I hadn’t. I’d been so wrapped up in Lexie and the Fantastic Four; I’d completely forgotten that what I was supposed to be after was outside Whitethorn House, not inside, and was very likely also after me. That slip, even more than the note in Frank’s voice, sent a sharp warning twist through my stomach: Stay focused.
Frank caught the second I hesitated, and pounced. “Go home. Now.”
“I’ve only been out for ten minutes. The others will wonder—”
“Let ’em wonder all they like. You don’t go wandering around unarmed.”
I turned around and headed back up the lane, under the owl swaying on a branch, silhouetted sharp-eared against the sky. I cut round towards the front of the house—the lanes that way were wider, less cover for an ambush. “What’s happened?”
“You heading home?”
“Yeah. What’s happened?”
Frank blew out a breath. “Brace yourself for this one, babe. My mate in the U.S. tracked down May-Ruth Thibodeaux’s parents—they live somewhere in the mountains in Arsefuck, North Carolina, don’t even have a phone. He sent a guy out there to break the news and see what else he could pick up. And guess what he found out.”
In the instant before I told him to quit playing games and get to the point, I knew. “It’s not her.”
“Bingo. May-Ruth Thibodeaux died of meningitis when she was four. Your man showed the parents the ID shot; they’d never seen our girl before.”
It hit me like a huge breath of pure wild oxygen; I wanted to laugh so badly I was almost dizzy with it, like a teenager in love. She had fooled the hell out of me—pickup trucks and soda fountains, my arse—and all I could think was Fair play to you, girl. Here I had thought I lived light; all of a sudden that felt like an adolescent game, like some rich kid playing at poor while the trust fund piled up, because this girl had been the real thing. She had held her whole life, everything she was, as lightly as a wildflower tucked in her hair, to be tossed away at any second as she took off burning streaks down the highway. What I hadn’t managed to do even once, she had done easily as brushing her teeth. No one, not my friends, not my relatives, not Sam or any guy, had ever hit me like this. I wanted to feel that fire rip through my bones, I wanted that gale sanding my skin clean, I wanted to know if that kind of freedom smelled like ozone or thunderstorms or gunpowder.
“Holy shit,” I said. “How many times did she do this?”
“What I want to know is why. This is all backing up my theory: someone was after her, and he wasn’t giving up. She picks up the May-Ruth ID from somewhere—a graveyard, maybe, or an obituary in an old newspaper—and starts over. He tracks her down and she takes off again, out of the country this time. You don’t do that unless you’re running scared. But he got to her in the end.”
I reached the front gates, got my back against one of the gateposts and took a deep breath. In the moonlight the drive looked very strange, cherry blossom and shadow scattering black and white so thick that the ground blended into the trees without a seam, one great patterned tunnel. “Yeah,” I said. “He got to her in the end.”
“And I don’t want him getting to you.” Frank sighed. “I hate to admit it, but our Sammy may have been right about this one, Cass. If you want out of there, you can start playing sick tonight and I’ll have you out tomorrow morning.”
It was a still night, not even a breeze in the cherry trees. A thread of sound came drifting down the drive, very faint and very sweet: a girl’s voice, singing. The steed my true love rides on . . . A tingle ran up my arms. I wondered then and I wonder now whether Frank was bluffing; whether he was actually ready to pull me out, or whether he knew, before he offered, that by this time there was only one answer I could give.
“No,” I said. “I’ll be OK. I’m staying.”
With silver he is shod before . . .
“Fair enough,” Frank said, and he didn’t sound one bit surprised. “Keep that gun on you and keep your eyes open. Anything turns up, anything at all, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks, Frank. I’ll check in tomorrow. Same time, same place.”
It was Abby who was singing. Her bedroom window glowed soft with lamplight and she was brushing out her hair, slow, absent strokes. In yon green hill do dwell . . . In the dining room the guys were cleaning the table, Daniel’s sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows, Rafe waving a fork to make some point, Justin shaking his head. I leaned against the broad back of a cherry tree and listened to Abby’s voice, unfurling out under the window sash and up to the huge black sky.
God only knew how many lives this girl had left behind to find her way here, home. I can go in there, I thought. Any time I want, I can run up those steps and open that door and walk in.
Small cracks. On Thursday evening we were out in the garden again, after dinner—huge mounds of roast pork and roast potatoes and vegetables and then apple pie, no wonder Lexie had weighed more than me. We were drinking wine and trying to work up the energy to do something useful. The strap had come off my watch, so I was sitting on the grass, trying to reattach it with Lexie’s nail file, the same one I had used to turn the pages of her date book. The rivet kept flying out.
“Dammit to hell and blast and buggeration,” I said.
“That’s a highly illogical thing to say,” said Justin lazily, from the swing seat. “What’s wrong with buggeration?”
My antennae went up. I had been wondering if Justin might be gay, but Frank’s research hadn’t turned up anything one way or the other—no boyfriends, no girlfriends—and he could just as easily have been a nice sensitive straight guy with a domestic streak. If he was gay, then there was at least one guy I could cross off the Baby-Daddy list.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Justin, stop flaunting,” Rafe said. He was lying on his back on the grass, with his eyes shut and his arms folded behind his head.
“You’re such a homophobe,” said Justin. “If I said ‘Dammit to fuck’ and Lexie said ‘What’s wrong with fucking?’ you wouldn’t accuse her of flaunting.”
“I would,” said Abby, from beside Rafe. “I’d accuse her of flaunting her love life when the rest of us don’t have one.”
“Speak for yourself,” Rafe said.
“Oh, you,” said Abby. “You don’t count. You never tell us anything. You could be having a torrid affair with the entire Trinity women’s hockey team and none of us would ever know a thing about it.”
“I have never had an affair with anyone on the women’s hockey team, actually, ” Rafe said primly.
“Is there a women’s hockey team?” Daniel wanted to know.
“Don’t go getting ideas,” Abby told him.
“I think that’s Rafe’s secret,” I said. “See, because he keeps up this mysterious silence, we all have this image of him getting up to unspeakable things behind our backs, seducing hockey teams and shagging like a bunny rabbit. I think actually he never tells us anything because he never has anything to tell: he has even less of a love life than the rest of us.” Rafe’s eyes slid sideways and he gave me a tiny, enigmatic grin.
“That wouldn’t be easy,” said Abby.
“Isn’t anyone going to ask me about my torrid affair with the men’s hockey team?” asked Justin.
“No,” said Rafe. “Nobody is going to ask about any of your torrid affairs, because for one thing we know we’re going to hear all about them anyway, and for another they’re always boring as shit.”
“Well,” said Justin, after a moment. “That certainly put me in my place. Although coming from you . . .”
“What?” Rafe demanded, propping himself up on his elbows and giving Justin a cold stare. “Coming from me, what?”
Nobody said anything. Justin took off his glasses and started cleaning them, too thoroughly, on the hem of his shirt; Rafe lit a cigarette.