Set This House in Order (25 page)

—and lifts it again an hour and a half later. The Buick's engine is off; they are parked in front of the house in Autumn Creek where Andrew lives.

“Penny?” Andrew says softly.

Autumn Creek! Realizing what has just happened, Mouse jerks upright—and yelps, as pain stabs the back of her neck again.

“Oh, Penny,” Andrew says, wincing sympathetically from the passenger's seat. “I thought you were going to have that checked out. Didn't you go to the hospital?”

Mouse looks at him, her eyes blurry with tears. “I don't know,” she says. She
tried
to go to the hospital, on Sunday night; she knows that much. But as she approached the entrance to the emergency room, she saw a group of security guards wrestling a man in a straitjacket to the ground, and it occurred to her that if she told anyone how she bashed her head into a tree while trying to outrun herself, she might end up in a straitjacket too. So she froze up, and she doesn't know what happened after that. Maybe she went
into the emergency room; maybe
somebody
did. But if so, it must not have done any good.

“Would you like me to go with you to the hospital now?” Andrew offers.

“No,” says Mouse. “No, thank you.” She swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. Her vision clears, and she sees Andrew's landlady sitting on the front porch of the house, watching them. Watching
her.
“She doesn't like me, does she?”

“Who, Mrs. Winslow? She likes you just fine.”

“She doesn't trust me. She thinks I might be dangerous to you.”

“Mrs. Winslow does worry about my safety. But it's not personal, Penny. She—”

“She knows that I'm crazy. She's seen it.”

“She's seen you acting out,” Andrew concedes. “A couple times, now. But even if she hadn't, she'd still keep an eye out. Really, it's nothing against you in particular.”

“Right,” says Mouse. She closes her eyes and lowers her head towards the steering wheel again, wishing for another blackout, knowing she won't get one as long as she really wants it.

Andrew says: “Her family was murdered.”

Mouse lifts her head again. “What?”

“Her husband and her two sons,” Andrew says. “They were murdered. So, you know, if she seems a little overprotective of me, you shouldn't take it personally.”

“Murdered how?” says Mouse, shocked.

Andrew thinks before answering, consulting with his own Society. “They were on a weekend trip to the San Juan Islands,” he finally tells her. “This was years and years ago, before my father moved in here, before I was…before I took over. Anyway, they went on this trip, and Mrs. Winslow was supposed to go too, but she got sick at the last minute and had to stay home. And on the way up, on the ferry, they met”—here Andrew says something that sounds like “a cougar” but then corrects himself—“a very bad man, who convinced Mr. Winslow to give him a ride. Once they were off the ferry and away from people, the man pulled out a gun and made Mr. Winslow drive to a cliff overlooking the Sound. Then he shot Mr. Winslow, and made the two boys jump into the water.”

“Did the police catch him?” Mouse asks, already knowing from the way Andrew has spoken that the answer is no.

Andrew shakes his head. “No, not for that. But my cousin Adam thinks he probably did get arrested for something in the end. At least we hope he did.”

Mouse starts to shake her own head but then stops, wincing. “I don't understand.”

“The police never caught him for the murders,” Andrew explains, “but it wasn't the last they heard from him. They figure he must have gone through Mr. Winslow's wallet after he shot him, and found a picture of Mrs. Winslow, and something with a home address. And then later, after he made his getaway, he started writing to her…”

“
Writing
to her?”

“Notes, mostly,” Andrew says. “
Awful
notes. Postcards, greeting cards, sometimes longer letters—all of it completely nasty, evil stuff, I mean a hundred times worse than the meanest message
you
ever got.”

“But what…what did he write to her? Threats?”

“More like gloating. He would start out by reminding her who he was—he never gave his name, of course, but he'd remind her what he'd
done
—and then he'd go on and brag about what a great time he was having, traveling around, free. He really did travel a lot, too—the postmarks on the notes were from all over the country, never the same place twice.

“So this went on for about five years.” Andrew pauses, cocks his head. “Five and a half years.”

“Five…” The word chokes off in a squeak.

“Yeah,” Andrew says. “And each new note that came, Mrs. Winslow would turn over to the police, so they could check it for clues. But they never got anything useful.”

“But, but then…how can you say that he got caught in the end, if they didn't—”

“They didn't catch him for the murders, or for the notes,” says Andrew, “but eventually the notes
stopped
—I mean they stopped all of a sudden, with no warning. And the police, and Adam too, they think that the kind of person who would keep up something like that for five and a half years, he wouldn't just decide to quit voluntarily. So something must have happened to him—most likely, he got arrested for some other crime. Or maybe, maybe he just died.”

“But you can't know that for sure,” says Mouse, horrified. “You—”

“No, but you can hope. The last note the man ever sent? It was postmarked from a town in northern Illinois. And this was in August of 1990, just a few days before a really big tornado touched down right near there. So who knows…maybe after he mailed that last note, maybe he got caught out in the open, with no storm cellar to run to. That's the way Adam wishes it ended. And sometimes…sometimes I wish it too.
“Anyway,” concludes Andrew, “anyway, the reason I'm telling you this, I know it's a horrible story but I want you to understand, the things
you've
done? Switching souls, and running off to the woods last time you were here—that stuff is
nothing
to Mrs. Winslow. And when you say you're a bad person? Penny, seriously…I hear you say a thing like that, I want to say that you must not know what a bad person is. Except that you do know, don't you? You know very well.”

Mouse doesn't answer, but she finds herself checking the rearview mirror to make sure her mother has not slipped into the Centurion's back seat somehow. She hasn't. Of course not.

“One other thing,” Andrew says. “When my father first told me this, about what happened to Mrs. Winslow's family? He admitted to me that when
he
first heard about it, one of the things he wished he could do was take a look at the notes.”

Mouse stares at him.

“Not for any morbid reason,” Andrew explains hastily. “It's just—my father wanted to know what would motivate someone to do such an awful thing, what would make them
want
to do it…and he thought, if he could read what the killer actually wrote, maybe he could get a handle on it, see something between the lines.” Andrew shrugs. “But of course, he didn't actually ask to see the notes. I mean, Mrs. Winslow didn't have them anymore, and besides, that's, that isn't something you can ask.

“So my father never figured out what the killer's motives were. But, he said, he knew what his
goal
was. That much was obvious: he wanted to destroy Mrs. Winslow's soul. Why, we don't know, but that's what he was after.

“And he failed.”

And he failed:
the words send a weird shudder up Mouse's spine, turning the pain in her neck to something else for a moment, something silvery and light that jangles in the back of her skull.

“He failed,” Andrew repeats. “Oh, he hurt her, all right: made her into a different person than she would have been otherwise. And maybe he even made her a little crazy: she still waits for the mail every morning, and my father thinks she won't ever be able to move out of this house, not until she knows for sure that there aren't any more notes coming. She sleeps badly; and she worries about me. So there's that. But she survived. She got hurt, but she wasn't destroyed. And—Penny?—she's a good person. Still.”

Mouse gets it—what he's really telling her—but she can't accept it. She
shakes her head firmly, the pain settling back in hard, bringing fresh tears to her eyes. “I am
not
a good person.”

“Why not? Because your mother tortured you?”

“Because,” says Mouse, and stops, thinking:
Because I deserved it.

Andrew reads her mind. “How could you have deserved it?” he demands evenly. “Remember the little girl in the diner, Penny. What could a little kid do to deserve that kind of treatment?”

“I don't know!” Mouse shouts. Crying, she bangs her fists on the steering wheel. “I don't remember! But I must have…must have…” She breaks off in sobs.

Andrew waits for her tears to subside and then asks, gently: “Penny? Would you like to come inside for a while?”

Still sniffling, Mouse shrugs noncommittally.

“You could,” says Andrew, as if phrasing a delicate proposition, “you could meet my father. If you'd like.”

“Your father?”

“I could call him out. You could talk to him.”

“Your father,” says Mouse. She wipes her nose on her sleeve. “Why…”

“The thing is,” Andrew says, “what you're experiencing right now…it's not something that's ever happened to me. I've never had to come to terms with being multiple, because I always just have been. All of that, the part where you learn how to cope with it, that happened
before
me. Which is maybe why I'm not more help to you.”

“Oh no,” says Mouse automatically. “No, you're helping.”

“I don't feel like I am,” Andrew says. “Not enough. But maybe my father…” He shrugs. “So do you want to meet him?”

Not really,
Mouse thinks. But then she thinks about driving home from here, alone—only not alone, oh God—and she decides that of the things that she
doesn't
want to do, meeting Andrew's “father” is probably the least worst option.

“OK,” she relents. “All right.”

“Great.” Andrew smiles. “Come on inside then,” he says, reaching for the door handle. “Mrs. Winslow will make you coffee, or tea if you like…”

He practically bounds out of the car, and Mouse thinks,
comfortable in the world.
A part of her is appalled that he can act so carefree just moments after describing a triple murder and the mental torture of an old woman, but another part of her is envious. Maybe Andrew, or Andrew's father, can teach her the trick of it: how to acknowledge evil without being consumed by it. Maybe if Mouse could do that, she wouldn't need to be terrified of the little girl in the cave.

Andrew trots up the front walk of the house, calling to Mrs. Winslow; as he mounts the porch steps she says something to him that breaks him up, and they laugh together, at ease.

Mouse gets out of her car and—moving slowly at first—goes to join them.

Julie was jealous of Penny.

That was what Adam thought, anyway; I wasn't sure what was going on. I'd expected Julie to be pleased about my decision to help Penny out, and she
seemed
pleased, especially at first…but she also started acting weird.

Like the invitation to have breakfast at her apartment on Saturday morning. That was nice, if unexpected. But when I showed up bright and early on Saturday, Julie was waiting for me outside her building.

“Let's go eat at the diner,” she suggested.

“The diner?” I said. “But I thought…I thought you wanted to have breakfast here.” I held up a grocery bag. “I brought frozen cinnamon rolls. The fun kind.”

“The apartment's kind of a mess right now,” Julie told me. “Besides, I've got no food in the fridge—I forgot. We can't just eat cinnamon rolls.”

“OK,” I said, disappointed.

“Here,” Julie said, reaching for the bag. “I'll put those in the freezer so they won't thaw. Just wait down here for me…” She took the rolls and ran inside. She was gone a long time.

“Tell the truth,” said Adam, while we were waiting. “The fact that you can't figure her out is part of the attraction.”

“Be quiet. I'm not attracted to her anymore.”

Adam wouldn't even dignify that with a laugh.

“So,” Julie said, a little too cheerfully, when she finally reappeared, “let's go eat!” She hooked her arm in mine and started down the block at a brisk pace, practically dragging me along with her.

“Julie,” I said, stumbling as I tried to keep up, “Julie, slow down a little!”

“I'm hungry!” Julie exclaimed, and kissed me on the side of the head, which temporarily scrambled my thoughts. By the time I got my equilib
rium back we were on Bridge Street—moving at a more reasonable speed, now—and Julie was quizzing me about Penny.

“There isn't a whole lot to tell, so far,” I said, which wasn't strictly true. But I'd already decided I wasn't going to mention the e-mails I'd gotten or the part about Maledicta chasing me into Thaw Canal, and if you left that stuff out, there
wasn't
a whole lot to tell.

“You've been hanging out with her though, right?”

“Not really, no.”

“But yesterday, when I came by and saw you…”

“That wasn't hanging out,” I explained. “Penny just showed up, just like you did. Or some of her people did, actually—Penny wasn't there.”

Julie looked pleased. “So you've met the family.”

“A few of them,” I said, thinking of how Maledicta had threatened to burn me with the cigarette lighter.

“What did they want?”

“They want me to help Penny.”

“So I was right.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I still don't know if Penny herself wants help, though. And—”

“Sure,” Julie interrupted, “but if her people are trying to get her help, that's a good sign, isn't it?” Without waiting for an answer, she went on: “So what about Dr. Grey? What happened there?”

I shrugged. “Not much. She said she'd like to meet with Penny, if Penny's willing to meet with her. But I don't know if—”

“Good,” Julie said. We were stopped on the corner across the street from the Harvest Moon Diner now; the crosswalk light had turned green, but Julie ignored it. “You and Penny will probably need to take another day off work for that, right?”

“I suppose. I hadn't actually thought about it. But…yes, I suppose we might. Or she might. It depends on—”

“Well whatever time off you need, that's no problem. Just try to give me a
little
advance warning this time, OK?”

“OK. But—”

“Also, if the two of you need a ride out to Poulsbo, I'd be happy to give you a lift. Assuming my car's running that day, of course…”

“Well thanks, Julie,” I said politely, actually finding the offer a little strange, “but you know Penny's got her own car. And anyway, I think you're getting ahead of—”

“Just keep it in mind,” Julie said. “Anything you need from me, I'll be happy to help out.”

“OK,” I said. “OK, thanks.” I looked up at the light, which was green for the second time now. “So…are you still hungry?”

The Harvest Moon was crowded that morning. While we waited for a table to open up, I scanned the newspaper racks by the door. Warren Lodge's picture was on the front page of both the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
and the
Autumn Creek Weekly Gazette.
MANHUNT CONTINUES
, said the
P-I
's headline; the caption beneath the
Gazette
photo read “Cougar” Still at Large.

Julie noticed my interest. “That's some story, isn't it?” she said. “You know what I want to know? Where was the mother?”

“The mother?”

“Yeah, you know: Mrs. Lodge.”

“
Mrs.
Lodge?…I thought he was a widower.”

Julie shook her head. “The papers said he was divorced, but I don't remember anything about the ex-wife being dead.”

“But if she were still alive,” I said, disturbed by the notion, “don't you think she would have known, or at least suspected, what her ex-husband was really like? And don't you think she would have tried to protect the girls?”

“Well yeah, I'd
think
so,” said Julie. “Which is why I was wondering where she was.”

A waitress came and seated us. After calling on my father to silence a few protests, I ordered a single breakfast, a shrimp-and-cheese omelet. While we ate, Julie continued to ask me questions about Penny, most of which I had no answers for. “Really, Julie,” I said, “I haven't gotten to know her yet. At all. What little contact I've had has all been with other souls.”

“Well what are they like, then? How many have you met?”

“A few. But—”

“So what are they like?”

Because she insisted, I gave her brief descriptions—the best I could do—of Thread and Maledicta.

“Maledicta.” Julie grinned. “That's what, Bad Mouth?”

“Something like that.”

Julie nodded. “I think I met her too. What is she, Penny's version of Adam?”

More like Penny's version of Gideon, I thought. Adam himself was not flattered by the comparison, but I'll omit his response. “Maledicta is Maledicta,” I said diplomatically. “She's a protector, I know that much, but
beyond that…I don't think it's fair to compare her to anyone in my household.”

“Of course,” said Julie. “Is she the one who kissed you?”

I blinked in surprise. I'd wondered whether Julie had seen that…but of course she had. Julie was very observant when she wanted to be. “I don't know who that was…or, or
what
that was.”

“Hmmph.” Julie raised her eyebrows skeptically. “Well, if you can't say, you can't say.”

After breakfast, as we were leaving the diner, a tow truck driving west on Bridge Street honked its horn as it went past us. This wouldn't have been noteworthy except for the way that Julie reacted: she caught me by the elbow and spun me around so that I was facing away from the street.

“So Andrew,” Julie said brightly, “would you like to come back to my place and hang out for a while?”

“What?” I shook my arm loose and looked back over my shoulder at the tow truck, which was already a block away. “Who was that, Julie?”

“Who was who?” Julie said, all innocence, and I thought: Adam is wrong. I don't find this attractive at all.

But when Julie repeated her offer to come back to her apartment, of course I said yes. I didn't even bother to mention the obvious: that if her place had been too messy for visitors before breakfast, it ought to still be too messy now. I went back with her, and hung out for the rest of the morning, and actually had a really nice time, just like in the old days.

Then around noon I noticed that Julie was stretching and yawning for the third time in as many minutes. Figuring that might be a hint, I got up to go. “I should head back to Mrs. Winslow's,” I said. “I promised Thread and Maledicta I'd call them this weekend, and I should probably do it this afternoon; Maledicta was kind of anxious about it.”

“You can call from here if you'd like,” Julie said, breaking her stretch.

“No, that's OK. It could be a long call.”

“All right,” Julie said. Then she smiled. “I knew you guys would hit it off.”

I tried to keep my expression neutral. But what did she mean,
hit it off
? Hadn't she been listening before? With the exception of a few words exchanged at work, and at lunch that first day, I hadn't even spoken to Penny herself yet.

“Don't bother trying to explain it again,” Adam counseled. “Just say see you later and get out of here.”

“Right,” I said, picking up my jacket. “See you later, Julie.” I turned,
started to walk out of the apartment…and stopped, my hand on the door. “Julie?”

“Yeah?”

“I think it's great, you wanting to be so helpful, but…you do understand, right? Even if Penny does decide to, to build her own house, you won't necessarily be a part of that process. I mean,
I
probably won't even be a part of it, beyond introducing her to Dr. Grey. And if Penny does come to me for advice, or whatever, I may not be able to tell you about it. Not because I don't want to, but because, well…”

“That stuff is private.” Julie nodded. “Sure, of course, I understand. No problem.”

“OK,” I said, not totally convinced. “OK, good. Well anyway…”

“Call me later if you want.”

I went home and dialed Penny's number. Thread answered on the first ring. “Hello, Mr. Gage.”

“Hi.” We spoke very briefly; Thread asked, right up front, if it would be all right if she and Maledicta came out to Autumn Creek to talk with me in person. I'd been halfway expecting this, and had decided that it would be OK so long as Maledicta and her twin behaved themselves. I told Thread they could come by Mrs. Winslow's anytime that afternoon. “Will Penny be coming too?”

“Oh no,” said Thread, sounding surprised. “Penny still doesn't know anything about this.”

At quarter to two the Buick Centurion pulled up to the curb in front of the Victorian. Mrs. Winslow had taken a seat on the porch a few minutes earlier, after I'd told her who was coming to visit; she watched my back as I went down the front walk to the car.

Maledicta was behind the wheel, puffing on a cigarette; Thread didn't know how to drive. “Would you like to come inside for some coffee or tea?” I asked.

Maledicta looked over at Mrs. Winslow sitting sentry on the porch. “No,” she told me bluntly. Then: “Get in the fucking car. Let's go someplace else.”

I frowned at her rudeness, but then turned, nodded reassuringly to Mrs. Winslow, and got in the car. “Where to?” I asked.

We ended up driving to a number of different places around town. While the car was in motion, Maledicta spoke to me; when we parked somewhere for a while, Thread took over. Between the two of them, I began to learn the answers to some of the questions Julie had been asking.
Thread gave me a broad outline of Penny's history: how she'd been born in Willow Grove, Ohio, in 1971; how her father, a traveling salesman, had died in a plane crash two years later; how over the next decade and a half her mother, a crazy woman named Verna Dorset Driver, had systematically broken Penny's soul apart; how Penny had finally escaped on a scholarship to the University of Washington; and how her mother's death the following year had freed her for good. Like a good reporter, Thread tried to keep her account as objective as possible; though she readily described Penny's emotions, she kept her own feelings to herself, and downplayed her own role in Penny's life.

Maledicta made no attempt at objectivity. She went out of her way to share her feelings, which consisted primarily of different flavors of hate, anger, and resentment. She bragged about her own actions, saying that she'd “saved Mouse's fucking ass” more times than she could remember, and that “without me and Malefica to look out for her, Mouse would be a fucking stain on the wall by now—and it's not that the little cunt doesn't deserve it, but it's our fucking neck, too.”

In addition to telling me about Penny's life, Thread and Maledicta asked questions about mine. Thread was fascinated by the idea of the house, and wanted to hear all about the practical aspects of building and running it; Maledicta, more skeptical, wanted to know what problems to expect (“Do Malefica and I get our own fucking room?” she demanded. “What if someone acts up? How do you keep the assholes in line?”). I answered their questions as completely as I could, until finally—it was late afternoon by this time, and I was exhausted again—they were satisfied.

“All right,” Maledicta said. “We'll do it. We'll build a fucking house.”

“What about Penny?” I asked. “Will she cooperate?”

“Fucking Mouse,” Maledicta sneered. “Yeah, she'll go along. She fucking well better.”

“But does she even know that you—”

“She knows. Enough. She pretends to herself that she doesn't, but she knows. Mouse isn't stupid, she's just a fucking coward.”

“OK. But—”

“What we'll do,” said Maledicta, “we'll get Mouse to come out here tomorrow, and you'll tell her what's what. And we'll make sure she fucking pays attention.”

“Tomorrow,” I mused, not sure I wanted to give up my entire weekend, not without being
asked,
at least. But whatever objections I was thinking of
making were put on hold as Maledicta thumbed the button on the car's cigarette lighter.

“Yeah,” Maledicta said, pulling a pack of Winstons from her jacket pocket and shaking one loose. “Yeah, Mouse'll go along. We'll fucking see to it. And if she doesn't…if she doesn't, we'll get someone else to run the fucking show.” She looked over at me. “We could do that, right?”