The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (61 page)

“I
T MAY BE TIME
to call off Operation Reunite,” Mel says, pushing the thick Velma glasses back up to the bridge of her nose.

“What?” Emma protests. “Why?”

Emma collapses against the wooden moose. She can’t believe she brought Mel here. Not when Mel is so obviously clueless.

All Mel’s done since they got here is complain:
I thought it was gonna be a log cabin; the moose looks more like a deformed horse; we’re going to get malaria or West Nile virus if we stay out here much longer.

It’s only midafternoon and already the mosquitoes are starting to come out in force. She and Emma have covered themselves in some herbal bug repellent Winnie gave them. It doesn’t really work to keep the mosquitoes away; it just makes them smell like cough drops.

“If we stopped breathing, they’d leave us alone,” Mel says. “That’s how they find us, you know. Each time we breathe out, it’s like we’re ringing a big old dinner bell.”

Winnie called Emma’s dad this morning to invite them out
for a picnic. Emma asked if she could bring Mel and her dad said it was fine.

“Why don’t you come with us today, Mom?” Emma asked once she got off the phone with Mel. “You can meet the new cats! We’re taking a picnic. We can get that cheese you like—the one that’s all moldy outside.”

Emma’s mom shook her head.

“Not today, love. I have to meet with a client I’m doing a painting for.”

“But it’s Saturday,” Emma whined. “You never work on Saturday. We usually go to the farmers’ market together.”

Her mom just shook her head. “Sorry. You go have a special day with your dad and Mel. You and I can do something together tomorrow.”

Even when tempted with moldy cheese, she had an excuse.

Emma doesn’t get it: if Winnie and her mom used to be friends, why isn’t her mom jumping at the chance to go see her? You’d think she’d be eager to go out to the cabin again, to visit Winnie and see all the old cats for herself.

They’ve named the cat Emma brought home last night Thor because he has a white mark, shaped like a hammer, on his chest. It was Emma’s mom’s suggestion. When Emma got up this morning, she found her mom in the kitchen with bags from an early Price Chopper run—cat food, litter box, flea collar, and brightly colored felt mice stuffed full of catnip.

T
HE EIGHT REMAINING PAINTINGS
of Francis are hanging inside the cabin. Emma stood before the wall earlier counting under her breath; counting to nine over and over again as she studied the details of his chest, legs, back, hooves, and tail. He has texture, the moose. Fur that actually looks like fur, coarse and matted.

But even better is the sculpture, which Emma and Mel are
helping to finish. Winnie showed them how to spread glue from the little pot across strips of canvas, then wrap the frame of nailed-together branches that make up his body. It’s like bandaging. Making a mummy.

Emma loves it. She’s figured out how to apply the canvas strips carefully, neatly, with just the right amount of glue. If she uses too much, if some drips out the edges, she tears off the canvas, cleans up the glue, and has to start over. Francis deserves perfection.

“You’re a natural artist,” Winnie told Emma.

Mel snorted, said, “Nah, she’s just fastidious.”

“B
UT WE CAN’T GIVE
up!” Emma tells Mel. “Winnie being back, my dad coming out here to help with the moose, with the cabin, it’s progress. Any day now, I’m going to get my mom out here and this place—it’s magic, I think. They’ll totally get back together if I can just get them both to the cabin.”

Winnie and Emma’s dad have gone inside and left the girls alone with the strips of canvas and pot of glue.

“This glue stinks,” Mel complains. “And I think I just found a horse hair in it. It’s totally the product of some rendering factory.” She smears more of it onto the moose, says, “From one ungulate to another.”

Show-off,
Emma thinks.

“Why do you think we should give up?” Emma asks.

“Sorry to be the one to tell you this, Em, but your dad totally has a thing for Winnie,” Mel says, dropping her glue-covered brush into the pot and standing up to stretch.

“What? No way! They’re old friends. She’s gonna help get him and my mom back together!”

Mel shakes her head, makes a buzzing sound like when someone gets the wrong answer on a game show. “In your dreams, Em. The truth is, Winnie’s going to be the thing that finally drives your parents apart once and for all. Believe me.”

“You’re wrong.” Emma’s voice is shaking now. “You don’t know her at all.”

“Yeah, well, neither do you,” Mel says.

Mel’s just jealous because Winnie hadn’t told Mel she was a natural artist or offered to teach her to do a perfect butterfly stroke. Emma knows all she needs to about Winnie: Winnie understands about Danner, which is way more than she can say for Mel.

But Emma’s trying not to think about Danner today. Danner’s been freaking her out—first, the weird thing she said at the bottom of the pool:
Everything you have is mine.
Was it some kind of riddle? Then there was the trick she played in the car last night, making that horrible sound and smell. Later, when they got home, her dad said the new kitten had peed all over the backseat. “Did not,” Emma told him. She’d been snuggling the kitten on her lap the whole time. But Emma’s dad was right, the seat beside her was all wet.

“Come on,” Mel says, taking Emma’s hand, dragging her toward the cabin. “I bet they’re making out right now.”

“You are so
sick
. They’re just friends.” Emma jerks away from Mel, goes back to the safety of the moose. She wants to open the little door in his chest and crawl inside. Count the sticks that make up his rib cage. Breathe in his sweet, gluey smell. Emma knows, just knows, that if she were to count every stick that made up his body, it would be a multiple of nine.

“If I’m wrong, then what are you so scared of?” Mel asks. “Come look.”

Mel’s at the window now, standing just to the side and peering in.

“Come away from there!” Emma hisses. “They’ll see you!”
It’s not respectful.

Mel doesn’t turn. Her eyes are focused on whatever’s going on behind the darkened glass, like a girl looking into a tank of sharks at an aquarium.

And it’s just to spite Mel that Emma finally gives in and joins her. Just to prove how wrong she is. Because if Emma doesn’t come and see for herself, Mel could make up anything about what’s going on in there. Mel could say all kinds of gross and terrible things about her dad and Winnie.

“I should never have brought you here,” Emma whispers when she gets to the window.

Mel just grunts in response.

Emma turns away from her and makes herself look in the window, where at first, all she sees is the reflection of Francis behind her, so large he takes up half the window and she has to look into him to see the figures inside.

C
LAIRE HAS LOADED HER
mesh shoulder bag with sourdough bread, maple syrup, breakfast radishes, arugula. Tess just introduced Claire to Lisa, who makes goat cheese at Second Chance Farm.

“Delighted to meet you,” Claire says, holding out her hand. Claire is wearing loose linen capris, an olive green silk blouse, leather sandals, and a cowrie shell necklace. A wide-brimmed straw hat keeps the early afternoon sun off her face.

“Enjoying the market?” Lisa asks. Lisa left a big corporate job in New York ten years ago after being diagnosed with MS. The disease hadn’t progressed much, and Lisa told people that she believed this was because she’d followed her bliss. She bought the land, the goats, went to France for a summer to study cheese making, and now was living the life of her dreams.

“Very much,” Claire tells her. While Claire peruses the cheeses, Tess scans the crowded farmers’ market. She sees her dentist, one of the men who works for Henry, and the holistic practitioner she saw two years ago when she was exhausted all the time. She was advised to give up dairy, white flour, and sugar—a regimen that
lasted approximately one week and left her feeling more tired and grumpy than ever.

“A life without ice cream and pizza is a life half lived,” Henry told her. In the end, Tess agreed and didn’t go back.

Across the market, over by the heavily tattooed woman selling eggs, a man is watching her. He’s wearing a green polo shirt, khakis, and sunglasses.

Don’t be paranoid, she tells herself. But is it paranoia? The man has had his eye on her since she and Claire arrived. She tries to think back to when she first noticed him. It may have been back in the parking lot by the courthouse. Had he followed them here?

She feels Claire’s hand on her elbow. “I chose the chèvre encrusted with fresh herbs,” Claire says.

“Excellent,” Tess says, her eyes still on the man, who has his back to them now and is talking with the tattooed woman.

Tess and Claire say their good-byes to Lisa and wander away from the goat cheese, meandering between umbrellaed tables laid out with free-range chicken, the first of the season hothouse tomatoes, cinnamon buns, and potted sunflowers. Claire is still holding on to Tess’s elbow. Tess nods and says hellos to all the people she knows, glowing and giddy because she’s here with this exquisite woman on her arm.

At the center of the market, on a little makeshift stage under a canopy, a woman with a shaved head and a pink guitar does a version of Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue.”

“I am absolutely enchanted with this place,” Claire says, leaning in so that Tess will hear her as they walk past the singing girl’s amplifier. “I may never leave.”

Claire’s breath in Tess’s ear is as warm and silky as her blouse. Tess feels her heart jump-start. Lets herself imagine what life might be like if Claire took up permanent residence here: the Saturday trips to the farmers’ market, the galleries she’d take
Claire to, sharing popcorn at the foreign film festival that she could never get Henry interested in.

“I see you two found each other!”

Tess turns. Julia from the Golden Apple is coming up behind them, a flat of dianthus in her arms.

“We certainly did,” Claire says, giving Tess’s elbow a little squeeze.

“No Emma today?” Julia asks. Emma is usually the one to accompany Tess on these Saturday trips. After the market, they go to Ben & Jerry’s for waffle cones.

Tess shakes her head. “She’s off on an adventure with Henry.” Tess looks over at the tattooed egg woman and sees there’s no sign of the man who’d been watching her.

“How
is
Henry?” Julia asks. “I haven’t seen him in ages.”

Tess feels herself stiffen a bit. “Fine. It’s his busy season and he’s working too hard, as usual.”

Julia nods, shifts the tray of plants in her arms. “What you all need is a vacation. Robert and I really enjoyed Tuscany last fall. When we came back, we were just so
invigorated
. It did wonders for our marriage—we were like newlyweds.”

Tess smiles. Is it painfully obvious that her marriage is on the rocks and needs to be
invigorated
?

“We’re not big travelers,” Tess says, almost apologetically.

She feels the gentle, comforting pressure of Claire’s fingers on her elbow. “When you live in a place as magical as this,” Claire says, “why would you
ever
want to leave?”

“I
T LOOKS LIKE THE
same wig,” Henry tells her. He can see the disappointment on Winnie’s face. She probably picked it up and brought it back to the cabin yesterday without even thinking about it. He tries to remember seeing it in her hand as he watched her leave his house and walk down the driveway and out to the road where she’d left her car.

Being in the cabin again puts him on edge. Everything is the same, but different. The place is neat and tidy now, everything in order. The mouse smell is still there, but hidden behind the stronger scents of pine cleaner and coffee. What did the cabin smell like when they were all there that summer? Cigarette and pot smoke. Oil paint and turpentine. The curry powder Suz dumped into practically everything she cooked.

He sees the place where Suz carved her initials in the heavy wooden table and runs his fingers over the pale letters:
SP
.

Why’d you come back, babycakes? What was it you were hoping to find?

Winnie claims the new wig appeared this morning. She woke up and found it sitting in a paper bag on the table, beside her journal.

“It’s not the same wig. It’s new. And it’s too big. I lost the first one and she gave me another.”

“She?” Henry asks. He bites the inside of his cheek.

“She’s come back, Henry. She left me another message in my journal too! Look.”

Henry watches her open up the notebook on the table, flip through the pages.

He’s worried. Not that Suz has come back. But that being here is just too much for Winnie. She’s breaking down in some crucial way.

Already she looks older, more worn than she did just twenty-four hours ago, when she pulled Emma from the pool. There are dark circles under her eyes. Her face seems gaunt. Henry finds himself scanning the cabin, making sure she’s got food. He sees a can of coffee, some instant oatmeal, a large bag of cat crunchies.

“Here. Look.” She thrusts the notebook at him.

He reads the lines on the page:

Use the saw to cut the table in half. Put the two halves together to make a whole. Crawl through the hole and escape.

His breath catches in his throat.

Of all the crazy coincidences.

But then, maybe Suz was right: there’s no such thing as coincidence.

Henry flips to earlier pages in the journal, then back to the last page.

“It looks kind of like your writing, Winnie,” he tells her.

She shakes her head. “No, Henry. No. It’s impossible.”

He lays his hand gently on top of hers, gives it a comforting squeeze. “Maybe you’re sleepwalking. Maybe you don’t remember.”

But what if she isn’t? What if someone really is leaving clothes and wigs laid out for her, scrawling messages in her journal?

“It’s her!” Winnie says. “I know it is. She’s come back.” Win
nie starts to tremble. Henry pulls her gently to him, takes her in his arms, and whispers, “Shhh,” into her hair.

A horrible popping sound fills the cabin and he jerks away from her, turning to the front window, which has cracked in a starburst pattern. And there’s Emma looking in at him, her face twisted in pain, her right hand dripping blood.