Don't You Trust Me? (17 page)

“Yes,” Brooke persisted. “And like you do now, you loved animals so much. Especially birds, which is why I wasn't surprised to find you here looking at these guys.”

“The birds are handsome,” I conceded.

“I can't believe you don't remember going to that petting zoo. You were crazy about it. But I'll bet you do remember the promise we made to each other, don't you? I flat-out won't believe that you've forgotten about
that
.”

“About what?”

Brooke's eyes narrowed. For the first time since I had met her, she looked . . . I'd have to call it troubled, and uneasy. “You mean you don't remember? I know, sure it was silly, but we were so serious. We swore! You even insisted that we do a blood pact, where we cut our fingers and mingled the blood together and then spit on it. You're telling me you don't remember what we promised each other?”

I groaned internally. Now what?

“Oh, sure. Yeah, I remember. It was just a dumb kid thing, though. I'd forgotten for the moment.”

The expression on her face did not change.

“What? What did we promise?” she asked. Her eyes were intent, watching me.

“Oh, you know,” I said, shrugging. “That we'd always be friends. And we are, of course! It was kind of lucky in a way that I fell so hard for—” I fumbled for the name for a moment. “Uh, Ashton. I mean, it brought us back together again after all these years. It's been so great spending this fall with you, Brooke,” I continued, pouring on the charm. “I'm glad I got this chance. That's what you meant, isn't it?”

There was a long silence.

“Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, that's what I meant.”

I COULD NOT SPARE ATTENTION
for Brooke's worries about what I did or did not remember regarding some childhood pact she claimed she had shared with her cousin. I was confident that I could win her back with a little attention, some girlish chitchat in our rooms that evening, and some enthusiastic praise for her part in the day's activities. I had seen her in the company of a thin, bespectacled boy earlier in the day, so that might be a fruitful subject of conversation. Perhaps there was a fledgling romance under way? Luckily the boy was not attractive enough to tempt me, so I didn't have to worry about restraining my acquisitive instincts. Brooke was welcome to him.

However, our cozy nighttime chat was not to be.
When we got home, both of us exhausted from the excitements of the day, she was unusually silent and thoughtful, and soon after a late dinner, she retired to her room. When I tapped on the door, there was a long silence, and then Brooke's voice, sounding pretend-groggy.

“Oh, I'm sorry, Morgan, but I was asleep. I'm awfully tired. Can whatever it is wait until morning?”

I looked with raised eyebrows at the line of light showing underneath her door. My cousin Brooke was
not
a practiced deceiver. “Sure,” I said.
All the more time for me to count my earnings,
I thought.

I had a long soak in the hot tub and emerged refreshed and relaxed and glowing with well-being. I went to my room and, after locking the door, spread the day's takings over the bed. When I had counted it over several times, I added it to the rest of my stash. I had a total of $5,364 secreted in various pockets of Janelle's otherwise-empty suitcase—a satisfying sum, though hardly enough to set me up for life. But no matter; I was certain I would always be able to raise enough money for my needs, wherever my life might lead me.

I patted the money affectionately and locked it up. I went to the kitchen to make myself a hot drink that would coax me into the deep sleep I craved as the fitting end to a perfect day. On my way back to my bedroom I noticed that Brooke's light was still on. I paused and listened at the door.

I heard the faint slap of something being laid out on the surface of her desk. Could she be playing solitaire, with a pack of real, as opposed to virtual, cards? Oh well. I'd have thought her tablet would have been handier to play on than an actual deck of cards, but that was her lookout. I continued on to my room.

There I sipped my cocoa and stretched luxuriously. I fell asleep with a smile on my face and the sound of remembered applause in my ears.

Brooke was up and dressed by the time I woke, so no opportunity for cousinly confidences then, either.

“Morgan, dear, I hope you won't mind, but Brooke and I thought we'd have a little mother-daughter day today, just the two of us,” said Aunt Antonia as I joined them at the breakfast table. “I know you must be exhausted after all your work in the past few weeks, and I'm sure you have lots of homework to do. Your teachers will be expecting you to make up some of the material you've missed because of the benefit.” She smiled. “Your uncle Karl will be here if you need anything.”

“No he won't,” said Uncle Karl, pausing in tapping out a text on his phone. “I've got to go in to the Ravena office. There's a backlog of paperwork that I need to finish up, and we've got a new load of pickups being delivered this afternoon. Count me out for the day.”

“Oh,” said Aunt Antonia, disconcerted. “Well, perhaps you'd better come with Brooke and me after all, then. I'm sorry—I don't want you to feel left out, or stuck alone at home here.”

I waved this off. “No, no,” I said, smiling benevolently on them both. “You two go and have a good time together. I guess you don't get much time for the two of you, with me hanging around.”

This remark produced a flurry of pleas from both mother and daughter to accompany them.

“Thank you,” I said. “But you're right, Aunt Antonia. I have a lot of schoolwork to make up. Honest, I'm better off staying at home.”

In the end it took me a good two hours, and several more refusals to join them, to get them out of the house. This was one of Mrs. Barnes's regular days off, so she left too, and the house was empty except for me. I realized that, with the exception of yesterday morning when everybody had been at Hidden Hollow, this had never happened in the two and a half months that I had lived here.

So. That being the case, what should I do next? Never mind homework. Janelle, that home-wrecker, was likely to make her existence known in a week or so, and I would be booted out of here. Let
her
worry about my/our grades.

I remembered my intention to search Uncle Karl's desk when I had the opportunity. There wasn't going to be a better time than today. Yes, and what
had
Brooke been up to last night? If it'd been a series of games of solitaire, I ought to be able to find a deck of cards in her room. I smiled, anticipating a peaceful day nosing around in other people's business.

Brooke's room first, as this would probably be a quick job. I doubted that I would find much of interest secreted in her underwear drawer, so if I found some playing cards, I would be done.

She did have some modest jewelry—a gold bracelet and a ruby ring—of which I made a mental note. The few other items were costume pieces, pretty enough, but worthless. Her clothes were familiar to me by now: utilitarian T-shirts, sweaters, and jeans. I found a sketchbook with some halfway decent drawings by her and some sick-making poetry, also by her. Books, a few stuffed animals, and a doll from childhood days. Her computer revealed that she had done research on sites relating to homework, horses, and popular music. I uncovered no drugs, dirty magazines, trashy novels, or occult pentacles marked on the floor. Dead boring, in fact. If I had been looking for something with which to blackmail Brooke, I would have been pretty disappointed. There
was
no dark side to Brooke.

There was no deck of cards, either.

What there
was
in the top drawer of her desk was an envelope of photographs. It contained about twenty pictures of two little blond girls. In some photos they held hands, or fed pellets to a goat, or posed next to a miniature donkey. Aha. A petting zoo.

I sat down at the desk and laid the pictures down one by one. Yes, they made the slight slapping noise I had heard the night before. This was what Brooke had been doing; she had been examining photos of herself and her cousin from nine years ago, back when Janelle had come to visit.

You rarely see this format for photos anymore, but a decade ago there were still diehards who took photos with non-digital cameras, hence the envelope of pictures from a facility that processed film.

I looked at them carefully. It took some consideration before I could decide which girl was Brooke and which was Janelle, but eventually I got them sorted out. The problem was that, while I had been a fragile little wisp of a girl at that age, the two cousins were already, at seven years old, big-boned and slightly chubby. They looked almost identical. In a lot of the pictures Janelle was holding a plastic horse—she was horse-mad back then too, I guess.

The images gave no clue as to what the mysterious “pact” might have been, although one did show their clasped hands, each with a thin red cut on the index
finger. Brooke had brought the subject up more as a joke than anything else, I thought. It could not have had any real significance, though she didn't like that I didn't recall it.

Why had Brooke been brooding over these last night? The fact that her cousin used to be a bit chunkier than she was today proved nothing. People change.

I shrugged and put the pictures back into the envelope and replaced them in her desk drawer. It couldn't possibly matter, as, sad to say, I was on my way out of here.

I moved on to Uncle Karl and Aunt Antonia's bedroom. Here I found much nicer jewelry, some of which might bring a reasonable amount on eBay or at a pawnshop. The trouble with selling my ill-gotten goods online was that you need a fixed address to ship from, and I might not have one of those for a while. I knew about pawnshops from LA but hadn't seen any here. Mostly they didn't want to do business with a kid like me, so you had to find one with a compliant owner. Still, jewelry was always good—it didn't take up much room, even when you were traveling. And I liked looking at it, especially seeing the gold against my skin, the way it caught the light. I tried on a few pieces and found it rather difficult to take them back off again. I did it, though; I put them back neatly in the jewelry cabinet. No point in getting kicked out before I was ready to go.

I tried on some of Aunt Antonia's clothes, too. These were also a lot better than Brooke's, although pretty conservative. I rooted around in the closet and found a nice little Prada handbag—something she must have used only on occasion, since it was wrapped in tissue paper. This I decided to put into Janelle's suitcase, as Aunt was unlikely to miss it right away. On second thought I went back for a Chanel jacket at the back of the closet, still in plastic from the dry cleaner. It fit me perfectly.

I did a quick tour through Mrs. Barnes's bedroom and was pleasantly surprised to find a sizeable diamond ring in a jewelry box. Nice going, Mrs. Barnes!

The thought of Mrs. Barnes and her ever-ready dusting cloth reminded me. I went back to each of the rooms I had visited and polished every surface I'd touched, along with a lot of other ones, just in case. I didn't want any signs of my presence once I'd gone and they started looking for me.

Now for Uncle Karl's office. Actually, both Aunt and Uncle had home offices, but Aunt's was less used and had fewer papers and files. Obviously she kept most of her work
at
work, while Uncle Karl hauled stuff back and forth and had duplicates in both places. Aunt's office
did
contain papers with some spicy details about a few of her clients, though, so I copied several files and hid them in the suitcase.

I sat down once again at Uncle Karl's desk. Today it
was pristine, without even a mote of dust to mar the walnut finish. I began opening drawers. The usual office supplies on the right, paid bills, user manuals, information about insurance and personal cars, etc., below. On the left were a small drawer and a larger one, likely fitted up for hanging file folders. Both were locked.