The Mirror (42 page)

Sophie McCabe slid her arm through Elton's and they both drew back. "Who in heaven's name is that? Where's Joshua?"

"I don't know her, Ma. But Joshua's dead of the typhoid and I think she has it too."

"Typhoid? But don't you see I'm--"

"No, ain't typhoid." Ansel St. John's eyes bulged above her. "Just a bug from running around all hours of the night probably. You're young. You'll pull through. Here, drink this."

Clouds of mist rolled across the glass of the wedding mirror, thunder shuddered the floor beneath it, lightning flashed the bronze frame to green. The entwined hands writhed until they disentangled themselves, reached out to her with fingers parted, the face of Marek Weir formed from the smoky mist, dark curls fluffing toward his face, sharp features half-shadowed.

9

Brandy heard the cock crow before she opened her eyes, and wondered why that ordinary sound should make her so happy. It meant it was time to rise and help Nora with the breakfast, bring up coal for the stove, let the hens out and . . .

Something furry with prickly nails moved along her neck, nudged her cheek. Brandy sat up with a gasp even as her eyes flew open.

The bed was alive with wobbly kittens. One lay on her lap, where it had fallen when she'd sat erect. Another wrapped its front paws around her foot and tried to bite through the covers. Yet another squatted to wet on the bedclothes. Five in all.

Oh yes, Stina Mark.
Tears pricked behind her eyes and nose. Why couldn't dreams be reality?

Mr. St. John snorted and rolled over on the sofa.

The odor of cat and sickness permeated the room.

Shay's body felt weak, hungry and filthy.

Brandy caught a kitten about to topple over the edge of the bed, stuffed him and his siblings into the box and put it on the floor.

In the bathroom she ran a tub of hot water and scrubbed Shay's body.

"Shay Garrett, you up and feeling better then?" Ansel St. John called from the other side of the door.

"Yes. Could you find my clothes, please?"

At the breakfast table Brandy consumed three eggs, toast and tea. "You've been so kind, Mr. St. John, I don't know how to thank you."

"I'll tell you how. Drink all that milk."

"I don't drink milk. I--"

"It's not for you. For the little one." His eyes grew wild and threatening. His beard dipped into his tea. "Do as I say now. Ain't ordinary milk. It's goat's milk." He finished eating and replaced his teeth.

Brandy choked down half the milk and then lay on the sofa while he stripped the bed.

"I'm going into town to the Laundromat and to get some food. You rest now. Got Happy chained out front. He'll keep anybody from the door."

Brandy's little display of health had exhausted Shay. They lay quietly drowsy, but clean and fed.

Stina Mark entered through a flap door cut into the side of the house and crawled into her box, calling to the kittens. They tumbled from all corners of the kitchen for their morning bath and breakfast. Stina purred while they nursed, her eyes black slits in pools of yellow.

A dog growled outside the wide glass door. It must be Happy. With a name like that he apparently wasn't Swedish.

Where had Shay found the kittens? And how had she come to be at this place? What was she doing with Brandy's body now?

The rattle of the electric icebox kept time with Stina's contented noise. A clock above the sink ticked soothingly. Brandy slept.

"Wake up, I say. High time you was eatin' something. It's four o'clock in the afternoon."

Brandy hadn't heard Ansel return. The table was set for a meal. Ears of corn, sliced tomatoes, peas, green beans and carrots.

"Just picked from the garden out back and steamed. Now, what do you think of that?"

"Mr. St. John, it looks like a feast."
Except for the goat's milk.

Ansel cut his corn from the cob and mashed it and everything else on his plate with a fork.

Brandy politely looked away from the dentures sitting next to his glass and ate until Shay could hold no more.

"Got you a toothbrush in Boulder. Took some old things my granddaughter left around into the Laundromat and went to the Salvation Army store for more like 'em. You'll want to be getting out of the house one of these days and you can't be seen in that outfit. And that hair gets hit by sunlight, it'll shine like a beacon. Bring every cop for miles. You tie it up in a kerchief and people'll think Lottie's back and won't take no notice."

"Mr. St. John, why are you doing all this for me?"

"Told you. For Stina Mark there. And"--he stood to orate, waving his fork and shirt cuff--"because I don't think you're rowing with just one oar, any more than me." He seemed to have a great deal of energy for so old a man. "You see, Shay Garrett, the WORLD is crazy. You and me know where it's at."

He flopped into his chair and gummed the last of his food. "Now, if you feel up to it, you can do the dishes while I do the chores. I'll bring your bedding in off the line."

No dishwashing machine here, but there was the luxury of hot water piped into the sink. Every dish in the place seemed dirty, stacked wherever there was room. Nora would have been aghast. The cupboards were almost empty. Brandy washed them out first and then began filling them with clean dishes. When she finished she was tired but had gone a long way toward cleaning up the clutter.

She crawled gratefully into the washed and aired sheets, awakening rested and stronger the next morning.

She talked Ansel into removing the piles of newspapers and then swept and scrubbed the kitchen and bathroom floors. She slept all afternoon.

The next day he brought her a long patterned skirt, a baggy blouse and a kerchief to cover her hair.

"Time you met the others and got some fresh air," he said when she'd dressed.

"There are others living here?"

"Come on, I'll show you." He led her past stale-smelling rooms, out a back door, along a path by a vegetable garden and rusting metal machinery to a board fence and a series of sagging sheds.

"This here's Olina," Ansel announced as a nanny goat bounded up to him. She was joined by her billy, "Oscar," and two frolicking kids, "Arvid" and "Luvisa."

Brandy laughed and was surprised at how it felt. "I suppose they're all Swedish."

Ansel's big eyes watered. "You're a picture when you smile. Even in that get-up. It's a JOY to see you mending." On the word "joy" he raised his arms to heaven. There was something almost religious about him.

"Mr. St. John, you said I was sent to Stina Mark with the kittens. Do you think God sent me?"

"God's for the young and the rich. Us old folks and animals got to look out for ourselves."

Tall whitened tree trunks lined one side of the goat yard, barren branches pointing like dead fingers toward the blue depth of morning sky. "What happened to them?"

"Used to be an irrigation ditch run through here. Dried up because of the town and the drought. Trees couldn't take it. God don't care about them neither."

"The town is very close." Boulder sprawled out along the base of the mountains to envelop the prairie until it reached dwellings and roads to the bottom of the long rolling hill on which they stood. "Do you truly believe you can hide me from the police?"

"They don't bother me none. It's the Chamber of Commerce that's got me worried. We're still county here, but this used to be peaceful farmland as far as you could see."

"Before that, prairie with scattered cattle grazing on it." Brandy heard the wistful note in Shay's voice.

"And before that, the land of the Arapahoe and the buffalo." He drew out the o's until she saw buffalo instead of goats. Ansel St. John was almost as magical as the wedding mirror and didn't even use pictures.

"Come along. Haven't met everybody yet." He drew her on to a barn, unpainted and leaning away from the west wind. Where there should have been cows and horses, chickens ran wild, and more cats. At the far end, more goats.

"That's Hooligan and his wife Stina Mark. Watch out for Hooligan. He's a mean one. Stina can handle him though. Swedes make awful good wives, you know."

"But Stina Mark is the black cat with the--"

"THIS is Stina Mark." His tone broached no argument and Brandy felt uneasy about him for the first time since she'd begun to recover.

The goat had soft brown fur with eyes to match and streaks of white along her flanks. She butted Ansel's hand gently, her stubby tail in constant brisk motion.

Ansel led Brandy around the front of the house, where derelict automobiles sat on tireless hubs among the weeds. A dog was chained in front of the wide glass door that slid half back on itself to provide entrance to the kitchen.

"Happy, I want you to meet our visitor."

Brandy had seen the dog through the door already and was confused as to his naming also. When she asked her host he merely replied, "Because he's happy."

"He doesn't look it." The animal's lips curled in a snarl. He was medium-sized and fairly stout.

"That's cause you're lookin' at the wrong end. See his tail?"

Happy's tail did indeed wag but the look in his eyes was cold and unloving. He sniffed her hand, then her skirt. Brandy shivered, remembering the silent dog at her side when she'd fled through the alleyways and streets of Boulder.

As she turned to go into the house, Happy growled low in his throat.

Rachael Garrett lay on the bed in which her Grandmother Sophie had given birth to her mother, where her Grandfather McCabe had died. Where she and Jerry conceived and later snuggled with the baby, Shay, sharing their delight at the good fortune that had finally befallen them.

Now she watched her husband dress. He sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her, one shoe on, holding the other, probably lost in the same remembering as she, unable to share it with her as once he would have.

He cleared his throat, put on his shoe and stared at the wall.

Another day. More false leads or nothing at all. Rachael no longer cared about the book she was writing. She spent more time listening for the phone than getting on with her work. Hoping it would be Shay come to her senses. Or at least word that she was alive and well. Afraid that it might be news of finding her body. She could be in another state by now, dead or alive, anywhere.

Jerry'd hired a detective, broadcast a reward for news of their daughter. People called, some trying to help, others just being cruel.

And again, as in every major aspect of Rachael's life, her mother had been instrumental. Even in her last act of dying. The trouble with Shay began the night Brandy Maddon died. Brandy's control of Rachael's life was complete to the end.

"Remember"--Jerry said his first word of the day "when we took a picnic up to Fourth of July Campground that time and Shay fell into the stream? She kept yelling, 'Daddy, Daddy.'"

"Even after you'd pulled her out and were holding her. And that fisherman came along and decided you were running off with somebody else's kid."

Jerry turned, looked into Rachael's eyes with feeling. "She couldn't have been more than five." He blinked away the feeling. "Maybe somebody really has run off with her now."

"Let's at least have breakfast together. I'll fix it quick."

"No. I'll get something downtown." The familiar sound of withdrawal. He stood and walked to the door.

"Wait, I'll get dressed and we'll both go out for breakfast."

"Rachael, I don't need--"

"Well, maybe I do. Dammit, Shay isn't the only one who needs you, you know. She was mine too. Whether you like it or not, we do share a common grief."

"Don't say 'was'!" Weight had mellowed the lonely eyes. The longer hair style, salted with gray, softened the bone lines of his face. "You've got your historic house and your career. You never needed me except as another piece of furniture to fill out--"

"Jerry, you still love me. I know that."

But her husband was gone. Rachael waited to hear the front door slam before she rolled over to cry. She decided to try again that evening after he'd had his scotch.

But Jerry Garrett didn't come home that night. Rachael knew he was up at the cabin in Nederland and probably not alone. When he hadn't returned by the next morning, she called the police and asked them to relay any messages about Shay to Marek Weir.

Then Rachael packed a bag and walked out of the Gingerbread House.

Marek Weir doubled his jogging distance that morning, looking for a platinum-blond head he knew he wouldn't see. The sting of sweat seeped into his eyes by the time he reached the door of the apartment. He fought the pain of ragged breathing and over pumping heart as he stripped out of his sweat suit and stepped into the shower.

Marek listened without hope to the morning news during his bachelor breakfast. Shay's mother would have called him about any development, even if Jerry Garrett did hate his guts.

The extra mug of coffee and the double exercise couldn't dispel the listlessness left by a night of nightmare and yearning on the controlled warmth of the king-size water bed that'd once lulled away disturbing thoughts.