Catherine (32 page)

Quentin was too focused on Hence to notice. He cocked his head again, considering
Hence’s declaration.

“If there’s life after death, you’re going to hell,” Quentin said.

“I’m going to Catherine,” Hence said. “Straight to her. Go on. Pull the trigger. Send
me to her.” Once again, he motioned for Cooper and me to leave while we still could.
“Do it.”

I took one giant step backward, but Cooper took a step forward, and then another,
so that he was right behind Hence, the two of them a few yards from that trembling
black gun.

“You’d be doing me a favor,” Hence said. He motioned again in my direction and Coop
shot a look over his shoulder, urging me to comply. What was he planning to do with
the fireplace poker? Would he threaten Quentin with it, trying to distract him from
Hence? Wouldn’t a gun trump a poker? I swallowed hard, hoping Coop knew what he was
doing. Trusting that he did. As if I had a choice.

Coop threw me another look. I took one step back, and another, and then remembered
the phone in my pocket. Maybe I could slip into the kitchen, out of sight, and dial
911. Would there be a signal way out here in the woods? It seemed unlikely. Wouldn’t
Quentin have a landline somewhere in the house? I hadn’t noticed a phone, but I hadn’t
been looking for one.
I inched sideways toward the kitchen without taking my eyes off the gun.

“If she’s dead, I don’t want to live anymore.” Hence’s voice was cool and matter-of-fact,
like he wasn’t daring his enemy to blow his head off. “Go ahead. Give me what I want.”
He leaned in closer.

“She’s dead all right.” And to my surprise and horror, Quentin’s eyes welled up with
tears. “I didn’t… I didn’t want to… but I had no choice.” With his free hand, he swiped
at his eyes. “She didn’t give me a choice.” The gun wobbled.

I moved toward him, thinking maybe I should pretend to comfort this man—my mother’s
brother. My mother’s killer. Could I distract him with kindness?

But Quentin flinched and tightened his grip. “Don’t crowd me.” Now the gun was aimed
right at my face.

“She’s not the one you want to hurt. Let her go. Let both kids go,” Hence said.

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Quentin was shouting now. “I’m the one with the gun!”
He took a threatening step closer to Hence. “You came into my house and ruined everything.
You took away my father and my sister….”

“I took away your father?” Hence sounded almost amused.

“With all your music bullshit, like you were the son he always wanted. He never cared
about my things… my lacrosse games or my swim meets. He hardly ever made time for
me. But you… with your
guitar
.” He said the word mockingly. “You took my father. And you took my sister…. You made
her love you….”

While Hence distracted Quentin, I had been moving little by
little toward the kitchen. When I got to the doorway, I looked quickly around for
a phone, but couldn’t see one.

“Catherine had a mind of her own,” Hence was saying, as if it were important to set
the record straight. “Nobody could
make
her do anything she didn’t want to do.”

There hadn’t been a phone in the storage room, but there might be one in Quentin’s
bedroom. Its door was open directly behind me. If I made a break for it, would he
start shooting?

“You took her away from me….” Quentin’s voice was breaking now. “You defiled her.
You couldn’t keep your filthy hands off her….” He shut his eyes and shuddered. When
he opened them a second later, his expression was flat and cold. He glared at Hence
a second more. The gun clicked in his hand—a noise I recognized from movies, from
the moment just before someone pulls the trigger.

Coop lunged toward Quentin, swinging the poker in both hands, aiming at his outstretched
arms. The whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion. I had time to think of many
things—how brave Coop was, how startled Quentin looked, how I should probably hit
the floor—but not enough time to do anything about it.

The gun fired as it burst from Quentin’s grip, flew across the room, landed, and spun
around. Coop dove for it. In that split second, I saw Quentin hurl himself toward
the gun, but Coop got there first. With shaking hands, he trained the weapon on Quentin.

“Stay back,” he commanded in a voice I’d never heard before. “Don’t move.”

Quentin’s body froze, but his eyes darted around the room, as if he was looking for
a way out or for something he could use to get his gun back. My eyes on his face,
I reached for the poker, retrieving it before he could and nudging it under the couch,
out of his reach. “You’d better not try anything,” I said to Quentin.

A low sound—a groan—brought my attention back to Hence. He was sitting on the floor,
his hand clutching his left shoulder, up high, near his chest. There was blood—a lot
of it. He stared at Quentin in what looked like disbelief. Then he grimaced in pain.

I dropped to my knees. “He’s been hit,” I told Coop, stating the obvious. “Don’t move,”
I said to Hence. Hadn’t I seen someone on a cop show say the same thing to a gunshot
victim? Or maybe it was a car-accident victim. Did it matter?

“He needs a compress. Some kind of cloth. And we need to call an ambulance. Is there
a phone?” Coop barked the question at Quentin.

Quentin didn’t answer.

“I may not be a gun expert, but I know how to pull a trigger,” Coop said through clenched
teeth.

Quentin gestured toward the door reluctantly. “In my bedroom. On the bedside table.”

Though I moved as fast as I could, it felt like I was running underwater. The 911
dispatch lady tried to keep me on the line, but once I’d given her the address—thank
God I could remember it—I dropped the phone, leaving her to talk to the air. I grabbed
a flannel shirt off the dresser and raced back to Hence.

“The ambulance is coming.” Praying the shirt was clean, I wrapped it around his wound
and knotted the sleeves as tightly as
I could. His blood was warm on my hands, but there wasn’t time to care.

Hence was talking. “I should have called nine-one-one on my way over… had them meet
me here… but I didn’t think…”

“Shhh,” I ordered. “Does that look right?” I asked Coop, gesturing to my makeshift
bandage.

But he couldn’t take his attention away from Quentin for even a second. “Tie it as
tight as you can get it.”

Hence looked intently at my face as I yanked the sleeves with all my might. A memory
popped into my mind: my mother putting a bandage on my skinned knee, her face hovering
above mine, warm and reassuring. So I said what she would have said: “You’re going
to be fine. It’s just a nick.”

“But I
want
to die,” he said, his voice matter-of-fact. “I’m going to die.”

“Not just yet.” I pressed down on the bandaged wound. “Cooper needs you. I need you.”
That last bit seemed urgently true to me now. “You’ve got to live.”

Hence closed his eyes and moaned, as if I’d sentenced him to life without parole.

“He looks pale,” I said to Coop. “And sweaty.”

“Is his forehead cold?”

It was.

“Get blankets,” Coop said in his new take-charge voice. “He could go into shock.”
He barked at Quentin. “Where?”

“In the bedroom closet,” Quentin said. “On a shelf.”

I found a pile there, and grabbed them all. I draped one across Hence’s chest, another
over his legs.

“Maybe he should lie down?” I looked at Coop.

He nodded. “I think you’re supposed to elevate his legs.”

I helped ease Hence onto his back, then rolled the last two blankets and propped them
under his shins. “There,” I said, but now his eyes were closed. “Look at me.” I grabbed
his hand and held it tightly. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“But you have to.” Wasn’t I supposed to be keeping him conscious? Then a question
occurred to me. “How did you know where we were?”

“Jackie. When you didn’t come back last night, she figured you found Quentin’s address.”
He paused, cringing in pain. “So she called the club.”

I checked the makeshift bandage and saw that he was bleeding through it, the red startling
against the plaid flannel. Should I run for a fresh shirt, or stay here and keep him
awake and talking? Both seemed urgent. “What’s taking the ambulance so long?”

Hence closed his eyes again.

“Wake up.” I squeezed his hand. “Tell me things about my mother. You knew her better
than anyone.”

“Catherine.” Hence’s eyes shot open, like he’d just remembered something crucial.
He craned his neck to look at Quentin. “Where did you put her?”

Coop shook the gun at Quentin. “Answer him.”

Quentin hesitated for a moment. “There’s a dump. Not far from here.” And he flushed,
looking, for a fleeting moment, almost human.

“You threw your sister’s body into a
garbage
dump?” Coop’s
voice rang with disgust. “What kind of monster…” He caught sight of me and fell silent.

My mother was dead. I’d pushed that fact out of my mind in the struggle first to stay
alive, then to help Hence. I shook off a wave of wooziness. When I looked down at
Hence, I found him staring intently up at me. We exchanged a look, the two of us whose
hearts had been punctured by the news. He moved his lips to speak, but I shook my
head. There was nothing either of us could say.

But after a moment, he spoke anyway. “I have to tell you.”

“It’s okay,” I lied.

“No. It’s not.” He inhaled sharply. “The Underground. It should be yours. I was planning
to change my will….”

“What?” This was the last thing I could have expected. “Stop talking like that. We’re
not going to let you die.” I squeezed his good hand again.

“It belongs to you,” he said. “To your family.” He looked around. “Where’s Cooper?”

“I’m here,” Coop reminded him. “Keeping an eye on this one.” Hands still shaky, he
gestured toward Quentin with the gun.

Hence turned back to me. “I left him the club and my savings. But I want him to give
the club to you. When you’re old enough.”

“You’re not going to die,” Coop said. “Cut it out.”

But Hence didn’t listen. “Don’t let Cooper run the club. Close it down if you have
to. Or hire somebody. He can’t run it.”

This order shocked me. “But… why not?”

“It’s too much… distraction,” Hence said. He called up to Coop as commandingly as
he could. “As soon as you can, quit,” he said. “Give it to her. I want you to concentrate
on your music.”

“Stop talking like that.” Cooper’s voice had lost its newfound authority. “The ambulance
will be here any minute.”

“You’ve got talent,” Hence said. “Don’t waste it like I did.” He looked me in the
eye. “Let him live in my apartment as long as he needs to.”

“
You’re
going to live in your apartment,” I said. It all seemed so crazy. Hence wasn’t going
to die of a little shoulder wound.

“If you say so.” His expression changed, softened. “I thought your mother would do
this for me.” His hand was cold in mine. “Hold my hand when—”

“You aren’t going to die,” I said again, less certain this time.

“I’m glad it’s you,” he said. “If it couldn’t be her.”

I moved my lips to respond—to thank him—but nothing came out. For once, I was speechless.
Instead, I did something I never would have imagined myself doing. I brushed his hair
out of his eyes, then bent and kissed his forehead. His skin was damp against my lips.
I felt him shudder.

“Catherine?” he asked, his voice trembling.

I drew back and saw the joy on his face.

“You’ve come home.”

I didn’t answer. Should I tell him the truth? Would it be so wrong to let him believe
I was my mother? I squeezed his hand and noticed the flannel bandage was completely
soaked with blood. I was about to pull free and run for another shirt when we heard
the sirens, speeding toward us, growing louder.

Coop and I rode in silence in the backseat of a patrol car, neither of us saying much.
We’d long ago lost sight of the ambulance that was rushing Hence to the hospital.
It had run the first red light we came to, leaving us in the dust. I felt exhausted—achy
all over, my body too heavy to move—but I held it together until Coop sighed, put
his arms around me, and pulled me to his chest. Then I lost it, dissolving into hysterics,
soaking the front of his shirt. I had been so sure my mother was out there somewhere.
I’d been counting on a happy ending that would never come. And the thought of how
she must have died, the brother she loved staring her down and shooting her… Had she
begged for her life? Had she suffered? Had she thought of me?

Each question brought a fresh wave of misery. Coop tightened his grip and hung on
while I wept a monsoon of tears.

“I’m sorry,” I said when I could speak. After all, he had his own sorrows and worries.
“I’m such a wreck….”

“Shhh.” Coop dug around in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out one of the napkins
from his long-ago stop at the doughnut store. I blew my nose in it and collapsed against
the vinyl seat. Pale and worried, Coop kept craning his head, looking for signs that
we were getting closer to the hospital, but for a long time the police cruiser passed
nothing but trees. Everything had happened in slow motion: the EMTs strapping Hence
to a gurney and putting him in the back of the ambulance; the cops handcuffing Quentin
and dragging him off; more cops taping off the crime scene, telling us we couldn’t
ride in the ambulance and that we shouldn’t drive ourselves. One finally offered to
take us, but said we’d need to be questioned before we could leave the hospital. Not
that we were even thinking of leaving; the idea of abandoning Hence and driving back
to The Underground was unimaginable. And knowing what I knew about my mother, could
I ever go home to Massachusetts? How could I bear to look into my dad’s face and tell
him how she died?