The Unloved (31 page)

But Kevin wasn’t in the store. Instead they found out he’d gone upstairs to Sam Waterman’s office. When they went up to the second floor, though, the lawyer’s secretary wouldn’t let them into her employer’s office.

“Whatever you need to tell him can wait,” she declared. “I’m sure it can’t be a matter of life and death, now can it?”

Jeff tried to tell her that that was exactly what it was, but she only smiled tolerantly and pointed to a chair.

“If you want to wait, you can sit there,” she said, turning back to her typewriter. “But I won’t tolerate any fidgeting, or any noise.”

The two boys settled down to wait, and the minutes dragged by, each of them longer than the one before.

Kerry Sanders pulled his car up in front of Sea Oaks and stared nervously at the old mansion. Maybe he should have
called before he came out, but he was almost sure that if Marguerite Devereaux answered the phone, she wouldn’t let him talk to Julie at all. So instead, he’d just gotten into his car and crossed the causeway, deciding that even if Marguerite wouldn’t let him see Julie, at least he might be able to find out how she was. To his surprise, it was Julie herself who answered the door when he rang the bell a few seconds later.

“Hi,” she said, her eyes sparkling happily as she recognized Kerry on the veranda.

“Hey, you okay?” Kerry asked, his voice reflecting his concern.

Julie nodded, and held the door wide. “I’m fine. Come on in.” But as Kerry stepped into the entry hall, he saw Marguerite at the foot of the stairs, staring at him with cool disapproval.

“I—I thought maybe I could take you to the beach, or something,” Kerry stammered, his eyes flicking past Julie toward her aunt.

“The beach …” Julie echoed, her eyes clouding.

“Not the one out here,” Kerry said hastily. “The one on the channel. You’ve never been there, have you? There’s hardly any surf at all, and the beach is kind of narrow, but—”

“I’d like that,” Julie said, her expression clearing. “I’ll go tell Aunt Marguerite—”

Just as she turned, Marguerite spoke, her voice carrying clearly from the foot of the stairs. “If you feel good enough to go to the beach, you should feel good enough to practice your dancing,” she said coolly. “Surely you don’t have time to waste with the likes of him.” Her lips tight, she nodded toward Kerry, but pointedly avoided using his name. Kerry, his face flushing, said nothing.

Julie’s smile faded. “But it’s too hot to dance,” she argued. “And didn’t Dr. Adams say I should take it easy? I’m just going to lie on the beach for a while. I won’t even go in swimming.”

“I just don’t think you ought to,” Marguerite insisted. “After what happened day before yesterday—”

“But that’s over,” Julie replied. “And I didn’t go anywhere yesterday, except to the movie with Daddy. Please? Just for a little while?”

Marguerite looked as though she were about to forbid her to go at all, but then seemed to think better of it. “Well, I don’t suppose I can stop you,” she sighed. “But promise me you won’t go into the water. If anything were to happen to you, I don’t know what I’d do.” Her voice cracked. “I know it sounds silly, but just promise me. Please? I—I think of you just as if you were my own daughter, and I worry about you—”

“I promise,” Julie said, snatching at the opportunity before her aunt had a chance to change her mind.

Kerry waited in his car while Julie ran upstairs to find a towel, but as he sat beneath the blazing sun, he could sense Marguerite’s eyes still on him, almost feel the hostile vibrations emanating from her. At last Julie emerged from the house and jumped into the seat beside him. Kerry started the engine and drove quickly down the driveway to the road. When he spoke, his eyes stayed on the road, avoiding Julie. “Can I ask you something without you getting mad at me?”

Julie glanced over at him, her eyes puzzled. “Sure,” she said. “Why should I get mad at you?”

“I don’t know,” Kerry admitted. “It’s … well, it’s about your aunt.”

“Aunt Marguerite? What about her?”

“It’s the way she’s acting, I guess,” Kerry said, his face reddening slightly. “I mean—well, she always used to like me, but ever since I’ve been hanging around with you, it seems like she hates me. But I haven’t done anything.” Finally he looked over at her. “It just seems like she’s acting kind of weird, that’s all.”

Julie suddenly remembered the incident yesterday on the third floor—the one that at first she’d thought was a dream. “I—I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “Sometimes she seems kind of strange to me, too, but then she seems to be just like anyone else.” Haltingly, she tried to tell Kerry what had happened the day before. “It was really weird,” she finished. “But I was so fogged out from the pills, I’m not even sure what really happened.”

“So what are you going to do?” Kerry asked, slowing the
car as they approached the causeway. “Did you talk to your dad about it?”

“It didn’t seem like any big deal,” Julie replied, shrugging. “But I keep thinking about it, and I keep thinking about the way Aunt Marguerite acts when I’m dancing. She seems to think I should be a big star or something, and I don’t even want to be.”

They saw a figure waving at them, and as Kerry brought the car to a halt, Jenny Mayhew ran up, panting. “I was just going out to your place,” she said, grinning at Julie. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Julie assured her. “But how come you didn’t stop in to see me after class yesterday?”

Jenny’s grin faded and she suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Didn’t Marguerite tell you?” she asked.

“Tell me what?”

Jenny’s eyes dropped. “We didn’t stay for the whole class,” she said. “It was real hot, and Miss Marguerite was making us work real hard, and—well, Tammy-Jo got kind of mad, and we all went home early.” Her eyes met Julie’s once more. “That’s really why I was going out to your place,” she added. “To apologize to Marguerite.”

“Apologize to her?” Kerry asked. “Why? If it was too hot up there, she should have sent you all home anyway.”

Jenny shook her head. “Maybe she should. But she said we shouldn’t worry about the heat, and I guess she was right. If you want to dance, you can’t say you’re not going to do it just because it’s too hot!”

Julie giggled. “But that’s what I just did,” she said. “She wanted me to practice my dancing, but I told her it was too hot and that I was supposed to take it easy.” She glanced at Kerry, then giggled again. “No wonder she was mad at you. Everybody left yesterday, then today you came and took me away from her too.”

“I didn’t take you away from her,” Kerry protested. “For Christ’s sake, just because she’s your aunt doesn’t mean she owns you.”

“Well, sometimes she acts like she owns me,” Julie replied. “She acts like she has my whole life planned out for me—”

“Julie!” Jenny exclaimed. “That’s not true. She’s just proud of you ‘cause you dance better than any of the rest of us.”

“But I don’t care,” Julie said, her voice taking on a note of exasperation. “Dancing’s fun, but it’s not my whole life. Sometimes Aunt Marguerite acts like it should be. In fact, that’s what Kerry and I were talking about just now.”

Jenny frowned. “What are you talking about? You mean you’re going to quit too?”

Julie realized she hadn’t really been thinking about that at all, but now she shrugged nonchalantly. “I might,” she said. “But so what if I do?”

“But she counts on you,” Jenny told her. “She counts on all of us. I don’t really care about dancing either, but I love Miss Marguerite, and just having all of us around makes her so happy.”

“Except for yesterday,” Julie reminded Jennifer. “It doesn’t sound like anyone was having a very good time.”

Jenny’s eyes rolled scornfully. “Well, that was Tammy-Jo’s fault, not Miss Marguerite’s. For Heaven’s sake, they’d just found Mary-Beth the day before. Nobody was feeling very good. Maybe we shouldn’t have been having a lesson at all.” She stepped back from the car, but her eyes remained fixed on Julie. “And if you decide to quit going to her classes, I think you’re mean.”

“I didn’t say I’d decided,” Julie protested. “I just said I was thinking about it, that’s all.”

“Well, let me know when you make up your mind,” Jenny said, her eyes flashing angrily. “It’s starting to look like I’m going to be the only one left, isn’t it?”

Before Julie could say anything else, her friend was gone, walking quickly up the road toward Sea Oaks.

“Maybe we should go back,” Julie fretted as Kerry put the car back in gear. “I don’t want Jenny mad at me.”

But Kerry shook his head. “She’ll be all right. Marguerite’s always been crazy about her.” He let the clutch out and started across the causeway. A few minutes later they were lying side by side on the beach bordering the channel. “Now,
isn’t this better than spending the afternoon up in the ballroom?” Kerry asked.

“Mmm-hmm,” Julie sighed. Then she sat up and stared out at the sea, a shiver running through her as she remembered what had happened two days ago. “But I’m still not going in the water. I don’t know if I’ll ever want to again.”

Marguerite was sitting on the veranda in front of Sea Oaks, staring unseeingly out over the island. She shouldn’t have let Julie go off with Kerry Sanders like that, she thought. She should have kept her home, the way her own mother had tried to keep her home when she was Julie’s age. But she’d been like Julie, headstrong and willful, and look how she’d ended up. Her mother had tried to stop her, tried to save her, but she hadn’t listened—

A figure was coming along the road from the causeway, and Marguerite stood up, taking a step forward. Pain shot out from her hip—the pain that had been throbbing for more than an hour now, ever since Julie had left. But now Julie was coming back.

And she was alone!

She moved across the veranda and down the steps to the lawn as the figure drew nearer.

But it wasn’t Julie. It was Jennifer Mayhew.

Marguerite’s hip sent a sharp, jabbing needle shooting down her right leg, and as she remembered what had happened in the ballroom yesterday, remembered the girls—
her
girls—running away from her, the fingers of her right hand began massaging her aching muscles.

She turned away, starting back up the steps to the veranda.

“Miss Marguerite?” Jenny called. “Miss Marguerite, wait!”

Marguerite stopped, but stood where she was, her back still toward Jenny.

“I—I came to apologize,” Jenny said, and the unhappiness in her voice made Marguerite turn around to look at her. Her eyes were glistening with tears. “I—well, I wanted to tell
you I’m sorry I left with Tammy-Jo and Allison yesterday, and that even if Julie decides to quit, I won’t.”

She ran forward and flung her arms around Marguerite. But Marguerite still didn’t move. “Julie?” she breathed. “What are you talking about?”

Jenny tipped her face up. “I was just talking to her,” she said. “She was on her way to the beach with Kerry Sanders, and she said she was thinking about quitting dancing.”

Marguerite’s eyes glazed over, but when she spoke, her voice was calm. “I’m sure you must be mistaken,” she said. “Julie won’t give up the dance. It means everything to her—everything.”

“But she said—”

Marguerite placed a gentle hand over Jenny’s mouth, cutting off her words. “I’ll talk to her,” she said. “When she comes home, I’ll talk to her, and I’m sure we can straighten out whatever’s wrong.” Then she smiled at Jenny. “But since you’re here, why don’t we go up to the ballroom. I can give you a lesson, just the two of us, to make up for yesterday.”

Jenny blinked in surprise. A lesson now? But she didn’t have her leotard, or her shoes, or anything else she needed. “I—I don’t know,” she said. “I told Mom I’d be home—”

“But you must,” Marguerite insisted. “You’ve come all this way, and I’m all alone. You mustn’t go right now.” Her voice took on a pleading note. “You mustn’t.”

Jenny hesitated, and for the first time noticed something odd in Marguerite’s eyes. Though Marguerite was looking at her, Jenny had the strangest feeling that she wasn’t really seeing her.

“Please,” Marguerite said. “Just for a little while.”

There was a tone of pathos in Marguerite’s voice that twisted Jenny’s heart, and she mutely nodded.

“Let me have your arm,” Marguerite said as she led Jenny into the cavernous stillness of the great house. “I’m afraid my hip’s a bit bad this morning.…”

Her voice trailed off, and her right hand clutched at Jenny’s left arm, her fingers squeezing so hard Jenny winced in pain. They started up the stairs, moving slowly. At the second-floor landing Marguerite stopped to catch her breath.

“M-Maybe you should have used the chair lift,” Jenny suggested, but Marguerite shook her head.

“I’m not dead yet,” she said, her eyes taking on a look of almost grim determination. “And if I can’t walk, then I can’t even hope to dance, can I?” Renewing her grasp on Jenny Mayhew’s arm, she mounted the stairs toward the third floor.

Ten minutes later Jenny knew she’d made a mistake. Ever since they’d come into the ballroom and Marguerite had put a scratchy record on the old phonograph, a growing sense of worry had begun to creep up on her.

Marguerite’s eyes looked even stranger now, and instead of watching Jenny dance and gently correcting her when she made a mistake, Marguerite herself was dancing, moving stiffly around the room in a limping parody of a waltz, her arms held high, her head tipped back with her eyes closed, as if she were being held in the arms of an unseen partner.

Finally, her unease growing into the beginnings of fear, she edged toward the door. Instantly Marguerite stopped dancing, and her eyes, glowing with a strange light, fixed on Jenny. “Don’t go,” she said. “You can’t go now.”

Jenny’s heart began to race and she felt dizzy. “I—I have to,” she whispered. “I didn’t really come for a lesson today. I don’t have my shoes, or my leotard, or—”

“But it doesn’t matter,” Marguerite said. “All that matters is that you dance.” She crossed the room, her right leg moving stiffly, her body twisting oddly with each step. “Dance with me,” she commanded, her hand grasping Jenny’s and pulling her out onto the floor. “Listen to the music, and dance.…”