I shook my head. “I don’t have to listen to you anymore. You’re not my mother. You’ve never been my mother.”
In the light of the moon, Frances’s face was a Picasso painting, the wrinkles deepening and casting strange shadows over the folds of her face. She didn’t reach for me again. Her arms hung limply at her sides. “Please,” was all she said.
I looked away.
The next instant, I felt her arms encircle me, the familiar spicy-floral scent of her French perfume mingling with my own sharp smell. She pressed her face against mine, and I bit my lip to keep from crying. I didn’t want to cry anymore. Not over this woman. This liar.
“I have always loved you,” she said. “Not the way I wanted to. Not well. For that I’m sorry.”
I pushed her away. Her eyes searched mine for a moment, then went wide—and blank. Her hands fluttered up and her mouth gaped, worked for a second or two silently.
“Frances?” I said.
She pitched forward, the weight of her body sending me staggering backward. I caught her and saw Doro, panting and clenching her knife.
KITTEN
—FROM CHAPTER 20
“Don’t go anywhere, you hear me?” Kitten said. “I have to hide the bowl.”
Fay didn’t see her leave. Her eyes felt gluey and wouldn’t open. The pain had dulled, thankfully, and she had gone to a gray place, gentle and warm. It was just as well she couldn’t move. She needed to conserve her energy until someone came—the deputy, maybe—and took her back to town.
When she got there, she’d try for a job. Not in a diner; a shop near the marina, maybe. Then she would take an apartment or carriage house behind one of those lovely Victorian mansions. A cozy home with some history. She’d decorate with wicker and Indian blankets and ferns. At night she’d cook and watch TV shows.
Her own home.
She was ready to go there.
Ashley, Frances. Kitten. New York: Drake, Richards and Weems, 1976. Print.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Doro bared her teeth and nodded when she saw me holding Frances.
“Good girl, Megs. Aiyana. Good girl.”
Frances slipped from my grasp and thudded to the ground. I crouched beside her and looked up at Doro. She wiped her mouth with the back of the hand that held the knife. The blade flashed.
“We did it,” Doro said. “The island is finally ours again. Just you and I and the Maker of Breath.” She smiled.
Terror swelled in my gut. Frances was shuddering on the ground beside me. Her eyes gone glazed and unfocused. And the sounds she was making—strangled, dry gasps that made the hair on my arms stand on end.
“Mom.” I touched her face. Spoke softly. I had to stay calm for her. She had to know I was here. I would save her. “Just lie still, okay? Lie still.”
Doro spoke behind me, in a singsong voice. “‘You tell me a story, you weave me a tale.’” She laughed harshly. “Frances thinks she owns all the stories, but I have stories too.”
The words flooded me with fear. I looked at her.
“I’m going to tell you one now.”
She picked up the silver cup, turning it around in her hands. “One of the friars, Father Miguel, tried to install his own choice of chieftain—mico—over the Guale here. The men of the tribe were angry. They came here one night, dragged him to the central chapel, and clubbed him to death at the altar. They cut him to pieces, here, in his very own mission.”
I couldn’t pull in a breath. It felt like my lungs had telescoped.
“This is the secret, Meg. The beautiful truth . . .”
I felt the blood pound in my ears.
“Bonny Island has always belonged to me. From the moment I set foot here. The Maker of Breath gave it to me as a reward for my mother’s sacrifice.”
I was locked in her gaze. Paralyzed by it. “So you did kill Kim.”
Doro jutted her chin. “She used to taunt me—say she was Guale, and she was to be the next mico of the island. She didn’t understand that I was the only true mico.”
“There’s no tribe here anymore, Doro,” I said. “No tribe and no mico.”
“You’re wrong about that. My father’s only mistake was thinking he could bring in other people to share it with us.”
And then I knew. She’d hurt Koa. She’d tried to kill him. Like Kitten had killed Carl Cormley and Fay in the book. My brain shifted into overdrive, buzzing and connecting every unanswered question. Making sudden, horrible sense of it all.
Laila. Esther. Where were they? What had Doro done with them?
I almost leapt at her, but something stopped me. The half-formed, flitting thought from earlier. The realization that crashed over me was so powerful, my knees buckled. “There’s no way you could have killed Kim alone. Someone helped you,” I said.
Her eyebrows lifted the slightest bit.
“Who was it?” I said.
But I knew who it must’ve been. Doro’s only true friend. The one who returned to Ambletern year after year, and then even after he was married to another woman. Pete Darnell.
Doro knelt on the other side of Frances’s still form and pressed the cup into my hands. It felt like a stone in my hands, heavier than I expected it to be. But then, it was an antique, an Ambletern cup, made of the purest, heaviest silver. With Doro so close, I could smell her scent—that familiar woody, smoky smell. Another memory pricked at me. That same earthy smell, drifting in my room at Ambletern.
Doro picked up Frances’s limp hand and pressed it to her cheek.
“Look,” she said. “See the way her nail beds curve slightly? Billy taught me it was the sign of a predator. The way you spot an enemy is look at their nails. Kimmy had nails like that. Koa does too.” She dropped Frances’s hand, her gaze fastened on me. “She’s not gone yet. If you hit directly on the temple, you won’t have to do it but a few times.” She leaned forward. “Do it, Meg. Hit her.”
Doro and Pete. Creeping through the marsh. A silver cup in hand. Just two children, off to play. To kill.
“End it,” she ordered.
I shook my head. “I can’t . . .”
“You can.”
“No, I can’t. She’s my . . .” I was going to say mother, but I found myself thinking something else instead.
. . . my everything.
“No,” Doro hissed, her eyes blazing. “I’m your mother. Do it or I will.”
I was shaking uncontrollably. She reached across Frances and snatched the cup out of my hand. In one swift move, she raised the cup and cracked it down on Frances’s head. I gasped. The cup flashed back up again, poised over my mother’s head.
“No!” I shrieked.
Frances was moaning, reaching into the air with one hand.
Doro smashed the cup down on Frances’s head again, and I launched my body at hers, knocking her onto the grass. She rolled, then popped back up and came at me. On instinct, I shoved the heel of my hand upward, driving it into her jaw. To my utter surprise, she dropped. I tripped over her, snatching the cup.