I followed her back to the arcade feeling churlish. I was being as obnoxious as Brian. It wasn’t Linda’s fault that Tom had disappeared again.
Linda was as good as her word. I saw her whispering to Ken, and when he suggested that we get pizza he mentioned that I had to be home early. I shot him a grateful glance. We ate quickly and headed out to the car.
Brian and I had a short wrestling match at the door before he left, and then I was finally, gratefully, alone. I dodged Stella as I entered the house and went looking for my mother. In the kitchen I found a note saying that she’d gone out and would be back around midnight.
Stella kicked her empty water dish across the room. I filled it at the sink and set it on the floor. Then I sat at the kitchen table and burst into tears.
Where was Tom? Why hadn’t I seen him all week? Would I have to spend my time fighting off the advances of creeps like Brian while Tom remained elusive, out of reach? My life was dominated by the uncertainty of my relationship with him. I never knew from one day to the next if or when I would see him. It was driving me crazy and making me miserable.
I knew of only one way to alleviate that misery. I got up, raced to my room and grabbed the agency keys from my desk. I returned to the kitchen and gave Stella a bone from the refrigerator to occupy her.
Then I dashed out the front door, on the run.
Chapter 4
I ran all the way to the agency. Everything was dark. Breathless and panting, I stabbed at the door with the key until I finally jammed it in the lock. I turned it and wrenched open the door, turning on the overhead entrance light.
“Tom!” I yelled. “Tom, are you here? I need to see you. Please, if you can hear me, come out.”
I didn’t stop to think that it was madness to be looking for him at such an hour. I was beyond logic, a tangle of nerves and frustrated emotions.
“I need to talk to you,” I went on, sobbing. “I don’t understand why I haven’t seen you all week. Why haven’t you come back? You promised that you would.”
My voice echoed in the cold gray autumn silence. The outlines of the furniture and books and maps blended into the deep stillness of the room. There was no response. Had I really thought there would be?
“Okay, fine,” I said belligerently. “Who needs you, anyway? Stay away. I don’t care if I never see you again.”
Something shifted in the shadows, and my heart leaped. I didn’t know whether I had seen movement or imagined it.
“Tom?” I whispered, and I thought I heard a sighing answer drifting on the wind: “Cory ...”
“Miss, what are you doing in here?” demanded a harsh male voice behind me. I whirled, to be blinded by the glare of a flashlight. I threw my arm up to cover my eyes.
“Wh-what?” I stammered, unable to comprehend what was happening.
“What are you doing?” the voice repeated. The light was lowered, and I could make out the blue uniform, the glint of a badge. Dear heaven, it was the police.
My first thought was that my mother was going to murder me. My second thought was that I had to extricate myself from this situation, fast.
“I work here,” I announced with as much conviction as I could muster. “I forgot something, and I came back to pick it up.”
The cop was looking me over, and he evidently decided I didn’t appear too dangerous. “Do you know what time it is, sis?” he said, exasperated.
“Yes, I know it’s late,” I babbled, praying that he had a girl my age and would understand the vagaries of teenagers, “but I was afraid the cleaning crew would throw this out.” I grabbed the book I’d left on the reception desk the night before, and which a merciful fate had allowed to remain there. “I need it for school,” I lied hopefully.
He studied me, while I stood facing him, trying to exude innocence and sincerity from every pore. He sighed.
“What’s your name, and where do you live?” he asked.
I told him.
“Did you walk here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do your parents know you’re out here at this time of night?”
I explained that my mother was out but would be home soon.
“Come along with me,” the cop said. “We’ll drop you back at your house.”
I went with him meekly, stopping to lock the agency door. The sight of me with the keys persuaded the policeman that I was not the burglar he’d thought he would catch. His partner stared in surprise as we made our way out to the squad car.
“Looks like you’ve got a dangerous criminal there, Harry.” He chuckled. “Yardley will be a safer place to live with this one behind bars.”
His friend was not amused. “Let’s take her home, and cut the chatter,” he replied curtly.
“Sure thing,” the driver said. We drove back to the house in silence.
As I’d feared, my mother had arrived in my absence. When she caught sight of me being escorted to the door by the cop, she almost fainted.
“Cory, what on earth . . .” she began, turning pale.
“It’s all right, ma’am,” the policeman said. “We’re just bringing your daughter home. She’s not in trouble.”
Mom stared at me. “Where were you? I thought you were out at the movies with Linda.”
“I was. I’ll explain if you give me a chance.”
“It’s not a good idea to let your girl run around town this late,” the cop admonished my mother, who then looked daggers at me. “I’d watch her more carefully in future.”
“I will, officer,” my mother said meaningfully. “This won’t happen again, I assure you.”
I’ll drink to that, I thought darkly.
“Good night, ma’am, miss,” the policeman said, nodding to both of us.
“Good night,” Mom replied, shutting the door after him. She turned to glare at me.
“Cordelia, I warn you,” she said icily, “this had better be good.”
“I went to the Werner Agency to get a book I’d forgotten,‘“ I said, deciding to stick with the same story. “The cop must have seen the light and decided to investigate.”
“You went to the agency at this hour to get a book?” she repeated incredulously, which wasn’t surprising. It was an incredibly stupid lie.
“I need it for school.”
“Couldn’t you have waited until morning?”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“You know agents drop by there on Sunday all the time,” she stated. “You could have gotten in if you wanted to. You have yet to tell me why you left the door wide open and went down there in the dark. I didn’t know what to think when I got home. The dog was frantic.”
The dog is always frantic, I thought sourly. Aloud I said, “I’m sorry I frightened you. I guess I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”
“I guess you weren’t,” she agreed. She gestured for me to sit on the sofa, and she dropped into the rocking chair. “Cory, I’ve noticed your . . . preoccupation recently, and I want to know what’s on your mind. Last night you were wandering around in your nightgown in the middle of the night, and tonight you arrive home with a police escort. What is it? I want you to tell me.”
I dug the toe of my shoe into the rug, silent.
“Is it your father? Did his visit today upset you?”
“Don’t try to pin this on Daddy,” I said wearily. “It isn’t his fault.”
“Then what? You have to admit you’ve been acting very strangely.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“That doesn’t answer my question. Maybe we should take you in for a checkup. You don’t look so hot.”
All these people wanted to do was send me to doctors. “I’m all right, Mom. Really.”
She shook her head. “You never would talk to me. Even when you were little, you’d be quiet as a mouse all day, but when your father came home, the floodgates would open. We couldn’t shut you up then.”
I watched her face, and it was the first time I realized that my reticence with her had hurt h
er feelings. She wanted that closeness I had had with my father, but she didn’t know how to achieve it.
“When you were born,” she went on more softly, “you were the only blond baby in the nursery. All the rest were dark. Your father used to stand for hours by that glass partition and say to anyone who would listen, ‘That’s my girl, right there. A Valkyrie, like her mother.‘“
I felt my eyes fill with tears. She was looking at the past; she didn’t even see me, though her gaze was fastened on my face.
“Your baby pictures could have been mine,” she added. “Grandma had some of me, and you would have sworn you were looking at the same kid.” She blinked, and came back to the present again. “That’s always been our problem, hasn’t it, Cory? We’re too much alike.” She stood abruptly. “I can see that you’ve taken the vow of silence again, so I’m going to bed. If you decide that you want to talk in the morning, let me know.”
I breathed a sigh of relief when she left. I had expected a lot worse than a mild reprimand and a trip down memory lane. Stella jumped into my lap, glad that the strangers were gone and the harsh tone of my mother’s voice had ceased. I hugged her and thought about my encounter with Yardley’s finest.
* * *
Gina called me the next afternoon to invite me to a Halloween party she was giving on the twenty-eighth. This news was not welcome; I never shine at parties, and this promised to be one of those affairs where everybody seemed to have a date except me. She said I could bring somebody if I wanted to, but we both knew I didn’t have anyone to bring. Brian and his monumental ego were out. I should ask him, I thought sourly as I hung up the phone; he could come as God. He wouldn’t even need a costume.
I went back to school on Monday, and the week dragged slowly on, with my mother busy with her time killers and me busy missing Tom. There was still no sign of him. Miss Kenworthy sacrificed Ethan Frome in short order and moved on to The Great Gatsby. She spent a lot of time lecturing us about the symbolism in the book, symbolism I felt sure Fitzgerald never intended. Why do English teachers have to make such a theoretical project out of everything you study? They could never just let you read a story and enjoy it.
Benti and I were the only ones in the agency on Friday night. All the others were off showing houses and talking listings. Things were pretty quiet for a Friday; it was turning colder and this discouraged the frivolous house hunters from the scene. In nice weather you get a certain percentage of people who have no intention of buying anything, but like to stroll around nosily, investigating the market or studying interior decorating. It drove the agents crazy.
Benti went out to get a sandwich at the deli around eight-thirty. I picked up Gatsby and was reading about Daisy’s voice full of money when I noticed a pair of shoes out of the corner of my eye. Men’s shoes. Work boots. I looked up and the book fell from my hands.
Tom was regarding me apprehensively.
“Nice of you to show up,” I said coldly.
“Cory, don’t be angry,” he said, holding up his hand.
“Why should I be angry?” I asked. “I haven’t seen you in how long, and you just waltz in here when you please and expect everything to be the same. No note, no call, no nothing. Everything is not the same. Goodbye.”
He remained standing in the same spot, watching me.
“Are you deaf?” I demanded. “I told you to get lost.”
“Aren’t you glad to see me?”
He had me there. I was very glad to see him. But I was determined to stick to my guns and voice my displeasure at this unconventional relationship. “That is beside the point,” I replied primly.
“That is the point,” he stated.
“Where have you been?” I cried defensively.
“You would have seen me before this if it had been possible,” he replied.
I was getting just a little tired of his cryptic remarks. “And what exactly does that mean? Are you a prisoner? Are you a government agent? What is going on here?” One part of me knew that on such short acquaintance, I had no right to berate him for his lack of attentiveness as if we’d been an item for months. But another part, a more instinctive part, knew that it was appropriate and right. We were into something more here than casual dates and an escort for the senior prom.
“Cory, don’t do this,” Tom cautioned. “There is no time to waste on trivial arguments.”
I ignored him. “Tom, why can’t I see you any place but here? Are you hiding from someone? Are you concerned about money? I see that you always wear the same clothes. If you can’t afford to go out, then we can do something inexpensive. I work, I have money. Won’t you let me help you?”
“Cory, listen to me.”
“No! Now you listen to me! I’ve been miserable since the last time I saw you. The other night I came here after hours trying to find you and got into trouble for it…”
“I know,” he interrupted.
“You know I got into trouble?”
“I know that you were here.”
“How?”
“I felt it.”
“You felt it. Wonderful. What are you, a mystic? You’re going to have to do better than that, Tom. I want some answers.”
“I can’t give you any that you would understand.”
“Am I too stupid?”
He shook his head. “It has nothing to do with intelligence.”
I felt I was getting nowhere. He responded to everything I said without giving me any information. They could use this guy in Washington, I thought. I decided to try a different tack.
“I had a very strange dream after I left you the last time you were here,” I ventured.
He did not seem surprised by this bulletin. “Oh?” he replied, raising an eyebrow in a manner reminiscent of my father.
“Yes. You and I were in the park by Lake Afton, just as I described the scene earlier that night. Isn’t that interesting?”
“It was probably on your mind,” Tom replied casually.
“No doubt. But it struck me that the dream fulfilled a wish I had that we couldn’t carry through in reality.”
“A common enough motivation for dreaming,” Tom commented uncomfortably.
“Certainly. It was as if something suggested it to me and I lived it subconsciously. Do you suppose that’s possible?”
Tom mumbled, looking away.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“It caused me to sleepwalk, which I haven’t done since I was a kid,” I added. “At least, I think I was sleepwalking. I woke up outside the house in my nightdress. Stella was there, barking at something I couldn’t see. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” Tom recited.
I froze. Perhaps Tom didn’t know it, but I recognized those lines.
He saw the expression on my face. He came toward me and touched me for the first time that night.
“Relax, Cory,” he murmured, putting his arm around my shoulders. “Trust me, and don’t worry.”
It was getting more and more difficult to follow that advice. Things that didn’t bother me when I was with him assumed ominous proportions when I thought about them later. I turned my face into his shoulder and sighed.
“That’s my girl,” he said softly. I clung to him for long moments before he said, “I can’t stay long this time.”
I pulled away to look at him. “Why not?”
He nodded at the door. “That woman will be back.”
“Yes, but she’s not going to bite you.”
He shook his head. “I took a chance visiting you with her near because I sensed that you were upset. I must go.”
He had a pathological phobia about seeing other people. It made me nervous.
“Can’t you stay a little longer?”
“No. I’ll be back again.” He rested his hands on my shoulders and gazed down at my face. “The next time you are here, get rid of the others if you can.”
“Why?”
“Just do it, Cory.” I could tell that my constant questions exasperated him. He had been reluctant to tell me even as much as he had, but he was trying to reassure me.
“All right.”
He looked up. “She’s coming.”
I hadn’t heard anything.
“Goodbye.”
I turned to look at the door, and when I turned back Tom was gone. How had he made it out the back way so quickly?
Seconds later Benti appeared carrying a brown paper bag. She came inside, wrapping her coat more tightly around her.
“Brr,” she said, shivering. “It’s as cold in here as it is outside.”
“It seems fine to me.”
She went to the thermostat on the wall. “Something must be wrong with this,” she said, tapping the gauge. “It’s set on sixty-eight, but the thermometer reads fifty-two.” She set down her parcel. “I’ll leave a note for Alice to get it checked. It seemed warm enough earlier; it must have just broken.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about. I was as warm as toast.
It wasn’t until I sat down again to read that I realized I hadn’t told Tom about Benti’s return. How had he known she was at the office in the first place, and how had he known she was coming back?
As soon as I got home, I looked up the lines Tom had quoted. As I’d thought, they were from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Hamlet’s friend is doubting the existence of the ghost of Hamlet’s father. When he expresses his skepticism to Hamlet, Hamlet replies that there are more things going on than his friend can comprehend with his narrow view of existence. Just reading the famous words again gave me a chill. They reminded me of my grandmother.
My mother’s mother had been a very superstitious lady. Though my mother physically resembled her Nordic father, she had inherited her mother’s fey streak, which she passed along to me. Grandma Lindstrom was Welsh, imbued with the tendency toward romanticism and flights of fancy for which the residents of that misty upland country are known. As a child I thrilled to tales of the Welsh witch Rhiannon, and listened spellbound to stories of fairy changelings and Druid rites. My father, like Shakespeare’s Horatio, dismissed such nonsense out of hand, and privately told my mother to control Grandma because she was sure to give me nightmares. He blamed Grandma’s ramblings for my nocturnal wanderlust, and he would rail at her to keep quiet after each sleepwalking incident. She was dead now, and to some extent her enchanted influence had died with her, but I felt her with me again as I closed the book. Maybe there were more things in heaven and earth than my father dreamed of in his philosophy, too.
Season of Mists (Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (Cupid's First Strike - Teen Love In The 80's) Page 6