fact that he was also Lucy’s cousin, and a cop, only made him more desirable, as far as Scout was concerned.
If pretending to sneak around with Glenn would keep everyone from finding out about Nick, then that’s what she would do. And if sleeping with Glenn was necessary... well, even that would be worth it.
God, she had been so young. Young and incredibly stupid. She had thought she could get away with anything. She never imagined how much her fun was going to cost, or how many people would end up paying for it. She’d learned about that the hard way. And she’d had the last twenty years to reflect on all the careless, life-changing, devastating mistakes she’d made in one six-week period in the spring of her seventeenth year.
The sound of the front door opening startled Scout out of her reverie. She looked up as Robyn peeked into the living room.
“You’re still awake?”
Robyn appeared greatly astonished by this. Scout suppressed a groan. I bet she’s always astonished. Astonished or gleeful or some other unbearably perky emotion. She found her astonishingly tiring. Small wonder Caroline had a stroke. If I stay here much longer, I might have one, as well.
She forced her mouth to form a polite smile. “I never sleep a lot,” she lied. “Don’t seem to need it somehow.” No, not much.
“Oh. Well, okay then. Thanks for letting me borrow the dog. I really, really like taking her along when I have to be out late at night. She’s such excellent protection, you know.”
“Yeah, sure, but listen,” Scout said insistently. “It’s like I told you before. If you want her, she’s yours. I don’t know what I’m going to do with a dog, anyway.”
“Oh, no!” Robyn replied, looking as if she were on the verge of a cardiac arrest. “No, I couldn’t possibly do that! I know Caroline would have wanted you to have her!”
Scout shook her head in resignation. What Caroline might or might not have wanted for her was not something she was willing to
think about at present.
“Well, I’ll see you in the morning,” Robyn announced brightly as she headed off to bed. There were four bedrooms on the second floor, all of them currently vacant. Caroline had apparently encouraged Robyn to sleep downstairs, in a room that had previously functioned as a rec. room. Scout remembered it well. A large, sunny room with a view of the gardens visible through French doors that opened onto the patio, it had been decorated with the most hideously garish flowered wallpaper, flowered upholstery and drapes, and Caroline’s collection of antique floral prints.
The relentless insistence of the flower motif – flowers everywhere, both inside and outside the room – suddenly struck her as wildly ironic. She was shocked to find herself giggling hysterically as she wondered if the decor had in any way contributed to her decision to allow Glenn to deflower her there?
Oh fuck, no. Scout pulled herself together with an effort, as the memories she’d evoked set her skin to crawling. What in the hell was wrong with her tonight? She hated that term. She never, ever used it. And she had never, except in her most paranoid moments, ever questioned her motives for that afternoon with Glenn.
It was the lack of sleep. It had to be. For days now – ever since she had heard from Caroline’s lawyer, in fact – she’d found it impossible to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time. She refused to even consider any kind of medication. She always feared the resultant loss of control so much more than she did the loss of clarity and common sense that accompanied chronic sleep deprivation. But she had tried almost everything else she could think of. Long walks, herb tea, hot baths, warm milk, dull books, strong drinks – nothing had helped. And now she was obviously well on her way to losing her mind.
Her giggling had gotten the dog’s attention. The creature ambled over and nudged Scout’s hand with her wet nose. She was a very sweet dog. But Scout had no use for dogs, or pets of any kind. Didn’t like them. Didn’t need them. Didn’t want the complications and responsibilities that went with having them. Her life was simple. Peaceful.
So, okay. Maybe it was also the slightest bit empty and dull, but she could stand that. Couldn’t she?
“Don’t even think about it, dog!” she murmured, reluctantly tickling her behind one velvety ear. “I don’t do relationships, see? I’m too much my father’s daughter.”
Living with her father, Scout had been able to observe firsthand exactly the types of behavior least likely to contribute to a healthy relationship. Unfortunately, whoever said children learn what they live was not entirely wrong. In the course of her thirty-six years, she had put together a depressingly impressive record of broken relationships and failed friendships.
Or should that be impressively depressing, she wondered, as another wave of irrational hysteria hit her. And really, when she thought about it, wasn’t it all just an advanced type of performance art, anyway? Just another art form for her to exploit. Just one more piece of the genetic legacy she’d inherited from her artist father.
It had been her father’s art that had brought them to Oberon in the first place. His work – always very much in the plein air style – was just beginning to gain popularity at the time. And Oberon, with its thriving artist’s colony and exquisite natural beauty, seemed like the ideal location for Gil Patterson to base himself.
Her father had been creative and charming, witty and – upon occasion – even perceptive. When she announced, at the age of ten, that she was changing her name to Scout, after the heroine of To Kill A Mockingbird, her father had encouraged her. Although he did draw the line at her suggestion that he change his own name to Atticus.
The truth was, she needed to be Scout – a girl who knew who she was and wasn’t afraid to fight for what she believed in – rather than Jen.
Jen Patterson, on the other hand, was a girl who – more often than not – wasn’t sure who she was, or where she belonged. A girl whose own mother hadn’t wanted her. Scout didn’t have a mother either, but she seemed to get along just fine without one.
There were other times, however, when her father had been amazingly obtuse. He seemed genuinely incapable of understanding why Scout might be less than thrilled when he presented her with yet another new set of step-sisters or brothers. Or how they, in turn, might fail to be completely enamored of her.
By the time her father had married for the fifth and final time, Scout had the drill down pat. She figured she could handle anything this new step-family threw at her. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
Caroline turned out to be the closest thing to a mother she would ever know, and Scout couldn’t help but love her. She’d even grown to love beautiful, blond, cool-eyed Lisa, although the relationship between them had never been an easy one.
She thought again about that portrait of the two of them in the foyer – she could still remember the joy that had been behind the brilliant smiles her father had captured all too well. She closed her eyes against the pain her memories brought her. It didn’t do any good to go on living in the past like this, except... there didn’t seem to be anyplace else for her to go.
For almost twenty years she’d tried to run away from her past, only to end up here.
Right back where she started.
Her dad was dead, Caroline was dead, and Lisa was who-knows-where. Probably dead as well. And Scout was back where she had no business being.
Home at last.
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* * * *
Chapter Four
* * * *
“Scout? Can you hear me? Come back, now.” Marsha’s voice called her out of darkness.
A thick, groggy darkness had come from nowhere and obscured her sight. But as her vision cleared, Scout’s heart began to pound. What was going on here? Only an instant earlier, she’d been in study hall, her mind doing its best to drift away from the history text she was supposed to be reading. Now she was here, on a couch in the nurse’s office.
The familiar, sharp-sweet scent of antiseptic made her stomach flutter. Desperate to understand what had happened, she tried but failed to pierce the darkness that stretched within her mind, wide and impenetrable, between now and a moment ago.
A very long moment, to be certain, but just the same—
“Scout!” Marsha repeated, more urgently, her freckled forehead creased with worry.
“Marsha, wh-what are we doing here?”
Marsha shrugged and looked away. “Well, uh, you sorta passed out. Tell me, what’s the last thing you remember?”
Scout dragged her thoughts back through what suddenly seemed like a thousand years of blankness. “I don’t know. I guess... I was trying to study, but Claire and Amy were arguing about some stupid old song, I think and – Oh, I know. It was Mandy. Claire was claiming it was about some girl named—”
“Damn. I was afraid it was something like that.” Marsha chewed on her lip for a moment before continuing. “Okay, listen, don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine, I promise. It’s just that... well, the nuns kinda think you’re maybe on drugs, or something.”
The nuns? A faint alarm began to ring in Scout’s mind. Something was wrong with that, as well. Surely, she didn’t belong here anymore? She needed to leave – right now. To run away and never come back. She shifted on the couch, squirming beneath the intolerable, warm heaviness that had settled in the region of her heart. There was something hauntingly familiar, yet still not quite right, about this conversation.
“Drugs? Just because I fainted? Oh, come on, Marsha, that’s stupid!”
“I know. But you see, you didn’t exactly lose consciousness. At least – Look, I’ll explain everything later, okay? Just for now, if anyone asks, tell them you were sick. Or, no, wait, I’ve got a better idea. Tell them you were asleep. And you were, like, sleepwalking or something.”
Sleep? She was asleep. She had to be, because it was years since high school... this had to be a dream.
“Marsha, what are you talking about? This is insane! What’s going on?�
��
The arrival of Sister Mary Francis, the school’s tall, grim-faced vice-principal, forced them to cut their conversation short.
“Miss Quinn. You have someplace else to be, I presume?”
“Yes, Sister.” Marsha’s voice exuded polite innocence. “I was just so worried about Scout.”
“Yes. Well. So are we all. You may go now.” The nun turned frosty eyes toward Scout. “Miss Patterson, your stepmother is here to take you home.”
Caroline.
But how – Scout’s eyes flew open; she all but sprang off the couch. Her sudden movement dislodged the cat who’d been sleeping on her chest. She recognized where she was now. Home.
No, not home. Merely back in Oberon. And it was starting again.
That was no dream she’d had; it was a flashback. A memory. One long suppressed and best forgotten, just like the rest of that year. But once upon a time, the whole sorry scene had actually taken place. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing – in and out, deep and slow – until the bitter tide of betrayal began to subside. Until her thoughts grew quiet and her mind clear.
As the last tattered shreds faded from her consciousness, her heart shuddered back into a slow, leaden rhythm. Sighing, she opened her eyes and looked around once more. Sunlight streamed into the living room. It was morning. Thank God. The big orange cat whose nap she’d disturbed licked at one paw, then glared at her from the coffee table. Several more felines had arranged themselves around the room in various attitudes of watchfulness. They were all but motionless, except for the hypnotically regular flicking of their tails and the occasional blink.
The dog lay on the floor beside the couch, eyeing the cats with an anxious look on her narrow face, and every now and again venting her unease in a sporadic whimper. Suddenly, apparently in response to some sound Scout couldn’t hear, all six cats jumped to their feet and left the room. She got up more slowly, as did the dog, and together they stumbled after the cats.
