The Unloved (36 page)

“But what about the recital tomorrow?” Alicia had asked.

“Recital? Why, I don’t know. Just a moment.” There had been a long silence, and then Paul, had come back on the line. “Tammy-Jo doesn’t know anything about a recital, and she says if there is one, she isn’t going.”

“I see,” Alicia had breathed, then called up Diana Carter. But Allison’s mother had not heard anything about a recital. Nor had she seen Jenny.

Now, with no one left on her list, she reluctantly dialed the Fletchers’ number, and a moment later recognized Muriel Fletcher’s voice, sounding strained, coming over the line.

“You already know what I think,” Muriel told her, barely able to keep her voice under control. “And don’t tell me what Will Hempstead thinks, because I already know. But he’s in love with Marguerite, and always has been.”

“I know,” Alicia agreed. “But it just seems so unbelievable. To think that Marguerite might have—” She fell silent then, but Mrs. Fletcher finished her thought.

“That Marguerite might have killed her?” she asked, her voice trembling. “That’s what I thought at first. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder. Mary-Beth was impetuous, but she wasn’t stupid. If it hadn’t been safe to cross the
causeway, she wouldn’t have tried. She’d have stayed on the island.”

“But why?” Alicia pressed. “Marguerite loved Mary-Beth. She loves all the girls—”

“Except that she’s changed,” Muriel said. “Will Hempstead won’t believe me, but it’s true. Mary-Beth was going to quit going to Marguerite’s classes, you know. She didn’t even wanted to go that day, but the rest of the girls talked her into it. And she and Marguerite had a fight, you know. She’d said she was quitting, and Marguerite tried to talk her out of it.”

Alicia felt a knot of fear forming in her stomach. Only that morning, before she’d left to go out to the island, Jennifer had talked about how the other girls were feeling.

“I don’t think I’d go back either, except it would hurt Miss Marguerite so much,” Alicia recalled her daughter saying. “But Tammy-Jo’s right. It
isn’t
as much fun as it used to be, and Miss Marguerite
is
more interested in Julie than she is in the rest of us.”

“Well, of course she is,” Alicia had observed. “Julie’s her niece, and she dances better than the rest of you.”

But now, remembering that conversation, an unbidden thought crept into the back of her mind.

What if Jennifer had changed her mind and told Marguerite she’d decided to quit the class?

No! She forced the thought away.

“If you ask me,” she heard Muriel Fletcher saying, “there’s been something strange about Marguerite ever since her mother died.”

“But she’s dealt with it so well,” Alicia replied.

“Which is exactly what I mean,” Muriel went on. “For Heaven’s sake, Alicia, Marguerite lived with that miserable woman her whole life, and for the last twenty years Helena treated Marguerite like dirt. You’d have thought she’d have been tickled pink when Helena died, even if she was her mother. But what did she do? First she acted as if nothing had happened at all, and then I heard she started talking about how much she missed Helena and what a wonderful mother she’d been!”

“But that’s not so strange,” Alicia pleaded, her voice taking on a desperate note. “Lots of people do that.”

“Well, perhaps they do,” Muriel said, her voice crisp. “But all I know is that the more I think about it, the more certain I am that there is something very, very wrong with Marguerite Devereaux. And in my heart I’m absolutely certain she’s responsible for Mary-Beth’s death.”

Suddenly there was a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder, and then, as the lights in the house flickered, the phone went dead in Alicia Mayhew’s hand.

“Damn!” she swore out loud. “Damn, damn, damn!”

She rattled the hook on the phone for a moment, but already knew from long experience that the phone would be dead for the rest of the night. Indeed, they’d be lucky if the lights didn’t go out too. Finally, frustrated, she dropped the receiver back on the hook and went to the window to stare out into the raging storm.

The wind still seemed to be growing stronger, and the rain was coming down in torrents. If Jennifer was out there somewhere …

Then her eyes filled with tears as she realized that deep down inside, she didn’t truly believe that Jennifer was anywhere out in the storm.

Deep in her soul she was certain that Jennifer had, indeed, gone to Sea Oaks that morning.

And for some reason Alicia could not yet understand, she’d never left.

Alicia numbly dropped onto the sofa in her tiny living room and prepared herself to wait for whatever news might eventually come. And yet, even as she began her vigil, she already knew how it was going to end.

She was going to be told that her daughter—her beloved Jennifer—was dead.

“Noooo!”

She screamed the word out loud, a wail of despairing anguish. But even had the storm not been raging outside, there would still have been no one to hear her, for since Jennifer’s father had died ten years earlier, Jennifer had been all Alicia had in the world.

After tonight she would have nothing.

Unless …

Unless she was wrong.

She had to be wrong, she told herself. She had to hold onto hope, had to cling to whatever scrap of faith she could muster that Jennifer might still be alive.

She had to weather the storm.

Jeff clutched the quilt around him, but even the warmth of its down filling couldn’t abate the chill that had seized his body. He wasn’t certain how long he’d been huddled on the bed, how long it had been since Julie had come in and tried to tell him he shouldn’t worry, that everything was going to be all right. But it seemed like forever, and the candle flickering in its holder on his bed table had burned halfway down. When he’d first fled to his room from the dinner table, he’d been certain that his aunt would come for him right away. He’d cowered in his room, his ear pressed to the door, listening for her footsteps on the stairs. But after a while, when he’d heard nothing, he finally retreated to the bed, his entire body trembling with an icy fear.

She was going to kill him.

He was certain of it now. She didn’t want him here, and she was going to send him away.

But why? He hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t done anything at all!

A bolt of lightning split the sky, and for a second the room was filled with brilliant white light. Then the clap of thunder crashed into the house as the light faded away, and Jeff whimpered softly, huddling deeper into the quilt. The rain, which had been beating steadily against the windows—driven almost horizontally by the wind—grew even heavier for a moment, then abruptly stopped. The silence left by its cessation had a strange hollowness to it, made all the more eerie by the wailing of the wind, crying through the trees like the lost souls of the damned.

And then, above the wind, Jeff finally heard the sound he’d been waiting for.

Uneven footsteps moving up the stairs.

Pulling the quilt tight around him, he slid off the bed, crept to the door, and pressed his ear against the wood.

He could hear it more clearly now, and as the ominous rhythm grew louder, he could picture his Aunt Marguerite, her right hand on her hip, her left grasping the banister, pulling herself step by step toward the second floor.

Then he heard her come to the landing, and there was a moment of silence even more terrifying than the soft thumping of her crippled leg. But the silence ended, and cold sweat broke out on Jeff’s body as he heard the footsteps approach his door.

She was outside now, he was certain of it. And once more the heavy tread had stopped.

What was she doing?

He gasped—a choking whimper—as the doorknob turned only a few inches from his eyes. Shrinking back, he stared at the key in the lock.

Had he locked the door?

He searched his mind frantically, but couldn’t remember. He’d turned the key too many times, each time trying the door, but then, a moment later, doubting his own memory and checking it again.

What if the last time he’d unlocked the door, and forgotten to check it?

The knob kept turning, and then he heard a soft click as the latch slid free of the strike plate.

The door moved a fraction of an inch, and Jeff pressed his hand to his mouth to keep from screaming out loud.

The door stopped moving, and there was a barely perceptible pause before unseen hands suddenly rattled the door, the sound resounding through the room with the intensity of drums.

“Why is this door locked?” he heard his aunt call, and there was something strange about her voice as it penetrated the thick oak of the door. “I’ve told you I won’t have you locking this door, young man! Open it this instant!”

Jeff shrank back from the door once more, the quilt sliding off his shoulders and dropping to the floor. His eyes flooded with tears, and he backed away across the room.

“Do you hear me?” Marguerite’s voice grated. “Open it!” Once more the door rattled loudly, and Jeff leaped toward the bed, seizing one of the pillows and pressing it against his chest.

The door rattled once more, then there was a moment of silence. Suddenly, miraculously, he heard footsteps again, getting softer as his aunt moved away from his door.

He rushed back to the door and once more pressed his ear to the wood. Where was she going?

The footsteps seemed to be receding down the hall. Was she going to her own room? He counted her steps, his heart racing.

Four.

There was a pause, and he strained to hear the sound of a door. But a moment later the steps began again.

 … seven …

Another pause, another silence.

 … ten …

 … fifteen steps.

A door opening and closing.

Thirty feet.

But that was just since he’d been counting. How many steps had she taken before?

But it didn’t matter, for he knew where she’d gone.

She was in his grandmother’s room. But what was she doing, and how long would she be in there? He stood frozen by the door, not knowing what to do.

Minutes ticked slowly by, and his heartbeat began to ease, but the same thought kept churning through his mind.

She was going to come back for him. He had to get out, had to hide.…

Julie—he had to get to Julie.

With trembling fingers he reached for the key, but just as he touched it, he heard a door far down the hall close with a soft but distinct thump.

And then, once more, the uneven footsteps as Marguerite made her way back down the corridor.

But this time she didn’t pause at his door. Instead the footsteps began to fade away again, and finally he heard her on the stairs once more. And then he knew.

She was going back downstairs to get the keys.

He could see them in his mind’s eye, hanging on the hook by the kitchen door.

One of them would fit this room.

His heart was pounding again, drowning out the sounds of the storm outside. He could no longer hear Marguerite’s footsteps.

Now!

He wrestled with the key, and the bolt slid free. Jerking the door open, he suddenly stopped.

The corridor should have been completely dark. Instead it glowed softly with flickering candlelight.

That was what the pauses had meant. His aunt had stopped to light the candles that always stood on the small tables scattered along the length of the broad corridor.

The mere presence of the soft light eased his fear somewhat. He started toward Julie’s room, then stopped as an idea came to him.

Conquering the last of the panic inside him, he took the key out of the lock, closed his door, then locked it from the outside. Slipping the key into his pocket, he raced down the corridor to Julie’s room and tried her door.

To his relief, it was unlocked, and he pushed through it, then shut it quickly and twisted the key beneath the knob.

“Jeff?” he heard Julie ask. “What are you doing?”

He turned, his face pale. In the dim light of a small oil lamp, Julie was staring at him curiously.

“She—She went back downstairs,” Jeff managed to say, his voice quavering. “She went down to get the keys, and then she’s going to come back. She’s going to come back and kill me!” Sobbing, he hurled himself into his sister’s arms. “What are we going to do?”

“Shh,” Julie soothed, stroking her brother’s hair with gentle fingers. “She’s not going to kill you—”

“She is!” Jeff insisted, his eyes imploring his sister. “She hates me, and she’s going to kill me!”

Julie bit her lip. What could she say to the terrified boy? Even she had been frightened at the dinner table, when her aunt had started talking so strangely. But then Marguerite seemed to calm down, and she’d thought maybe—just maybe—everything was going to be all right after all. “She’s not going to kill you,” she insisted once more, struggling to keep her own voice even. “All we have to do is wait for Dad to come home, and everything will be all right. You’ll see.”

But Jeff shook his head. “He’s not coming home,” he sobbed. “He’s not ever coming home, ‘cause he’s already dead. And she’s going to kill us too!”