Sugar Birds

by Cheryl Grey Bostrom

  A demanding voice interrupted her suspicions. She couldn’t make out the words, but realized that Cabot was bellowing at someone or something in the barn. At Burnaby? She looped behind the parlor and stopped short of the barn’s gaping doorway.

  “… mutt doing in here again?”

  “… with me since she was a pup … cattle dog. Bred for this work.”

  Aggie sidled closer to the opening, her body tight against the jamb.

  “Seems to me that her job is to babysit you, Burnpile. So you don’t start any more fires.”

  Not again! She eased her head around the corner. Cabot was clambering up the tall stack of bales toward her brother. Burnaby pitched a forkful of alfalfa to the cows below, then punched the fork’s tines into the hay beside him, waiting. As Cabot reached the top, Burnaby dropped to one knee and rested his arm over Pi’s back, his chin above the dog’s muzzle.

  Her brother was feeding cows—with Pi, like always. That was his job. So why was Cabot harassing him?

  “What do you mean?” Burnaby sounded confused.

  “You got a little carried away at your house, didn’t you? When I heard someone set that blaze, I thought of you. Does Loomis know about your little pyromania hobby?”

  Burn won’t answer him. Her brother never defended himself when anyone teased him. But these were serious accusations. She wanted to shout at that awful man, shout that she did it, that she lit that fire and that he should leave her brother alone. She wished that Burnaby would stand up for himself for once. But as she predicted, he raised his head and focused on something past her, outside.

  “For whatever reason, you burned your house down. Then Auntie Nora brings you home like a stray cat.” She saw Cabot eye the pitchfork. “Bad enough when you just came here to milk.”

  “During the school year I only work weekends. Every summer I work full-time.”

  “And now you live here, invading my territory. How convenient.”

  Burnaby hiccoughed and stood up. Aggie took that as a sign that he heard the man.

  Pi leveled her head at Cabot, unblinking. The man eyed the dog warily.

  “And Celia is part of my territory.”

  “Celia?”

  “I saw you with her at Mender’s barn.”

  “You did?” Burnaby tilted his head, perplexed.

  “Your truck was parked at Mender’s yesterday. You were in the barn, right?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Celia was leaving there when I drove up. What were you two doing?”

  “We worked on birds. Talked.”

  “She’s off limits for you.”

  With fists balled at his hips, elbows and jaw protruding, Cabot took a step toward Burnaby.

  Pi bared her teeth and crouched, ready to vault. Burnaby grabbed her collar, and Cabot seized his chance. He sprang for the pitchfork and jerked it out of the hay. The dog lunged, but Burnaby’s grip restrained her. Cabot lowered the fork and aimed.

  “Get that mutt outta my barn.” He waggled the tines at Pi.

  The dog wrenched hard, broke loose from Burnaby’s hold and hurled herself at Cabot, who caught her with the sharp tines and thrust them deep into her chest. For a split second Cabot and Burnaby stared at the impaled, squirming animal, then Cabot yanked the fork free. Pi writhed, whining on the bale between them, then slipped off the stack. She twisted in the air and yelped, hit the concrete, and flopped, silent.

  Aggie clamped her hands over her mouth, stifling a shriek as Burnaby, wailing eerily, scrambled down the stack and huddled over his limp dog. He ran his fingers fast down her bones, checked her eyes and gums, tamped the bleeding holes. Felt for a pulse.

  For a moment Aggie saw Cabot as a terrified little boy, his cheeks flushed, mouth crumpled, eyebrows high. As if it were all an accident. Then his jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed into slits.

  “Stay away from my girl.”

  Burnaby slid his arms under Pi, hoisted her gently and rushed from the barn, his head bent low over the dog. Outside, an engine turned over, rumbled. Wheels spun, bit, and a vehicle sped down the driveway.

  Immobilized, a tremor grew in Aggie’s gut, then spread into her shoulders and limbs until her body juddered. Her mind raced. She had to run from this horrible place, from this terrible man. Run. She tried to palpate her trembling, useless legs. Her fingers refused to engage.

  She buried her head in her hands. If Cabot heard her sobs, she didn’t care. If he caught her, she would make her limbs work, would fight him with her teeth and fingernails. She’d get away from him and run for help. Tell on him. He wouldn’t get away with this.

  But Cabot didn’t hear her. Stock-still, he watched Burnaby’s retreat, then cocked his head at the whine of shifting gears as they faded down the road. Finally, he rammed the fork back into the top of the stack and muttered under his breath. “Leaving early, aren’t you, Burnaby? Loomis don’t like shirkers.” He cracked his knuckles and took his time climbing down. Then he felt in his pocket again and headed Aggie’s way, looming as he approached. She cowered against the doorway as he marched right past her, downhill, toward the trail to the river.

  CHAPTER 26 ~ CELIA

  Cabin

  I was thinking about mind-painting the next morning when I jogged to the farm and found Cabot in the dairy’s office, next to a chlorine-scrubbed room with a stainless tank the size of a Volkswagen van. He sat at a fly-specked steel desk, writing notes from a list of cows’ ear tag numbers onto pages splashed with coffee and who knew what else. He laid his pen down and grinned.

  “Couldn’t stay away, could you?” As I stepped toward him, he pointed at a chair. “That’s far enough, unless you want to wear my cologne.”

  I did not. Manure splattered his coveralls and neck; cow blood freckled his cheek and ear. I slumped into the bucket chair opposite him. My posture matched my pout.

  “Uh-oh. You look like you could start a fight in an empty house. What’s up?”

  “I’m seeing gray skies. I need to get out of here.”

  “That can be arranged.” He leaned back in his seat and propped his boots on a corner of the grungy desk.

  “My dad’s harassing me, and Gram keeps pressuring me to talk to him. He and I had planned on Lake Chelan, remember? Instead, he dumped me here.”

  “Sorry you’re not liking the company, my lady. What am I then, a way to kill time?”

  Actually, he was just that, but in a scrumptious sort of way.

  “Of course not. You’re the redeeming part of this whole mess. When I’m with you, I don’t think about the cabin.”

  “Cabin?” Cabot dropped his feet to the floor and cocked his head, his radar swiveled toward me.

  “Yeah. The one I told you about. Daddy and I were going to paint the outside, build some Adirondack chairs like Gram’s. Swim, hike, read. Water-ski. We got a new boat last year.”

  “Too bad. So who’s there now?” He raised an eyebrow. Lifted and lowered his heels.

  “Nobody. It’s sitting there empty, overlooking that lake, with that clear water lapping the dock like an invitation.”

  “Maybe we need to accept. Can you get inside?”

  I felt a smile climb my face. The cabin. No Greyhound necessary. “Oh, yeah. I have the key at Gram’s.” I tapped my chin, thinking through the week. “You have Wednesdays and Thursdays off, right? We could leave Tuesday after your shift, hang out for a couple of days. Do some skiing. Be back before your shift on Friday.”

  This plan would give Daddy convulsions. Yeah. If I disappeared, that would punish him all right. Gram would have to tell him I was missing. He would wet his pants when he got the call. By the time I got back from the lake, he’d be so deranged he’d come get me and fly me to Houston himself.

  Then I thought of Aggie. I had seen heartbreak on the faces of her family and the neighbors searching for her. Disappearing would be downright cruel. I would phone Gram once we arrived and let her know where I was—and that Cabot was with me. That would set Daddy in motio
n. “Let’s do it.” I flew from the chair, clapping.

  His eyes sparked with … uh … longing? No, not so affectionate as that. More like the eagerness in Gram’s dogs when I waggled steak gristle in front of them, then made them wait until I released them to eat it. Ravenous.

  I was too jazzed about my ride to Chelan to care.

  With my escape in the works, I tapped him on the head and danced out of the office, into the sparkling day. Mid-July’s morning light webbed me with its rays and towed me away from the road and across the fields, toward the woods below Gram’s where I had played as a child. A heron rose from the pasture like an aging pterodactyl and landed in the grass closer to the trees.

  In the forest, I crossed over a nurse log to the brimming spring above the pond, where the heron’s large, twiggy tracks decorated the mud. Last time I had been to this pool, my granddaddy had braced himself on the mossy log and sipped the sweet water. “Purest in the county,” he’d said. Remembering, I bent to copy him, and was drinking straight from the pool when I caught sight of something in my peripheral vision.

  A footprint.

  Water went down the wrong pipe when I saw it; I got up choking. This was no cryptic tiptoe, but an honest-to-goodness, child’s footprint. Barefoot. Fresh.

  “Aggie?” I pivoted, calling. “Aggie? You here?” A thrush’s song whirled through the trees as I waited, listening. “You don’t have to hide from me. I can help you.” I circled outward from the pool in a snail shell’s curve, a girl-finding Fibonacci spiral that led me to another close-set pair where she had lingered in the squishy earth. She must have drunk here, too. I curled away from the pond looking for more, but the leafy litter hid any other signs of her.

  My thoughts raced. Aggie was nearby. Aggie was alive.

  Search teams from here to the moon had scoured the area for her repeatedly, with nothing to show for it but those vomited berries in the hours after she vanished. I had seen those prints in the garden, briefly. No one had found anything since. Now here were these footprints, undeniable.

  This was the deal: Aggie was hiding. Not lost, not dead. Hiding.

  I tore back to the house to tell Gram and found her and Cabot sitting on the porch with glasses of lemonade. Since I’d left the dairy, he had finished work and scrubbed clean. Plaid shirt, Wrangler jeans, cowboy boots. Dressed for town.

  “Footprints! Aggie’s!” Gasping for breath, I waved them toward me. “You gotta see.”

  Gram rose quickly, but Cabot didn’t move. “Hold on, Celia. Slow down,” he said. “What exactly are we talking about here?”

  “The little pool above the forest pond. Fresh footprints.” I tugged his arm. “C’mon.” Gram had already started for the woods. The dogs ran ahead of her, chasing the heron I had spotted earlier until it flew into the trees.

  Cabot stalled until Gram crossed the hill. “Where did you go? I’ve been here for half an hour.” His arms snared me. “My girl. I need to know where you are.”

  “In the woods, Cabot. I found her!”

  “A few prints. Far cry from finding the elusive Agate Hayes.”

  “You’re just jealous, Mr. Search and Rescue.” I wrested myself from his hold, poked him in the ribs, and skipped sideways until he followed.

  “I don’t see anything, honey.” Gram bent at the waist over the pool’s muddy shore. Across the water, Clover jumped at the heron perched high overhead, splashing each time she landed. Zip spun in place and barked at the disinterested bird.

  “Call them off, Gram.” I snagged Zip’s collar and hauled her from the mud. “It’s right—” Dog prints riddled the ground. “It was here.”

  Cabot watched from the trail, arms folded.

  Gram backtracked to me. “I suppose,” she said, stooping low over the pummeled earth.

  “Hold on. There are more.” I hurried to the pair of prints. But where Aggie had most certainly stood, a rock the diameter of a Frisbee pressed into mud.

  “They were right here!” I pried up the stone. An impression of its underbelly had replaced any sign of the child.

  “Under that rock?” Gram peered at me as if I’d slipped a cog.

  “The rock wasn’t there before.”

  “Sure, Celia,” Cabot exaggerated a slow nod. “Neither was that tree.”

  “But I—”

  “I know you want to find her, honey. We all do. But we can’t let our imaginations fool us now, can we?” Gram’s cheeks sagged. I tried to explain, but she held a finger to my lips, whistled for the dogs, and headed home.

  Cabot was studying the ground around the pool. “What were you thinking, Celia? Dirty trick to play on an old lady, even if she is giving you grief.”

  “I wasn’t—” I kicked at the stone. Stubbed my toe. Started back up the trail, away from that miserable pool.

  “Hey, hey, hey. Hold on.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me toward a downed log, onto his lap. “What time does Mender go to bed?”

  I sat stiffly. No use explaining. They didn’t believe me? Fine. I’d find her on my own.

  “About nine. She reads for a while. She’ll be asleep by ten.”

  “That works. I’ll pick you up by the road tomorrow night at ten thirty.” He settled his chin on my shoulder. Lowered his voice. “If we drive straight through, we should get to the lake before four. Neighbors won’t see us arrive at that hour, either.”

  “There aren’t any close neighbors. Nobody will be nosing around. We’ll have the place all to ourselves.”

  I tried to stand, but he held me there, his mouth by my ear. His breath smelled metallic. “We may never want to leave.”

  A worm of fear crawled up my spine. What had I done? I tore at his hands.

  “Let go of me, Cabot.”

  He laughed and squeezed me tighter.

  Not funny. I bent forward until he relaxed his arms, and I rolled off his knees onto the ground. I couldn’t leave for the cabin yet. Aggie was hiding in the woods, possibly within shouting distance. Who else would have planted that rock on her tracks? I would find her before I would go anywhere.

  “About tomorrow.” I scrambled for an excuse. “I can’t just disappear. Gram will call my dad and they’ll have the cops hunting for me within hours. You’d be in deep trouble. I’m not eighteen yet, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah?” He seemed surprised. Did he pay attention to anything I said?

  “Um, I’m sixteen? A minor? If we’re taking off, I have to make Gram think I’m staying with some friend from the berry field, so she doesn’t come after me. We need to buy ourselves time to make the trip.”

  This little excursion wouldn’t work, anyway. If I called Gram from Chelan to kick Daddy into gear, she’d have Cabot arrested. But if Gram thought I was with a friend, she’d have no reason to call Daddy, so what would be the point?

  Cabot’s eyebrows crouched. “Buy ourselves time. Yeah. Next week.” He pulled me to my feet and kissed me, his lips unyielding. Made me think of a cattle brand. When he slid his hands around my waist, he clutched at me, and not in a good way.

  I pushed against his chest and forced a smile. “See you tomorrow. I’m going to help Gram feed the kits.”

  He released his hold. I knew his glare hung on me as I trotted away, but I didn’t look back. Despite the warm day, I was shivering by the time I reached the house. I checked windows, expecting him to show up at the door any minute, but after he emerged from the woods, he cut across the lawn and drove off without saying goodbye. Gram watched my hand shake as I lifted the raccoon’s bottle out of the steamy water in the sink.

  “You all right, Celia?” I nodded, but she wasn’t convinced. “Of course you want to find her.”

  “I saw those footprints, Gram.”

  “I know, honey. I know.” She patted my head as if I were a puppy. “You look a little peaked. Something happen with Cabot?”

  There she went, prying again. “I’m fine, Gram. Cabot and I are fine. And I’m sick of you acting like we’re not. Like I’m not!”


  “Oh, dear, you—”

  I threw the bottle into the sink; water splashed onto the counter, the cupboards, the floor.

  “I care about you, Celia. Want what’s best for you.”

  “Yeah. What you think is best. What about what I want?” I tramped to my room and locked the door.

  How would she know what was best for me? Times had changed since she was sixteen, in, what, the 1930s? I’d have to figure this out myself. But I knew two things: Aggie was in those woods. And something about Cabot scared me.

  CHAPTER 27 ~ AGGIE

  Cache

  After Cabot descended the haystack, Aggie guessed his destination. When he bulled his way through a thicket toward the abandoned farm, she scooted into the brush, rubbed her sweaty palms on her shirt, and sipped teaspoons of air to calm her erratic breath. If she circled behind the stone chimney, she would have an unimpeded view of the root cellar.

  At the clearing, the door to the underground room already stood ajar. She edged past a tangle of blackberry vines, wiped her brimming eyes, and crouched behind the chimney. A scraping sound came from inside the cellar, made by something rough. Cabot hadn’t appeared to be carrying anything that would make that noise. What else had he hidden in there? And why?

  She waited until he emerged and strode toward the trail, then began counting. At fifty-two, she no longer heard him. At one hundred, she crept to the cellar door, propped it open with a stick, and stepped into the small, dim room.

  Not much to see. River rock walls. Heavy beams across a low ceiling. Plank shelves. A floor of packed earth, cool on her bare feet. Her eyes adjusted and she noticed a silty layer coating everything horizontal: dust from an overhead ventilation hole, she figured. Years of dirty cobwebs, interrupted only by mouse trails and droppings, stretched across the shelves. The place was humid. Undisturbed.