The Mirror (16 page)

Her body'd been moving around without her. It felt sore and tired. Her feet hurt. Had somebody pushed it out of a car? Perhaps it was sick because of some kind of wrenching when she came back to it.

All she knew at the moment was that Rachael was in for the surprise of her life. Shay intended to kiss and hug her and fall all over her.
Daddy too. And I'll stand under a hot shower for an hour . . . and the minute my stomach straightens out I'm going to McDonald's for a quarter-founder and fries.

Shay waited for the shock of the next cars passing to leave her. She'd forgotten how much they stank. She stumbled along the ditch.

You really should stop a car for help, dumb-dumb.

Yeah, but what if it's full of perverts?

When she came to a side road she left the shadowy ditch.

Her thoughts filled with home and her knees rubbery, Shay walked a surprising distance before she came to a driveway with a mailbox beside it. The house at the end of the drive was dark.
Maybe everyone's asleep.

But there was no answer when she rang the bell and then banged on the door. It was locked.

She walked back down the drive and onto the road, relishing the freedom of movement the Levi's and tennies allowed her, the natural suppleness of her own body. She picked up a strand of hair that fell over her shoulder. It gleamed silver blond in the moonlight and she thought of Hutchison Maddon.

The next house was dark too and in front of it a dog the size of a pony growled on the end of a chain. Shay went on.

The houses were so far apart here she realized she was farther from town than she'd thought.

This road was graveled. Shay kicked a small rock.
I should've known there wouldn't be as many houses on a gravel road.
She could have used Brandy's tireless legs.

A mewing sound startled her. Something that might be a cloth bag squirmed in the ditch to her left. She shuddered and walked on.

Shay, you can't. You know what's in that bag.

I
have enough troubles of my own.

The mewing came again, and from several throats. Hopeless. Lost.

They'll die, Shay.

Retracing her steps, she knelt to untie the knot of the bag.
Why me?

Wriggling, rat-like bodies. Tiny eyes glowing back in the moonlight. Plaintive, heart-rending cries.
That's all I need, abandoned kittens.

They weren't even old enough to be weaned.
They'll probably die anyway. I'm a sap.
But Shay knew what it felt like to be lost and alone.
Why didn't I stop a car?

Farther on another sound startled her and a goat moved from the shadow behind a fence. At least it wasn't abandoned.

The goat followed her from his side of the ditch, trying to talk to her. She was, finally, coming upon a house. And another dog on the end of a chain. It was bordered on one side by tall white tree skeletons.

Shay decided she was no longer fussy. She was so very tired. The kittens in the bag cried pitifully. They needed milk.

How can I think of them at a time like this?

The house sat back from the road. She started across the yard, keeping track of the dog.

"Help! Please, I need help!"

A yard light filled her eyes. She covered them and when next she looked she saw the dog was too close and a man with white beard and hair slid back a glass door to peer out at her.

"Help," she yelled, wondering vaguely why an old farmhouse should have a modern sliding glass door, before dark mist rose from the ground and grabbed her.

16

Voices rose through the mist with Shay.

". . . but no fever. This is certainly a strange malady. And you say she's been acting queerly?"

"Yes, as though she'd just come back from a faraway place. But she's been here all the time. And look at this. It was lying open on the table. I haven't read it. It's a personal diary. But I happened to glance at the handwriting."

"It's not very good, is it?"

"Doctor, it isn't Brandy's handwriting."

"It's possible it's the shock of John's death coupled with the newness of being a bride or perhaps the early onset of a pregnancy. Frankly, I'm at a loss to--here, she's beginning to come around."

Shay struggled to open her eyes. She'd never felt this sick in her life but her head was clear enough to know it'd happen again. Her disappointment was intense.

She lay in Brandy's body and in her bed. Sophie and the strange doctor came into focus through a welling of tears.

"I have to throw up."

"Here's the bucket, dear." Sophie held it for her and pulled Brandy's hair out of the way.

"This violent retching could cause some delirium, Mrs. McCabe," the doctor whispered.

Outside the window it was still raining in Brandy's world.

May Bell ironed the last ruffle and then hung the dress in the wardrobe next to her other lovelies. When she'd worked at Miss Hattie's she hadn't had to iron. But it was better to have her own rooms, be her own boss.

She looked around with satisfaction. All the doilies and lamp shades, the comfortable chairs and bed. May Bell had found the poor Brady woman to do her wash but couldn't trust her with the ironing. And she had to get dressed to go out for her meals now, where at Miss Hattie's there'd been a dining room . . . but still, Nederland was a better place.

May Bell liked being independent and business was so good she could afford coal all year long.

When the iron had cooled she put it and the board away, pulled her most comfortable chair closer to the potbelly stove--even if she wasn't a bit cold yet--and took a chocolate from the box Hutch had given her when he and Lon came to get their money from her hiding place. She was proud of the way she played banker to a select few of her preferred customers. Although she didn't pay interest, May Bell never cheated or borrowed, either.

All in all, life was pretty good since she'd gone into business for herself. Of course she'd worry about the twins, but nothing like she'd worried and scraped in Iowa.

She knew she should be getting dressed to go down for supper but ate another chocolate instead--bless that Hutch and good luck to him--and then found her ledger book. It was fun to add up her own accounts. She reached for the packet of papers and the tobacco pouch. Tonight should be a slow one and she wasn't cold or starving. She'd have a smoke and do her ledger and then go down. The thought of the Iowa farm made her feel pampered and cozy here.

May Bell'd no more than opened the tobacco pouch when she heard the board steps outside her door creak under the weight of boots.

The pampered feeling changed to one of anger. She was good-natured but business before supper wasn't allowed and everyone knew that. Some damn summer visitor from the hotels probably. She put the paper, tobacco and ledger book in the drawer of the side table and was half out of her chair when the door was kicked open.

May Bell knew him. Because she'd been thinking about him since the twins left. Even if she'd never seen him before.

Collapsing back into her chair she grabbed another chocolate, wishing it was a stiff whiskey.

It was the crazy look in his eyes that made him so recognizable, reminded her of Jeremiah.

"My name's Horn," he said and just stood there, a rifle dangling across one arm. "Looking for a man name of Maddon. Been told you might be able to help me."

His face and body were lean, his nose long, his eyes wide open with that self-righteous look Jeremiah wore when he told her how bad she was. That her father'd had when he told her the same thing. She'd been "bad" ever since the age of twelve when her mother died and left her the female head of a family with seven children. When she was fourteen her father'd married her off to Jeremiah because God decided such things and because her father needed money and there was a sister grown old enough to take over. But after all these years it was still hard to meet the eye of a self-righteous male.

Now this man was "good" because he killed bad men. Waited behind a tree and shot them in the back.

"Hutch Maddon ain't no outlaw," she said bravely. And he surely was small potatoes for a man like Tom Horn. Was he just picking up pin money as he rode through the area?

Horn didn't move, didn't blink, didn't take his eyes from her face. One thin hank of dark hair curled across a high forehead.

"You got no right to hunt him down." She wore a negligee and her breasts hung loose beneath it. Sweat and fear made the skin slimy where they lay against her.

His nose wrinkled as if he didn't like the perfumed air of her apartment, and his mustache twitched. What if somebody'd paid him to rid the world of bad women?

No matter how hard May Bell breathed she felt dizzy for the lack of air. "He went to the Little Hole and you can't get him there."

Rumor had it Tom Horn would wait weeks to pick off his prey. Would he wait for Hutch to ride out of the Hole? May Bell felt sick with guilt, but what could a lone woman do?

He blinked finally, relaxed a little against the doorjamb. "Thought he wasn't an outlaw. Why would he go to an outlaw hideout?"

"To get away from you."

"Then somebody warned him." The rifle rose slowly to aim at her head. "Who?"

"Some man from Denver. I don't know him."

"Who?" he repeated. His voice was thin like the rest of him.

May Bell stared at the small black hole at her end of the rifle. "His name was Murphy. That's all I know."

Tom Horn turned suddenly and the doorway was empty. She heard his boots clatter down the stairs.

Her breath made humming sounds as she reeled to the door, locked it and wedged a straight chair under the knob. "Oh, Hutch, I'm sorry."

May Bell poured a whiskey and chipped a tooth when she brought the glass too hurriedly to her mouth.

Tobacco spilled on her pretty red rug as she rolled a cigarette with shaking hands. "So sorry, Hutch . .."

Shay and Brandy were very ill. Sophie, Nora and Elton took turns at the bedside. The doctor visited daily. Everyone seemed relieved when Brandy developed a sore throat and a fever.

The second transposition of minds must have lowered Brandy's resistance to the point that she was ripe for this new illness. And then there'd been the strain of those long nights in front of the mirror. Shay remembered how sick her own body had been in that ditch east of Boulder. This switching of bodies and time was dangerous. She'd have to wait and gather strength before she tried again.

At first Shay was too weak to care where she was. But as she recovered she worked out what she thought had happened and was still happening. ...

Her body'd been in that ditch because, for some reason, Brandy had taken it there. And while Shay'd traveled to her own time Brandy had returned to this one, acting "queerly," talking as if she'd been to a "faraway place," as Sophie had said. The mirror'd performed a switch. While Shay was trapped in this time and body, Brandy was trapped in Shay's.

If this was a strange experience for Shay, what must it be like for her grandmother? Had she married Marek Weir?

During her convalescence, Shay developed a plan. . . .

"I heard what you told the doctor about my diary," she said to Sophie one day.

"I haven't read it, dear, and I won't. I just happened to glance at the handwriting."

"Ma, I was in a hurry and just scribbled. That's why it didn't look like my handwriting."

"I know, Brandy. Don't distress yourself." Sophie sounded as if she wanted to believe it but couldn't quite. "This illness has probably been coming on for longer than we realized." She took the breakfast tray and started for the door. "Except for that night when you were first ill, I haven't heard you call me Ma for so long." Her lips quivered. "Brandy, please don't call me Sophie anymore."

"I won't, Ma."
I'm going to be a model daughter,

"It's as though you haven't forgiven me for your marriage to Mr. Strock. And you know it was your father who forced that."

Sophie reminded Shay of Rachael again.
Strange, tracing similar features and expressions between your own mother and her grandmother before that mother's even born.
Rachael would not resemble Hutch Maddon as her twin brothers would. She'd be a throwback to Sophie.

And another day when Elton came to sit with her . . .

"Bran, now that Pa's gone, maybe we can do something about Strock. I know divorce isn't an easy thing to live with but if we let him keep the Brandy Wine he might--"

"No, Elton. I want to go back to Corbin as soon as I'm well enough."
Your mother's too alert. I
can't carry on this masquerade here for long.

"You want to live with him?" His hair was cut short as was the fashion now. It made his ears stick out like stunted wings. "Have you come to love him, Bran?"