Autumn Dreams (10 page)

“Why didn’t he take the Chapel position?” If he had, she would have grown up knowing Dan. Strange thought.

“Money.”

“Money?” Cass looked at him, surprised.

Dan grinned. “Sounds crass, doesn’t it? It isn’t really. Dad had been an engineer for several years before he felt God calling him into the ministry. Those years in seminary depleted his savings, and the Chapel, being very small, couldn’t pay enough to feed a family of four. So it was Indiana.”

And I never met you until a few days ago
.

Silence fell, and Cass became increasingly uncertain. As far back as she could remember, she had felt tied in knots around men. Or at least men she liked. When the brothers brought home friends she didn’t like, she was fine. Conversation was easy, teasing, comfortable. In a business setting, she was fine. She was supposed to be in charge, she knew what was expected of her, and her strong personality showed to advantage when she ran SeaSong
or led the meetings of the Seaside B&B Guild.

It was social situations and interesting men that undid her.

And, without question, it was all the brothers’ fault.

Without meaning to, they had made her so self-conscious that she couldn’t relax and act naturally. She knew that at almost forty she should be beyond such a reaction, but that didn’t change the audiotapes that ran through her mind every time she was around someone she liked.

“I love you, chubby tubby.”

Hal, six years her senior, called that to her every night when she went to bed right up until the time he married little, slim, elegant Ellie, a model for petite clothes. If Cass were within reach as he said the endearment, he’d pinch an inch. Or two or ten.

Cass had been twenty when Hal and Ellie walked the aisle, and she’d been a bridesmaid in a hot pink dress with a flounce at the bosom. Not only did the dress make her resemble a drunk’s traditional pink elephant, but the color ate her fair complexion whole. All Ellie’s little, dark-haired friends looked lovely as they walked the aisle. She’d died a million deaths as she followed with her pasted-on smile. As she reached the front of the church, Hal had glanced at her and winked.

“I love you, chubby tubby.” And he’d smiled sweetly before turning his attention back to Ellie.

Tommy, four years her senior, always teased her about her height. “Come on, Cassandra. Stop that growing. You’re going to be bigger than all the boys. Who’s going to want an Amazon with a big bottom for a girlfriend?”

Who indeed? When she was in junior high and all the boys came to her knees and her baby fat still quivered, she realized how true Tommy’s comment was. She was growing up to be a monster. The fact that he took to calling her
BB
for big bottom didn’t help her self-confidence any. When the other brothers picked up on it, she flinched every time she heard it but knew she couldn’t complain. If they knew how it bothered her, they’d use it twice as much.

At least Bud didn’t say anything derogatory. He just looked at her and shook his head and married another lovely munchkin.

The funny thing was that she knew the brothers loved her. They constantly pummeled each other both physically and verbally as they grew, and they treated her like one of them, hitting
her as much as they slugged each other, calling her names as easily as they insulted each other. She never minded the punches and gave as good as she got. The names, however, eroded her confidence a bit more every time she heard them.

“I should have been a boy,” she had sobbed to her mom one day in tenth grade, her little mother who now barely came to her shoulder.

Mom reached up and patted her gently on the cheek. “Don’t worry, Cassandra Marie. God knows what He’s doing.”

Cass wasn’t certain whether it was the lack of conviction in her mother’s voice or the fact that God seemed to be keeping silent about the whys of what He was doing, but either way her height and girth shadowed her life like a jail term trailed a reformed thief.

When she’d come out to run yesterday morning and found Dan, her first horrified thought was,
He’s going to see my legs!
The second was,
And I never did lose that extra weight!

She had immediately turned their run into a competition. If she looked on him as a challenge, she could deal with him. All her life she’d loved to win, and that meant beating all kinds of people in all kinds of situations. She’d simply added Dan to that list. Run faster. Control your breathing better. Beat him.

But sitting here in the car with him was different. Now she was supposed to chat and be sociable. Now she had to be charming. She shivered.

“Does your mother have a twin?” Dan asked suddenly.

“What?” Cass was jerked from her introspection by his question.

“A twin. Does your mother have one?”

Cass shook her head as she pulled into a parking space near Dante’s at the Dock. “Whatever made you ask that?”

“She doesn’t seem like the same lady at all.” He waved his hand in Mom’s direction as she walked to the restaurant door.

Cass pulled the key from the ignition and dropped it in her purse. “The same lady as what?”

Dan reached for his door handle. “But you called her Mom both times. Certainly you don’t have two moms even if they act nothing alike.”

Cold prickles traveled the length of Cass’s spine. “That was you Friday?” she asked in an appalled whisper. “That gray car?”

He nodded. “Silver. They call it silver.”

She glared at him. “Like it matters.”

“Yeah.” Dan nodded and sighed. “Like it matters.”

It helped a bit that he seemed to understand that car color was nothing compared to a mother’s encroaching senility, but it tore her heart that he had seen Mom at her worst. She managed a tight smile in spite of the tears that gathered. “We’d better get in there.”

“Hey,” Dan said, frowning. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She blinked the tears away. “Don’t worry about it. I’m really not upset at you. It’s Mom. She’s always been so dynamic, so strong, so much fun. Then suddenly she became someone totally different, a stranger.” She swallowed. “It’s hard.”

Dan ran a finger across the dust on the dashboard. “Does she realize what’s happening?”

Now there was an interesting and scary question. What would it feel like to know you were losing your mind? “I don’t know. She’s never said. Fortunately, she doesn’t seem to remember you and the car and Friday, so she thinks she just met you. She’d be mortified if she knew you’d seen her in that condition.”

“It’s our secret,” Dan assured her.

Cass nodded and climbed out into the crisp autumn sunshine. He walked beside her up the walk. He held the door, and she passed through. She felt the heat of his hand at the small of her back as he directed her to the noisy family group the hostess had wisely seated in the corner, all the kids at one table, the adults at another.

Dante’s was unusual in that it had a family side and a fancy side, the menu and prices differing significantly. The Merton party was on the family side. Somehow their waitress made sense of everyone’s orders and which meal should be on which check. Cass couldn’t decide whether she was more embarrassed or pleased when Dan insisted that Cass’s meal was his treat.

“Does that mean us, too?” Jared called from the neighboring table, pointing to himself and Jenn.

“Sure,” Dan said. “Why not?”

“But, Dan—” Cass started, looking at the handsome man seated next to her.

“Cassandra Marie,” Mom interrupted from her seat across from Cass. “You must never argue with your young man in public.”

Her young man? “But Mom—”

“Why,” she continued, smiling sweetly but looking alarmingly vague, “Jared is taking care of his girlfriend very nicely. Let—” She looked at Dan, obviously at a loss for his name.

“Dan,” he supplied.

Mom nodded. “Dan. Of course. Let Dan take care of you.”

Cass looked at her mother. “Jared’s girlfriend?”

“Certainly. That lovely girl sitting beside him. I forget her name.”

Cass felt tears again prick her eyes. The lovely girl sitting next to Jared was Jenn.

Mom had forgotten her own granddaughter.

T
UCK STOPPED AT
the door of Sherri’s bedroom and let his eyes wander. He shook his head in disgust. Patsi hadn’t let anyone move a thing since the day Sherri disappeared, and the room had become a shrine. The only things missing were lighted candles and a haloed icon of Sherri.

He crossed the pale yellow carpeting to the windows with their yellow and blue floral drapes. The view was similar to that in the backyard, L.A. in all its glory. He could just imagine Sherri sitting here on the window seat staring at the city lights, a smile curving her lips as she dreamed her sweet dreams.

She had been so optimistic it gave him stomach cramps just thinking about her.

He turned from the window and began one of his frequent but secret forays about the room. What would he do this time? Steal something? Break something? Ruin something?

Part of the fun of invading his stepsister’s domain was the surprise of suddenly realizing what was the right thing to do this time. It was almost mystical, the fine certainty that stole over him and caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand erect. He’d smile. The family princess was about to suffer significantly more discomfort than a pea beneath her pile of mattresses.

The first time he’d experienced this
knowing
, he was nine. Four-year-old Sherri had been in the kitchen being fed by their cook. Hank was still at work, of course, and Patsi was at one of her unending meetings, keeping the world safe from predators who killed whales and baby seals and dolphins.

He’d been curious to see how the little princess lived, so he prowled the room, at first just looking. Then he poked into her drawers, fascinated by all the miniature clothes. Her closet held more dresses than most children’s departments, and her toy box was filled to overflowing with any toy a little girl could desire. The lower shelves that ran around the walls held games and the higher ones a collection of designer dolls too high for Sherri to reach.

“These dolls aren’t for playing,” Patsi had told Sherri. “They are too valuable.”

Tuck studied the dolls with their pink cheeks and rosy mouths, their curling hair and magnificent outfits. Why would a girl want dolls she couldn’t play with? A pretty doll with brown hair that hung to her waist caught his eye. She reminded him of Sherri.

And the
knowing
zinged through him.

He grabbed the glorious doll from the shelf. While she smiled sweetly, vacantly at him, he took Sherri’s pink plastic little-kid scissors and chopped her hair off. Silken curls fell to the floor, and he smiled. He hacked and hacked until only a couple of inches of now ugly, uneven hair remained. He very carefully set the doll, the shorn hair, and Sherri’s scissors on her bed. Then he pulled her desk chair over to the shelf where the doll had stood.

He stood back and studied his crime scene. He grinned. He skulked down the hall to his room where he played a computer game with the sound muted. He wanted to hear when the doll was discovered.

He wasn’t disappointed. Patsi screamed in distress, then anger as she upbraided her darling daughter for such a vile act. Sherri was in hysterics as she pleaded her innocence, and all the designer dolls disappeared for safekeeping in spite of Sherri’s tears.

For fifteen years he kept up his subtle torture of his stepsister. A much-loved stuffed animal would be found lying in the sodden grass after a rain or floating in the pool, ruined. A favorite article of clothing would develop a mysterious stain. A CD acquired a
scratch that warped the music. A report for school inexplicably disappeared from the computer.

At first Sherri ran to Patsi or Hank about every little thing, and they scolded her for her carelessness. Then he became aware that no one suspected Sherri any longer, and he relished this turn of events because it made the game that much more interesting. Get in, do the deed, and get out undetected. He was twelve when Hank took him to a child psychologist, the first in a long line of shrinks of all kinds and philosophies.

Like they would ever persuade him to give up that
zing
.

The years he was away at college were probably a relief to Sherri, but they were hard on him. He’d learned to like wielding the power of emotional pain. He had to make do with vacations and summers. Then she went away for the whole summer, first as a camper, then a counselor. He missed her terribly. How could he hurt her when she was gone? He still prowled her room, he still plotted, but he yearned for the immediate satisfaction of her distress.

His most daring act occurred the night before she came home from camp the summer before she disappeared. He crept into her room and attacked Happy, her parakeet. Before that night he’d only damaged inanimate objects. But, oh, the
zing
in upping the ante.

When she came home, she found the bird flopping in his cage with a broken back.

He still smiled over that one. As she wept on Patsi’s shoulder, it was as if her tears had washed over him in a fragrant waterfall, comforting him. Even Hank’s glares and Patsi’s looks of disbelief, all aimed at him, hadn’t upset him. No proof.

And then, not too long after, Sherri had disappeared.

He missed the pain.

T
UESDAY AFTERNOON CASS
was dusting in the common room when she heard the melody of the phone buttons being punched just around the corner at the registration desk. She walked to the doorway and there sat Brenna, the phone clamped to her ear. Again she was staring out the side window at nothing. Again her face was etched with equal parts pain and sorrow, and her eyes swam with tears.

As Cass watched, she couldn’t help wondering why the girl was using the office phone when she had a cell phone of her own. Cass had seen her use it countless times, usually talking with Mike. The only thing she could think was that Brenna didn’t want the number to show on her bill—which would also be Mike’s bill if they had a joint plan. If she called from SeaSong, no one—certainly not Mike and probably not Cass herself—would notice one or two or even half a dozen extra calls since she paid a flat rate for SeaSong’s 800 number.