The Seeker A Novel (R. B. Chesterton) (12 page)

“No. It was just sex. Nothing more. Don’t get all romantic and mushy, because it won’t happen again.” A little late in setting ground rules.

“Didn’t you like it?” He grabbed my coat sleeve and tugged me to a halt. His eyes glittered in the moonlight. “Was I bad? I mean, I’ll get better. You know, with practice.”

“There won’t be practice.” My harsh words caused him to inhale sharply. “I don’t mean to be cruel, but this shouldn’t have happened and it can never happen again, Patrick. I’m too old. You’re too young.” The familiar tang of bad choices filled my nostrils. Remorse had its own peculiar odor.

“Joe’s more experienced. He’s a better lover, isn’t he?” He loosed my coat sleeve and stalked away.

I ran to catch up with him. “No. You’re a terrific lover, Patrick. But I’m nearly a decade older than you. I feel like I’ve taken advantage. It makes me dislike myself. It’s like I’m some kind of sad old predator sniffing around a young man.” I shuddered at the thought.

“That’s not it. Not at all. The truth is, Joe wouldn’t like it, would he?” Patrick chuckled softly. “Maybe I should be worried.”

“Don’t be a fool. Joe couldn’t care less.”

“Then there’s no reason we have to stop. You were wild, Aine. You enjoyed it.”

This had to be settled for once and for all. “I intend to be a teacher, Patrick. If word gets out that I sleep with young men, it could ruin my chances at a good job. Can’t you see that?”

He resumed his pace toward the inn. “That’s hogwash. It’s Joe. You don’t want him to know. He’ll be angry. Doesn’t matter that he’s ignored you for days. He thinks he has a claim on you.”

Patrick was like a lot of men I’d known—figuring that every other dog wanted the bone he chewed. Male delusion. “Joe doesn’t pretend he’s staking out a claim. He isn’t interested. What makes you think he is?”

“He’s had a tough time getting a date since Mischa disappeared. Never made any sense to me why he came back here.”

I put a hand on his arm and stopped him in the cold, still night. “Who is Mischa?” Karla had hurled the name at me as if it were a disease. I’d asked Joe, but in freeing me from the police station, he’d never answered my question.

Concern drew his eyebrows together. “Shit. I thought you knew.” He shifted from foot to foot. “He didn’t tell you?”

I tightened my grip on his arm because I knew he was about to bolt. “Who is Mischa?” I repeated, squeezing a little on his wrist.

“Ask Dorothea.” He tugged free of me.

“Patrick, please.” My words held him. “Please. Just tell me.” I’d known something wasn’t right.

The snow had almost ceased, but a few flakes dusted Patrick’s blond hair. We stood outside the inn, haloed in light coming from the dining room windows.

“Joe was an elementary teacher, before he became a ranger. About ten years ago one of his students disappeared, a young girl about nine or ten. Mischa Lobrano. She was a really pretty kid, and she lived in the same neighborhood as Joe. She often ended up at Joe’s house after school, and he played kickball and stuff with the neighborhood brats. One day, Mischa was gone. She made it home after school and then went out to do a science project. Her footsteps led into the woods at Walden Pond and then just stopped. She was never seen again. Like the goblins got her.”

My gut twisted in a hard knot. I knew exactly where this story would lead. Accusations of a sexual predator. Ruination of a teaching career. A reputation that makes a man a neighborhood pariah.

“Was anyone ever arrested?”

He shook his head. “They searched for weeks. With tracking dogs and helicopters and volunteer groups. It was October, and the weather was good. Folks held out hope for over a month that she might be alive.”

“What happened to her?”

“No one knows.” He spoke on a sigh. “Trouble is, folks suspected Joe. A lot of folks, actually. Said he was too close with the children. Mischa talked about him all the time at home and with her friends. She had a crush on him the way young girls can get with a teacher.”

I finished the story for him. “They suspected Joe molested her and then killed her to keep her quiet.”

Patrick didn’t deny it. “Dorothea never believed it. She said Joe liked children and wasn’t it a crying shame that a man who loved his job could be tainted with foolish rumors. There was no proof. None at all. Joe was never charged with anything.”

“Yet he gave up teaching.”

“He wasn’t fired. He quit. He got hired on as a ranger and left here. Only came back last spring when his mother was dying.”

I felt exhausted, barely able to stand upright. “Thanks, Patrick.” I started toward the inn at a slow shuffle. I needed time to think, to process this new picture of Joe. Pedophile and child murderer didn’t fit the Joe I knew, but he should have told me. I would have slept with him anyway, but
he
should have given me the option of saying no. Taint was like a virus. It passed from one to the next.

Then again, I hadn’t bothered to tell him about my family, about the oxy selling, the guns and shootings, the brutality for the pleasure of hurting others.

Patrick’s hand pressed into the small of my back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to start anything.”

“I’m glad you told me. I have a right to know who I slept with.”

“I gotta run, Aine. I’m going to slip in the back door to the kitchen and get busy. Maybe Dorothea won’t notice I’m hours late.”

“Don’t count on it.” My remark followed his disappearing back as he darkness swallowed him.

Standing alone in the snowy dark, I tried to feel something about Joe and the little girl who’d disappeared. Mischa. Numbness deadened all reaction. I’d slept with a man many believed to be a child abuser, a child killer. And I felt nothing at all.

That wouldn’t last long. Fury would arrive quickly enough. Dorothea could have warned me. Joe should have told me. Once again, I’d been played for a patsy.

Inside the inn, Dorothea served coffee to the Wescotts at a window table. They laughed and cut up, unaware that I watched from the darkness. Patrick hustled to bus several empty tables. I almost turned back to the cabin, but I knew I couldn’t last the night without food. I had to go in.

Dorothea saw me before I could slip into an empty seat. She grabbed a glass of water and came my way. “Aine, are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked.

She frowned at my cool tone. “Has something happened?”

“You should have warned me about Joe. About the child.”

The smile slid down her face. “I see. I maybe should have told you, but Joe deserves to be judged on his own merits, not by gossip. He was never charged with anything. He didn’t harm the child. He wouldn’t.”

Several tables of diners had stopped eating and were looking our way. I hated being the center of a scene. I’d already had a fight on a public street and been taken to the police station because of Joe. Now I was making a spectacle. “Drop it.”

Dorothea lowered her tone. “I did what I thought was right, Aine. I’m sorry if you feel hurt by it. Folks around here are quick to judge and slow to forgive, even if they’re wrong. Joe has suffered at the hands of gossips. He likes you and it was a chance for him to date a woman without the wall oflies.”

“You should have told me and let me make up my mind.
He
should have told me.”

“Perhaps. But how hard would it be to tell a romantic interest you were once accused of a horrible act, one you didn’t do?”

I saw her point, but it didn’t make me feel less betrayed. “You put his interests above me.”

“I’m sorry you see it that way.” She edged toward a table where a man held up his hand to get her attention. “I’ll bring you some food. We’ll talk when the rush is over.”

Patrick brought me a glass of dry red wine, chili, crusty bread, and a salad. He served me with a wink and a wicked grin. I ate, focused on my food. When I was finished, I slipped out the door and headed to the cabin. I didn’t want another confrontation with Dorothea, and I couldn’t look at Patrick without a rush of guilt and shame. He was a young man. Too young.

The snow had only partially covered my and Patrick’s footprints. No new ones were evident, yet when I heard the crackle of a stick deep in the trees, I almost panicked and ran back to the inn. Perhaps this was the Cahill Curse for me, an overactive imagination that would push me to foolish conduct.

Reaching the cabin, I climbed the steps to the porch. Before I could put the key in the lock, the door inched open.

I had locked it. I had taken great care to do so. Now it was open, and Patrick had not been here.

But someone had.

Sitting in the middle of the floor was a Victorian doll. She wore a red-and-white-striped dress, and her dark brown curls cascaded onto her shoulders beneath a pert hat. Her red lips curved in a smile. Where there should have been two bright eyes that shut whenever she was laid down, two empty sockets glared at me.

17

In moments of blind panic, the brain can’t form a single thought. It’s a holdover from prehistoric times. Animals are labeled fight or flight in their response to danger. Humans vacillate between both reactions. Karla attacked, I fought. Now, confronted with a hellish doll that appeared out of nowhere, I fled.

My feet slipped on a thin layer of ice beneath the snow as I sought traction on the porch. My boots scrabbled on the wood, but I couldn’t find a purchase. Momentum hurled me down the steps headlong into the night. I stumbled several yards before I fell. When I looked back toward the cabin, in the open doorway I could see the silhouette of the doll. She stared out at me with her eyeless sockets. I cried out and tried to get on my feet.

The blow caught me across the back, sending me sprawling in the snow. “You thought you had me, didn’t you, bitch?” Karla’s furious question came before another hard blow crashed on my shoulders.

I rolled toward her legs and grabbed her ankle. With all of my strength I bit into her calf. She tried to kick free, but I chomped harder, the iron taste of her blood filling my mouth as I tore through her legging.

“Let go! Let go!” She hopped on one leg, screaming and swinging the hockey stick she’d whacked me with.

I clamped down until she squealed in anguish and fell over. She caught me in the mouth with her boot, bursting my lip. I punched her in the gut as hard as I could, hampered by her heavy coat but connecting next with her jaw. That took the fight out of her and I released her and clambered to my feet. My back and shoulder felt like I’d been hit by a train. Blood gushed from my lip. I couldn’t see anything clearly in the darkness, but I heard her sobbing and moaning.

“You’re insane,” I said, spitting blood into the snow. “I’m calling the cops.” I marched toward the inn. I had a cell phone but there was no reception until I got to the main road.

Headlights swung down the driveway and came toward me. I stopped, highlighted in the beams. I waved my arms, signaling the driver to halt. When the vehicle drew closer, I saw it was a truck. Joe’s truck. He left the engine running and stepped out.

“Aine, what’s wrong? What happened to you? You’re bleeding!”

“Karla attacked me. She’s back there.”

“Are you hurt?” Joe’s hands captured my cheeks and turned me into the beam of his headlights. “Holy shit. Your face—”

“I know.” I shook, like I had neurological damage. “She’s insane and dangerous.”

“Go to the inn and call Chief McKinney. I’ll see about Karla.” He moved past me. In a moment, the darkness absorbed him. I didn’t move. Now that Joe had arrived, I had no desire to call the police. They’d force me to go to the station and fill out reports and complaints and explain how I’d managed to bite Karla’s calf and hopefully break a few ribs. Even though it was self-defense, it would still paint me as a vicious savage, my second episode of physical assault.

I heard Joe calling Karla’s name and I walked toward his voice. In a moment, he stepped back into the light cast by his vehicle’s high beams.

“She’s gone.”

I almost didn’t believe him. “Where?”

He shook his head. “I put her on a bus to Nebraska last night. I sat with her and made sure she got on. I watched the bus leave, and I saw her in the window. How the hell did she get back here? And why?”

“She put a doll in my cabin. I was afraid and tried to run to the inn, and she attacked me with a hockey stick.” I panted as I talked. “She tried to kill me.”

Joe eased me to the passenger side of the truck. In a moment he was turning the vehicle around.

“Where are we going?”

“To the hospital. There’s blood all over your face and down your coat. You might be seriously hurt.”

“I’m okay. My lip is just busted.” It felt huge, and I started to laugh. I tried to smother the giggles, but I couldn’t stop.

“Aine, you’re hysterical.”

“I am.” I doubled over with laughter. “I am.”

Joe stopped the truck. “Get ahold of yourself.”

I tried, but the laughter seemed to bubble from a deep pressure. Tears ran down my cheeks and I couldn’t catch my breath. The whole time my body shook with mirth.

Joe pulled me across the seat and into his arms. He cocooned me with his warmth. I laughed until I realized I was crying. While I sobbed against his chest, he stroked my hair.

“It’s snowing again,” he said once I’d calmed a little.

I lifted my head to look out the window. Fat, fluffy flakes tickled the windshield.

“If it keeps up like this, they’ll cancel school tomorrow.”

He chattered on about the inconsequential in an attempt to help me regain my equilibrium. My anger about the missing child, Mischa, evaporated. My remorse for sleeping with Patrick was still there but I buried it deep. I let Joe comfort me.

When I was twelve, I’d traveled the half-mile from Granny’s house to the little store that serviced our community. My mission was a package of Baker’s coconut to make a cake. Granny’s birthday was the next day, and coconut was her favorite. I’d saved pennies and nickels to buy the ingredients, and all I lacked was the lacey white coconut, so sweet and moist.

I made my purchase and was headed home when my cousin, Amon Cahill, met me on the road. Amon had red hair and pink-rimmed eyes, and it was common knowledge that his mother had a real fondness for family members. Granny never allowed me to go swimming at the creek with Amon or any of his relatives. She just said they had a different way of living life and it was best for me to stay clear of them.