You can’t miss what you’ve never had—a numbing, dogged refrain. By Friday the worst was over, Jolian told herself. She was numb. Work and more work had started the cure; time would complete it. If Fletch just gave her the time ... stayed out of her life. Well, there were ways she could keep him out. Would keep him out.
Right now, she had more immediate problems, Jolian thought grimly, staring out the open window at Yaffa.
She jumped as the phone rang behind her. ‘Don’t go away!’ she warned the cat unnecessarily. Just let that be Fletch on the phone, she thought savagely. She’d give him an earful today! ‘Hello!’ she barked.
‘... Hello? ... Jolian?’ The boy’s voice was hesitant, gruffness masking the shyness of his greeting.
‘Jem!’ Jolian found herself smiling in spite of herself—an odd sensation. She hadn’t smiled all week. ‘How are you?’
‘Oh, not bad. I was ... just ... wondering how you were?’ It was a tentative, hopeful question.
Her smile was rueful this time. So he wanted to talk. If she had half a brain she’d tell the kid she was busy, forget him as she was trying to forget his father.
But then what other link did Fletch have to the boy but her?—’
None. And whatever her needs, Jem still needed a home and a father. And Fletch needed his son ...
Jolian pulled a deep breath. He’d asked a question, hadn’t he? Oh—‘How am I? At the moment, I have a cat up a tree, Jem—a very tall tree—and I’m trying to balance my cheque book, which isn’t balancing. That’s how I am—just ... peachy keen!’
He laughed, sounding so much like his father that she flinched. ‘I didn’t know you had a cat.’
‘Had is the word,’ she assured him, turning to peer out the window. A pale patch of fur swayed into view as the wind moved the branches. ‘One slip and I’ve got a two-tone pancake, not a cat. She’s three stories up, the dimwit!’
‘Sounds like you could use McKay’s Feline Retrieval Service,’ he told her, suddenly at ease. ‘Treed cats are my speciality.’
‘Do you provide back-up scrape and burial services?’ she teased.
‘For you, lady—anything. Just tell me how to get there.’
Jolian checked her watch as she hung up the phone. This should prove interesting. Yaffa was still nailed to her tree limb about ten feet above the fire escape, her eyes blue saucers. She let out a low moan, as if too loud a yowl might knock her from her perch. Or maybe her voice was finally failing. ‘Hold on,’ Jolian advised her kindly, and went back to the kitchen. She had the makings for brownies, if she worked fast.
The brownies were just in the oven when Jolian heard feet clattering up her stairs. She checked her watch. Ten minutes. So her hunch must be right; Jem had to be living in Cambridge. Elementary, my dear Watson. Smiling, she opened the door to find not one but two half-out-of-breath boys on her doorstep—Jem and a boy half a head taller. ‘McKay’s Feline Retrieval Services?’ she asked, masking her surprise with a teasing grin as she waved them inside.
‘At your service, ma’am.’ Jem swept off his baseball cap with a graceful flourish, then tugged his taller, red-faced friend forward. ‘Ms. Jolian Michaels, this is my intrepid assistant, Kyle Taylor.’
‘Hello, Kyle.’
Apparently tongue-tied, the boy nodded jerkily and backed up a step, jamming his hands into his pockets. ‘Hi,’ he managed finally, directing it more to his tennis shoes than her face.
‘Where’s the subject?’ Jem wanted to know, his voice brisk.
‘Right out here,’ she told him, leading the way to the open window. ‘I let her out on the fire escape for some sunshine, and next thing I knew...’
While Jem sized up the situation with all the authority of a professional, Jolian studied his friend from the corner of her eye. She would guess he was sixteen, perhaps a very immature seventeen. He was almost as fair as Jem, but there the similarities ended. Where Jem was still gracefully compact, Kyle was a shambling young crane. Where Jem seemed to be basically outgoing, his friend was painfully shy, and while Jem showed all indications of being outrageously handsome some day, this boy would have a nice, birdy face. He shot her a glance and looked away quickly, but now she had one more similarity for her list. He was as bright as Jem—perhaps not articulate, but bright. Those pale grey eyes were uneasy, but very, very wide awake.
Jem scrambled out the window.
‘Jem, what are you going to—’ It suddenly
occurred to Jolian that a treed cat was the least of her worries. If Jem broke his neck, no doubt Fletch would wring hers for her as well.
Jem leaned back into the room. Behind the façade of breezy command, his eyes gleamed with a fierce, almost manic joy. ‘Kyle, come gimme a hand!’
The older boy groaned and flashed her a wry glance. He climbed out with a careful bending and sorting of long limbs that still resulted in a tangle as Jem pulled him through the window.
Heart in her mouth, Jolian leaned after them. Two boys with broken necks—marvellous! Stepping into Kyle’s clasped hands and then up to the fire escape railing, Jem hoisted himself on to the roof and disappeared from view. ‘Jem, be careful!’ she pleaded. Why had she ever started this?
‘Piece of cake, lady,’ he sang out from above. ‘Come on out and get your baby!’
And just how much weight was this fire escape meant to hold? Jolian stepped up and swung through the window. Catching the bony paw that Kyle offered her, she stood up beside him on the iron grating. Piece of cake, indeed! Pie in the sky was more like it. Just don’t look down.
On the slope of the roof, Jem was grappling with the lower twigs of the large branch that waved above him. She gasped as he jumped for the branch itself and missed. ‘Jem!’
Ignoring her, Jem jumped again and caught it this time. ‘Piece of cake!’ he panted, his legs swinging. ‘Now watch!’ Hand over hand, Tarzan fashion, he began to swing backwards out towards the end of the branch. As he did so, the branch began to bend under his weight. Jolian turned to look at her cat, and understood at last. Perched on a smaller limb of Jem’s branch, Yaffa was dipping down out of the sky as the boy’s weight forced the bough down.
‘Jem, you genius!’ Beside her, Kyle caught at the twigs of Yaffa’s branch and pulled it towards them. Standing on tiptoe, Jolian peeled a wild-eyed cat from her perch, brought her down at arm’s length, dangling by the scruff of her neck, her paws swiping the air for a clawhold. ‘You turkey!’ She dropped her on the windowsill and Yaffa bounded into the room, tail stiff with outrage.
‘Jem, you’re brilliant!’ Jolian told the boy as he flopped down on the roof just above her, his feet dangling. ‘She’d have been up there till Christmas if you hadn’t come along.’
Jem’s offhand shrug utterly failed to hide his pleasure. If Fletch could just see him like this! Was this all he needed? ‘All in a day’s work,’ he said modestly, his face glowing.
‘Does McKay’s Feline De-treeval Service take payment in brownies?’ she enquired politely.
‘You better believe it, lady!’
While Jolian set out the plates for the brownies, Jem kneeled by the table, one hand carefully extended towards Yaffa. Huddled under a chair, the Siamese crouched lower, her ears flattened. ‘Hiya, gorgeous!’ he crooned, making no move to touch her, his fingers steady. One of Yaffa’s ears relaxed a trifle—swivelled towards him and then back again.
Jolian shot him a nervous glance, but said nothing. Jem was making the right approach, but Yaffa might be too riled to except it right now. Beside Jem, Kyle stood with his hands back in his pockets, staring down at the open cheque-book she’d been cursing when Yaffa first yowled for help. Nosy kid!
‘You made a mistake here,’ he said suddenly.
‘I know, it won’t balance. I—’ Jolian looked up from cutting the brownies, her eyes widening. No pencil, no calculator—Kyle was doing that in his head? She walked over to stand beside him, frowning.
‘Check number 302,’ he mumbled, nodding down a
t the cheque-book. ‘Your balance should be 987.69 there. You forgot to carry one.’ His eyes flicked on down the column of figures. ‘And there—you did it again in the cents column this time. That last figure is ten cents too high, but taking into account the first mistake, your final balance this page is ... 681.14.’
Jolian picked up a pencil, scribbled the sum next to her own figure, then looked up again, her eyebrows lifting. ‘You’re sure?’ He had to be pulling her leg.
His look of surprise answered her question. He was sure. Reddening under her gaze, Kyle nodded stiffly, turned and wandered aimlessly into the living room, his shoulders hunched.
Jem stood up from the floor, Yaffa cradled gingerly in his arms. ‘I it’s numbers, he’s sure, Jolian,’ he confirmed. He shot a mischievous, triangular smile at his friend and the next words were raised for his benefit. ‘He can’t spell his own name the same way twice, but he knows his numbers.’
‘Lucky for you I can’t,’ Kyle growled, ducking his head. He wandered over to her workshop doorway and leaned there, studying the room intently.
And what do you make of this, my dear Watson? As she brought their plates into the living room and set them on the side table, Jolian could make nothing of it, nothing that made sense. She glanced at her watch. ‘Oops! We’ve got to watch something.’ She gestured at the small television set housed in the bookshelf across the room. ‘See if you can find My Brother’s Keeper for me, will you, Jem?’ She started for the kitchen, wondering if boys drank skim milk. If she poured it out of their sight, they’d probably never notice the difference.
‘You watch soap operas?’ asked Jem, sounding vaguely disappointed.
‘Not usually, no,’ she called back, pouring the milk. ‘But my business has a contract with this show. We supply all the jewellery the stars wear, and there’s going to be a close-up of a necklace I designed, in a dance scene. I’ve been waiting for this for ages.’ Her eyes lit on the cake pan and the rest of the brownies. That was silly, serving teenage boys one brownie apiece. If she brought them all out, they would eat them all. And Jem was looking a bit thinner, wasn’t he? She ought to be giving him a tuna sandwich and a salad, not junk food. He probably hadn’t looked a carrot in the eye since he ran away. Oh well. She picked up the knife.
When Jolian returned to the living room, Jem and Kyle were huddled in front of the set, their eyes riveted to the struggling figures there. That couldn’t be Keepers, surely? The boys didn’t look up as she came to stand behind them. On the screen, one man went down with a grunt and the other crouched above him, fists cocked. Jolian laughed softly. ‘Jon Corey in Blue Riders. My God, I loved that man! I guess I cried for a month when he died—me and every other teenage girl in the country.’
The camera was moving in for a close-up of that fabulous face—heroically battered for this scene. A line of blood trickled down from the corner of his mouth, and his lips tilted up in that angular, heart-wrenching grin. He whipped the blond hair out of his eyes. ‘Get up, Dawson, we’re not done yet!’ he rasped.
As Jem hit the knob, the picture contracted to a point of light and blinked out. His hand stayed on the knob, twiddling it slowly back and forth. The blond head below her was unnaturally still, fixed on that blank screen. ‘Jem?’ Jolian touched his shoulder.
‘He drank himself to death,’ he murmured, unmoving.
Kyle shot him a nervous look, then glanced up at Jolian and down again. He cleared his throat.
If she could just see Jem’s face! ‘I guess he did,’ she agreed gently, utterly bewildered. ‘He was one of those shooting star kind of people—four films on the way up, two on the way down, all gone in five short years.’ She crouched down behind Jem, put a hand on his shoulder. ‘What’s the matter, Jem?’
He shook his head rapidly and Jolian gasped as she glimpsed the colour of his cheeks—greeny-white. ‘Nothing!’ he muttered.
‘He doesn’t like blood,’ Kyle said clearly beside them. He blushed as Jolian turned to stare at him. ‘He’s a real chicken-heart when it comes to blood, right, Jem?’
‘Right,’ Jem murmured. ‘That’s it.’ His grin was ghastly. ‘Yuk!’
Kyle glanced at his watch. ‘You know, Jem, I’ve got—’
‘Right.’ Jem cut that statement with some of his old vitality. ‘I know.’ He smiled again for her, almost got it right this time. ‘I’m feeling sort of sick,’ he told her frankly. ‘I think I better go too.’
And he was not to be dissuaded. It was all Jolian could do just to get them to take a package of brownies along. His colour returning, Jem promised to call her soon, and seemed to mean it. At the door, Jem stopped to give Yaffa’s tail a gentle tug, and dodge her halfhearted swat. He grinned at Jolian, started to speak, then shrugged. ‘ ’Bye,’ he said shyly, and followed Kyle’s clumping footsteps down the stairs.
‘And what do you make of that, Yaffa?’ she murmured. Scurrying into her bedroom, she peeped out of the window at the street. She caught a glimpse of a shiny, ten-speed bike overloaded with two boys wobbling around the corner, Kyle’s legs flapping and then folding as he pedalled, Jem hanging on behind, his mirror glasses gleaming, his baseball cap on crooked. ‘What in heaven’s name do you make of all that!’
Fletch, as you can see, I’m gone. Won’t be back this weekend. I saw Jem this morning—Friday—and learned the following things:
1.He has a friend—Kyle Taylor, sixteen-seventeen; blond; not a street kid, whatever he is; very good at math.
2.I think Jem is staying within ten minutes’ bike ride of this house.
Jolian tapped the pencil absently on the margin of the paper, doodled a quick star with a chequered comet tail. Even sticking to facts, it was amazing how much she had to tell Fletch. It would be so much easier in person ... Easy? Ha! She squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head, and went back to the list.
14. Is Jem bothered by blood?
She glanced at her watch. Three-thirty. Got to get out of here. If Fletch followed his pattern so far, he could be flying into town any time today or tomorrow.
19. Please don’t call me again. Please. If you have more questions, tell your detective to come see me. I’ll talk to him.
Her pen hesitated, touched the paper, and lifted again, leaving a tentative mark where the complimentary close should be written. Four letters and a comma—‘love’,—so easy to feel and so useless to write. Fletch didn’t want that from her, whatever he wanted. She transformed the mark into a quick sketch—a small bird winging away. She penned in a ‘J.’ below it, folded the message and dropped it in the envelope.
Cat feeder loaded with dry food? Check. Two bowls of water set out? Check. Toothbrush, clothes, sketch pads, one silver ring to finish for her father, a book, all the provisions for a weekend on the lam from Fletch? Check.
‘Tell him “hi” for me if he knocks,’ Jolian instructed the cat. She locked the door, then tacked the note to it, stood staring at it absently. Thank God Katy was going to Maine this weekend with her tofu man; the loan of her apartment near the hospitals was a life-saver. Fletch would never find her there. But what would she do next weekend—Al’s couch? Don’t think about it. Get through one day at a time. You can’t miss what—Jolian squared her shoulders, picked up her night bag and trudged down the stairs. You can’t.
On Monday morning there was an angry, neglected cat behind her door, and a new note tacked to its surface. He’d set it at his own eye level, jamming the tack in so hard that she broke a fingernail when she stood on tiptoe to pry it loose. Ignoring Yaffa’s desolate cries, she leaned back against the door to read it.
That won’t do, Jolian. I need your help—need it.
So answer your phone, damn it!
Fletch
Unlocking the door, she scooped up Yaffa and wandered down the hallway to her bedroom, dumped cat and overnight bag on the bed. ‘Need’—had Fletch used that word on purpose? His jewellery box gleamed on her bureau; she opened it idly, her hands caressing the different colours of wood as t
hey unfolded. But ‘need your help,’ he had said, not ‘need you’ ... She slid open the secret drawer, stared down at the pearl, shut the drawer again quickly. ‘I pay my debts,’ he’d also said, and, ‘I don’t need anybody.’ Sadly she closed the box again and stood holding it, her hands cupping its elegant curves, her eyes distant. No, he’d made it perfectly clear from the start. What Fletch felt for her was not love, and he had no intention of giving love a chance to grow between them. In the few times they’d met, he had been so careful to keep her at arm’s length, never asking about her past, never asking what she hoped for the future. All he had wanted from her was the present. Fletch didn’t want, wouldn’t let himself need the rest of her.
‘Well, I need you, Fletch,’ she murmured, setting his box down with gentle fingers, ‘but I can’t talk to you ... Not till it stops hurting.’ Maybe in a week or two ... Or a month ... A year, maybe?
That night she took her own overnight shift at the Hotline; on Tuesday night she unplugged the phone. Wednesday night she taught the jewellery class, slept again with the phone disconnected, and on Thursday Al had someone he wanted her to meet.
Jolian dressed for the evening with care. Ostensibly this was a business dinner, but there had been a certain note in Al’s voice ... She chose a grey wool dress, a soft, zip-front knit which gently skimmed her curves, neither denying nor flaunting them, black slender heels, dark hose, a black, white and grey plaid shawl to ward off the unseasonable cold. A pair of her own earrings—a simple, dangling leaf-like design which had always been one of their best sellers—completed the outfit. Studying herself in the mirror as she would have criticised one of her own designs, Jolian sighed slowly. She would do. She looked a bit hollow-cheeked and dark-eyed nowadays, but with her hair down and curling around her cheeks and shoulders, the underfed look was softened to fashionable thinness. All she needed was a smile. She tried one on and winced. Must be out of practice. She scowled—that was easy.
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