He doesn’t argue with my logic. What’s there to argue? We sit for a while. I stare at the wall. He stares at the window. My computer sits heavy in my lap. I look down at it and run my hand across it’s smooth top. “The reason why I write, Dad, is because if I don’t, I’ll self-destruct. I can’t sit around and brood like the two of you.”
He’s retreated into silence. He has already said more words than all those combined over the last three weeks. After a time I stand and sigh. “I’ll try to talk to Christi.” I go to my room.
I sit on the bed and open my computer. I’m to the part where the explosion happens, where Mom places a bag with thirteen sticks of dynamite onto a pit of slowly burning logs. Thirteen dangling and tangled fuses compete for the flame as she waits, ignoring my screams; her answer to saving her family; the ultimate sacrifice. Victor Vandermill, the bad guy, sits nearby, unaware of what she has done.
I can see it; I can feel it; I can’t write it. I’m against a wall of horrible, horrible memory that explodes and wraps me up in a black, sooty cloud. As soon as I start thinking about it, to write it down, I fall right into it and start living it again. It is at this place of death in my journal, one month ago, where I’ve been stuck for three days.
I close the computer, set it aside and look at the two envelopes still sitting on my desk, or at least I look at the corner of one of them. Several unread magazines to which I have subscriptions sit on top. I stretch and pull the envelopes out. One is my acceptance letter to the University of Texas. It came in the mail just before I left for Montana, what seems like a lifetime ago. The second must have come while we were being pursued through the mountains, or while I was busy getting my mother killed. It is also an acceptance letter, but from a school I hadn’t told Mom and Dad about. Not sure why, maybe because I knew they’d balk. It just happens that this school has a department of earth science with an option in paleontology. Certainly it’s not why I applied there. I applied because the school was in the state where my dad saw saber-toothed cats eight years ago. I had no idea when I applied that I’d be interested in paleontology. Now it’s like it was meant to be, and even though there are probably better colleges with paleontology, there are none other than this one that I would apply to, even if there was time, even if money was no object, which in this case it isn’t. Mom had a huge death benefit which her will split between Christi and me, to be used for college. Another policy paid off the house. Financially, we’re okay. Emotionally, we’re overdrawn and broke.
Since coming home I’d almost thrown away both acceptance letters at least a dozen times, but here they still are. Maybe it’s what I need. Get away. Bury myself in academics. Dad thinks I should be around for Christi? Could he stop me? I’m only seventeen. Maybe he could. Would he?
I stand up and drop the University of Texas letter in the trash, hold on to the other and return to the computer to check on the university’s schedule.
I don’t want to be the woman of the house. I’m not old enough.
“Hellooooo! Anybody home?”
It’s Aunt Suzie. She’s taken over as Christi’s mother, as it probably should be. I put the computer aside, tired of looking through the university’s Website. Classes start in three weeks, and I’ve already missed registration. I can still get in though. I walk out into the hall and look down at my aunt.
“Hi,” she says up to me. “Your dad and sister here?”
“Sleeping I think.”
“Hours until dark. It’s dinner time. I brought pizza. Straight out of Mama’s Pizza oven. Mama’s famous cinnamon rolls, too.”
I turn and call toward the bedrooms, “Pizza!” I walk down the stairs. I’m not hungry but the smell of pizza wakes up my stomach. “Thanks.”
Her eyes go back up the stairs. “Hi, Sweetie. How’re you doing?”
I don’t have to look to see who she's talking to. She certainly doesn’t call Dad sweetie. Christi’s the only innocent one in the house; Aunt Suzie’s favorite. I take the pizza and the rolls from her and carry them into the dining room. “How was the aquarium?” she asks Christi as they hug. I fetch plates and forks.
Dad and I silently work on our pizza. I’m surprised that I have an appetite. He nibbles on the crust of his only piece. Aunt Suzie pries aquarium information out of Christi, not once asking how Dad and I are doing. I’m surprised she didn’t come to take only Christi out to eat instead of bringing the food so that we’d all be forced to sit together. I’d use my psychic talent to figure out what she’s thinking, but I swore it off. I shoved it into a dark closet in a corner of my mind, and tried to forget that I have it. I’ve had no feelings of pending doom, no visions of strangers being subjected to bloody, painful deaths. That’s been part of the reason why I haven’t left the house. I can turn off the mind reading stuff, but the forecasting of tragedy I have absolutely no control over. All I can do is avoid being near it when it happens, part of the reason I’ve nearly dumped the entire college idea.
I grab a third piece. It doesn’t look like Dad is going to want it.
“I’d like Christi to come stay with me for a while,” Aunt Suzie suddenly says.
Bingo!
She looks at Christi. “What do you think?”
Two weeks ago I would have said absolutely not. “Sounds like a good idea,” I say.
“I don’t think so.” We all look at Dad. “This is her home.”
“What would your mother have wanted?” she asks Christi. Christi looks between Dad and me. “I’m not talking permanent,” Aunt Suzie adds. “Just a few weeks, until school starts.”
“Things are getting better,” Dad says. “We had a good day today. It’s just a time thing.”
Suzie continues to ignore Dad and me. Her eyes remain on Christi as though she’s the only one who has a say. “Christi? Would you like to do that? When school starts you can come back here. Maybe I’ll come and stay for a while, until your routine settles out.”
“I guess so,” Christi says softly.
“I really don’t think so,” Dad says.
Suzie finally looks at him. “Why?”
“She needs family.”
“What am I? Chopped liver?”
“No. It’s just that . . .”
“I vowed to my sister that if anything ever happened to her I’d make sure her daughters are taken care of.”
I interject. “What am I? Chopped liver?” I wouldn’t go live with her if she begged me, but it seems important that I make the point.
She glares at me. “You’re quite capable of taking care of yourself.” She turns back to Dad. “Christi is the innocent one and could use some time away to help sort things out, clear her head. It’s what Tanya would have wanted.” She and Dad have a staring contest. “Do what’s best for Christi, Zach.”
Dad turns his head to Christi. “What do you want? Your ‘I guess so’ didn’t sound very positive.”
She looks between the two of them. “I guess so . . . I mean, yes. But just until school starts.”
“Good!” Aunt Suzie puts her napkin on the table. “Let’s go upstairs and I’ll help you pack.”
“I’m going to register for school,” I say.
Suzie settles back in her chair. “That’s good, too. Actually, probably the best thing. You’ll have to live on campus, but at least you’d be close.”
“Not here.”
“What do you mean, not here?” Dad and I face each other lengthwise across the table. “University of Texas is where you got accepted. That was the only place you applied.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Now they’re all looking at me. “I’ve been accepted to MSU.”
“MSU?” Aunt Suzie says. “Missouri? Michigan?”
Christi is the only one who knows where else I applied, but she says nothing. Her eyes ping-pong between me and Dad. Dad is perplexed, probably running all the M states through his mind, maybe praying I don’t say what I’m going to say.
“Montana State.”
He roars to his
feet. “No!”
I jump a good six inches off my chair. Dad has never been one to fly off the handle, never one to explode. I settle my tensed muscles. “I need to get away, too.”
“Not there! Anywhere else but there.”
“I didn’t apply anywhere else. Texas doesn’t offer Paleontology. Montana does.”
“Paleontology!” Aunt Suzie says. “Why do you want to study that? Isn’t that like old bones, or . . .”
I give Aunt Suzie my ‘I’m smarter than you’ look, something I perfected for my parents about the time I turned sixteen. “You’re probably trying to think of fossils, but that’s not correct. Paleontology is the study of past geologic periods, based on fossils. More precisely I want to study paleozoology, specifically vertebrates, specifically . . .” I don’t say it. Suzie doesn’t know about saber-toothed cats beyond Dad’s adventure eight years ago, which she doesn’t believe one iota of. Other than Victor Vandermill chasing us through the mountains, what happened in the Montana wilderness, stays in the Montana wilderness. Dad, Matt and I agreed to that while we sat in the helicopter waiting for the EMS. After the explosion that killed Mom, Sam and Vandermill, we had escaped by flying out in Vandermill’s helicopter. Matt is the poor guy who got stuck in the middle of the mess, which also got his father killed, and then nearly him. He lives in Montana, not far from the scene of the tragedy, and the den of what’s left of the big kitties.
Dad is turning red and white all at the same time. He puts his hands to his face and then runs them over his head, through his hair. He blows air and then looks at Aunt Suzie and Christi. “Why don’t you two go up and pack. Rebecca and I need to talk.” He usually calls me Becky, seldom remembering that I prefer Reba. When I’m in the doghouse, I’m Rebecca. At least he didn’t call me Rebecca Caroline.
Christi wastes no time getting to her feet. Suzie measures the tension slicing down the table and pushes her chair back. Without another word she follows Christi up the stairs.
“I don’t want you going back there,” Dad says, his anger under control again.
“You and Christi are talking about going there,” I remind him.
“That’s different. That’s a visit so that she can get closure. We talked about putting up a plaque. We could hire a pilot to fly us in and wait. That’s in and out quick and back home. You want to go live there for four years.”
“Montana State is over 300 miles from where Mom died. I have no desire to go there, not even for closure. You and Christi and Aunt Suzie can do that. As a matter of fact, I think it’s a great idea to put a plaque there, I just don’t want to go.”
He softens some, but I still don’t think he fully believes me. I’m not feeding him any bull. I really don’t want to go there, at least not this soon.
“It’s still too close.”
“Unless you’re planning on giving me Mom’s, I don’t have a car; don’t plan on getting one. The campus and the town of Bozeman don’t seem all that big, so a bicycle is probably all I’ll need. If I go anywhere, I’ll probably come back here to visit now and then, just like any college kid.”
“It’s still no.”
“Why?”
He glances toward the stairs and lowers his voice. “You know why.”
“First of all, Dad, remember what Sam said about the cats? They’re dying. They’ll be extinct again in a few years. Second, have you forgotten my relationship with them? I could walk, sleep, and eat among them and they wouldn’t harm me. They’d probably lick my feet and fetch my slippers.”
“That’s cold, rough country up there.”
“I’m sure they’re all out of tepees and drafty log cabins by now, and have heat like we have air-conditioning.”
“You’re not used to the temperatures.”
“Jeez, Dad. How cold can it possibly get? I’ll wear gloves and a hat. Okay? You can argue with me all you want, but I’m going, with or without your approval.”
“You’re only seventeen.”
“So? You’ll have to sign something. The money is all there.”
The conversation ends.
I’m going.
Chapter 2
August 4, Monday
“You’re not going! The University of Texas was good enough for me and your mother. It’s good enough for you.”
“It isn’t a matter of being good enough, Dad. It’s that Texas doesn’t offer the curriculum I want. I’ll find a job and work for a year, then I’ll be eighteen and you can’t stop me.”
“You’ll still have to go through me to get the money. Go to Montana State if you like, but you’ll have to figure out how to pay for it yourself.”
“You can’t do that! That money is there for my education. You’d be violating Mom’s wishes.”
“Your mother wanted you to go to college. Do you think she’d have approved of you going to Montana?”
“She might have.”
Dad snorts.
I’m going to win this . . . somehow. “It’s my money!”
“When you turn twenty-five it’s your money. Her rules. Until then it is to be used for a college that your mother would have approved of.”
“It doesn’t say that.”
“It says, and I paraphrase, ‘the proceeds from my life insurance policy are to be distributed equally between my daughters for their education, and shall be administered by my executor. When they turn twenty-five years of age, any remaining portions of their shares are to be released to them to be used as they see fit.’ As I am the executor and thus the administrator, she has given me the power of approval.”
“When did she write her will?”
“February. We update them every year.”
“It’s not fair!”
“Maybe. Maybe not. It’s the way it is.”
I sit and stare at my father with all the glare I can muster. Forty-eight hours ago I wasn’t even thinking about going to college this year, let alone Montana State. Now it has turned into a burning obsession. If nothing else, it’s the principal. He can’t deny me. Montana is where my mother is buried. I have a connection to that state. It’d mean I’d be closer to my mother. He has no right to stop me.
“I want Mom’s car, then.”
“You’re already using it.”
“Can I have it put in my name?”
“No. For insurance purposes it has to remain in mine. Besides, in a few years Christi will be driving and she’ll be sharing it.”
A year and a half away until she gets driver’s training. A lot can change. “Okay.”
“I want to know every place you go with it.”
“What? You want me to check it out and give you my itinerary, log my miles?”
“Not a bad idea. I may even give you a mileage allowance.”
I can’t believe it. I cross my arms and roll my eyes. “Okay. Whatever.”
“And since we’re on the subject, I suggest you get to looking into registering at the University of Texas.”
“Okay.”
“Today.”
“I will!” I will not! I quietly stomp out of the house, leaving my breakfast for him to clean up.
The sun is low, and the house is quiet. I’m sitting in Dad’s office, at his computer. I managed to stay away all day, spending the morning at a coffee shop staring at my journal and planning what to do. Christi is at Aunt Suzie’s. Dad is somewhere doing something. He doesn’t go away very often and when he does he isn’t usually gone long, so I have to be fast. I punch his computer out of sleep mode and then go directly to his bank accounts. I haven’t been in there in months but he never changes the password. Even if he did, he’s easy to figure out.
One thing has changed at the bank. There’s a new account called children’s trust. Just as I had hoped. All of Mom’s insurance money is in it, plus a little more. $102,232.10. Dad had talked about investing into something with a bit more growth, but so far it’s all right there. A few clicks of the mouse and I could move it to my accounts. I have a savings and a checki
ng. As soon as Dad finds out, though, he’d move it back, fix it so that I can’t get to it anymore and then ground me for life. Whatever I do, I have to make sure it can’t be undone. Luckily, I’ve already thought of that. This afternoon, after a short visit to the University of Texas, and after getting the oil changed on Mom’s car, I visited the Bank of America, asked a lot of very grown-up questions and then opened a new account. They assured me I’d have no problem transferring money from my existing accounts at the First National Bank of Dallas to my new account, online.
Very cool.
How much should I transfer?
The entire fifty thousand seems a bit greedy. It’s not stealing because it’s mine anyway. So what’s wrong with it?
Wait a minute. Isn’t there some kind of red flag raised if high amounts of money are deposited or withdrawn? Does that work with transfers? Is it $10,000?
I’ll move nine thousand, wait a while and then do it again. I’ll do it three times. Twenty-seven should be enough. I’ll get a job, too. That way there’ll still be money there when I turn twenty-five when he’ll have no choice but to give the rest to me.
I move $9,000, shut everything down and then go up to my room and transfer it to my new account. I take a deep breath. There’s no turning back now.
I go back down to his office, check that his car is not in the driveway, and then log back on and move another $9,000. Back up to my room. $18,000. Wow! This is too easy.
I practically run back down the stairs and screech to a halt four steps from the bottom. Dad is standing in the foyer looking up at me. “What’re you doing?” he asks.
“Nothing.” I immediately hate myself for saying that. That’s the first clue to parents that you are doing something that they shouldn’t know about. I’ve learned to already have a story in mind anytime I get hit with the ‘What’re you doing?’ question. He caught me off guard and ‘Nothing,’ just fell out like I’m still a little kid.
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 89