Legacy (25 page)

I nodded. He was that, all right. Cute as a button, and a moron about women.

“And he’s terribly intelligent, you know.” She lit another cigarette, even though the first one was still burning on the edge of her plate. “None of my friends even know what he’s talking about.”

“Sounds like fun,” I said.

“There you go.” She finished her drink. “You know, you’re a pretty girl, Kathy . . .”

“Katy.”

“See? That’s what I’m saying.”

“What are you saying?”

“You’re a pretty girl, but sometimes you get this attitude. I don’t know. Maybe it’s going to prep school that does it.”

I almost laughed out loud at that. Not only was Ainsworth the least preppy school imaginable, but I didn’t even fit in with the uncool kids there, let alone the preppy ones. For most of the past year, my idea of a rocking weekend had been hanging out with my great-grandmother.

“I think I’ll clean up the dishes,” I said.

“I just wanted you to know the truth.”

Oh, yes. Mim the Truth Fairy. “Thanks for enlightening me,” I said.

“See? See what I mean? The snottiness.”

I took a deep breath. It was time to leave, any way I could. “I’m sorry, Mim. I wasn’t trying—”

“What did you call me?”

Gaah.
“I don’t remember.”

“
Mim.
You said, ‘Mim’
.
” She poured herself another glass. “As in
Mimson
. That’s cute.” She smiled fuzzily. “I like it.”

I said nothing. There was no point in telling her that I’d named her after a cartoon witch. Especially since I’d grown to like witches.

She stared, grinning beatifically at her reflection in her wine glass for some time. “I never had a nickname,” she mused.

I’ll bet you had plenty
, I thought.
Just none that anyone used in front of you.
“Can I take your plate?” There had to be something in the kitchen that could substitute for an ashtray.

“Don’t go,” she said, so quietly that at first I thought I’d misunderstood her.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I beg your pardon?” she repeated, mocking me.

I started toward the kitchen, but she grabbed my arm. There was a brief explosion of emotion and a swirl of images—an alcoholic father, an abusive mother, three brothers, and she was never going to wash another dish in her life. Secondhand shoes that squeaked. Having nothing for the collection plate in church. Casting off her family like a pile of dirty clothes, hoping they’d never find her, wanting, wanting . . .

I subdued the messages until they were blank. Her hand on my arm, white and manicured and conveying . . . nothing.

“Your father is a wonderful man,” she said woozily.

“Uh,” I grunted. It was as noncommittal a response as I could muster.

“He’s smart and gentle and sweet.”

“Okay.” I just wanted to get away.

She yanked at my arm. “No, you don’t get it, Kath—Katy. He tries to stay out of your way because he thinks you don’t want him in your life.”

She had it backward. It was Dad who didn’t want me in his life.

“He never got to go to private school. He was the first person in his family to go to college, and he had to fight for that. His people wanted him to drop out of high school and go to work to bring in money. They don’t talk to him anymore, did you know that?”

I didn’t. Dad had never mentioned his upbringing to me. He never mentioned much of anything about his past. But I was beginning to see that he and Mim had more in common than I’d thought.

“And then he married your mother and had to change his name because of some weird family tradition, and from everything he tells me, the Ainsworths were a bunch of wackos, anyway—”

“They are not!”

“Okay, that was harsh. But you know about your mother, don’t you?”

“He can’t blame my relatives for what she did.”

“He shouldn’t, no. But the incident—the publicity from it—almost destroyed him. He couldn’t work anywhere in the Northeast, even after he changed his name back to Jessevar. That’s why he ended up teaching at a lot of minor colleges in Florida instead of being at a place like Columbia, where he belongs.”

“It hurt my aunt and great-grandmother, too,” I said. “Hardly anyone will talk to them anymore.”

“Yeah, it isn’t fair.” She lit another cigarette. “I’m not saying it is. I’m only telling you why he acts the way he does.”

“Like not giving a crap about me until I do something wrong, and then acting like I’m a criminal?” I was already sorry I’d said so much. I didn’t want to have a conversation with her.

“I think there may be something else. The boy, maybe. I don’t know. He won’t talk about it with me.”

I picked up the dishes that I’d put back on the table. “I need to get back to my room,” I said.

“Please, Katy.” She didn’t seem drunk now, or at least not insensate. “There has to be some kind of communication between you two.”

“Why? We get along fine the way things are.”

“Because he loves you. More than anything in his life. And he thinks he’s losing you.”

“He has you,” I muttered.

“That’s not the same. A lover is a measure of what you want to be. But your child lets you know what you are. Everything about Harrison Jessevar is wrapped up in you, Katy. And when he sees you withdrawing, pulling away, trying to find comfort in sex, not fitting in anywhere, never revealing anything about who you really are . . . well, he sees himself, and it hurts him even more than it did the first time around.”

For a long moment I just stared at her, the dishes balanced in my left hand, as if she’d been speaking a foreign language. How could this . . . this psychobitch barracuda presume to know
anything
about me? Or my father, for that matter.

“Have another drink,” I said, and walked away.

With a little mirthless laugh, she poured the rest of the wine bottle into her glass and sat nursing it, her elbows on the table as if she were at a bar. Within a few minutes, I knew, she’d be in a mean stupor. Fifteen minutes after that, she’d be asleep, if everyone managed to stay out of her way that long.

She flicked her cigarette ash onto the floor. The smoke curled up between her fingers and veiled her face.

As I was climbing the stairs, I heard her BlackBerry ringing.

“Madison Mimson,” she said, all business.

Dad was sitting at his computer, with three books open on the desk around him, but I don’t think he was working. The TV was on, and he was leaning on his fist with his legs stretched out in front of him, watching the news.

“Hi,” I said, sliding in.

He looked dyspeptic. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Just saying hi.”

“Oh.” His eyes wandered back to the television.

“Um, I saw a McDonald’s down the street when you brought me here . . . those many weeks ago.”

He made a noncommittal sound, the way I do when I don’t like the direction a conversation is going.

“I could get you a burger.”

“I could get it myself.”

I tried a weak laugh. “No get-out-of-jail-free card for me, huh?”

He slammed his fist on the desk. “Katherine, you were
necking
!”

God, it never stopped. “So what’s the punishment for necking?” I yelled. “Life imprisonment?”

“You’ve never been appropriately remorseful.”

“No, I haven’t. You know why? Because being with Peter was the last good day of my life, that’s why. If I felt remorseful about anything, it would be—”

“Shh.” He waved me down and turned up the volume on the TV remote.

“. . . strange goings-on in a place known to locals for its strangeness, thousands of Cory’s Shearwater birds have been found dead along the beachfront on Whitfield Bay. Here’s Matt Rodriguez with the story.”

The camera switched to a view of the bay, nearly at the identical spot where Peter and I had been. A man in a short-sleeved shirt and khakis was walking along the shore, pointing out a ridge made up of large bird carcasses.

“Waste management trucks have been called up to perform the unpleasant task of removing . . .”

“That’s happened before,” my dad said. “The shearwaters. The last year we were here. Your mother said—”

“It’s a harbinger,” I finished.

Dad looked at me with an expression that conveyed something like fright. “Are you one of them?” he asked, so softly that I didn’t know if he even wanted me to hear him.

I pretended not to.

“And Whitfield’s troubles don’t end there. In instances that authorities say are unrelated to the dead birds, the town’s
historic district has been plagued with a rash of arson fires. We have breaking news on one of those fires right now. Channel Nine’s Melanie Ott is on the scene. Can you tell us what’s happening, Melanie?”

A pretty young woman wearing a pink suit appeared standing before a Rose of Sharon hedge that looked like the one in front of my great-grandmother’s house.

“Like the two other fires reported in Whitfield’s historic Old Town this past week, this one appears to have been set deliberately. Although our cameras are not permitted to get close enough to show our viewers, several witnesses who claim to have seen the path of the blaze report that the fire does appear to have circled the house. Fire trucks are on the scene now, and damage does not appear to be extensive, although some of the houses here, including this one, have been designated as historic landmarks . . .”

Dad sat up in his chair.

“It’s Gram’s house,” I said. I ran out of his office and down the stairs, making only a brief stop to grab a handful of coins from the change dish in the entryway for the bus.

“Katherine!” my father called.

I didn’t stop. He could ground me again later. For now, though, I had to get to Old Town. Since I’d never been free here I had no idea where the bus stop was, but I had a sense of which direction the business district of New Town lay, and I sprinted toward it.

“Katherine, wait.” It was my father, pulling up beside me in his car. “Get in. I’ll take you.”

I didn’t know if I wanted him to go with me to my relatives, but it was definitely the quickest way there, and at the moment
speed was the most urgent factor. I climbed in and we drove in silence through the development where Mim’s house was located and onto the wide thoroughfares flanked by huge commercial establishments that made up most of New Town.

He turned on the radio. To my surprise he didn’t tune it to a news station, but to some punk rock music too young for him. That was for my benefit, I guessed. It was a small effort, I know, but something.

“This your car?” I’d guessed it was, since it was a Ford Focus—not something Mim would buy.

He said, “Um,”—that noncommittal sound again—and nodded.

“It’s nice,” I said.

“Oh?” He seemed surprised, as if he’d expected me to criticize it.

“I like the color.”

“Good.” He knocked on the dashboard, as if showing me how sturdy the vehicle was. “I got tired of driving Madison’s hand-me-downs,” he said with a self-deprecating smile.

“It’s better to have your own stuff,” I agreed.

“Where is she now? By the way, what do you call her?”

“Madam Mim?” I ventured.

He laughed. “That’s it.”

“She’s resting, I think.”

The laughter stopped, and the smile behind it slowly disappeared. “Yes. She does a lot of that. But usually at the table.”

“That’s where I left her.”

“She’s not there now. Neither is her car.” He shrugged. “Alas, a corporate vice president’s work is never done.”

There was a long uncomfortable silence which I finally broke. “Dad, I know you don’t like Mom’s relatives,” I said. That was so weird, calling her “Mom”, as if my mother were someone I knew.

“So they’ve come after you, have they?” I saw the color rise in his cheeks.

“They’re my family, Dad,” I said quietly.

“
I’m
your family.” He stomped on the gas, and we lurched forward.

The whole area around Town Square was in turmoil. While Dad parked the car, I ran through the gathered crowd, looking for Gram. The TV crews were finishing up, putting their equipment away into two big vans with satellite dishes on top. On the far side of the property an ambulance was parked, its interior light bright against the darkening night. As I passed, I heard snippets of conversation:

“. . . lives in New Town with cowen . . .”

“. . . I think she’s related to that Wonderland woman . . .”

“. . . hardly a drop of witch blood in her . . .”

“. . . of course you know who her mother was . . .”

“. . . hard to believe she’d do this to her own family . . .”

I turned around at that one. Were they saying I’d set this fire? I scanned the faces around me, but no one met my eyes.

Near the side entrance to the house I saw Captain Dryden, the police officer in charge of Old Town, taking notes while he spoke with Aunt Agnes and Gram. The damage to the house didn’t look too bad. The fire was already out, and Jonathan was directing a crew of volunteers who’d been helping the firemen. The Ainsworth women might have fallen out of favor
in the community, but Jonathan Carr hadn’t. When he asked for help, every able-bodied man in Old Town showed up.

“Oh, Katy dear, what a blessing it is to see you,” Gram said as I approached.

Captain Dryden must have finished his business with her because he folded up his notebook and moved on.

“Dad drove me over,” I said, looking around for him. “He was parking the car, but I couldn’t wait for him. What happened?”

Agnes shook her head.

“Harbinger,” Gram said, almost in a whisper.

“Perhaps,” Agnes said. She looked skeptical.

“What do you . . .” I followed her gaze back to the house. The fire had inscribed a charred circle around its perimeter. “The news report said that the police think it might be arson.”

“Oh, surely not,” Gram said.

“Natural fires don’t burn in a circle, Grandmother.”

The old woman squared her shoulders. “They do if they’ve been set by the Darkness.”

“That’s ridiculous. Why would the Darkness choose this house?”