The Unwanted (31 page)

Eric glanced over at her, then closed his eyes again. “The one tomorrow night. Don’t you want to go?”

Cassie started to shake her head. It was bad enough having everyone stare at her at school all day long. But to have to spend an entire evening—

She couldn’t stand it. Just the idea of it terrified her. Then she remembered what Eric had told her at lunch time, and Miranda’s words. “All right,” she said quietly. “I’ll go.”

Eric smiled at her. “I knew you would.”

When Rosemary came downstairs Saturday morning she found Keith already sitting at the breakfast table, his marine charts and tide tables spread out before him. That, together with the phone call he’d gotten earlier, could mean only one thing.

“You have a charter?” she asked.

Keith nodded, not looking up. “Some guys from Boston. They’ll be here at noon.”

“It—it’s awfully short notice, isn’t it?” she asked.

Keith glanced up at her, the quaver in her voice catching his attention. He shrugged. “That’s the way this business is. You take the jobs as they come, and if you turn them down, they don’t call again.”

“But …” She fell silent. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have bothered her. But the circumstances weren’t normal. Hadn’t been normal since the day Cassie had come to live with them. Now, for the first time, he was going to leave her alone with this strange girl she hardly knew, and of whom she was beginning to be desperately afraid.

Cassie herself, her food untouched, was staring out the window, a faraway look in her eyes as she gently stroked Sumi’s gray fur.

Jennifer, her eyes wary—as if she knew something had
gone wrong in the house but wasn’t sure what—was poking nervously at her eggs.

“Hurry up and finish them,” Rosemary said automatically. “As soon as they’re gone, you can go outside and play.”

Jennifer frowned. “I don’t want to go outside. There isn’t anyone to play with.”

Rosemary shot a glance at Keith, who had finally pushed his charts aside and was looking at Jennifer now. “Why don’t you go to the park?” she heard him ask. “There’s always someone over there, isn’t there?”

Jennifer nodded uncertainly. “But Wendy Maynard always goes there, and she doesn’t like me anymore.”

“She doesn’t?” Keith asked. Rosemary saw his eyes flick toward her then return to his youngest daughter. “Why not?”

Jennifer opened her mouth to say something, glanced at Cassie, and seemed to change her mind. “I don’t know,” she said, but her eyes evaded her father’s. She slid off her chair. “May I be excused, please?”

Keith hesitated, then nodded.

Now Cassie emerged from her reverie and smiled at Jennifer. “What if I go with you?” she asked. “Would that be fun?”

The little girl looked uncertain. “I—I don’t know.”

“Come on,” Cassie urged. “We can play on the swings and do the teeter-totter, and anything else you want.” Jennifer still seemed unconvinced, and Cassie turned anxiously to her father. “It’s all right, isn’t it?”

Keith shrugged. “If you’re sure you’re up to it.”

“I’m fine,” Cassie said. And indeed, this morning she was feeling even better than yesterday. There was only a trace of the pain left in her chest, and on her back, where she’d first felt the blinding stab of agony when Kiska had been shot, there was only a faint itching, like a scab that was about to fall off.

“Great,” Keith said. He swung Jennifer off her feet as she tried to dart past him, and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Aren’t you going to say good-bye to your old dad?”

“ ’Bye,” Jennifer replied, kissing him back.

He put her back down and she dashed out into the morning sunshine. Grinning happily, Keith turned to Cassie
once more. “Take good care of your sister while I’m gone, okay?”

Cassie nodded, then she, too, disappeared out the back door. When she was gone, the smile on Keith’s face faded and he turned to Rosemary. “Now, what is all this?” he asked. “It’s obvious you don’t want me to take this charter. And I presume it has to do with Cassie. Right?”

Rosemary took a deep breath. “I just … well, I just don’t feel comfortable with her, that’s all.”

Keith’s eyes rolled impatiently. “For God’s sake, haven’t we been through this before? She’s fine now.”

“She’s not fine!” Rosemary snapped. “She wouldn’t leave the house for over a week, and when she came home yesterday, she didn’t say a word about school. All she did was go over to the cemetery and sit by Miranda’s grave. She sat there for more than an hour, Keith. I watched her and it was—Well, it was just weird. She had that awful cat on her lap, and she was sitting on the grass next to the grave, petting the cat and talking to herself. Maybe you call that normal, but I don’t!”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Keith rasped. “She’s having a rough time, and except for Eric, Miranda was the only person in town who was nice to her. So is it a crime that she went to visit her grave?”

“But it isn’t just that,” Rosemary pleaded.

“Then what is it?” Keith demanded.

Rosemary cast around in her mind for something concrete, something Keith couldn’t simply dismiss. “All right. Before we came downstairs I told her she had to clean her room this morning. Instead she’s off playing in the park with Jen.”

“So? Maybe she forgot.”

Now Rosemary’s eyes flashed. “Or maybe she was just playing us off against each other!”

“Make up your mind,” Keith said, his voice taking on a cutting edge of sarcasm. “Is she crazy, or is she manipulative, or is she both?” The sarcasm gave way to cold anger. “Or are you just imagining things?” Turning his back on her, Keith returned to his marine charts.

When he started out of the house twenty minutes later, the anger between them still hung heavy in the atmosphere.
Rosemary knew he wouldn’t be back before he took the boat out. “Keith?” she blurted. He turned back, but his hand stayed on the half-open screen door. As their eyes met, she could see that he was in as much pain as she.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She went to him and slipped her arms around him, burying her face against his chest. “We can’t just leave it like this. Please?”

She felt him stiffen for a moment, but his arms went around her and he held her close. “It’s going to be all right, baby,” he whispered. “I’m sorry too. But I just can’t believe there’s anything really wrong with her.”

Rosemary hesitated, then nodded, her head pressed close to his chest. “When will you be back?”

“Tuesday, maybe Wednesday. They weren’t sure.” He held her away from him then. “And you can always get me on the radio. You know that. Okay?”

She hesitated, wanting to beg him not to go, to back out of the charter just this once. But in the end she nodded again. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

And then he was gone, and Rosemary was alone.

Cassie was pushing Jennifer on one of the swings when she first saw Lisa Chambers and Teri Bennett walking along Oak Street. At first she thought they were going to pass by without noticing her. But then Lisa glanced in her direction and came to an abrupt stop, putting out a hand to stop Teri as well. At Cassie’s feet Sumi opened his eyes and stood, a soft mewing emerging from him as he pressed himself against her legs and twined his tail around her calf.

“Would you look at that?” Cassie heard Lisa say loudly to Teri, intending to be overheard. “Do you believe Mrs. Winslow’s letting her take care of Jennifer? She must be as crazy as Cassie is!”

Swallowing the sudden surge of anger that rose in her, Cassie forgot the swing.

“Push me,” Jennifer called out. “How come you stopped?” Then, as the swing gradually came to a stop, Jennifer saw the two girls standing at the edge of the park, watching them. “Just pretend they’re not there,” she told Cassie. “Maybe they’ll go away.”

Instead, Lisa left the sidewalk and started across the lawn toward them. When she was a few yards away she stopped again, her lips twisted into a cruel smile. “Didn’t anyone tell you about Cassie?” she asked, her eyes fixed on Jennifer.

Jennifer got up from the swing and moved next to Cassie. “Tell me what?” she asked, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.

Lisa’s eyes glinted maliciously. “That she’s a witch, just like Miranda was.”

Jennifer gasped. “Th-that’s not true,” she stammered. But in her head she heard an echo of Wendy Maynard’s singsong chant after school yesterday. “Cassie is a wi-itch. Cassie is a wi-itch.”

“How do you know?” Lisa taunted. “She has a cat, doesn’t she? Don’t all witches have cats?”

Cassie, her temples throbbing with anger, stepped forward. “Stop it, Lisa,” she said. “Why do you want to scare her? She’s only a little girl.”

“Why should I stop it?” Lisa sneered. “Maybe it’s true! Besides, what can you do about it? You don’t have Miranda’s hawk anymore, do you? Mr. Templeton shot it! So what are you going to do?”

Cassie’s eyes narrowed and she reached down to pick Sumi up. His body was tense, and the fur on his hackles was standing up stiffly. His soft mewling had turned into a hiss, and she could feel his claws flexing.

“Do you want me to let Sumi go?” she asked. “Is that what you want me to do?”

Lisa’s twisted grin faded slightly. “You think I’m afraid of a crummy cat?” she asked. “Or are you going to put a hex on me?” Bolstered by her own words, she grinned again and turned her attention back to Jennifer. “That’s what she did to Mr. Simms, Jennifer. She put a hex on him and made him go crazy. Is that what you want her to do to you too? Make you as crazy as Mr. Simms?”

Jennifer was trembling now. Suddenly all the stories she’d heard about Miranda came back to her. Instinctively she took a step away from Cassie, and Lisa saw the movement.

“That’s right. You’d better get away from her. If I were you, I wouldn’t even want to sleep in the same house with
her. You don’t know what she might do to you in the middle of the night, do you?”

With that, Cassie’s anger erupted. “Stop it!” she shouted. “Stop it right now!”

“Why?” Lisa taunted. “What are you going to do about it?”

Cassie froze, and Miranda’s words echoed once more in her mind.
Don’t let them hurt you
.

But it was too late, and she ignored Miranda’s words, letting her anger run free.

“I’ll kill you,” she shouted, her eyes burning with tears. “If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll kill you!”

For a moment Lisa said nothing, but then her mouth opened and an ugly peal of laughter burst from her throat. “You can go to hell, Cassie Winslow,” she shouted. “In fact, why don’t you? Nobody wants you around here!” Still laughing, she turned back to Teri Bennett. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here before she cracks up completely.”

Cassie stared after Lisa, fury churning inside her. She could feel it coursing through her, making her whole body shake.

Her limbs trembled with it, and after a moment she felt Sumi begin trembling too. Suddenly the cat leaped from her arms and streaked across the park after Lisa.

No!
Cassie thought.
Stop!

Instantly the cat stopped running and turned back to look at Cassie. Both the girl and the animal stood frozen for a split second. Then the cat—as if obeying some unspoken order—trotted back and rubbed itself against Cassie’s leg.

The tight knot of anger in Eric Cavanaugh’s belly hadn’t relaxed in the slightest, despite the three hours of hard work he’d put himself through since the fight with his father that morning.

He still wasn’t exactly sure what had triggered Ed’s explosion, unless it had been the mere sight of Cassie Winslow coming out of the house next door.

“What you starin’ at, boy?” his father had growled.

Eric looked up from his plate of greasy hominy cakes—the breakfast his father insisted on every Saturday morning, and which Eric and Laura did their best to pretend they
liked, though the very sight of them made both of them slightly nauseated. He shook his head. “I’m not staring at anything—”

“Don’t you lie to me, Mr. Smartmouth,” Ed had cut in, his eyes glittering dangerously. “Don’t you think I know what goes on in that head of yours?”

Frowning in puzzlement, Eric had glanced out the window just in time to see Cassie and Jennifer disappearing around the corner onto Cambridge Avenue. “I wasn’t staring at anything, Dad,” he insisted, though he knew that arguing with his father was useless. Once Ed had made up his mind about something, there was no changing it.

“You were starin’ at
her!”
his father snapped, pushing his chair back and rising to his feet so abruptly that the chair tipped over and crashed to the floor. Eric flinched involuntarily, and his father’s mouth twisted into a vicious smile of victory. “Thought you could fool me, didn’t you?”

“Leave him alone, Ed,” Laura pleaded, standing next to the sink. “Can’t you just let him finish his breakfast? He wasn’t looking at anyone!”

Ed’s hangover-induced fury quickly shifted focus, and he sneered at Laura. “How’s anybody ’sposed to eat this slop?” he demanded.

“I thought you liked it—” Laura blurted, then stopped herself. But it was too late.

Ed’s hand snaked out to strike her across the face with enough force to knock her off balance. She stumbled, then fell to the floor, her head banging against the door of the cupboard below the sink. “Don’t you argue with me, you worthless bitch,” he stormed.

“Stop it, Dad!” Eric yelled. “She didn’t do anything to you, and neither did I. Why don’t you just go get drunk and leave us alone!”

Trembling, Ed faced his son, but this time Eric, who was on his feet now, showed no fear. “Try it, Dad,” he said quietly. “Just go ahead and try it. I’m done letting you beat up on me for things I never did.”

Ed’s eyes flickered uncertainly. “You ain’t big enough to take your old man,” he snarled, certain that the words alone would be enough to cow Eric.

But Eric’s jaw only tightened. “Try it, Dad,” he challenged.
“Just go ahead and try it. I’ll kick the shit out of you so fast you won’t even remember what happened.”

For a moment Ed wavered, and Eric had been certain his father was going to swing at him. If he did, Eric would have to make up his mind what to do. Would he really strike back at his own father? No, not yet. It wasn’t quite time. Not quite.