Nowhere Girl (28 page)

“Sure,” I said, rubbing my arms like I was cold. But really, I needed to get away from her. “No problem.”

We played Cranium, each of us paired up, and Mads finally sacked out on the living room couch. Greg and I lost, and I got slowly drunk. Whenever I drank too much, I also got strangely quiet, so that everyone around me got louder and louder, and I could tell Greg was psychoanalyzing it all, when what I really wanted him to do was loosen up and have fun.

On the way home, I watched the sleeping houses of Stanwich sail by. “Well,” Greg said. “So
that's
what you do every Thursday night.”

The car was spinning a little bit. “It's usually more fun than that.”

He turned up the heat. “I should hope so.” He shifted gears, and my stomach felt like it was in my throat. “Are things okay with you and Gabby?”

I supposed I should have known he'd pick up on that. He was a shrink, after all. “Sure. Why?”

“I don't know. It felt like you were avoiding each other a little. I thought maybe you'd gotten into an argument on the porch.”

“Maybe we need a break,” I blurted before I could think about it.

“But she's been your best friend since you were seven. You've never needed a break.”

I turned away from him in my seat, feeling like I might cry. “Well, now we do.”

“Does that mean you're not going to Cookies on Sunday? I'd love it if you would come to yoga with me.”

Did he say
yoga
? “Why would you want me to do that?” I asked. “To torture me?” I laughed, but he stared straight ahead, his hands gripping the steering wheel.

“It's very relaxing.”

“Oh,” I said, and then I tried to stop thinking, because I felt so thoroughly confused.

*   *   *

Being drunk always made me feel slightly dirty, especially if it was martinis—which it had been—and when we got home, I stood in the hot shower until I thought I might fall asleep. When I got out, Greg was sitting up in bed, reading files, his rectangular glasses perched studiously at the end of his nose.

“Hi,” I said, still feeling mildly drunk and sort of glad he was still up.

He took off his glasses and set them on his lap next to the files. “Cady,” he said while I was pulling my nightgown out of the drawer.

“What?” I turned around.

“I want to see Dr. Mirando again.”
Mirando.
I never had been able to think of his name. I pressed the nightgown against my chest. It was flannel with roses across it, and I loved how soft it was.

“Oh.” I could hear the surprise in my voice. “Weren't we just there?”

Greg closed his eyes briefly, and then with a lot of patience, he said, “We said we'd look at our calendars and get back to him. Do you have some resistance to going on a regular basis?”

“Yes,” I wanted to say. I hated sitting in that cramped office with him and pretending I was actually telling the truth. “No,” I said, shaking out the nightgown. “I guess I've been busy.”

Greg put his glasses back on his nose and picked up his file again. “With serial killers,” he said.

“That's research,” I told him defensively.

He raised his eyes to me and then settled them back on the page. “Okay, Cady. So you've said.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” I quickly pulled the nightgown over my head.

“Nothing.” He pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “I think it's important to see Dr. Mirando as soon as we can. I'll make an appointment tomorrow.”

“Any day but Tuesday,” I said in hopes that maybe Brady would want to spend his day off with me.

“I know, Cady, Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday.” I slid into bed. I felt myself reaching for his hand under the sheet, thinking I could make amends—for what, I wasn't sure—but before Greg could turn to me, I was already slipping into dreamland.

 

CHAPTER

32

I woke up the next morning with a headache that made me want to bash myself in the face with a hammer. While I was downstairs making coffee, my phone beeped. I picked it up. There were two missed calls and five texts from Hazel, who owned the barn where Bliss was stabled, saying something was wrong with him. “I'll be right there,” I wrote. I ran upstairs, threw my pajamas on the bed, slid into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and was out the door in less than five minutes. I sped through yellow lights and got to the intersection of Rattling Valley and Burnt Mill faster than I ever had before. I was almost out of cell range when Brady called. “You coming?” he asked when I answered. I'd forgotten I was supposed to meet him this morning for breakfast to talk more about my book.

“Bliss is sick.” I almost couldn't get the words out. “I'm on my way to the barn.”

There was a pause, during which I thought I lost him driving those winding dirt roads to the farm, but then Brady's voice came on again. “Are you avoiding me?”

Jesus Christ. “No, Brady. Bliss, Savannah's horse, is sick. I have to go to him. I'm sorry I forgot to call; I'm hungover and—” but I heard the background noise go quiet, and the screen went black.

When I got there, Dr. Stewart's old Denali was in the parking lot, and Hazel's Subaru was parked at an angle to the door. Bliss was almost twenty-seven now, one of my last connections to my sister, and I didn't know what I'd do if I lost him. I'd hardly put the car in park when I jumped out, and Hazel came to meet me.

“He's colicking,” she said, which she'd already told me in the texts. “We're having a hard time keeping him up.” This she had not told me.

“Shit.” I could feel the kick of my heart. Hazel was wearing denim overalls and a pair of ancient muck boots. Her hair was in one long braid down her back, even longer than the last time I'd seen her. “For how long?”

“When I got here this morning, he didn't eat breakfast and kept looking at his stomach. I listened for bowel sounds, and when I didn't hear any, I gave him a shot of Banamine. I finished feeding the other horses and threw hay out to the yearlings in the field. When I came back to check on him, he was down and rolling pretty violently. I called Dr. Stewart, texted you, and have been walking him ever since.”

I felt that panic again, the sky closing in on me like I might pass out.

I rushed into the barn and to Bliss's stall. Dr. Stewart had his stethoscope on and was listening to Bliss's belly. He held up a finger, indicating I should wait. After a few seconds, he took the hard plastic ends out of his ears and wrapped it around his neck.

“He has good gut sounds.” Dr. Stewart's eyes were rimmed in red, and his hair hadn't been brushed.

“Thank God,” I said. “Are you okay?”

Dr. Stewart yawned. “I was up all night with a horse at Market Street. Left that call to come here.”

“Was it one of Anne's?”

“Customer's,” he said. “That new girl who has the bright-pink coat and matching stirrups.”

Riding was a proper sport, immersed in tradition. “Oh God. I know who you're talking about. She's hard to miss. Is the horse okay?”

“Yes, he's stable.” He came out of the stall and put on a plastic glove that came to his bicep. “I'm going to do an internal exam now. Does he need ace?”

“No,” I said, taking Bliss's muzzle in my hands. “He's perfect. He'll stand like a rock.”

Hazel stood in the aisle while I petted Bliss and talked to him about which of the three yearlings was his favorite. Dr. Stewart pulled a few nuggets of hard manure from him. I kept thinking of Savannah the day she'd gotten Bliss. We'd waited on a tack trunk until past midnight when a Brookledge truck finally lumbered down the narrow drive of the barn. She took his temperature to make sure he hadn't gotten shipping fever, made him a warm bran mash, and stayed with him through the night. From that first moment, she was the only person Bliss trusted. Every day, she'd lean her face down near his muzzle and whisper to him. Then she'd swing a leg over his back, her gold hair flying, her face so relaxed and happy it was as if she were lit from the inside out. Hazel kept touching my arm and giving me little sounds of encouragement, and then, about twenty minutes into it, we heard a motor in the drive, and she went out to see who it was.

I talked to Bliss in a low voice, telling him it was okay and to hang in there, and though he rested his muzzle in my hands a few times, for the most part, he concentrated on Dr. Stewart. When the door opened, I turned, and there was Brady standing in the light of the barn. I went to him, and Hazel took my place at the stall. Even though I didn't want to leave Bliss, I walked into the lot with him. The sun was hot overhead, and I saw Brady's bike next to my car.

“I tried to call back,” he said. “But I couldn't get you.”

“Yeah,” I told him. “The cell reception here sucks.” I heard Bliss whinny, a sad, troubled sound. “Listen, I have to get back to my sister's horse.”

Brady looked helpless; it seemed like he didn't know what to do with his hands. “Do you want me to wait?”

I still had a splitting headache, and I felt both flattered and slightly guilty that Brady had driven all the way out here. “If you want.”

“Okay,” he said. He put up a hand and backed away. “I'll stay as long as I can.”

“As far as I can tell, it's an impaction,” Dr. Stewart said when I went back in. “Pretty good-sized one. More Banamine and mineral oil should do the trick. Do you have some paste on hand?”

“Plenty,” Hazel told him. “He's already had one dose.”

“That's okay. He can have more now and then again in four hours. I have a nasogastric tube in the truck. I'm going to pump him full of mineral oil and electrolytes to rehydrate him. Let's keep him hand walking until he passes manure.”

While I walked Bliss around the ring on a lead line, I talked to him. I told him I loved him and that he was all I had left of Savannah and please, I knew he couldn't live forever, and I didn't want him to be in pain, but he'd given me the scare of my life. I walked him slowly and tried not to cry, tried to tell myself he was going to be fine, tried not to see Savannah the first time we went out into the woods and she'd looked for fallen logs, for places to jump Bliss, who seemed light as air with her on his back. It had been a sight like you might see in a film, the light filtering between the leaves and Bliss moving like liquid through the trees. And I remembered feeling unafraid. Nothing could happen to Savannah when she was with Bliss; he was part of her good luck.

It was after noon when Bliss finally stabilized. He passed a pile of hard, pebbly manure. I made him a warm mash, put a cooler on him, and watched him in his stall. He immediately lay down, but this time it wasn't to try to roll the pain out of his gut. He stretched flat out on his side, and a minute later, he was snoring. I walked Dr. Stewart out to his truck, and Brady's bike was gone. After the vet drove away, I noticed a notepad right where the motorcycle had been. In Brady's scrawl, I saw a work schedule for the week. I picked it up and brought it into the tack room and tried his cell. I called later that day, after Bliss and I had been walking again. Still no answer.

When Bliss finally passed a mound of softer, normal-looking manure, I made him another soupy bran mash to help rehydrate him and tried Brady one more time before I left, but he didn't answer. It was almost three, and I decided to drive to his house and drop the pad in his mailbox. He'd told me once where he lived, a little rental on Cove Road, a cul-de-sac near the high school. Gabby and I had ridden by it a few times on spy missions, a compact white cape with sea grass and perennials planted around the perimeter that I imagined were courtesy of Colette.

A smattering rain spit down even while the sun was shining, and I drove with the windshield wipers squeaking intermittently. The driveway was empty, and I parked in the street and walked across the yard to drop the pad in the old-fashioned mailbox by his front door, where I saw other mail, mostly catalogs. And then I went back to my car. That's when I heard it: a sort of singing sound coming from the back. It was so melodious, high pitched and lovely, that I stopped to listen. The voice carried on the slight breeze, and when the raindrops fell, it was as though they were somehow in time with the song.

I crept along the side of the house, past a bunch of kindling, following the song. When I was about to turn the corner, I saw a slight wisp of a woman standing in the midst of a huge garden of daisies. Her black hair was loose around her, and her long, thin arms appeared pale, like a child's in winter. She was the one singing, her tone pitch-perfect. Like her voice, she was beautiful. And the oddest thing was that she was wearing nothing from the waist up. Her breasts were heavy and turned up at the end. Tied around her waist was a gauzy sarong. I stood there watching her as she rhythmically, patiently pulled at weeds.

The song was French, I knew that much, but I didn't know the words. I stood there listening to her singing and wondering if she was cold. Maybe it was the hangover or how emotionally wasted I felt from Bliss, but I had the comforting thought we might actually become friends. Save Gabby, I didn't have many friends. My friends were the characters who populated my books, heroes who found ways to circumvent and catch perpetrators. My confidants were the black letters on the page I strung together to make sentences, paragraphs, scenes, chapters, books. They never seemed to fail me. Now I wondered if this woman might be a kind of kindred spirit. The way Brady had described Colette, with so much to give but so little desire to live, was seductive. She seemed childlike, perhaps a little crazy or maybe free-spirited, but harmless.

She stopped the beautiful singing and started talking. She spoke quickly, hurriedly, as though trying to convince someone of something, as though defending herself. Again, the words were French, but I saw she was working something out, talking animatedly to the willowy flowers in her yard. Watching Colette alone in her garden, unburdening herself of her grief to the flowers, dirt on her knees, I suddenly felt terrible for trespassing, and I tried to steal away. Except I had forgotten about the kindling, and when I backed up, I snapped a few twigs. With nowhere to go, I stood stock-still, willing myself to become invisible. Colette stopped talking, but she didn't turn her head toward me. After a few seconds, she picked up a trowel and went back to work digging in the dirt in silence.