The Unwanted (27 page)

Strange, she reflected cynically to herself as she watched Ed climb out of his truck and shamble up the steps of the school, how the drunken fools like Ed Cavanaugh never trip
and break their necks. She heard him lumber into the outer office, and went back to her desk. When he pushed her own door open a moment later, she was staring at him calmly and coldly. “I don’t believe we have an appointment, Mr. Cavanaugh,” she began, but he only sneered at her.

“I don’t need an appointment where my boy is concerned,” he said, advancing across the room to lean over Charlotte’s desk. The reek of his breath made the principal lean back, but her eyes never left his.

“Eric’s situation will be dealt with in a—”

“Don’t give me that pious bullshit, lady.” His eyes had narrowed to slits, and his jaw was clenched tight. “None of what’s happened is his fault anyway. It’s all that trashy Winslow girl. If it wasn’t for her, none of this would have happened!”

Charlotte decided there was no point in arguing—Ed was far too drunk for that. “I’m sure you’re right—” she began, but once more Ed cut her off, this time with his fist pounding on her desk.

“And don’t you patronize me!” Ed roared. “I already took care of Eric for cutting school and getting himself dumped from the baseball team. All I want from you is your word that you’ll see to it he gets back on the team! And I want you to keep him away from that girl too!”

Suddenly Charlotte Ambler had had enough. The strain of the last fifteen hours suddenly telescoped, and her temper snapped. She rose to her feet. Though her height was no match for Ed’s, the fury in her eyes seemed to cut through his alcoholic haze. “Is it!” she spat. “Is that what you want? Well, let me tell you what I want! I want you to get, out of my office and off my campus. I want you to stop drinking, and stop beating your wife and son! I want you to start being a decent husband and father! And then, when I get what I want, perhaps I’ll be willing to listen to what you want! But until that happens, keep in mind where you are, and who you are, and who I am! Now get out of this office, and if you have anything further to say, put it in writing and send it to the school board. If you
can
write!”

Ed’s face turned ashen and his fist rose up threateningly.

“Do it,” Charlotte challenged him, her voice dropping, but taking on a cutting edge. “Just do it. But don’t expect me to keep my mouth shut about it. You might be able to bully
your family, but you can’t bully me. I’ll have you in front of a judge before the blood even dries. Now either get out of my office or swing that fist.”

Ed stood still for a moment, his entire body trembling with rage, and for a moment Charlotte thought she’d pushed him too far. But then she realized that she didn’t care. Indeed, she found herself half hoping he
would
try to slap her around. Let him think about it in jail for a while. As she watched him warily, he seemed to regain control of himself.

“You can’t talk to me that way,” he rasped, but the menace was gone from his voice. “I know what you think of me—I know what everybody thinks of me in this crummy town. But I can take care of myself, and I can take care of my family. And ain’t you or anybody else gonna stop me. So you think about that, Mrs. High-and-Mighty, ’cause if that girl gets my boy in any more trouble, I can tell you there’s gonna be hell to pay!” He turned around and shambled out of the office, leaving the door open behind him. Only when the outer door had slammed shut did Patsy Malone appear nervously in her office, her face pale.

“Are you all right?” the secretary asked. “I was just about to call Gene Templeton.”

“I trust,” Charlotte observed dryly, “that if he’d actually hit me, you would have followed through on that impulse.”

“I … well, I don’t … well, of course I would,” Patsy floundered, and for the first time since Harold Simms had been found in the gym the day before, Charlotte Ambler found herself chuckling.

“Well, that’s nice to know.” She eyed Patsy mischievously. “And can I also trust that you won’t say anything about that little scene?”

“Why … why, of course not!”

“Good,” Charlotte replied, knowing as well as Patsy did that by the end of lunch hour there wouldn’t be a person at the school who hadn’t heard every detail of what had just transpired. If nothing else, the story should put an end to any further discipline problems for the year. The way Patsy would tell it, it would sound as if Charlotte had actually given Ed Cavanaugh a thrashing. “Now perhaps we can get on with the day, all right?”

The secretary’s head bobbed, and she quietly pulled the door closed, leaving Charlotte alone in her office. Charlotte went over to the window and saw Ed Cavanaugh’s truck still sitting in front of the school, and Ed himself still glaring at her. But when she nodded to him, he started the engine, slammed the truck into gear, and careened down the street, his wheels shrieking in protest as they skidded over the pavement. Only when the truck had disappeared around the corner did Charlotte return to her desk and lower herself tiredly into her chair. She leaned back, removed her glasses, and closed her eyes, rubbing at them for a moment. In her mind Ed Cavanaugh’s last words kept re-echoing.

Hell to pay
.

Didn’t he realize that since Cassie Winslow had come to False Harbor there had already been hell to pay?

And unless Charlotte missed her guess, it was all just beginning. Despite her words to the students that morning, and despite what Paul Samuels had told her, Charlotte Ambler was still not convinced that Cassie had nothing to do with what had happened to Harold Simms.

She recalled all too clearly that first meeting with Cassie, when she’d instinctively sensed trouble. And her first instincts, as always, were proving to be correct.

Cassie Winslow was, indeed, proving to be trouble.

“You can’t just never go to school again.”

“Why not?”

Eric and Cassie had been sitting on the beach, staring out over the water, saying nothing. After leaving the high school an hour ago, they’d cut over Maple Street to Cape Drive, but instead of walking along Cape until they came to the public path, Cassie had insisted they go through someone’s yard. Eric thought about arguing, then realized that Cassie was right—the more quickly they put the beach and dunes between themselves and the village, the less chance there was of someone spotting them and reporting them to his father. And so they’d slipped through one of the beach-house gates, ducked around the corner of the house itself, then scrambled down a low bank to the beach. From there they’d walked along the deserted expanse of sand, finally flopping down to watch the sea and the birds.

“Because you just can’t do that,” Eric argued now. He regarded Cassie carefully out of the corner of his eye. “Besides, if you don’t go back to school, everyone’s going to think you’re afraid to.”

Cassie was silent for a moment, and when she finally spoke, there was a tremor in her voice. “Maybe I
am
afraid to go back.”

“Why?” Eric asked, his voice almost teasing. “You didn’t do anything, did you?”

“Maybe—maybe I did,” Cassie whispered. “Maybe we both did.”

Eric hesitated, then shook his head. “That’s stupid.”

“But what about yesterday?” Cassie asked. “What I thought about really happened.”

Eric reached down and scooped up a handful of sand, then let it run slowly through his fingers. “Nobody even knows what happened to old Simms. Not really. And it doesn’t matter what he said—you didn’t beat him up.”

Cassie turned to face Eric. “But we wanted something to happen to him, and it did!”

Eric shrugged. “So what? You didn’t really do anything, and it isn’t your fault if old Simms cracked up.”

“But what if it is?” Cassie blurted out. “Miranda said I had a gift, and what if that’s what she meant? That I can make things happen just by thinking about them?”

Eric was silent, but his fist closed on the rest of the sand, squeezing it hard for a moment. Then he threw it down, stood up and started walking away.

“Eric?” Cassie called after him, scrambling to her feet. “Are you mad at me, too, now?”

Eric stopped and turned around. He stared hard at her, then said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about. But, you know, Cassie, it sounds kind of crazy.”

Cassie gasped, but Eric didn’t seem to hear her. “And maybe you feel like you can never go back to school again, but I can. So I’m going for a walk and think things over. Okay?”

Cassie helplessly watched him walk quickly away, disappearing into the distance, his head down. She wanted to follow him, wanted to try to talk to him some more, try to
explain the confusion she was feeling. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it—the look in his eyes as he’d stared at her a moment before, a look that resembled pure hatred—stopped her. He didn’t hate her, did he? Eric was her only friend. If he started treating her the way everyone else did—

She shuddered, and tried to close the thought out of her mind. If Eric turned against her now, she wouldn’t have anyone left at all. But there was nothing she could do. Nothing at all. Turning in the opposite direction from where Eric had gone, she headed toward Cranberry Point and the marsh.

For the first time in years Rosemary found herself really looking at the marsh. How long, she wondered, had it been since she’d last gone for a walk in it?

She remembered the first time she’d seen it, soon after she’d met Keith and come to False Harbor. It had been spring, and the day had been much like this one—clear, with just a touch of crispness still lingering from the winter. The wetlands had been full of geese that day, and the air vibrant with their honkings and the quacking of ducks. It had been a beautiful sight, bursting with life, and she’d made Keith walk in it with her for hours.

But that had been ten years ago, and as time had passed, the marsh became just another familiar fixture of False Harbor, until finally she’d grown so used to it that she barely noticed it at all.

Until now.

But as she looked at it today, it seemed to have changed. A feeling of foreboding appeared to have settled over it, and where once she had sensed new life stirring within it, now she was most conscious of the stifling odor of decay, as if deep within it, somewhere below its shimmering waters, there was a rotten core threatening to bubble to the surface.

But, of course, she was wrong—nothing in the marsh had changed at all. It was her feelings toward it, for as she stood at the edge of the park, gazing out over the green expanse of grasses and quivering reeds, she realized that in the last few days she’d come to associate the marsh with the uneasy tensions that had begun to wrap themselves around her like the coils of a serpent.

And in the center of the marsh, rising like a boil on an otherwise smooth skin, was the barren hummock that supported Miranda Sikes’s cabin, with its half-starved trees reaching upward like the hands of a corpse trying to claw its way out of the grave.

Stop it
, Rosemary commanded herself.
Just stop it. It’s only a marsh, and an empty shack. There’s nothing to be frightened of at all
.

Determinedly she pushed her way through the barrier of tall weeds that separated the park from the wetlands, and found one of the soggy trails that led out into the bog itself.

She made her way slowly, for the path she had chosen was narrow and nearly overgrown with rushes and cattails. Every few yards, it seemed, the trail split off and she had to make a decision about which direction to take.

More than half the decisions appeared to be wrong, the trail petering out entirely, the grasses closing in around her, the earth giving way beneath her feet.

Twice she felt the deceptive firmness of quicksand that seemed solid when she put her weight on it, only to give way a second later, sucking at her shoe like something alive. Both times she jerked loose, her heart beating fast as panic welled up inside her. But both times she forced the panic back into its cage and backed away to find solid ground.

Several times, when she realized she’d made a mistake and turned around to retrace her steps, she saw a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, as if something had been following her on the trail and darted off as she turned, to disappear into the reeds.

The third time it happened, she stood perfectly still, only her eyes flicking over the marsh, searching for a telltale movement that would expose the animal. But the seconds crept by, and she saw nothing. Her skin began to crawl. Though she could not see them, she knew that there were eyes on her, watching her from some hidden ambush, waiting for her.

Once again she had to force herself to go on, had to fight back the urge to retreat to the park, with its secure footing and protective groves of trees.

But the cabin was closer now, and she could see it clearly.

And she could see the hawk, perched at the very peak of the roof, stretching its wings restlessly, its head bobbing back and forth as its red eyes fixed on her.

And then, when she was only a hundred yards from the cabin, the bird rose into the air, its great white wings lifting it onto the wind then locking into position as it effortlessly soared toward her.

Rosemary stared at it, mesmerized, and in her mind’s eye she saw once again the deep slashes the bird’s talons had left in Lisa Chambers’s arm.

The hawk passed between Cassie and the sun, and its shadow flashing over her face jerked Cassie out of her silent reverie. She glanced up to find that she had walked nearly the whole length of the beach. Only a few yards ahead the concrete cylinder of the Cranberry Point light rose up from the end of the peninsula, and for a moment Cassie thought that was what she’d seen. But then she spotted the pale white form of the hawk circling high above the marsh.

As she watched, she thought he was searching for something, but then she realized that he wasn’t searching at all. Whatever he was looking for, he’d already found it.

Frowning, she scanned the area of the marsh the bird was hovering above. She saw nothing. Then, almost invisible against the green expanse of the wetlands, she found the hawk’s target.