Monday's Child (14 page)

Thirty-Four

“What’s all the laughing about?” Georgia asked with a smile when Katy came into the kitchen. “What are you two doing back there?”

“Nothing.”

Bev shook a finger at her daughter. “Katy, you know better. That’s not an answer.”

“Jill is showing me some tricks,” Katy said, and curtsied.

“Tricks?” Georgia raised her eyebrows at Bev. “Jill doesn’t know any tricks.”

“Yes she does. Can we have a can of soda, Aunt Georgia?”

“Help yourself.”

“Thanks.”

Georgia waited until Katy left and then sighed. “Were we ever that age?”

“Must have been.” Bev took a pretzel from the bowl and broke off one of the twists. “Although you were eight when I was born, so we weren’t that age together.”

“They sure seem to be having fun. I’m glad they’re getting along so well.”

“So am I, but if they could get along a little quieter it would suit me fine. They must be measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale.”

Georgia tried to remember when she’d last heard so much laughter coming from her daughter’s room, and then realized she never had.

Jill wasn’t one to invite her school friends to the house.

“Anyway,” Bev said, “I hope they run down pretty soon, or we’re not going to get any sleep tonight.”

“You know, I wouldn’t mind.”

“You’re crazy.” Bev grabbed Georgia’s glass and sniffed at it. “What’re you drinking, to make you say crazy things like that?”

“Ice tea, same as you.” She put her elbows on the table and cupped her face in her hands. “I love to listen to them laugh.”

“You’ve got to get out more. I think living in the sticks has affected your brain.”

“Well, maybe that’ll change.”

“What are you talking about?”

Georgia hesitated. “I may not be living in Winslow much longer.”

“Ah, now we’re getting to it.” Bev sat back in her chair and drummed her fingers on the table. “Okay, spill it.”

“I’m thinking of taking Jill and leaving. I know I can get a job in another town. I’m only short six units on my library science degree, and if I could finish the requirements, I could even get a better job.”

“Sounds great.” She hesitated and took another pretzel, frowning as she scraped the salt crystals from it with a thumbnail. “Does Dave know you’re planning on leaving him?”

“No.”

“How do you think he’ll take it?”

“Well I guess that depends.”

“On what?”

“On how soon he notices I’m gone,” she said, and knew her smile was bitter.

“That bad, huh?”

She nodded, then reached up to massage her neck. The tension had knotted the muscles to the point that it hurt to rub them.

“At work today I was trying to figure you how much time we’ve spent together in the last few months. It works out to be about ten minutes a day, not counting sleeping in the same bed—”

“Which is all you do in bed, right?”

“Right.”

“It figures.” Bev popped the pretzel in her mouth.

“Anyway, I’ve thought it out from every angle, and I’m not getting anything out of this marriage. So maybe
I
should be getting out of this marriage.”

“You know, I’ll be honest. I’ve wondered lots of times why you were still with him.”

Georgia looked at her sister curiously. “You never did like him, did you?”

“No, I surely didn’t.”

“Would you mind telling me why?”

“Oh no! I’m not
that
honest. You might change your mind, kiss and make up, and then where’d I be?”

“I’m not going to change my mind,” Georgia said.

“We’ll see. But you say you’ve figured every angle, I assume that includes—”

Georgia held up a hand to stop her. “I’ve already had the money lecture today.”

“I’m not thinking of the money. If I can get by on what I make working temp jobs, you’ll be fine. It’s the security thing I’m wondering about.”

“Security?”

“Having him around. Maybe he’s not everything you ever wanted in a husband, but he’s here—”

“Sort of,” Georgia corrected.

“Okay, maybe he’s not
physically
here a lot of the time, but his clothes are in the closet, his razor’s in the bathroom, the toilet seat is up when you go to use it in the middle of the night. He’s here in the sense that you’re not living alone.”

“Ten minutes a day, Bev. If I can find something else to do for those ten minutes when I’d be with Dave, I don’t think I’ll even miss him.”

Bev shook her head. “You always miss them, no matter what kind of bastards they were. Sort of the way you miss a tooth that’s been pulled. It might have been hurting you so bad you couldn’t stand it, but when it’s gone, your tongue keeps probing that hole.”

“Are you trying to talk me out of it?”

“Hell no. If you really want to go, say the word. I’ll help you pack up your and Jill’s stuff, we can load the cars, and be out of here before morning. All I’m saying is, be sure.”

“I
am
sure.”

“I hope so. I’m not going to pretend to be an authority on marriage, because I’ve never been married, obviously, but I know in any relationship there is a point of no return, and you cross it at your own risk. And I mean to tell you, it can be scary as hell—”

“I know.”

Bev looked doubtful. “I’m not sure you do. No matter what’s going on between two people, when it’s over, there will come a moment when it hits you that you’re alone. It’s an empty feeling.”

Georgia said nothing, but that feeling had already come and gone. She’d spent her lunch hour in the employee restroom literally shaking from the shock of having to come to the only decision she felt she could make.

“If you’re ready, though, I’m here for you. If you want to come down to LA, you can stay with Katy and me until you get settled. We’d be living in close quarters, but what the hell. We’re family.”

The thought of driving away on impulse was both heady and sobering. Georgia reached across the table and took her sister’s hand.

“I wish we could go tonight, but there are some things I have to take care of first. And I’ve got to do this in a way that’s the least painful for Jill—”

“And for you,” Bev interrupted. “You have to think of yourself here, too. Now isn’t the time to be selfless.”

“Don’t worry about me.” Georgia squeezed her hand. “Remember, I’m the big sister.”

“Not so big that you can’t cry. No one’s ever so big that they can’t cry.”

Thirty-Five

Katy was wide awake.

The house had been quiet for at least an hour, and Jill was sleeping soundly, but whether it was being in a strange bed or the things that she’d seen today, Katy wasn’t able to get to sleep.

She’d tried lying on her stomach, her back, on her right side with her legs curled tight, on her left side with her legs straight out.

She’d tried thinking the same word over and over, hoping to induce a kind of trance. She counted backwards from one hundred. She’d tried closing her eyes and crossing them, which sometimes made her dizzy but often had the effect of making her drowsy as well.

Even though she didn’t quite get what doing one had to do with attaining the other, she counted sheep.

Nothing worked.

She stared at the ceiling, hands behind her head, and wondered how Jill did the things she did.

Sleight of hand, she supposed. Once when her mother had worked a full week as a movie extra and they were flush, they’d gone with a bunch of her mom’s friends to celebrate their good fortune at the Magic Castle.

They’d been ensconced in a small private dining room with their own waiter and a chef who’d prepared several flamed dishes, including Cherries Jubilee and the best cooked carrots she’d ever tasted.

Before, during, and after dinner, they were entertained by magicians.

A lot of the tricks they performed, she’d seen before on television, but she’d been intrigued at seeing them done up close.

Try as she might, though, she hadn’t been able to catch the magicians at their wiles. As carefully as she watched their hands, she couldn’t see past the carefully crafted illusion.

She understood magicians were masters at misdirection, but she’d always considered herself, a child of Hollywood, the world capital of make-believe, as being wise to their guise.

But if those guys were good, her cousin was great.

So great that if
she
were David Copperfield, she’d start looking for another line of work.

Copperfield performed with a lot of flash and dazzle, but she’d never seen him turn a solid to liquid and then back again.

Katy sat up in bed and looked toward her sleeping cousin.

“Jill,” she whispered. “Jill?”

Her cousin didn’t stir.

Katy turned the covers aside and slipped out of bed. She walked on tiptoe to the small bedside table where Jill kept the wooden box of buttons.

The table drawer stuck a bit—she’d pulled it out crookedly—and squeaked.

She held her breath, waiting to see if Jill would awaken. When she didn’t, Katy eased the drawer further open and reached in for the box.

It felt surprisingly heavy in her hands, most likely from the weight of its secret compartment, she supposed, and the weight of the liquid, of course.

She left the drawer standing open so that it would be easier to return the box, started toward her bed, but then hesitated.

The thing was, she needed light to examine the box. Even if she raised the window shade by the bed, there was almost no moon out tonight, and she wouldn’t be able to see clearly enough to check for hidden panels or levers or whatever the mechanism was that controlled the box.

Standing on the bare floor was making her feet cold, and she lifted one foot to rub it against the warm material of her pajama leg.

Jill sighed in her sleep and turned over.

That was enough impetus.

As her mother always said, “He who hesitates sits through the red light twice.”

Katy reached the door without making any noise, and was relieved to find that it hadn’t been fully closed. She put a finger on the latch bolt to keep it from clicking when it came free of the striker plate, and after that she was home free.

She turned on the bathroom light and the fan, then turned on the faucet to help cover the sounds of her quest. She took a face towel and spread it on the counter, in case the liquid inside spilled as she was trying to open it, and put the box down.

She thought it odd that the box wasn’t painted or carved the way most magic devices were. If it belonged to her, she’d paint it black and gold, and have a sprinkling of stars across the lid.

At the very least she’d want it lined in velvet, the better to show off the first stage of the trick.

Katy leaned over so the box was on eye level, and studied the front panel. There was a simple metal clasp that held the box shut, and she used her thumbnail to undo it.

With the lid still closed, she ran her fingers over the exterior of the box, thinking that she might feel what she couldn’t see.

No such luck; the wood had been sanded completely smooth and hadn’t even the tiniest indentation.

Katy lifted her eyebrows at her reflection in the mirror which looked as baffled as she did.

Maybe, she thought, the trick was on the inside.

She opened the lid and after a moment, frowned. Even though it was filled with buttons, she could see that there wasn’t enough thickness to the box to contain an inner panel of some kind.

Katy dipped her fingers into the buttons, feeling beneath them for a scored area on the bottom. The wood on the inside felt slippery but unyielding.

“How did she do that?” Katy whispered.

An optical illusion, obviously, but Katy had been standing close by Jill’s side when her cousin had passed her right hand through the buttons, filtering them through her fingers, until somehow, they’d turned to a silvery-black liquid before her eyes.

A drop of the liquid had fallen to the floor, and when she’d glanced down, it had transformed into an ordinary gray button. Four holes, flat on one side, indented on the other. She’d picked it up, and it was solid, if slightly warm to the touch.

When she’d looked at Jill in amazement, the younger girl had smiled, holding out the box so she could see.

All of the buttons had returned to their original form.

Katy had cupped her hands so that Jill could fill them with buttons. They, too, were warm.

Then Jill had selected one, held it between her thumb and forefinger so that Katy could see it—it was a red one—and in an instant it had vanished.

There was no doubt about it, Katy thought; her cousin was uniquely talented.

Magical, in a word.

She only wished she could figure out how the kid had gotten to be that way.

Jill had burrowed completely under the covers when Katy returned to the room.

She gently eased the box into the drawer and slowly, slowly pushed the drawer closed. Not even a squeak this time, thank goodness.

Back in bed, Katy yawned and hugged the pillow to her. The sheets had cooled and she felt pleasantly shivery and tired.

As she was about to close her eyes, a car drove by and the reflected headlights brightened the room, and she thought she saw a dark mass of some kind hovering above her cousin’s bed.

She blinked several times, and it faded.

Or maybe it hadn’t been there at all.

Her imagination was starting to get the best of her, Katy thought, and fell asleep.

Sunday

Thirty-Six

Noah Houston arrived back in Winslow shortly before daybreak after having driven to Los Angeles for supplies he knew he couldn’t get at the small hospital. Or rather, couldn’t ask for.

Why, they would wonder, did he need curare?

The drug, used in anesthesia, facilitated skeletal muscular relaxation, inducing paralysis within minutes by blocking nerve impulses to the muscles at the myoneural junction.

It did not render the patient unconscious, nor did it have any effect on pain.

The preferred method of administration was intravenously, since intramuscular injection produced unpredictable results. Rapid infusion of the drug into the system was dangerous but a small dose given fast could paralyze the patient in seconds.

Respiratory depression secondary to increased levels of histamine was a potential complication, with bronchospasm and paralysis of the muscles necessary to breathe. Hypotension was also a possibility.

Finally, the drug could be lethal; if an overdose was given, there was no antidote, no antagonist to reverse its effects.

Used correctly, curare, or more accurately turbo-curarine chloride, was a powerful and effective medical tool.

And the way he intended to use it?

He couldn’t bring himself to say the word, but he knew what most people would call it.

Houston pulled into the driveway and shut the engine off. There was a humming in his ears—too many hours spent on the road—and he had a dull ache in the small of his back.

As he got out of the car, he glanced across the street at the Baker house, but all was still. That wasn’t unusual for a Sunday morning.

The entire neighborhood tended to sleep on Sundays, with the exception of Mr. Rafferty. Case in point, the only sign of anyone being up yet was the light he could see at the back of the old man’s house.

A couple of times over the years he’d accepted Rafferty’s invitations for morning coffee, and he remembered quite well the sunny kitchen, fragrant with the scent of fresh-ground coffee and cinnamon rolls.

The old guy was lonely, although he’d never admit it, Houston thought.

There were too many hours in a day to fill, Rafferty had told him once, even in a town full of retired folks like himself.

“I don’t care for lawn games,” the old man had said. “Never understood bridge. Chess is too highfalutin’ by half. And if I never hear another joker call a square dance I will die a happy man.”

Instead of participating in the social activities for the older set, Rafferty had kept himself busy volunteering at the hospital, tending his yard, and keeping a watchful eye on his neighborhood.

A nice old guy, to be sure.

Houston glanced at his watch, wondering if it was too early to be knocking on a neighbor’s door. Six a.m.? He’d probably be welcomed.

But no, he thought, I wouldn’t be fit company.

In truth, he was so exhausted that he wanted nothing more than a hot shower and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

And he couldn’t fool himself; the only reason he was even considering paying a call on the old gent was to put a buffer of sorts between himself and his conscience. He’d been alone with his thoughts for too many hours.

Another time, he thought, when all of this is over.