Gallows Hill (2 page)

"I wouldn't be surprised if a senior asked you," Eric told her. "Stranger things have been known to happen." He flashed her his white-gold grin, and a dimple appeared in one cheek, giving him the look of a mischievous ten-year-old.

As always, Kyra felt herself melting.

"All right, I'll go with you to talk to him," she said reluctantly. "I warn you, though, it's not going to do any good. Sarah hates my father as much as I hate Rosemary. My dad doesn't have any pull with her at all."

CHAPTER TWO

The house they had rented on Windsor Street was a small, one-story stucco structure with blue wooden trim. The front yard was almost totally devoid of grass because a huge oak tree had kept it shaded throughout the summer. Now the tree was losing its leaves, and sunlight slipped between its branches to fall in erratic patterns on the ground below, mottling the surface with patches of light and shadow.

Her mother had raked that day, Sarah noted as she crossed the yard to the house. It was probably as good a way for her to keep busy as any. In Ventura they had lived in a garden apartment. The landlord had been responsible for keeping the grounds up. But there, of course, her mother had held a full-time job and had not had any time to devote to yard work.

Yowler was perched on the doorstep, slit-eyed and glaring, looking like a displaced alien. When Sarah opened the door, he continued to crouch there, defiantly expressing his lack of interest, until the very last moment before the door closed, when he slid in after her and disappeared behind an armchair.

Sarah sympathized totally. She, too, had a feeling that' she should have rung the bell before entering. Although they had been living here for over two months, she still felt like a visitor in somebody else's home. Her mother had made an effort to lay claim to the place by painting the walls the same shade of eggshell white as those in their last apartment, so that their furniture was set against a familiar backdrop, but the proportions of the rooms were so different that nothing seemed to fit or to look like it belonged there.

The house smelled of chocolate. Sarah crossed the living room to the kitchen, where her mother was removing a pan of brownies from the oven.

Rosemary Zoltanne glanced up with a welcoming smile. She was dressed in jeans and a bright red sweatshirt. Her soft, pale hair was combed back from her face and tied with a scarlet ribbon, giving her the look of a child at a Christmas party.

"Hi, honey," she said. "I didn't hear you come in. Did you stop to admire the job I did on the yard?"

"You must have used a vacuum cleaner," Sarah said. "What's with the brownies? You know I don't eat chocolate, and we've still got half the spice cake you baked on Tuesday."

"I wanted to make something special for the weekend," her mother said, straightening up and setting the pan on the counter. "You can eat the cake while Kyra and Brian eat brownies. Something for everybody, right?"

"They're coming again? We just got rid of them!"

"I don't like to hear you talk like that," Rosemary said. "They probably won't sleep over, since they stayed both nights last weekend, but I'm sure they'll be spending some time here. Ted wants to see as much of his kids as he can." She paused and then deliberately switched gears. "So, how was school?" she asked brightly. "Did you talk to the sponsor of the Drama Club?"

"I told you the club's filled up. They don't have room for another member."

"I'm sure they'll make an exception for you," Rosemary said. "Especially when they find out how active you were in the drama club at your old school. Ted will talk to the sponsor if you feel awkward doing it."

"I don't want Ted pulling strings for me," Sarah said. "I put my name on the sign-up sheet and got turned down. As far as I'm concerned, that's the end of the story."

Leaving her mother to continue her culinary activities, she carried her books down the hall to her bedroom. Although it was close to the size of her room in Ventura, it seemed much smaller because of the extra bed. Her beloved, double-size waterbed was stored in the garage along with most of their other belongings until such time as her mother and Ted got married and bought a house. "After we're married" was her mother's favorite phrase these days, as though the date of the wedding were firmly set. Until it took place—if indeed it ever did take place—and the "nice big house with four bedrooms" became a reality, the tiny room off the kitchen was allocated to Brian, and Sarah's room was also Kyra's on weekends or whenever else she decided she wanted to sleep over. Even on nights when Sarah had the room to herself, it didn't feel like it belonged to her, with Kyra's bed positioned across from her own and two whole drawers of the bureau assigned to Kyra, even though she kept nothing there except pajamas.

Sarah shut the door and dumped her books on her desk, pausing as she did so to switch on her tape player. As the soothing strains of woodwinds and wind chimes filled the room, she threw herself down on her bed and closed her eyes. The remainder of the afternoon stretched drearily before her. Back home she had been involved in so many activities, what with club meetings, play rehearsals, beach parties, and trips to the mall, that the days had never been long enough to get everything done. Here she had nothing to occupy her time except schoolwork, which took a minimum of effort, since Pine Crest High was not as advanced as her school in California. Perhaps she should look into finding an after-school job, she thought. It would be nice to have spending money of her own again. Now that Rosemary wasn't working, cash was tight, and when Ted had offered to give Sarah an allowance, she had refused it. There was no way she was going to be indebted to Ted Thompson for anything more than she absolutely had to be.

The irony of it was that if she had played her cards right, she could have kept her mother from meeting him. The complaint of a sore throat or even a bad headache would have done it. All she'd have had to do was say she didn't feel well and Rosemary never would have left her to go to San Francisco. Still, there was no way she could have known what would happen there. For years her career-oriented mother had been attending educational conferences in the summer while Sarah was at camp or staying with one of her girlfriends, and she always had come home stimulated and revitalized, ready to plunge back into her teaching schedule in the fall.

How could Sarah have guessed that this time it would' be different? She couldn't have, of course, and yet there had been something—she couldn't exactly call it a premonition, but something.

That "something" had caused her to wonder for a moment about her eyesight. It had happened the evening before her mother's departure when she had passed by the open door of Rosemary's bedroom and seen a flash of yellow in the mirror over the dresser. The room had been dimly illuminated by light from the hallway, and when Sarah stepped back to peer into it, she saw nothing more than the shadowy reflection of herself—a tall, slim girl with a mane of black hair, who was dressed in a white, sleeveless T-shirt and hot pink jogging shorts.

It was odd, she had thought, and she felt disconcerted but not particularly concerned. She hoped this didn't mean she was going to need glasses. She turned to start back down the hall, and saw it again—at the edge of her line of vision, a glimpse of something yellow." This time she entered the room and turned on the overhead lights, only to find nothing yellow anywhere in sight. It wasn't until her mother returned from the conference and Sarah was chatting with her while she unpacked that she saw the full-skirted, sunflower-colored cocktail dress.

"Is that new?" she asked.

"I bought it in San Francisco," Rosemary told her. "I didn't pack the right clothes. I forgot to take something dressy to go out to dinner in."

"They wouldn't let you into a restaurant in a suit?"

"Sure, but who wants to go dancing in something tailored?" Her mother's voice held a lilt that was almost girlish.

"Dancing?" Sarah said slowly. "You went out dancing?"

"There are all sorts of wonderful dance clubs in San Francisco." Rosemary was facing the closet as she spoke, and the statement was tossed back over her shoulder in a careless manner, but when she turned from placing the yellow dress on a padded hanger, her face had a glow that made the words seem magical.

"Who was this guy?" Sarah asked her.

"His name's Ted Thompson."

"An English teacher?"

"Who else would a person meet at a convention of English teachers?"

"Available?"

She expected her mother to say, "Of course," but instead she paused and then said hesitantly, "Well, sort of."

"Sort of?"

"He and his wife are separated. They're in the process of getting a divorce, but it hasn't come through yet. He's a very special man, so attractive, and unbelievably thoughtful. He said he'd call tonight to make sure I got home all right, can you imagine?"

As if on cue the telephone rang.

"I'll get it!" Rosemary exclaimed, and went dashing to answer it. "Oh, hi!" Sarah heard her trill. "Yes, fine, it was a very smooth flight!... Nothing much, in fact we've just finished dinner.... We—my daughter and I—who did you think I meant?... No, I'm afraid I've had more than my quota of seafood in the past few evenings. Not that I didn't love it, but Hamburger Helper is more the norm around here." A pause and a giggle. "Yes, it was, wasn't it?" A longer pause. "Me too.... Yes, really. I can't say it now, but I do. I'll talk to you tomorrow, then. Sleep well, Ted."

The receiver clicked back in place, and Rosemary sighed.

After that Ted Thompson's phone calls came on the dot of eight every evening. Then he arrived in person, and that was a shock. Far from the Harrison Ford type that Sarah had been anticipating, her mother's "boyfriend" (Rosemary's term, not Sarah's) turned out to be a humorless, square-jawed man with horn-rimmed glasses and a head of rust-colored hair that was streaked with gray. Sarah could not imagine what Rosemary saw in him. Widowed for over twelve years, her mother had attracted plenty of men, and if she had wanted to remarry she could certainly have done so. Instead she had never shown the slightest interest in anything more than casual dating and had seemed quite content to devote herself to motherhood and her teaching career.

When Ted arrived in her life, that sensible, down-to-earth Rosemary vanished, to be replaced by a starry-eyed stranger who made senseless decisions. Although Ted started out sleeping on the sofa in the living room, by his third night there he was sharing the master bedroom. By the time the long week was over, it had already been decided that Rosemary would give notice at the school where she taught and that she and Sarah would follow him back to Missouri.

Now, as she often did, Sarah blocked that memory from her consciousness and let herself pretend that the move hadn't happened. It had all been a silly dream, and if she didn't accept its validity, she was bound to wake up and find herself still in California, where the scents of summer lingered in the damp salt air of October and crimson hibiscus bloomed in front of their garden apartment. The cries of gulls would replace the harsh' caws of crows. And the clouds would be puffy and white and blow in off the ocean like cotton balls, not dull, striated layers spread out like thin sheets of plastic against the sky behind Garrett Hill, whose pine-covered slopes gave the town of Pine Crest its name. When the phone rang, the calls would not be from Sheila, Ted's soon-to-be ex-wife, whining about how lonely she was or begging Ted to come over and repair her dishwasher, but from longtime pals like Gillian or Ryan or Lindsay—or from Jon, who had been on the verge of being more than a "friend"—each one wanting to know if Sarah was free to party or to go to the beach or a movie or just out cruising.

She was zipping along the beach road in the backseat of Ryan's Jeep, with her head tipped back against Jon's shoulder, roaring with laughter at one of his crazy surfing stories, when a knock at the bedroom door caused her eyes to fly open. To her surprise she discovered the afternoon was over. The tape had long since played itself out, and the room was heavy with silence and bathed in the glow of softening twilight.

"Sarah?" The voice was her mother's. "Will you come out here, please? There's something Ted and I feel we need to discuss with you."

"Okay," Sarah called back. "I'll be with you in a minute."

Her voice was foggy with sleep, and her limbs felt leaden. She realized that she must have been sleeping like a dead thing if Ted had managed to come home and she hadn't heard him. He always made a point of parking at the side of the house instead of in the driveway next to her mother's car, under the ridiculous assumption that if his own car wasn't visible from the street, nobody would' suspect that he spent his nights there.

When she dragged herself to her feet and went out to the living room, she found Ted on the sofa munching brownies, with a worried-looking Rosemary seated next to him. It was obvious to Sarah that they had been discussing her, for the moment she appeared, her mother said, "Don't tell me you've been sleeping!"

"All right, I won't tell you," Sarah said. "I'll let you guess."

"Why? Are you sick?"

"Since when is napping a crime?"

"Excessive sleeping is a sign of depression," Ted said in the classroom-lecture voice that Sarah found so irritating.

"It's also a sign of boredom," Rosemary said, frowning. "Honey, it isn't healthy for you to spend all your afternoons closed up in your bedroom. You've got to start getting involved in some after-school activities."