by John Saul
“How can she live here?” she asked. “Why do they even let her?”
Eric tipped his head noncommittally. “She’s always lived here, except when she was in the hospital.” He faced Cassie, his blue eyes serious. “This is how come everyone thinks she’s crazy,” he went on. “I mean, you would think you’d have to have something wrong with you to live like this, wouldn’t you?”
Cassie bit her lip, her eyes suddenly filling with tears again. “But how come nobody does anything for her?” she asked.
Eric paused, then shrugged his shoulders again. “Mom says people tried a few times, but Miranda wouldn’t even let them into the house. She …” He hesitated, then went on. “Well, I guess she just likes it out here.”
At last—with the hawk eyeing them warily every step of the way—they worked their way back to where they’d begun and Cassie stopped to look at the house once more. As she watched, the front door opened and Miranda, dressed in the same black clothes she had been wearing the day before, stepped out onto the porch.
She stared out over the swamp for a moment, then, as her eyes found them, she slowly raised her arm.
Instantly the white hawk rose from the roof, its wings beating rapidly as it lifted itself into the sky.
As the hawk soared higher and higher and Cassie felt a shudder of sudden fear, a shout floated over the marsh. “Eric? Eric!”
“Oh, Jesus,” Eric whispered. “It’s my father. What are we going to do now?”
Cassie said nothing. She stood motionless, as if hypnotized by the ghostly bird. Then she tore her eyes away and faced Eric. “Nothing,” she told him. “We already decided what we’d say if we got caught. So let’s go do it. Come on.”
With a last quick glance at the strange figure of Miranda standing on her front porch, Cassie turned and began making her way back toward the beach.
The hawk, screaming with fury now, beat its way after them, flying low over the reeds of the marsh. Only when they reached the beach did it finally turn back, screeching once more, to return to the peak of the cabin’s roof. Panting, Eric and Cassie watched it for a few seconds then headed for the parking lot that edged the easternmost border of the marsh.
Ed Cavanaugh was leaning against the fender of his truck, his eyes flashing with unconcealed rage.
“What the hell are you doing out here, boy?” he demanded. “You got any idea what time it is?”
“I—I don’t know,” Eric stammered. “Two-thirty? Three?”
“Don’t sass me, Eric. You know what happens when you sass me.” The muscles in Ed’s jaws twitched dangerously, and his right hand clenched into a fist.
“I’m not sassing you, Dad,” Eric said, his voice desperate. “I don’t know what time it is, that’s all.”
“It’s four,” Ed rasped. “Four o’clock! And if it were two-thirty or three, it wouldn’t make a goddamned bit of difference. What the hell are you doing out here?”
“It’s my fault, Mr. Cavanaugh,” Cassie tried to interrupt, but Cavanaugh raked her scornfully with his eyes.
“I ain’t talking to you, you little slut,” he snarled. “Get your ass in the truck, Eric! You and I are going to have a little talk when we get home!”
Eric’s face paled but he said nothing, only glanced quickly at Cassie before climbing into the passenger seat of the battered white truck.
A second later Ed Cavanaugh’s eyes met Cassie’s, and she felt a chill of pure terror. He hates me, she thought. He’s never even met me, and he hates me.
Then Cavanaugh swung himself into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and gunned the engine. The truck shot forward, spraying Cassie with a stinging hail of sand and gravel. She instinctively raised her arm to shield her eyes. When she touched her face a moment later, her fingers came away bloody.
Biting her lips against both the pain of the cut on her forehead and the sting of tears in her eyes, she started home. But before she’d gone more than a few yards, she found herself stopping to turn back once more and gaze out over the marsh toward the tiny cabin in the pines. She could barely make out the dark form of Miranda Sikes, still standing on her porch. Seconds, marked only by Cassie’s heartbeat, passed. At last, almost tentatively, Cassie raised her arm and waved.
For a moment Cassie thought Miranda hadn’t seen her. But then, just as she was about to turn away, she thought she saw Miranda smile.
Whatever anger Keith may have been feeling toward Cassie vanished as she came in through the back door. Her right hand was held against her forehead, and her cheek was stained with a dark smear of drying blood. “Cassie? Honey, what’s happened?”
“I’m okay,” Cassie said. “I just—it was an accident, that’s all.” She dropped her tote bag on the kitchen table, then went to the sink and bent over it, washing the cut with warm water. She groped for a paper towel, pressed it against the wound, then straightened up and faced her father. “Are there any Band-Aids?” she asked, managing a weak smile.
“Upstairs in the bathroom,” Keith told her. “Come on.” Herding Cassie up the stairs ahead of him, he guided her into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. “Maybe we better let a doctor have a look at that,” he suggested as he fumbled with the little metal box. “When Rosemary gets back from Jen’s dance class, I’ll take you.”
“It’s just a cut. It doesn’t even need a big one. Are there any of the little round ones?”
“Got it,” Keith said, ripping open the paper cover and extracting the small plastic disk inside. He peeled away the backing, then told Cassie to tip her head back. When she took the paper towel away, he saw that she was right—the cut wasn’t nearly as bad as it had looked when she came in. He centered the bandage carefully, then pressed it tightly to her skin.
“Okay,” he said when they were both back downstairs, “now let’s hear the whole story. Starting with why you left school right after lunch.”
Cassie’s heart sank. How had he found out so soon? But then she knew the answer: False Harbor wasn’t like the San Fernando Valley, where nobody ever noticed what anyone was doing. False Harbor was a tiny little town, and everybody knew everybody else. Someone had seen Eric and her, and told on them.
“School was—” she began. She was about to blurt out the truth, but then remembered the story she had made up for Eric. What would happen to him if she told her father the truth and Mr. Cavanaugh found out about it? “I—I got sick,” she began again. “I was having lunch with Eric and I got sick to my stomach. I decided to come home and lie down, and Eric said he’d come with me, in case I started throwing up on the way home.”
Keith frowned. “But that was three hours ago,” he said. “Where have you been since then?”
Cassie’s expression turned wary. “I got better,” she replied. “By the time we got home, I was all over it.”
Keith eyed her suspiciously. “Then why didn’t you go back to school?”
“I didn’t want to,” Cassie said without thinking. “School was horrible, and I hate it. It isn’t anything like I’m used to, and everyone was talking about me.”
“Talking about you?” Keith repeated, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Why would they do that?”
Cassie shrugged. “One of the girls hates me.”
“Hates you? That’s a little hard to believe, honey. How could anyone hate you on the first day?”
“It’s Lisa Chambers,” Cassie replied. “She’s Eric’s girlfriend, and she thinks I’m trying to take him away from her.”
Keith relaxed. “And for that you skipped half a day of school?” he asked, the beginnings of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth.
“It’s not funny,” Cassie began, just as the back door opened once more and Rosemary came into the kitchen.
“Well, she’s right,” Rosemary sighed after Keith had repeated what Cassie had told him. “It’s not funny, really. Lisa Chambers can be pretty nasty when she wants to be.” But just as Cassie was starting to let herself relax, her stepmother turned
stern eyes on her. “But that still isn’t any reason for you to stay away from school. If you were sick, you should have gone to the nurse’s office.”
“I—I didn’t know there was one,” Cassie stammered.
Rosemary’s brows arched skeptically. “Did you ask?”
Cassie hesitated, then shook her head and turned to her father. “Mr. Cavanaugh found out we cut too. Eric says he’s going to be in trouble.”
Keith glanced at his wife, who said nothing, apparently waiting for him to take the lead. “Don’t you think you might be in a little trouble too?” he asked with more severity than he was really feeling.
Cassie shrugged. “I don’t care. But Eric’s father—I think Mr. Cavanaugh’s going to beat Eric up.”
“Beat him up?” Rosemary echoed, her voice clearly betraying her doubt. “Just for cutting school? What gave you that idea?”
“Eric told me. He says his father hits him when he gets mad. He hit him Saturday night.”
Simultaneously both Keith and Rosemary remembered the shouting they’d heard coming from the Cavanaughs’ two nights before. Surely it had been no more than an argument, hadn’t it? But, of course, they both knew better, for each of them had at one time or another seen the bruises on Laura’s and Eric’s faces and arms. Eric’s injuries had always been explained away as nothing more than accidents on the playing field, but neither Keith nor Rosemary had ever put much faith in Laura’s implausible accounts of her own clumsiness.
Suddenly Keith understood the truth of his daughter’s tale. “You didn’t get sick, did you?” he asked, his voice gentle. “You made that story up for Eric, so his father wouldn’t beat him up.”
After a moment Cassie nodded unhappily. “You won’t tell, will you? It was all my idea. Eric didn’t want to go with me, but I talked him into it. Please?”
Keith hesitated, uncertain. When he glanced at his wife, he could see she was still determined to leave the situation up to him. “I don’t see what harm it can do,” he said at last. “If claiming you got sick will keep Ed Cavanaugh’s hands off Eric, I think it’s worth it. But I want you to promise me you won’t cut school again. Or if you do, at least don’t try to talk anyone else into going along. Understood?”
Rosemary saw Cassie glance at her, but said nothing, and after a long silence Cassie finally nodded. “Yes, Daddy,” she said quietly.
“Then that’s settled,” Keith said.
“Not quite,” Rosemary interjected. “Don’t you think we have to do something about this?”
Now Cassie’s eyes met her stepmother’s directly, and Rosemary was sure she recognized a challenge in them.
“Why?” Cassie asked. “My mom never did anything when I cut school at home.”
“Did she know what you were doing?” Rosemary countered.
“Sure,” Cassie replied, her tone just short of belligerence. “I used to do it all the time. What’s the big deal? I get good grades, and the classes are so dumb I don’t see the point of going.”
Rosemary decided to ignore the jibe. “What did you do when you cut school?”
“Nothing much,” Cassie replied vaguely. “Sometimes I’d go to the beach, like Eric and I did today. But usually I just went home and read.”
“And your mother didn’t care?”
Cassie’s jaw tightened, but when she spoke, her voice was almost emotionless. “Most of the time she probably didn’t even know. She was always at work, and then after Tommy left, she usually went out all the time. Sometimes I didn’t even see her except on the weekends.”
“I see,” Rosemary breathed, suddenly softening. Apparently Keith was right—Diana hadn’t really cared about Cassie at all. “Well, under the circumstances I guess we can let it go this time,” she said. “But I want you to understand that here we do care if you go to school or not. Even though I have my store, I won’t be working all the time, and I certainly won’t be going out every night. If you have problems at school, we want you to talk about them, not just stop going to classes. Okay?”
Cassie’s eyes narrowed slightly, but she bobbed her head. “Can I go up to my room now?”
Rosemary hesitated, feeling certain there was more to be said, but not quite sure what it was. As had already happened a couple of times before, she felt vaguely manipulated. “All right,” she sighed. “I’ll call you when I need you to come down and help Jennifer set the table.” Cassie started toward the stairs when Rosemary suddenly remembered the cuts on her wrist. “Cassie?” she called.
The girl stopped, and turned back questioningly.
“There was a cat in your room this morning,” Rosemary said. “It was in your bed, and when I went in to make it, it scratched me.” She held up her bandaged hand. “Do you have any idea where it came from?”
Cassie said nothing for a moment, the dream from last night suddenly coming back to her. Then she shook her head. “I don’t know. It was in the tree last night, so I let it in. Then I let it out this morning, but it must have come back.” She hesitated a second, then: “Can—can I keep him?”
Immediately Rosemary shook her head. “You shouldn’t even have let him in. I’m sure he belongs to someone, and I let him out again.”
Now it was Cassie who shook her head. “He’ll come back,” she said. “I know he will. When he does, can I keep him? Please?”
Rosemary glanced at Keith. Wasn’t he going to say anything? He certainly knew how she felt about cats—she’d made it perfectly clear last year when Jennifer wanted a kitten. “I—I don’t know,” she finally temporized. “He probably won’t come back, but if he does, we’ll talk about it then.”
Cassie opened her mouth to say something, but then seemed to change her mind.
A moment later Keith and Rosemary were alone in the kitchen. Rosemary went to the refrigerator and pulled out the bottle of white wine they had opened the night before but hadn’t finished. “I know it’s a bit early,” she said, offering Keith a glass of wine and a rueful smile. “I guess I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed.”
Keith raised his glass and tipped it toward her. “Well, if you ask me, you handled that situation like a champ.”
“Did I?” Rosemary mused. “I wonder. I have this nagging feeling that maybe we should have insisted on some kind of punishment.”
“But you heard her,” Keith replied. “It was almost as if she didn’t even know that what she did was wrong. And it’s obvious she didn’t think we’d care.”
Rosemary shook her head. “I don’t know. She certainly knew there was the possibility of getting in trouble. I mean, she went so far as to make up that story to protect Eric. And I’m also having a problem dealing with the idea that Diana really didn’t know what was going on, or didn’t care.”
“Well, it doesn’t surprise me,” Keith replied bitterly. “In fact I’m not sure Diana ever really cared about anyone but herself. Even when we were married and she claimed she loved me so much she couldn’t stand to have me out of her sight, she wasn’t telling the truth. The truth was that she couldn’t stand being away from me because she could only convince herself I loved her if I was there every second. And I’ve never been sure she didn’t take Cassie just to keep me from having her.”
“My God,” Rosemary said, her eyes drifting up to the ceiling toward Cassie’s room. “What must it have been like for her?”
Then they both fell silent as they heard Ed Cavanaugh’s voice shouting from next door.
“Lying, stinking, rotten kid! I’ll teach you to talk back to me!”
Laura’s voice came next, softer. “Ed—”
“SHUT UP!”
Keith rose to his feet, but Rosemary stopped him. “Don’t,” she said. “We can call the police, or we can ignore it. But I don’t want you to get involved.”
“But we are involved, damn it,” Keith replied. “We have to listen to it, don’t we? And what about Eric and Laura? Do we just let him beat them up?”
Rosemary met his eyes. “Then call the police,�
�� she insisted. “If you want to do something, call the police. But let them handle it.”
Keith reached for the phone, then, as he always did when he was tempted to report the fights at the Cavanaughs’, hung up again before he dialed. If he called the police, Ed Cavanaugh would know immediately who had reported the fight at his house. And there were too many nights when Keith had to be at sea, and Rosemary and the girls would be alone in the house. He couldn’t risk Ed taking out his drunken anger on them when Keith himself was hundreds of miles away.
“Shit,” he said softly, pouring himself a second glass of wine. Then he smiled sadly at Rosemary. “I guess Cassie’s story didn’t work for Eric. But at least she tried, didn’t she?”
For a moment Rosemary said nothing. Was that really all the lie had been? An attempt to help Eric? Or had it been meant for them too? She wished she could be sure.
She dismissed the uncharitable thoughts from her mind and made herself smile. “Yes, I guess she did.” She reached over and squeezed her husband’s hand. “We’ll make things work out. She’s got some problems, but nothing we can’t handle.”
“And it’s hard to get mad at someone whose always looking out for someone else, isn’t it?” Keith added. “She did it for Jennifer the other night, and she did it for Eric today. Whatever mistakes Diana may have made, I think she raised a good kid.”
But Rosemary made no reply, for once again her mind was occupied with the strange feeling she had about Cassie, the feeling that the things Cassie was doing, no matter how well-intentioned they seemed on the surface, were cloaking something else. Cassie, she was beginning to believe, was a lot more complicated than she seemed on the surface. Something was going on behind those large brown eyes of hers, and it wasn’t something that Rosemary understood.
More and more, she was growing certain that it was something she should fear.
But that’s silly, she told herself once again. She’s only a child. What can there be in a child to be afraid of? But as the afternoon turned into evening, and the evening turned to night, Rosemary found herself watching Cassie, looking for something.