“In the dead of night? I think that’s called spying.”
He shot me an apologetic grin. “At the end of the day, she’s my girl. And I’m her daddy. I told you, she’s an odd one. Sensitive and vulnerable. It’s my job to look after her, even if she doesn’t want me to. No matter how much of a pain in the ass she might be, I couldn’t live with myself if I left and something happened to her. Anyway. I heard Doro had a lot of turnover with the staff. Dustups with the guests. Didn’t surprise me much. She can be prickly. Hard to work with. I hear she got her a whole new crew, before she decided to shut the place down.”
“What do you think about that?”
“It’s hers now. She can do what she wants.”
Including tell everyone that you’re dead, I thought.
He drummed his fingers on the table, then eyed me. He seemed on the verge of saying more. I wondered how long it had been since he’d had a visitor. Since he’d unburdened himself to someone. I felt another ripple of discomfort.
“So why didn’t you go back to wherever you were from? Why did you come here?” I asked. “To Farrow?”
“Don’t get me wrong; I know the town is a shithole. And it’s full of racist assholes. But it’s cheap, and I keep to myself. And it’s nice out here in the country. Quiet.”
Then, without warning, he leapt out of his chair and crossed the length of the room to the boxy TV. He drummed his fingers on the top a few times, then ricocheted to the opposite wall, the one with the horse photograph. He stared up at it, rubbing his chin.
“Billy?”
He spun back to me, his jaw set, arms limp at his side, and spoke.
“There are direct flights from Jacksonville International to LaGuardia, all day, every day. Just pick a time.”
I stared at him in disbelief. He’d started shifting his weight from foot to foot.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked. He didn’t look like he was. He looked deadly serious. Afraid, even.
“I can get you a ticket,” he said. “First class, if that’s what you want.” His voice had risen the slightest bit.
I stayed very still. “I don’t understand what’s going on here. Why don’t you just tell me the truth, Billy?”
He seemed to hug the other wall. And now he was plucking at his shirt like he was on the verge of having a panic attack.
“Billy?”
“You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into. You got no damn idea. So, like it or not, I’m taking you to Jacksonville, putting you on a plane, and sending you home.”
And then he lunged toward me.
KITTEN
—FROM CHAPTER 16
Fay screamed Kitten’s name through the oaks, into the nettle bushes, and across the vast, flat beach. The wind whipped her voice up and into its hot, swirling currents, carrying it away before there was an answer. The only sound that remained was the echo of the endless waves. Even the birds had stopped singing.
At the northern end of the island, she stood on the pinnacle of the middens, looking out over the crashing greenish-brown Atlantic, savoring the lash of her hair on her face. She hated herself for the thought, but she had not ruled out the chance she might catch a glimpse of Kitten’s form, bobbing lifeless in the surf. When she got up her courage, she looked.
The water was clear.
She returned to the house, exhausted, sunburned, coated in sand and mosquito bites. She was starving as well, having run out of the house without the slightest thought of breakfast. She told herself not to cry. A little something to eat would make things seem brighter.
Ashley, Frances. Kitten. New York: Drake, Richards and Weems, 1976. Print.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I scrambled up out of my chair as Billy crossed the room. But he didn’t intend to hurt me; all he did was slap a wad of crumpled bills on the table between us. He looked at me with a beseeching expression.
“Take it,” he said. “It’s all I got. Just take it and get the hell out of here.”
“I don’t want your money. I’m not leaving.” I was shaking a little. Breathing hard. He’d scared the shit out of me, again. What was it with this guy? “Look, Billy, I’m going to find out what went on between you and Frances and Doro, and I’m going to put it in my book. So if you know anything, if you have anything to get off your chest, now would be the time.”
His eyes met mine. The fire was gone, his whole body had deflated, and I saw where a couple of beads of sweat had tracked down his face. He let out a long sigh.
“I need a drink.” He pointed at me. “You? Beer? Iced tea?”
The man was a disaster, possibly an unreliable source. But I needed to calm him down enough to open up to me.
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever you’re having.”
He returned from the kitchen and we sipped rum and iced tea from cups with Confederate flags emblazoned across them, and the words DIXIE OR DIE.
“Sorry about the . . .” He glanced at my cup. “They’re free at the Dollar Store in town.”
“Just tell me about Doro, Billy.”
He leaned back. “You don’t know how it was for her all those years. You wouldn’t believe it. No one could, not if they hadn’t seen it for themselves.”
“So make me understand.”
“Weirdos and freaks.” His voice was gruff and unsteady now. “Maybe even some of them perverts, I don’t know. And I let them . . . I gave them complete access to the island. They used to spy on her, you know, all hours of the day. Snuck into her room at night. They said nasty, hurtful things—like how did it feel to kill her best friend? Was there blood or brains that spilled out when she did it? Where did she hide the murder weapon?”
I was silent.
“And I didn’t stop them.” His face sagged in regret. “About four years after the book came out, a group of kids, teenagers, told her they were kidnapping her and tied her up. Left her on the north end of the island in some cove while we searched for her for hours. Did she tell you that?”
“My God. No.”
“She was twelve years old. She went back to sleeping with her baby blanket after that.”
His fingers frantically drummed the table for a moment or two. Then he stood. Began pacing the tiny den, matting the grungy shag carpet in long twin tracks under his work boots. “She never made any friends. The boys she liked never liked her back. One broke her heart so bad I thought I’d lost her forever. Her mind, you know. I thought it might be gone for good.”
“Pete Darnell?”
He stopped in front of the photograph. His skin was mottled, pale beneath the sun spots, and a blue vein stood out on his forehead.
He rubbed his bristled jaw. “Ah. Maybe that was him. Hard to say.”
It was a lie, I was almost sure of it. The man looked antsy, like he might make a run for it, right out the front door. I wondered if it had anything to do with his defamation lawsuit against Frances. The mysterious, disappearing lawsuit.
“Doro told me some things,” I said. “But I’d like to hear it from you so I can understand better. Would you be willing to talk about how you came to own Ambletern?”
“What did Doro say?”