Tighter (7 page)

But when I blinked, he was gone.

I lingered another minute, half waiting for Isa to join, and when she didn’t, I took the stairs to the third floor. It was airless with the smell of cleaning ammonia and brine. Rain drummed the roof.

A softer pounding had started in my own head, and the beating rain plus no breakfast began to jumble me. My mind picked up the pattern of a Mother Goose rhyme—
rain rain go away come again another day little Isa wants to play go away ha-ha hey-hey.

Luckily, I found a bonus stray pill in the pocket of my shorts. I broke it between my front teeth and crushed it deep into my molars. Awful-tasting, but maybe whatever it was, it would balance me.

The first two rooms standing opposite each other were guest bedrooms, both furnished with stuffy chintz curtains and lace counterpanes. Down the hall was a storage room and Isa’s unplayful playroom—
little Jamie wants to play but not the same old boring way
—with a shelf of musty fairy tales and a plastic dollhouse.

Then I entered the room that faced the playroom. Like my bedroom, it bore a thumbprint of the home’s original grandeur. A canopy bed, a black marble fireplace, and voila—the recamier—an exquisitely fragile chaise lounge in faded gold brocade. Perfect for swooning.

But the room was rancid. An awful stink. I drifted through it, my fingers splayed against my nose, breathing in teacup sips. Connie’s housekeeping must not extend to this floor. I practiced a swoon, diving into the chaise, and leaped up again with a scream as the pain shot into my hip.

“What the …?” I found it right away, where it had dropped to the carpet. A long, heavy needle with a black bead like an evil eye on one end. Such an antique, odd-looking thing—I was pretty sure it was a hat pin. I rubbed my skin where the pin had pricked me, but as I readjusted the bolster pillow, my eyes caught in disbelief what was concealed behind it.

Crude, hard, a knife cut dug deep against the wood grain.

Its touch was rough against my fingertip, like the mindless path forged by a termite or a carpenter ant.
J
for Jessie? Strange. Why would she have done that? If it was true that this piece of furniture had been priceless, now it was probably worth nothing. What a pointless sabotage. But I had no urge to call Connie and dime out a dead girl. I had no urge to stir up anything.

Guiltily, I replaced the pillow and then stared at it as the pinging rain seemed to beat away my thoughts
go-away go-away go-away.

A sound drew me to the window. I parted the curtain. Through the sheet of the downpour, I saw Isa dashing toward the orchard. Someone was chasing her; I caught a flash of a gangly kid in a pink shirt and khakis who was just as quickly lost among the trees.

Milo? No. But I knew that kid.

Isa was laughing as she reappeared, streaking across the wet grass. Zigzagging around the trees through the downpour. And then the boy stopped. Lifted his head slowly to look up at the window. As if he knew I’d been watching all along. He struck a muscleman pose. To show that he enjoyed my spying on him? He was a few years older than Milo, and he wasn’t as classically handsome, but he had something to him, a fierce charisma. He took a few steps closer, almost exaggeratedly, as if he were sneaking up on me, and yet his eyes were trained to a point just past me—quickly I glanced over my shoulder, to make sure nobody else was in the room. But I was alone.

I tapped on the glass, to normalize it. So that I wasn’t just gawking at him. I halfway smiled.

In answer, he yawned, but from him, the gesture seemed more tantalizing, and I realized that I was standing at the very same window I’d gazed up at that first day, when Connie had picked me up and driven me here.

Only now the situation had reversed itself, and the boy was closer, almost directly below.

He was staring upward. I was looking down at him. His eyes were extraordinarily pale, a washed-out, tobacco-juice color, like those of the portrait children. And now a shiver of recognition ran down my spine as panic plucked at the root of me. My heart was racing—because yes, it was the same kid, it was the boy from the cliff, the gangly boy it was

No no no you’re being paranoid. It’s just some kid from next door or a friend of Milo’s you’re just dozy on that pill.

And then he was gone, turning away to speed around the corner of the house
friend of Milo’s of course had to be
, but I jerked the curtain shut, and with that sure motion, another surprise.

Unlike the
J
, though, this wasn’t a human endeavor. The marks that cut around the windowpane were desperate, claws and teeth that had scraped at the wood like a knife scraping corn from a cob. As if some small, feral creature had been trapped in this room, and then had tried to chew his escape through the window.

But, of course, the window had been locked. Airtight and inescapable.

A sudden vertigo spun me around as I imagined the animal’s eyes on the sealed world outside. His claws scrabbling, his heart whirring. I sat on the edge of the bed
breathe deep breathe slow
and scanned the room until I found what I was looking for.

Curled in the very back of the fireplace hearth, a glove-sized lump of russet fur. The squirrel must have fallen down the chimney sometime this past winter, right into this room. Where he’d battled, lost, then crawled off to die. What a lonely end, even for a dumb, helpless creature.

Especially
for a dumb, helpless creature—that’s what Mags would have said. Maggie was the ultimate bleeding heart for all animals, shelter dogs and kittens and wayward spiders. If she were here, she would have insisted on a funeral. She’d want me to do something.

After a dazed minute or two, I crept across to the fireside and knelt there. The grate was blackened, the hearth thick with fresh ash and cinders. “I’m sorry, guy,” I whispered. “That must have been a scary way to go.”

But the smell was killing me. I had to get out.

EIGHT

“What happened to you?”

I’d returned to the kitchen, my unease refocused with the express purpose of finding Isa.

“Nothing. Have you seen Isa?”

Connie, holding a basket, was about to head downstairs to the laundry room. Her shark eyes looked suspicious. “Latht I knew, thee wath playing out in the rain without a raincoat. But what’th wrong with you? You look pale ath death.”

By the view from the kitchen windows, no Isa. “If she’s still out there, I should go get her and bring her in.”

Turning, I saw them.
His clothes.
Pink shirt and khakis made a large, sopping wet ball on the top of the basket. My fears refreshed. “Where’d you find those?”

Connie adjusted her basket. “On the lawn. Panth might be ruined—they’re linen. Itha mutht’ve taken them out of her father’th clothet for dreth-up.”

She spoke so matter-of-factly, as if daring me to contradict her. “Connie, didn’t you see that kid out there with Isa? It wasn’t Milo.”

A pound of thunder made me jump as glasses rattled on the shelves. Connie was frowning. “Oh, tho now ith Milo playing in the rain, too?” A fleck of spit hit my cheek.

“I just said that it wasn’t Milo. It was someone else. A skinny kid, with pale eyes and reddish brown hair.”

Connie’s lips pinched, but she let her laundry basket slip-slide to the floor as she blew into her hankie. “Jutht thtop. I mean it, Jamie. Whyever would you thay that? Nobody wath out there. Nobody.” She crossed to the back kitchen door to send another frown through its Dutch window.

“I saw someone.”

“Then you need glatheth.”

“Why are you so sure I didn’t?”

She turned on me, indignant, her eyes bugged, nostrils flaring and her nose the color of ham. “You think you can give me a fright, don’t you? You know, you might be too much like Jethie for your own good. Everything ith funny, ithn’t it? Everything ith a joke. Ath if I don’t have enough to trouble me with my feet thwelled up like bread. Latht thing I need ith you trying to thcare me. Latht thing—do you hear? Between you and thith dratted rain, it’th enough to thend me back to bed till Thunday morning.” And then, in a final, grand gesture, she swanned over to a high cupboard to locate a bottle of bleach, dropping it on top of the pile of dirty clothes before hauling the basket back up on her hip. Looking so self-righteous I might have giggled, if Mags had been around. Or anyone.

“Maybe Jessie thought this place needed some laughs,” I said.

“Well, I am not a profethional comedian. I am a houthkeeper.”

“Speaking of, there’s a dead squirrel in the canopy bedroom on the third floor. He must have fallen down the chimney. He’s decomposing, it’s pretty gross. I guess you don’t get up there much?”

“I get up there regular enough,” Connie scoffed. “And I keep the chimney flueth locked tight. There hathn’t been a fire built in a Thkylark hearth in yearth.”

I didn’t bother to comment on the fresh ashes. Thankfully, right when I needed it, my pill was beginning to soften my world. I was getting lax again, unbothered by Connie’s scolding.

“But I’ll go double-check,” she said after another long pause, “when I get half a minute.” She regarded me, the skin around her eyes winced tight. “By the way, your mother rang the houth line a little while ago. I did call for you. You better recharge your phone and call her back. Or find Itha. Whichever’th your priority.”

Without waiting for my response, she turned and marched down to the basement.

After a quick ground-floor patrol—no luck—I ran upstairs, hollering Isa’s name.

My cell wasn’t dead. I’d just turned it off. I went to my bedroom to retrieve it. Inhaled. I knew why my mother was hounding me. This wouldn’t be fun, but I’d get it over quick.

“It’s me.”

“Jamie! How are you adjusting? Is the job easy to handle? Is Isa a good girl?”

“Yeah, yeah. She’s sweet. And it’s really scenic here. Like a postcard.” I looked out my window. Lighthouse. Of course. I’d bet anything Isa went there. “But, Mom, it’s raining pretty hard and I need to go—”

“Then, Jamers, I guess I better cut right to it. Dad and I think someone’s been into our prescriptions. Scads of pills have gone missing.”

“That’s odd.” Hunch confirmed.

“Honey, please be honest. Did you … borrow … any of our painkillers? I need the truth here.”

“Maybe I took a handful. For my back pain.”

“And what about my allergy meds?”

“Oh, right, and maybe four or five of those. But Tess grabbed some of Dad’s muscle relaxers for her stress fracture. I saw her with the bottle. Right before she left for Croatia.”

“A lot of Dad’s antihistamines are gone, too.”

“Probably Tess again.” My sister could handle some blame. She’d be safe at college in a couple of months anyway.

Mom, who hardly ever got mad, sounded maddish. “Those are Dad’s and my own specific doctor’s prescriptions. What are you girls thinking, treating our medicine cabinet like some kind of pharmacy buffet? I would never have thought my own daughters—wait, now Dad wants to say something.”

As Dad’s voice burred in the background. “Oh yes, sleeping pills,” said Mom. “Any of those, Jamie?”

“Okay, you got me, but only two. Tess and Teddy took most. They like them for the plane trips.”

“This is incredibly disturbing.” She did sound disturbed. “Any kind of self-medicating, Jamie. It’s so worrisome. Please promise me, if you
insist
on using a sleeping pill, you’ll break it in half and go straight to bed. That’s a narcotic, that’s not a joke.”

 … bumped my head and went to bed and couldn’t get up in the morning.

“What did you say?” Mom sounded nervous. Uh-oh. Had I said that out loud?

“My back hurts so bad it wakes me up in the morning.”

“Then I’m going online this minute to look up a local doctor, and I’ll make you an appointment. But if you’re really having such serious issues, you need to come home—because sleeping pills are no kind of solution.”

“Mom, you’re overreacting. Don’t make me a doctor’s appointment that I won’t keep.”

“You just told me your back pain woke you up in the morning, Jamie. How do you think I’m going to react?”

My silence frustrated her, but there was no way she could vault the distance between us. “At the very least,” she continued, “let me find you a doctor and email you the information. And we’ll go see a chiropractor when you get home.
Capisce
?”

“Capisce.”
I was off the hook, kind of.
Capisce
was one of those Atkinson family words that signaled good humor.

“Otherwise. How are you?” I could feel her listening hard.

“Me? Great.”

“Wonderful.” Mom sounded calmed. “And that means … you’re not feeling too blue?”

“Blue? Like, country-western-song blue?”

“You know what I’m saying. Mopey. Down in the dumps.”

“I’m fine, Mom. No blue moping in the dumps here. For real.”

“Because I’m always thinking about you.”

“I know. But I’m fine.” I knew she wanted more. “I’m trying really hard, Mom. I’m focused on staying positive every day.”