The Twisted Window (20 page)

"It doesn't look like I have any choice," said Tracy.

"No, you don't," agreed Jamie. "Not as long as I hold the car keys. There's no way you can get back to Terrero unless I drive you."

In the short time the girls had been talking, the sun had dropped lower in the sky, and it was now balanced precariously on the peak of the hill. Its rays were suddenly filtering through leafy branches, and the vibrant green of the meadow had become more muted, as though it were being viewed through a pair of tinted sunglasses. A breeze moved across the field and the long grass came to life, bending and rising and bending again in a fluctuating wave. As Tracy sat watching Jamie move slowly out into the midst of the turbulence, she had the strange impression the girl was entering an ocean.

"What do you think you're doing now?" Brad shouted.

"I want to get out where you can see me!" Jamie called back to him. "Look at me, Brad! You've got to see that I'm Jamie! I've come here because I want you to go back home with me!"

How confident she sounded, how sure of her place in his life!

Well, I wasn't in love with him anyway, Tracy tried to tell herself.

Not "in love," perhaps, and yet, he had kindled something—a spark of light in the depths of her inner darkness. She had thought she could never feel anything again for anybody. Now she realized she could, but she still wasn't sure why she would want to.

She waited until the other girl had reached the center of the meadow before she made her move. Then she quietly opened the door and slipped out of the car. Jamie had parked just past the top of the rise, so it was only a matter of yards to the edge of the woods. Tracy covered that distance quickly, keeping in a direct line with the car so it would cut off any view of her from the cabin.

Once safely concealed by the trees, she breathed a sigh of relief—and then discovered she was in for more problems. The undergrowth was thicker than she had imagined, and forcing her way through it was a marathon battle. Low-hanging branches whipped across her face, and bramble bushes ripped and tore at her clothing. By the time she had finally reached the foot of the hill, her cheeks were raw and stinging, and her arms and legs were covered with cuts and scratches.

As Jamie had predicted, a space between the bushes at that spot opened onto a narrow trail that led up through the trees. As Tracy began to ascend it, the sound of rushing water, which until then had been no more than a background whisper, became increasingly louder. When the path took a sudden sharp turn to the right, she abruptly found herself on the brink of the stream.

From there on, the trail became nothing more than a narrow catwalk along the bank. Water tumbled past, swirling around rocks and churning in unseen basins, and Tracy's shoes were soon soaked from the leaping spray. The roar of the stream obliterated the sound of Brad's and Jamie's voices, and the woods and the water became a world of their own. The one connection with reality that made it possible for her to continue to relate to the situation that had brought her there was the sight of two sets of footprints imbedded in the soft, damp earth—the deep impression of Brad's leather loafers and the smaller, slighter indentation made by Cricket's tennis shoes.

Although the trail was not particularly steep this low on the hill, Tracy found that the unaccustomed altitude made even an easy climb difficult. It was only minutes before she was gasping for air and her heart was pounding. Then, just when she had decided she could go no farther without a rest stop, she glanced up and saw the roof of a small log house jutting out from beneath a canopy of leaves. Several yards ahead of her the path she was on veered away from the stream and led directly up to the cabin's back door.

She was close enough now to hear Brad's voice from the porch at the front of the house, no longer raised in anger, but lower and much more calm. When she strained to listen, she thought she could hear a girl's voice also, although the words being spoken were impossible to make out. She wondered if Jamie had climbed the hill from the front and if she and Brad were now standing together on the steps. If this was the case, she hoped that Cricket was not with them, or if she was, that Jamie would find some pretext for sending her back into the house.

Breathing more easily now that she had had a moment to recuperate, Tracy resumed her trip up the path to the rear of the cabin. Two slabs of flat rock had been placed one on top of the other to form steps leading up to the back door. She tried the knob and was relieved to feel it turn in her hand. She gave the door a shove and it swung open, revealing a narrow, rectangular room laid out in two sections. The front portion obviously served as a living room, for it was furnished with a high-backed couch and two overstuffed chairs. The back section contained a table, four straight-backed chairs and a wood-burning stove.

Cautiously, after a moment's hesitation, Tracy stepped in through the doorway. The door at the front of the house stood open also, and she could hear Brad's voice clearly, along with the lighter tones of Jamie's voice. Although their voices did not sound angry, they were obviously arguing.

"... know you can't stay here long," Jamie was saying. "It was one thing, baching it here by yourself or with your dad, but a little kid can't be expected to rough it, with no indoor plumbing or anything."

"Mindy'll love it here, once she gets used to it," Brad insisted. "She got fussy this afternoon because she needed a nap."

There was only one door off of the kitchen area. It was closed, and Tracy assumed it must lead to a bedroom. Moving as silently as she could, she tiptoed across the kitchen, cringing as a board creaked under her feet and maneuvering around haphazardly placed chairs. Turning the knob of the door, she pushed it open. The small bedroom that lay beyond contained only two bunk beds and a chest of drawers.

Cricket was lying on one of the bunks, but she was not sleeping. Her eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling, and her face was puffy and red and streaked with tears. Her breath was coming in little gasping hiccups, as though she had cried herself into a state of exhaustion. In her arms, she cradled the shabby toy monkey.

"Cricket?" Tracy said softly. "Cricket, it's me."

The child evidently had not been aware that the door had been opened, for she gave a start and jerked her head around to stare at Tracy.

Her eyes showed first fear and then recognition. "He said you wasn't coming!" she exclaimed.

"Shh," Tracy warned in a whisper, raising her finger to her lips. "Be very quiet. We don't want anybody to hear us." She crossed the room to the bed and bent to gather the little girl into her arms. "We're going to sneak out the back, and then we're going home."

Releasing her hold on the monkey, Cricket clasped both arms around Tracy's neck

"To Mommy?" she asked hopefully in a tiny voice.

"Yes, to Mommy," Tracy promised, keeping her own voice low. "And, boy, I bet your mommy will be glad to see you!"

She lifted the child from the bed and, holding her tightly in her arms, carried her back out through the door to the kitchen. The conversation at the front of the house was still going on. Brad was saying, "You will too, if you give it a chance here."

"He's bad," Cricket whispered, tightening her grasp on Tracy's neck. "That boy's bad. He's got a gun to shoot people!"

"He's not going to shoot us," Tracy told her reassuringly. "We're leaving this place right now, and we're not coming back."

She crossed the kitchen with slow, careful steps, avoiding contact with furniture, awkward and thrown off balance by the child she was carrying. She was attempting to transfer the full weight of her burden to her left arm so as to free her right hand to open the door when Cricket startled her by suddenly saying, "No!"

"Shh!" Tracy cautioned her. "We'll talk when we get outside."

"No!" Cricket said again, more loudly. "No! Wait! Where's Monk-Monk?"

"He's back in the bedroom. We can't get him now. Well come back for him later."

"No! Monk-Monk! I want Monk-Monk!"

Releasing her hold, Cricket shoved both hands hard against Tracy's chest The child was surprisingly strong for someone so little, and Tracy felt her one-armed grip beginning to loosen.

"Cricket, stop this!" she whispered frantically. "That monkey's just a toy! You can get a brand new Monk-Monk when you get home."

"No!" cried Cricket, giving a violent lurch.

The weight of the struggling child was more than she could handle. To keep from having to drop her. Tracy bent and set her down. The moment her feet touched the floor, Cricket broke free and took off at a run in the direction of the bedroom.

Frozen in helpless horror, Tracy could see what was going to happen a split second before it did.

The sound of the little girl colliding with a chair was followed almost instantaneously by the roar of a gun.

CHAPTER 19

Afterward, Brad could offer no explanation for the shooting. His last clear memory before the gun discharged was of standing with Jamie on the tiny front porch of the cabin, looking down into her face and thinking how beautiful she was.

It was strange he had not noticed that before. Perhaps it was because she had become so familiar. For him, looking at Jamie was like gazing at a painting that had been hanging at the center of his life for so many years he had stopped taking in the richness of its colors.

He had chosen Tracy to help him because she had reminded him of Jamie. But no one could take Jamie's place—not now, not ever.

How could he have failed to recognize her, even at a distance? It had been the car that had confused him. He was accustomed to seeing Jamie behind the wheel of the Hanson family station wagon and had forgotten about the secondhand Charger in their garage. Jamie had bought it for next to nothing through an ad in the newspaper and had been tinkering with it for months, trying to get it running. Now she had accomplished that, as she eventually accomplished everything she set out to do. Determined, clear-eyed, practical—those were the words he had always connected with Jamie.

And now he had another adjective—beautiful.

That realization had struck him with startling clarity while he stood watching her climb toward him up the face of the hill. Her face had been awash with gold from the slanting afternoon sunlight, and the radiance of the vision had set fire to his heart.

She had been flushed and winded when she finally reached him and stood, panting, at the edge of the porch, hanging onto one of the posts like a child swinging on a maypole while she struggled to catch her breath.

"Hey, that's quite a climb! That hill is steeper than it looks!"

"You could have gone around back and come up the trail," Brad said.

"It would have taken too long." She attempted a smile, but it stopped at her lips and was not reflected in her eyes. "It's pretty grotesque being greeted by a guy with a gun. What are you doing with that? Are you planning to shoot me?"

"Don't be silly. It's for—well, it's for... protection." Brad let the muzzle drop so the rifle was pointed at the floor. "I'm glad you came. I've been hoping you'd come. I've missed you."

"I've missed you too," said Jamie. "It's been a long week."

"I've got a surprise for you. Guess who's up here with me? Guess who's in the bedroom of the cabin right now?" Brad reached out a hand and lightly touched her cheek. It was a gesture he had never thought to make before, and he was startled by the softness of her skin. "It's Mindy! I found her in Texas where Gavin was hiding her! I was thinking maybe the three of us could stay here all summer."

"That's a nice idea," Jamie said, "but it couldn't work. It's pretty up here, of course, but you know you can't stay here long. It was one thing, baching it here by yourself or with your dad, but a little kid can't be expected to rough it, with no indoor plumbing or anything."

It was a down-to-earth argument, as all her arguments were. Jamie never angered him the way other people did. So if he wasn't angry, how had the thing come to happen? One moment, he had been standing there with his back to the open door, the rifle held loosely in one hand with its muzzle aiming downward. Then, there had been a crash, and he had spun to face the cabin, automatically jerking the gun into a raised position.

Somehow, it had gone off.

For several moments after the blast, Brad stood unmoving, cemented in place, too stunned to react at all. Then, as the significance of what had occurred penetrated his consciousness, he let the rifle fall and dashed into the house.

The scene that greeted his eyes was not unexpected. It had been hidden at the back of his brain for four terrible months, held at bay like pain held back by a local anesthetic, waiting for the inevitable moment when numbness would subside. The golden-haired child on the ground, a woman's figure bent over her—the meaning of the tableau came rushing in upon him, and he could no longer refuse to acknowledge its validity.

The protective wall of denial began to crumble, and as the bricks fell away, there was nothing left but reality.

"I did it," Brad said quietly. "I killed Mindy."

The terrible words that slid from his lips so softly, expanded upon their release to fill the room like thunder. I did it. I killed Mindy—Mindy—MINDV! They bounced back at him from walls and floor and ceiling, reverberating from every part of his being.