Indigo Moon (9 page)

A battered motorcycle was propped against a workbench. Was it Ren’s? Did she rebuild these old vehicles? Isabelle wished she knew. She wanted to build up an image of Ren as much as she wanted to understand herself. They were both mysteries to her.

Toward the back of the barn, straw bales were stacked six feet high. Some had toppled over and the straw had burst into a large, disordered mound. The center of the mound was indented, and several old blankets were scattered in the depression. Isabelle stood and examined the large nest-like shape. What slept there? Maybe dogs?

“Ren?” a sleepy voice asked from the straw. Isabelle watched in amazement as the far edge of the nest rustled, then erupted, and a face peeped out at her. A young girl sat bolt upright in a straw-strewn flurry, confounded at seeing Isabelle standing before her.

“No. Not Ren,” Isabelle said and smiled. The child was perhaps eleven or twelve, not quite in her teens. Her straggly, long brown hair had stalks of straw poking out at all angles, and her face was smudged with dirt. Her clothes, what Isabelle could make of them half buried in the straw, were grimy with dried mud.

“I’m Isabelle,” she said. “I’m staying at the cabin up the hill.” The girl blinked in surprise and examined Isabelle’s borrowed waxed jacket and ridiculous rolled-up jeans with deep suspicion.

“Where’s Joey?” she asked suddenly, seemingly satisfied with the introduction.

“I don’t know who Joey is. Who are you?”

“Mouse. Joey’s getting me breakfast.”

“Mouse?” Isabelle smiled at the nickname. Small, brown with dirt, and ferreted away in the straw bales, the moniker fitted her perfectly. “Lucky you, getting breakfast in bed. Do you usually sleep here, Mouse?”

“I don’t like the bunkhouse. Noah and Patrick snore.”

More new names. Isabelle had already met the unwelcoming Patrick, but she didn’t know anything about a Joey or Noah. How many others were living at Ren’s place? Did they work here? Where were Mouse’s parents? Did they live here, too?

“Hey. Is there a Mouse in the house?” The barn door creaked as someone shuffled in to join them. Isabelle turned toward the smell of cooked food, her stomach growling as if it hadn’t been fed in years. A young man on a crutch hopped precariously across the barn floor, balancing a tray with his free hand. He had dark blond hair cut in a shaggy surfer style and looked like he pumped iron all day long. He was big, looked to be in his mid to late teens, and seemed extremely cheerful despite his awkwardness with the crutch.

“It’s you should be getting me breakfast in bed, Mouse,” he said, all attention on the tray. “I got the bad leg. Have you any idea how hard it is not to tip this dang thing over—” He broke off when he saw Isabelle. “Oh.” His guileless blue eyes blinked and his jaw slackened. Her appearance seemed to throw him.

“Let me help.” She went over and took the tray from him, and brought it back to Mouse. She had crept over to the edge of her nest and now hung over watching them both, refusing to leave its confines but anxious for her breakfast to arrive. Isabelle set the tray down before her. A plate was piled high with bacon, steak, and eggs and swimming in a sea of spilled orange juice. It was more than enough food for a grown man, never mind the diminutive girl before her, but Mouse fell on it with a gusto that made Isabelle jealous.

“Thanks.” Joey’s uncertainty passed, and he hopped over beside her and eased himself down on a bale. Beside him, Mouse guzzled as if she’d never seen food before, though she still managed to keep a wary eye on both of them.

Joey shuffled and shifted. It was clear his hip and leg caused him pain. Finally, he propped his crutch on the bale beside him and straightened out his bad leg.

“Hey.” He turned his attention back to Isabelle, his cheerful smile back in place. “You’re Ren’s—” Mouse made a strange little spitting sound and Joey shut up with a confused look.

“You’re Ren’s houseguest, yeah?” he said, this time with a sheepish grin. He rubbed his hip and thigh. She wondered what he had been about to say before Mouse had shushed him. She had a good idea, and it made her uncomfortable. What were the preconceptions about her and Ren?

“Sort of. I’m staying at her cabin for a while. I’m Isabelle, and you’re Joey, right?” Isabelle was just as canny back. She was unsure what she was to Ren, but if she was careful, these two might provide her with some concrete answers. “What happened to your leg, Joey?” She might as well ask since he was constantly drawing attention to it.

He gave a mirthless barked laugh and received another warning look from Mouse.

“Hunting accident,” he muttered and looked everywhere but at Isabelle.

“Oh no,” Isabelle said. “What happened?”

Joey warmed to her interest. She decided he wasn’t used to getting much attention and gloried in it when he did.

“I split my spleen and crushed this hip, and the thigh bone broke in two places, see? And I cut a nick out of my kidney. All down this side, it was.” He wobbled to his feet and lifted his shirt. His left side was a rash of livid yellow and purple bruises, and freakish Frankenstein stitches. She winced, suitably impressed. Her shoulder wound was trite compared to his mangling.

“Oh, Joey. That looks so sore.” She paid due respect to his wounds. “When did this happen?” Lord knew how many operations the poor guy had to undergo.

“Last week. Tuesday I think it was,” he said. Mouse gave a frustrated hiss and he glared at her. Isabelle managed to bite back her smile. It was nonsense; his wounds were healing well, so they had to be months old at the very least. Nevertheless, she decided she liked Joey, with his open expression and childlike exuberance. It was obvious he wasn’t the brightest match in the box. And he was certainly emotionally immature compared to his sharp-eyed little friend, who at nearly half his age was so censorious of him. She watched the interplay between the two, how Joey accepted Mouse’s directions with a minimal amount of grumping.

“Well, it was.” He glared back at Mouse, then dropped his head and fell into a massive sulk. Isabelle ignored the little contretemps and filled her voice with sympathy and understanding.

“I’m very glad to see you’re on the mend, Joey. You’re one tough guy.” She tried to soothe him. This was greeted with silence. Joey was still huffing, but he did turn in her direction, head still down and his back to Mouse.

Mouse watched it all with a shrewd intelligence well beyond her years as she continued to stuff her mouth with her fingers. Isabelle frowned. The child’s behavior was positively feral. Why was she here? Who looked after her?

“Do you stay out here often, Mouse?” she asked.

“She’s a barn rat,” Joey butted in good-naturedly and sat up straight, his bad mood evaporating in an instant. Mouse stopped eating and watched intently, as if trying to figure out Isabelle’s next line of approach.

“She’d stay out here all the time if she could,” Joey said. “I have to smuggle her food out of the cookhouse, and that ain’t easy because Jenna’s got eyes in the back of her head and I’m already in her bad books because of the mess in the floor which wasn’t my fault.” Joey was determined to share the minutiae of his daily struggles. “Jenna’s very house proud, and it was only a little spill.”

“Ah.” Isabelle nodded wisely, noting the new name, Jenna. “And I thought Mouse stayed out here because Patrick and Noah snored,” she joked with him. Mouse’s eyes widened and Joey fell into hoots of laughter.

“They do! They do! They’re great big honkers!” His shoulders shook with laughter, and huge smile lit up his face. “But that’s not why. She says that, but she wants to sleep out here anyway. All the time. Most of us sleep here when we can. It’s way more cool to wake up in the nest after a night out on the furry. I—”

“Shut up,” Mouse said, her voice a high, worried squeak.

“It’s true. It is. You don’t like the bunkhouse. You only sleep there when Ren makes you.”

Mouse reached over and poked him hard on his bruised side. He yelped.

“Hey, fish lips, quit flapping and shut up.” The snipped words came from directly behind Isabelle. She spun around, startled, to face Patrick. She hadn’t even heard him enter the barn.

“I don’t have fish lips,” Joey muttered but didn’t look at Patrick. He rubbed his poked side and gave Mouse a woeful stare. She had the grace to look contrite and threw a quick downcast glance in Patrick’s direction. As Isabelle watched, a slight smile twitched the corners of Joey’s mouth. Mouse might have hurt him, but they shared a secret communication about Patrick. She had saved him from a lot worse than a sore side, judging by the glower on Patrick’s face.

Patrick turned on Mouse next. “I told you, you eat with the rest of us.”

She shrank back into the straw and gazed at him in childlike innocence. A total contrast to the beady-eyed suspicion she’d cast Isabelle’s way earlier. It didn’t fool Patrick for one minute.

“You don’t eat with us, you don’t eat at all.” He snatched up the tray with her partly eaten breakfast and pushed it into Joey’s chest. “Take that back to the kitchen, dumbass. Jenna’s been bitching in my ear all morning about you and your messes.”

Isabelle bristled at his rudeness.
It was bullying behavior and there was no need for it.

“And
you
shouldn’t have left the cabin. Ren won’t like it.” His tone to Isabelle was reined in but still cold and curt. He did not like her at all. She already knew this from his snub at their initial introduction, and it would become a mutual dislike if he didn’t mind his manners. She could feel Joey’s empathy flow toward her in big, sloppy waves. He was familiar with this tone, too.

“Ren told me nothing of the sort. In fact, she even left out clothes so I could explore.” She was just as curt back. There was no denying she wore Ren’s clothes. She was acutely aware of her scent clinging to everything. She had no idea what Ren’s intentions were when she left out the clothes, and as she hadn’t the decency to hang around and explain, then Isabelle would do whatever she damned well pleased in them. And no cocksure boy, barely out of his teens, was going to tell her what to do either.

“What exactly is the problem?” She pressed at his supposed authority over her. His face darkened and his right hand twitched as if he ached to slap her. Mouse scurried deeper into her hidey-hole and Joey sat wide-eyed holding his breath. There was a sourness in the air. Isabelle was very aware of it and knew it came from Patrick. Curdled and bitter, like milk on the verge of going off, and it matched the expression on his face.

So Patrick was not used to people standing up to him. Well, he’d better understand right from the start that she didn’t think much of him and his self-styled authority. She had seen him scuttling off to do Ren’s bidding, and though she didn’t fully understand it, she knew she held sway with Ren and it would not do to let this young man try to boss her around.

She nodded at the tray in Joey’s hands. “There’s a cookhouse? I’ll take that and drop it off to Jenna. See what’s on the menu.” She threw Jenna’s name out casually to see how Patrick would react.

Patrick spun on his heel. “The cookhouse is closed. Jenna will bring food up to the cabin so you can cook for yourself.” He strode off, his back rigid with anger.

“Joey, follow me. You got chores. Mouse, go wash. You stink,” he yelled over his shoulder, not slowing his pace. His barked orders were a stand-down, a compromise until he discovered where he stood with her, how far he could push—and they both knew it. As far as Isabelle was concerned, Patrick would not be pushing her at all. He had just met an immovable object.

“See ya.” Joey hobbled past, trying hard to catch up with Patrick. Mouse slithered back into the depths of the straw and left Isabelle standing alone.

Isabelle’s stomach growled louder than ever. She thought about Ren’s kitchen with its little heater and roomy old stove and the pleasant odor of drying herbs. A second breakfast sounded like a fine idea, and she would be happy to cook it if there was food in the cupboards. The tray was already in her hands. It was the perfect opportunity to visit Jenna and the cookhouse and to finish her exploration of the rest of the outbuildings.

“Mouse?” There wasn’t so much as a twitch from the straw nest. “Mouse, I know you’re in there. Come show me the rest of the place,” she said. “Where do you wash?” The straw heaved, but only because Mouse was burrowing deeper. She was obviously a law unto herself around here.

“All right, young lady. Get out here right now. Time to clean you up,” Isabelle ordered, and wondered where such a commanding tone came from. It worked. Mouse stuck out her nose, then her head, and gave Isabelle a look of consternation.

“Right now, missy. Patrick’s right about one thing, you are a disgracefully dirty little girl.” Isabelle’s inner mom was on a roll. She pointed to a spot on the floor beside her where Mouse was to report immediately.

Reluctantly, Mouse disentangled herself from the straw and hoary old horse blankets and crept out to stand before Isabelle. She was even smaller than Isabelle had first thought, and she revised Mouse’s age down to maybe nine or ten. One look at those world-weary eyes made it impossible to guess. Mouse was a scruffy little preteen who channeled the Wisdom of Solomon through a pink sweater with appliquéd ponies.

“Where are your folks, Mouse?” Isabelle asked in a gentler tone.

Mouse shrugged. “Ren looks after me,” she said.

Ren was her caretaker? The news intrigued Isabelle. She looked at Mouse’s tatty clothes, filthy sneakers, and mud-encrusted hair. She needed more than a good scrub; she needed care and attention and someone to make sure she didn’t spend the night under a straw bale. Isabelle clucked her tongue disapprovingly and held out her hand. Ren needed to do better.