The Unloved (30 page)

Jeff, knowing from his father’s tone that he’d better not argue, nodded. “I guess,” he agreed, sliding off his chair, but his voice carried no conviction.

Kevin, thankful for even that small a concession, gathered his papers together and started out of the kitchen. “I’ll be in the library for a while,” he told Julie. “If you need help with anything, just holler.”

“We’ll be okay,” Julie replied. When her father was gone, she tossed Jeff the dishrag. “Wipe the table, okay?”

Jeff shrugged, but said nothing, and began carefully wiping off the scarred top of the kitchen table. Without looking up, he spoke again.

“Know what I bet?” he asked, his voice low, so his father wouldn’t hear him.

“What?” Julie asked, knowing that no matter what she said, Jeff was going to tell her anyway.

“I bet Aunt Marguerite killed Ruby,” Jeff went on. Now he looked up, his eyes wary as he glanced at the kitchen door. “I bet that after we went to the movie last night they had a big fight, and Aunt Marguerite killed Ruby and buried her out on the island somewhere.”

“Jeff!” Julie exclaimed. But before she could say anything else, Marguerite spoke, her voice cold.

“That’s a disgusting thing to say, Jeffrey.”

Jeff whirled. To his horror, his aunt was standing just inside the kitchen door, staring down at him, her eyes blazing angrily. He gasped and took a step back.

“If I ever hear you say such a thing again, Jeffrey, I shall have no choice but to—”

But Jeff was already gone, slamming out the back door and streaking down the hill toward the grove of pines. Marguerite, her hand suddenly going to her hip, limped to the door. “Come back!” she shouted. “You come back here!”

“He didn’t mean it, Aunt Marguerite,” Julie pleaded. “Really he didn’t. He’s just a little boy, and he’s always making up stories like that. But he didn’t mean it.”

Marguerite, her back stiff, said nothing for a moment, but then she turned and smiled at Julie. “Perhaps he didn’t,” she agreed. “But I’m afraid I’ve never quite understood small boys.” She paused then, and when she spoke again, her voice had taken on a strangely distant tone. “Perhaps Mother was right,” she said, her brows knitting thoughtfully. “She always said little boys were more trouble than they’re worth. And I’m not sure she was wrong. No,” she finished, “I’m not sure she was wrong at all.”

“Well, I know how we can find out,” Toby Martin told Jeff. They were scuffing along the beach, and Jeff had just finished repeating to Toby what he’d already told his father and sister—that he didn’t believe his aunt’s story about where Ruby was. “Let’s go see Emmaline. She’ll know where Ruby is.”

Jeff squinted in the bright sunlight. “Who’s Emmaline?”

“Ruby’s sister,” Toby replied, his eyes rolling as if he couldn’t imagine anyone in Devereaux not knowing Emmaline Carr’s identity. “She lives out past Wither’s Pond. Come on.”

They left the beach and made their way through the maze of paths that led across the island, then came to the causeway. Jeff paused for a moment, frowning uncertainly. “Maybe I better tell my dad where I’m going.”

Toby looked at him scornfully. “You’re not going anywhere. Just into town. Who cares?”

Jeff considered it for a moment, then shrugged. They wouldn’t be gone very long anyway.

At the mainland end of the causeway Toby turned left. They walked for a while along the main street of Devereaux, then Toby turned right on Atlanta Avenue and started inland. The village seemed to peter out after only a couple of blocks, giving way to an area of small farms, each of them no more than a few acres surrounding a sagging farmhouse, many of which looked abandoned. Finally Toby turned off the road entirely, following a footpath that led through a thicket of mossy pines, and past a stagnant pond covered with a thick layer of green slime. Jeff stared at it for a moment, but when
a large snake suddenly dropped out of a tree to disappear below the water’s surface, he ran to catch up with Toby. Then, in a small clearing carved out of the thicket, they came to a house.

Except as far as Jeff could see, it wasn’t really a house at all. It was no more than a shack, really, built out of weathered boards, its floor supported a few feet above the ground by a crumbling foundation. It had a rusting tin roof, and there were torn screens over the glassless windows. The door stood open, but no light emerged from within.

Jeff stared at the sagging cabin in awe. “You mean someone really lives here?” he asked.

Toby shrugged. “Lots of people live in places like this.” He took a step forward and shouted toward the cabin, “Emmaline? You home?”

There was a long silence, and Jeff glanced nervously around the little clearing. The image of the snake was still vivid in his mind, and he could almost feel one of the serpents slithering out of the trees, drawing closer to him. “M-Maybe we better go back,” he whispered. “I don’t like it here.”

But Toby shook his head vehemently. “We came to talk to Emmaline, and we’re gonna talk to her,” he insisted, then his voice rose to a shout. “Hey, Emmaline! Come on out!”

There was another silence, then Jeff heard the sound of feet shuffling across the floor. A moment later a gnarled old woman dressed in a thin cotton dress that looked as if it might once have been blue, but was now washed and bleached to a grayish-white, appeared at the door. A tattered apron was tied around her waist, and a bandana around her hair. Her feet, bare of any socks or stockings, were shoved into a pair of frayed mules. Jeff couldn’t tell exactly how old she might be, but her face was deeply lined, and when she peered out at him, her eyes narrowed to suspicious slits.

“Who’s that?” she demanded, her voice rasping and rattling in her throat. “Who’s yellin’ at me?”

Even Toby drew back, but then he tried to make himself look braver than he felt. “It’s me. Toby Martin.”

The old woman’s lips tightened and she raised her arm to shake a trembling finger at Toby. “Don’t you get in no
mischief out here,” she warned. “I may be old, but I ain’t dead yet!” Then her eyes shifted to Jeff. “Who be you? Don’t believe I recognize you.”

“J-Jeff,” Jeff stammered. “Jeff Devereaux.”

Emmaline’s brows rose slightly. “Well, ain’t that somethin’. A Devereaux comin’ all the way out here just to visit old Emmaline.” She fell silent for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice sounded almost angry. “What you be wantin’?”

“W-We’re looking for Ruby,” Jeff quavered, fighting his urge to turn around and run away from the crumbling shanty and its strange occupant.

“How come you lookin’ here? She don’t live here.”

Jeff felt a lump rise in his throat. “Aunt Marguerite said—” he began, but the old woman cut him off.

“Who cares what she says?” Emmaline demanded. “She’s just plain crazy, and that’s the truth, no matter what folks around here think!”

The two boys exchanged a nervous glance. “But she says Ruby went to see her family,” Jeff finally managed to say.

Emmaline’s black eyes glittered. “Ruby ain’t got no family ‘cept me, and she’s not been here for months and months.” She raised her hand again and beckoned the two boys forward. “You might as well come inside,” she muttered. “If you ain’t come to throw rocks, least I can do is give you some tea or somethin’.”

“W-We better not,” Toby breathed, the last of his air of nonchalance disappearing as he glanced nervously at the darkness within the little cabin.

“Scared?” Emmaline asked, her lips spreading into a twisted grimace of a smile which exposed dark gaps between the few teeth that still remained in her gums.

“N-No,” Toby lied.

“Then come in,” Emmaline demanded. “You want to know all about Miss Marguerite Devereaux, you got to come inside. I ain’t standin’ out here all day.”

She turned away and disappeared back into the shack, leaving Toby and Jeff to stare uncertainly at each other.

“What should we do?” Jeff finally asked. “Will she hurt us?”

“I—I don’t know,” Toby replied. “Nobody hardly ever even talks to her anymore.” A look of sudden determination came into his eyes. “If we run away now, we’ll never find out where Ruby went,” he decided. “Come on.”

Almost against his will, Jeff let himself be led inside the cabin. There was an old easy chair—its upholstery torn and its stuffing bursting out—and a scarred wooden table with three chairs. But the cabin appeared to have been swept out that morning, and as Jeff gingerly perched himself on one of the chairs at the table, he could see a bed, neatly covered with a patchwork quilt, in the other room. “All’s I got is some tea,” Emmaline muttered, putting a steaming cup in front of Jeff and sitting down opposite him, her eyes squinting as she examined him in the shadowy light. “So you’re Jeff,” she said, easing herself into the chair opposite the boy. “Well, I guess Ruby wasn’t too far wrong about you. Bright as a new penny, is what she said, and that’s about what you look. ‘Course, I don’t rightly—”

“I thought you said you hadn’t seen Ruby,” Jeff asked.

“Didn’t say that. All’s I said was she warn’t here. Ain’t seen her for a couple of weeks now.”

“Then where would she have gone?” Jeff piped.

Emmaline pursed her lips and her scowl deepened. “Well, now, I don’t rightly know. Fact is, I ain’t seen her at all for a week.”

Jeff turned to Toby, his eyes shining triumphantly. “See? I told you Aunt Marguerite was lying! I bet she
did
kill Ruby!” Then he clapped his hands over his mouth and looked fearfully up at Emmaline. But to his surprise, Emmaline didn’t look angry. Instead, she was nodding almost thoughtfully.

“I knew somethin’ like this would happen,” she said, half to herself. “I told her and told her to watch out for that sweet-actin’ Miss Marguerite, but she wouldn’t listen. Said Miss Marguerite was all better now and wouldn’t hurt nobody!”

Jeff’s eyes widened. “B-Better?” he asked. “What was wrong with her?”

Emmaline’s lips narrowed into a thin, hard line. “Near’s I can tell from what Ruby told me, your auntie was crazy as a
bedbug, a long time ago. It was that accident that did it. If it was an accident.”

Now Toby, too, was listening in fascination to the old woman. “You mean when she broke her hip?” he asked.

“That warn’t the half of it,” Emmaline observed. “Fact is, she was in a family way when she fell down them stairs, and she lost the baby. And that’s what drove her crazy—t’warn’t her hip at all!”

“C-Crazy?” Jeff whispered, all of his own suspicions about his aunt suddenly congealing into a tight knot of fear. What if everything he’d said was actually true?

“Don’t suppose nobody told you that,” Emmaline continued darkly. “Miss Helena sure never told anyone, and neither did Ruby, ’cept for me. Said no one else would believe her, and I ’spect she was right, the way things was back then. Anyway, Ruby told me a long time ago what happened. They kept your auntie locked up out there.”

“Aunt Marguerite?” Jeff breathed. “Wh-Where?”

“Down in the cellar. Miss Helena wouldn’t even take her to the hospital after she fell down the stairs. Told Ruby she’d let Miss Marguerite die before she let anyone find out she was pregnant. So they just put her to bed, but then she lost the baby and just went crazy. That’s when they locked her up down in the basement. There’s a little tiny room down there—way at the back—that you can’t hardly see. And that’s where they kept her till she calmed down.” Her voice took on a distant tone then, and her eyes clouded as if she were looking into the past. “Miss Marguerite was a little spitfire before that,” she said. “Never knew a girl with so much spirit. Always in one kind of a scrape or another. But then afterwards—” She fell silent, then poured herself another cup of strong tea from the dented pot at her elbow. “Well, after that she just turned real sweet. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and everybody started thinkin’ she was some kind of saint.” She shook her head, her eyes narrowing. “But not me. I always told Ruby that people don’t get over somethin’ like what happened to her—it just festers inside ‘em, and finally they come apart. And you mark my words,” she finished, her eyes suddenly fixing on Jeff. “Your auntie’s
gonna come apart some day, and if somethin’ happened to Ruby, you can bet she done it.”

Ten minutes later Jeff and Toby left Emmaline’s tiny shack in the woods and started back toward the village. “Did you believe her?” Jeff asked when they were well away from the little clearing.

Toby shrugged. “I don’t know. Lots of folks think she’s kind of nuts. She sure looks like she is.”

Jeff nodded, but his brows knit into a deep frown. “I still gotta tell my dad,” he said as they came to the outskirts of Devereaux. “But I bet he won’t believe me. Will you come with me?”

Toby shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “I’m not ever goin’ out there again.”

Jeff gasped. “You think Emmaline’s right, don’t you?” he demanded. Toby said nothing, scuffing his feet unhappily in the dirt. “But what am I going to do?” Jeff wailed. “If you won’t even come with me—” Abruptly he fell silent as he saw his aunt’s battered Chevrolet parked in front of the general store. “I bet Dad’s in there,” he yelled, breaking into a run. “Come on! Let’s find him.”