by Tess Grant
Kitty gazed at her. Her heart fluttered in her chest, and the whole room narrowed down to a long swirling tube of rose-colored sheets with her mother a far outline at the end of it. She cleared a lump out of her throat. “Mom? I heard about the protests.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Anne sat down again tiredly. Her shoulders sagged a little. “Did you? From whom?”
Even tired and upset, she still managed to use good grammar, Kitty noticed. “Joe and Jenna.” Kitty’s voice came out staccato and sharp, emphasizing each of her next words. “I sure didn’t hear it from you.”
“I figured it’d get back to Oakmont sooner or later. I didn’t want you and Sam to get caught up in it.” She slumped back in the rocking chair, a dark silhouette against the window.
“Well, it did. I did.” Kitty’s voice rose a little, both in volume and pitch. “You didn’t even tell me. It’s so embarrassing.”
“I meant to tell you. I just hadn’t gotten to it yet.”
“When did you plan on getting to it? People think you’re doing it because you don’t care about Dad. That sucks.”
Anne leaned forward in the rocking chair and her voice was strident. “Of course I care. How dare you say that?”
“Because we’re a family. I thought we were supposed to get through this together. Some home team rooting for the hero.”
“Yeah, well the hero is off fighting some war I don’t even believe in. I wish he had been sent to Afghanistan. I wish he’d never been sent anywhere.”
Kitty wanted to shake her mother. “What difference does it make where he went? Afghanistan is not a better war than Iraq. They all suck. Aren’t we just supposed to support him?”
Anne slouched backward in the chair, and even though the blood pounded in her ears, Kitty heard a sniffle. Her mother wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
When Anne spoke again, her voice was soft and flat. “I’m trying to, Kit, the best I can. But I married your dad, not the military. I never wanted to be in the army. And all these other wives think I’m a traitor. But what am I supposed to do? Send him care packages for fifteen months and sit around on my butt waving the flag?”
Lip balm and shampoo. Kitty wanted to scream. She couldn’t see Anne so she moved around the side of the bed. As her mother’s heart-shaped face came into the light, Kitty was startled. Her delicate features looked pale and drained, and there were dark circles under her eyes. The fury left in an instant and an icy tongue of worry slid into the void, cooling her immediately. She knelt next to the rocker, and the anxiety she felt made her fall silent.
She was surprised to see the huge tears in Anne’s eyes come sliding down her cheeks, slowly at first, then an ever faster torrent. The only thing that outpaced the tears were the words. “I’d like to say something oh so mom-like right now but I don’t know anything. He was always the mom of the house, so much better at it than me. And now he’s gone, and I don’t know what I’m doing. What if he doesn’t come back?” She raised her hands helplessly to her face; they fell back to her lap limp and boneless. “What am I going to do if he doesn’t come back?”
Kitty reached for her hand, but Anne drew herself up and paced toward the bed. “He’s so sure that this is the right thing, and I’m not.” Her voice was becoming angry again, no longer teary. “So I did this instead,” and she waved her hand vaguely toward Maple Rapids.
Kitty slumped sideways from her knees to her butt. She didn’t know what to say.
Anne sat on the edge of the bed then fell backwards, arms outstretched. “Yeah, we’re the friggin’ Home Front Delta Force all right, and we’re all going different directions. Guess we better get our act together, huh?”
“I think it’d work better that way,” Kitty said hesitantly.
Anne laughed, still sniffing. She sat up and slid off the bed. Landing with a thud on her rear, she jarred loose a hiccup. Stretching out a leg, she touched Kitty’s knee with a pink-painted toe. “We need a game plan, kiddo. ‘Cause we got a helluva long row to hoe yet.”
Kitty steeled herself. As long as they were going down this path, they might as well finish it. “Did you know Sam was wetting the bed?”
Anne sighed, and her head lolled against the mattress. “Yeah. I hope you at least give me some points for that. He was fine for the first month or so. After that…” she shrugged resignedly and hiccupped again. “It’s stress, Kitty. I’ve talked to one of the doctors at the hospital. Those poor little kids in Iraq are having an even worse time of it. Different things may start coming up as this goes on. He may get mean or stutter.” She rubbed her forehead as if it throbbed. “Or other things. There’s a whole suite to choose from.”
They sat there in silence for a minute or two. Downstairs, they could hear Sam bellowing his way through another song. Still Anne’s toe touched Kitty’s leg, a tenuous bridge.
Anne was the first to break the silence. “Thanks for everything today. I mean it. The house is beautiful. I haven’t had clean sheets in awhile, and it’s been even longer since I heard Sam sing. It makes me feel almost normal.”
Kitty crab-walked over to her mother and planted herself alongside. “The color got a little weird on the sheets.”
Anne slid her arm behind Kitty’s neck and leaned into her conspiratorially. “That happens sometimes. A stray sock sneaks in or a washcloth and kaboom.” Anne shrugged. “It’s no big deal.” Suddenly, she giggled. “I turned Dad’s underwear pink once. He just laughed, but the next time he bought underwear they were navy blue.”
Kitty looked sideways at her and grimaced. “You might need to buy Sam some navy blues, because some of his were in the same load with the sheets.”
Anne’s face dimpled with her smile. She squeezed Kitty’s shoulder with one hand and swiped at her nose with the other. “Come on, home team. My feet hurt and I’m starving, and I can’t front a game plan in this condition. We also need to go help Sam before he takes the kitchen out.”
“I’ll scrape sandwiches,” Kitty volunteered. She pulled her mother to her feet and they walked downstairs, daughter trailing after.
As Kitty walked past the east window at the top of the stairs, something caught her eye. She paused for an instant, gazing out at the twilight sky. The moon was nearly full.
Chapter Twenty-Five
She had a hard time sleeping that night. The closed casket dream came again. It hadn’t visited her since she killed her first werewolf. But this time, there was only one casket in the field. She didn’t want to see who it belonged to, but she couldn’t stop herself from walking toward it. As she got closer, the metallic snick of the crickets started up. She managed to look back over her shoulder, though she had been powerless to turn around or to stop moving toward the coffin. It wasn’t her dad this time, but her mom and Sam clicking at her. She turned away from them, going closer to the casket one step at a time. She forced herself to wake up even as her hand reached out to touch the lid, hurling herself upright in bed, panting with the effort.
She didn’t need some wild-haired dream interpreter telling her who was in that casket. She knew without looking.
That casket belonged to Kitty Irish.
* * *
A burger and some onions popped and bubbled in the yellow grease, and Phinney wiped at the splatters flying from the cast-iron frying pan with a frayed dishcloth.
“This isn’t your usual time of day,” he said pulling some bread out of a bag. “Want to stay for dinner?”
“No thanks. I told Mom I was taking a quick hike.”
He flipped the burger and slapped a few slices of bread into the toaster. “I know you well enough by now to know you didn’t come up here to check on my dining habits.” The teapot wheezed asthmatically, and he grabbed it. A cloud of steam rose between them as he poured the hot water into his thick-walled white mug.
Mist off the river Styx, Kitty thought then shook her head. Where did that come from? Taking a deep breath, she dove in. “I can’t do it anymore.”
/> Phinney looked unimpressed by her big announcement, but at least he didn’t pretend not to know what she was talking about. “Why’s that?” He tossed the toast out onto a plate and squirted great yellow arcs of mustard across the bread.
“I can’t take the chance I’ll get hurt or—” the words tumbled out, “or killed. Dad is already in a bad spot. Mom’s a mess, Sam’s even worse. Maybe Mom’s worse, I’m not sure. And what if something happens to Dad and then something happens to me? I can’t do that to them.”
Phinney slid the burger onto the bread and piled the onions on top before setting the plate down on the table with a clunk. He stirred his decaf with his fork and put it on his plate, sitting down and resting his chin on his hand. He motioned at her to sit, but she resisted, pulling back toward the door. She had said she was leaving; now she was going to do it.
He looked at her unblinking. His eyes were kind, and that was probably the worst part. She tottered forward one tiny step. The inexorable everyday power of Phinney. “I can’t tell you what to do,” he said. “I think maybe you’re afraid and looking for an excuse. I do know you’re safer here in this woods with me than your dad is out in that desert.” He took a drink of his inky black coffee, wincing at the heat. “But, just so you know, I’m afraid too. I just move past it.”
Defiance reared its head, and Kitty straightened and stepped backward. “I’m not afraid. I’m telling you why. My family needs me more than you do.”
“I know your family needs you, Kitty. But it’s not only them. It’s me. It’s this town, these people.” He waved a hand vaguely over his shoulder in the direction of Oakmont. “I know it’s hard for you to see how this is anything more than taking pot shots at animals. It is though, and deep down you know it. You saw the news clippings from back when they were running strong, how many lives got ruined.” He paused to take another drink of coffee.
“I know it’s not just taking pot shots. Those things want to kill me, and what if they do? Whose life gets ruined then?” Even as she protested, Kitty took one more step toward him and lost the ground she had gained.
He looked into the black currents of his coffee. “The right thing is never easy. That’s how you know it’s the right thing. That’s why a lot of things these days are half-assed. No one wants to work at it anymore.” He plunked the cup down, and a little coffee sloshed onto his checked tablecloth. “Most of the people in this town think I’m drunk and crazy, but I’ll still stand between them and those wolves. Because it’s the right thing to do. They need somebody whether they know it or not.”
Kitty reached deep down and found the strength to back toward the door, hand behind her open and groping. When it found the knob, she held on fiercely as if her life depended on it. She couldn’t be sucked back in. “I can’t. You don’t understand. My mother cried. She never cries. And if you had seen Sam…I won’t do it anymore.” She opened the screen and half fell down the steps. At the bottom, she looked back. Phinney had moved amazingly fast to the porch. She turned to face him as he stood at the door. He still looked sturdy enough, but for the first time in that muted haze of approaching night, she could see his age creeping up on him.
“I’m sorry,” she croaked.
“It’s alright, Kitty.” He smiled at her. “You need to do what you need to do.”
It was all she heard before she broke and ran. She hit the path running and didn’t slow down until a tree root snagged her foot and sent her sprawling. Her face pressed into the cool damp of the leaf mold. It eased the heat of her tears and softened the shaking sobs. She stayed there for a long time.
* * *
Sam and Anne were playing war, but Kitty didn’t see the game. Their chatter was a background note to the hum in her brain. She had thought she would feel safe and free, and instead she felt like absolute crap. She claimed she was protecting Sam and her mom, but what if something happened to Phinney? She heard his voice in her head from the first time she heard the story—Where you gonna go? They know your smell, the sound of your breathing, the rhythm of your heart. Don’t you think they’re watching you? They were all just dominoes, and as soon as one of them fell, all the others would go too. She closed her eyes tiredly. The three-ring binders of obituaries at the Special Collections Building were going to get thicker again.
“Kitty.” her mom said, and from the exasperated tone, Kitty knew she had said it more than once.
“Hmm?”
“The phone,” her mother said, cocking her head at the cordless on its base.
Kitty grabbed the receiver, feeling stupid that she hadn’t heard it. Both Sam and her mom were looking at her like she was an idiot. She clicked the talk button. “Hello?”
“Hey Kitty,” a familiar voice said. “It’s me.”
“Hi Joe,” she said and waved at her mother to keep playing. Getting up from the couch, she headed for her talking chair in the study. “What’s up?”
“Not much. Same old, same old. I can only talk for a minute, so I’ll cut to the chase. Tim, as in Tim and Zoe? It’s his birthday Tuesday night, and he’s having a party. I wondered if you wanted to go?”
Her stomach twisted, wrung out like a dishtowel. She didn’t need to go check the calendar. She already knew what filled that square—a small black circle. Tuesday was the full moon.
I told Phinney I was done.
“Yeah,” she said bleakly. “I’d love to go.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kitty checked her Disney watch for the umpteenth time. A swirl of bees drifted by Winnie the Pooh’s head. Kid watch for a little kid, she thought. Ten after eleven. What am I doing here? She clambered over the porch railing and jumped the flowerbed beneath it. A halo of light from the porch held the night at bay. She scooted out beyond the rim of light, needing to survey the darkening sky. An east wind blew in gusts. The trees loomed, a great wall of shadow against an orange glow announcing the rising of the moon. There was a pain in her stomach that wasn’t the greasy pepperoni pizza.
I don’t want this.
A soft voice in her head whispered back, Maybe Phinney didn’t want you for a partner, but you’re who he got, and you ran out on him.
A gust of wind jangled the wind chimes on the porch; their metallic swirl caught the corner of her eye. Someone else was there too, watching her. She had barely seen Joe since they arrived, splitting her time fairly evenly between consulting her watch and pacing in and out of the house. She had watched him carefully for any hint of nerves over the full moon. There was none. But he was less than pleased about her lack of attention.
She took a final glance at her watch—eleven twenty—and turned to him. “Joe, I have to go. Give me your car keys.”
“Kitty, what is going on? All summer long and tonight too—.”
“Not now. Please. I have to go.”
“Not with my car, you don’t.” He turned and started to walk away.
Lunging forward and grabbing his arm, Kitty pulled him toward her. His dark blue eyes looked like chips of stone.
“Please. This isn’t about you. I told someone I’d be there, and I’m not. I need to go.”
“Then find some other way to be there.”
She watched his back as he went up the stairs and into the house. She wanted to run after him but she had to stop half-doing things. She couldn’t keep vacillating; taking care of this business was taking care of Sam and her mom. It was taking care of Joe. She had been handed the crap, and it was time to deal with it.
She was a hunter, the same as Phinney.
Kitty turned and started to run. She didn’t look back. If she cut down the riding path through the woods, she would come out on Hillclimb south of Joe’s house. From there, she could keep on the road until she hit Phinney’s lane.
Her feet found the riding path for her. The difference between grassy lawn and hard-packed soil was so immediate she stumbled, hands nearly touching the ground as she staggered. Righting herself, she pushed her legs harder. The riding path ran a short q
uarter mile before it crossed Hillclimb and wound eastward.
She came out on the road’s edge, and the Escort stood with the passenger’s door open. Joe stood on the other side, long curls coiling around his neck in the wind and the orange glow behind him.
“Get in.” He slipped into the car. “Geez, Kitty. If you would just tell me what is going on….”
“There’s nothing to tell. This is the last time.”
“Last time for what? That’s the problem. Nobody will tell me what’s going on, and I don’t have a clue.”
“I can’t tell you. I promised. Even if I hadn’t promised, you would think I was a nut job. Drop me off and that will be the end of it.”
“The end of it will be me going back to this party without my date.” He stopped suddenly, face reddening in the dashboard light. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
She put her hand on his arm. “It’s all good. And I’m almost done, I promise.”
“Hmm,” he said doubtfully. “Where am I dropping you?”
She drew her hand back to her lap. “Phinney’s.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him turn toward her. He paused long enough that she thought he was going to say something, but instead he shrugged and hit the gas. As they came down the hill, he cut the wheel hard right to make the lane. He coasted in alongside the rear of the cabin, and she pulled up the door latch. The door swung wide, carried by the momentum of its own weight.
“Thank you.”
He didn’t respond. She started to get out, but leaned back in and pressed her lips against his cheek. He whispered something into her hair; maybe it was “Careful.”
Then she was gone, running around the shack to the porch facing the meadow. Phinney wasn’t there, of course; he would have been in the safe zone they’d found since at least ten thirty. Out front, she dimly heard the crunch of tires and the hum of acceleration.