Lovely Wild Page 26

  “Oh. Shit,” Andrew mutters and drops Mari’s hand.

  “Rosie? What are you doing?”

  Rosie holds out the hen, whose feet swim in the air. “This one’s not laying anymore. She’ll make a nice pot of soup.”

  Mari isn’t sure she can be affronted—technically the chickens are hers, or at least they belong to her property, but since Rosie’s been the one taking care of them all these years it seems she has some sort of right to them, too. Still it would’ve been nice if the woman had asked her first.

  “Oh. I didn’t know you just...took them.”

  Rosie’s smile slips over her face like the growing shadows in the field. She looks at Andrew, her gaze hard and somehow hot. “Chickens that don’t lay aren’t of any use but in the soup pot. Hello, Andrew.”

  “You...know each other?” Mari supposes she shouldn’t be any more surprised by this than she was about the chickens. Rosie, after all, lives in the only other house on this lane and would be Andrew’s only other neighbor.

  “Of course we do. He hasn’t told you?”

  Mari looks at Andrew, whose shoulders have hunched. He’s looking at the ground where the toe of his boot digs into the dirt. “Why would he? You never mentioned him, either, Rosie.”

  The words come out with a faintly accusatory air, and Mari realizes that’s exactly how she meant them to sound. Rosie had known of the tiny cabin in the woods and the man who lived there but hadn’t mentioned it. It was strange, at the least. Slightly sinister, if Mari thought harder about it. As though Rosie knew, but hadn’t wanted her to know.

  Andrew says nothing, not even when Rosie sidles closer and shakes the hen at him. The poor bird is dangling from Rosie’s fist like she’s already killed it. Mari doesn’t want to watch it suffer, slowly suffocating.

  “Kill it, if you mean to,” she says. “But don’t choke it like that.”

  Rosie looks at the chicken, surprised, as if she’s forgotten she held it. She tosses it to the dirt where it lands on its side and scrambles in the dust before getting to its feet and shaking its wings.

  “I wondered how long it would be before you found her,” Rosie says to Andrew. “Like calls to like. Sin to sin. No matter what we try to do. You always were full of sin.”

  Mari tastes sourness, bright and sharp. “Andrew? What’s she talking about?”

  Rosie laughs. Here in the darkening yard it has a slightly maniacal sound to it. “Oh, Mari. Pretty Mariposa. Pretty like a butterfly and just as stupid.”

  “Don’t you call her that.” Andrew’s eyes flash.

  “What’s that? Mariposa? Or stupid.” Rosie’s gaze pierces Mari. “You don’t know about him, do you?”

  “I know all about him,” Mari says stubbornly, though by looking back and forth between Andrew and Rosie, it’s clear she’s clueless. Her chin lifts, though. Her fists clench. She stands her ground. She might not be sure what’s going on, but she certainly won’t stand for being called stupid.

  “Do you? I don’t think you do. Because he didn’t tell you, did he? Of course he didn’t,” Rosie says bitterly. “He wouldn’t. Because if you knew... Well, I thought better of you, Mari. That’s all. You with your nice family and those children. That handsome husband who gives you so much trouble.”

  Mari shakes her head. Earlier the world had threatened to spin out from under her. It tips again now. She digs her heels into the dirt, wishing she was barefoot so she could curl her toes into the earth, too. The solar lights lining the driveway have started to come on, and a light inside the barn she didn’t notice before has now become bright enough in the dusk to make a square of light. All of this means she can clearly see Rosie’s face, twisted in disgust, and Andrew’s look of shame.

  “You don’t know anything about my husband.”

  Rosie laughs again. The sound curdles in Mari’s ears. “Sure I do. How he got into trouble at work. Even an old woman like me can look stuff up on the internet. I know all about how he lost his job, how he slept with that patient of his. How he killed her.”

  “Ryan,” Mari says, “did not kill that woman.”

  Rosie shrugs, unconcerned. “She took her own life, but he was her doctor. Wasn’t he supposed to be helping her? Not driving her to jump in front of a train.”

  “Disturbed people aren’t rational. It’s not anyone’s fault. And certainly not Ryan’s.”

  “Disturbed people. You’d know about that, wouldn’t you? And you,” she says to Andrew, “I guess you’d know a thing or two about it, too. Huh?”

  “Shut up,” Andrew says firmly. “You can just shut up.”

  “That’s a nice way to speak to your mother,” Rosie says, and Mari gasps aloud. Rosie turns. “That’s right. He didn’t tell you, did he?”

  Andrew makes a low noise in his throat. “You’re not my mother.”

  Mari can’t keep up. There are too many words. Emotions. All of this is swirling around her, a tornado of anxiety, but though she’s in the center of it, there’s no calm place to keep her safe.

  “No, I’m only the one who raised you like my own when she wouldn’t. I’m only the one who took care of you when you were sick, made sure you had clothes and food and a roof over your head!” Rosie shakes her fists at him. “I’m only the one who made sure you got your schooling, made sure you learned your Bible! No, I ain’t your mother, praise Jesus, and I thank the good Lord I’m not!”

  Mari steps back. Back again. She’s never liked the sound of raised voices. They make her cringe.

  “Tell her,” Rosie says and spits to the side. “You disgusting, devil-ridden piece of hell-bound filth.”

  “This is the woman who gave you the watch,” Mari says, then louder, “the one who punished you for getting your clothes dirty? Rosie is the one who made you kneel on the rice to pray?”

  He nods once, twice. “She did raise me. She did all of those things. Yes.”

  “And yet you’d run away, like you always did! Always running off into the woods.” Rosie spits to the side, a great glob that glistens in the light from the barn. “And I never knew, did I? Why you were so hell-bent on getting back here, no matter how many times I warned you off. That was your filthy secret, yours and your father’s. Well, then I learned why and I prayed for your soul, Andrew. I prayed the sins of the father had not been visited upon the son, but my prayers went unanswered. Didn’t they?”

  Rosie heaves a great sigh and for the first time sounds more sad than angry. “I tried with you, son, I truly did. But there was too much of your daddy in you, wasn’t there? And too much of your mama, too, I guess. No matter what I did, it was always going to come to this.”

  “Andrew,” Mari says with as much dignity as she can maintain considering she feels as though she might vomit into the dirt from all the stress. “Please. Tell me what’s going on.”

  He turns to her. He takes her hands, an action that makes Rosie spit again. Andrew ignores her. “You want to know about the first time I met you?”

  Mari nods, uncertain of why it’s important to tell her now. Not sure she wants to know, if the look on Andrew’s face is any indication of how he feels about the story. But his fingers squeeze hers, and Mari remembers how Andrew always did his best to keep her safe.

  Andrew draws a long, slow breath. “I was six when you were born. My father had promised me a ride into town with him to go to the hardware store. That’s where he told her—” he jerks his chin at Rosie “—we were going.”

  Mari thinks Rosie will interrupt to complain again, but she says nothing. She’s listening, too. Maybe she doesn’t know the whole story, either.

  “But we didn’t go to town. We came here, to his mother’s house. We came here a lot. Rosie wasn’t supposed to know when we visited, and my dad always made sure I knew not to tell her. But she knew, anyway, I think.”

  “I knew,” Rosie mutters with a shake of her head that sends her gossamer hair floating all around her face. “Oh, yes. I knew about it.”

  The hen has ab
andoned them and gone back to her sisters, too dumb to be happy she’s survived another day. The three of them stand in the harsh, white light from the barn that makes the shadows so much deeper as Mari tries to wrap her mind around what Andrew has said. His mother’s house? Whose mother?

  “We came into the kitchen. The dogs were barking and jumping. You know how they were.” Andrew’s thumbs stroke over the back of her hand. His smile is meant to reassure her but only sends another swirling vortex of anxiety around her. “They were barking so loud it should’ve been impossible to hear anything else. But I heard screams.”

  Screams are never good.

  “My father told me to stay in the kitchen with Gran, who was sitting at the table pretending she didn’t hear anything, but he wasn’t paying attention when I followed him upstairs and down the hall. The bedroom door was open. I could see directly into it. I could see her there, sitting on the bed, her legs spread. I was embarrassed, I thought she was, you know. Peeing.”

  “But you kept looking, didn’t you?” Rosie says with another bitter laugh. “Just like your father.”

  Andrew looks into Rosie’s eyes, and his look is dark. Black. Nothing blue about those eyes now. For the first time since meeting Andrew again, probably for the first time in her life, Mari is scared of him.

  “There was a lot of blood. I’d never seen so much blood. And she was screaming, cursing. When she saw my dad, she called him every bad name I’d ever heard and a lot of ones I never had. She put her hands down between her legs, where this tiny head with dark, dark hair was pushing out. And my father turned around, saw me. ‘Get some blankets, Andy,’ he said. So I ran into the other bedroom and pulled the quilt off the bed, and I dragged it down the hall to give them. And there was the baby in her arms. Covered in blood and screaming. I’d never seen a baby so small like that. I didn’t know they came out so bloody.”

  Even at eight, Ethan knows where babies come from, how they’re made and how they’re born. Still, knowing and seeing are two different things. Mari can’t imagine what the boy Andrew must’ve thought about seeing a woman give birth.

  Andrew shivers and takes in a long, deep breath. “And my father said, ‘you can’t tell anyone, Andy. Nobody. Don’t. Tell. Anyone.’”

  Rosie gives a low groan but says nothing.

  “And Ellie said, ‘Andy, isn’t she beautiful? I’m going to name her Mariposa, because she’s so beautiful, just like a butterfly. And it will be your job to protect her, Andy. You’ll have to help me protect her. You will help me, won’t you?’ And I said...I said yes.”

  Mari doesn’t want to be holding Andrew’s hands any longer. His grip is too tight. It’s no longer a comfort, but a set of shackles. He’s not stopping the world from spinning, but instead has put his finger upon it like a globe, turning it fast and faster.

  “So I did what she asked. I protected you. And like my father had said, I didn’t tell anyone. Especially not her.” He throws the word again at Rosie.

  “All I knew was you had some fascination with running back there through the woods to that house! No matter what I did, I couldn’t keep you from it! The same as him,” Rosie adds bitterly and spits again, then again as though she’s sick from the words. “No matter how I punished you, you still ran back there. If I’d known there was another child—”

  “What would you have done?” Andrew challenges, letting go at last of Mari’s hands and confronting Rosie. “Would you have taken her, too? Raised her up to kneel on rice until her knees bled? Locked her in the closet for hours at a time just because she said she was scared there was a monster in there, and you wanted to prove that Jesus didn’t allow monsters in children’s closets? What would you have done if you’d known?”

  “I wouldn’t have left her there alone with nobody to take care of her!” Rosie screams. “You can hate me all you want to, Andrew, but the sin is not mine! It’s your father’s and his sister’s, the pair of them, sick as sin. I tried, oh, how I tried, to keep you from it. You call me cruel, but everything I did was to help you. And in the end, you didn’t go so far away did you? You could’ve gone anywhere in the world, but you stayed right here. Right within spitting distance of this house. And why? So you could make sure it would be here for her when she came back? So you could keep it safe for her, make sure nobody else lived in it, right? Did you tell her about what you did to make sure it would be here for her? Did you?”

  “Shut up!” Andrew screams, and advances on Rosie so fast the woman can’t back away and Mari can’t reach to stop him, even if she could move, which she can’t.

  She’s still reeling from everything Andrew has said, trying to make sense of it. How the pieces tied together. How they’d made her who she was.

  Andrew’s fingers close around Rosie’s shoulders and he shakes her the way she shook the chicken earlier. Rosie fights him. For an old lady, she’s strong. Or maybe Andrew, despite his rage, isn’t willing to really hurt her. She kicks at him, missing his nuts but bending him over, anyway.

  Panting, she turns to Mari who’s stood in stunned silence during the whole violent episode. “Ask him what he did to keep people from that house.”

  Andrew stands, hands out. “Mari. I didn’t know it was you. All I knew was someone new had moved into the house. And I never meant to hurt anyone, especially not you....”

  Mari hears the sound of ringing rocks. She feels the thud of the stone on her leg. She gasps and gags, acid burning in her throat, but swallows down hard to keep her gut in its place. “You were the one throwing the stones?”

  Andrew says nothing. He doesn’t have to. He looks ashamed, and that’s enough of an admission.

  “You asshole! You hurt my kids!” Mari flies at him.

  Andrew doesn’t even try to get out of the way when she smacks him across the face first in one direction, then the other. The second blow sends him again to his knees. She thinks about kicking him in the face but steps back instead, chest heaving yet unable to get enough air.

  “The police said it was kids,” she says miserably.

  “Oh, the police know about us back here in the woods,” Rosie says. “They know to leave us alone—that’s what they know.”

  “The mud. The noises. The peacock?” Mari cries, beyond sickened.

  Andrew nods without looking up at her. “I thought...I knew one day you’d have to come back here. You’d have to come home. So I kept the house empty as I could. I didn’t know it was you this time. Once I knew...”

  “I don’t understand.” Her voice is thick like syrup. The words drip. She wants to speak clearly but stringing the syllables together is too much effort. “Why, Andrew? Why would you do any of this? Why would either of you do any of this? Are you crazy, out of your mind? You...you were supposed to protect me, take care of me, not mess with my head. Not ruin my life!”

  “Is your life ruined?” Andrew shouts, getting to his feet. “You got out, you got away, you got help, didn’t you?”

  “Not from you!” She wants to hit him again but punches her fists against her own thighs, instead. She looks at Rosie. “You’re sick, both of you. You’re sick and crazy. And I can’t believe...”

  She trails off into tears. The fairy story’s happily ever after ending has been destroyed, which is no surprise because she’s old enough to know better. She doesn’t want to hate her prince, Andrew, the boy who did his best to keep her safe the only way he thought he could. She doesn’t want to hate him for throwing rocks at her children in some misguided attempt at keeping her home ready for her. Mari wants to remember where she came from and know that she’s become something better, that whatever happened to her in the past shaped her into who she became and, therefore, she should regret nothing.

  She has one simple question for him, the boy who became the man in front of her. “Why did my mother ask you to take care of me?”

  Andrew’s mouth has closed up tight, and his blue eyes still look black. Rosie is the one who shuffles her feet in the dirt of the chicken yard
and lets out a long, aggrieved sigh. “Oh, Mariposa. You want to know why?”

  “Yes.”

  Another sigh, and the answer as complicated as the question had been simple.

  “He’s your brother.”

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  ACCORDING TO LEON CALDER’S files, Ellie Pfautz had lived with her disabled mother, Eleanor Pfautz. Her father had died when Ellie was a child. Her brother, Ronald, older by twelve years, lived in the house down the lane with his wife. Ronald provided financial support, making it possible for Ellie and her mother to live with only a little help from the state.

  At age thirteen, Ellie Pfautz dropped out of school when it became apparent to everyone involved that she’d become pregnant. Father unnamed, but certainly not unknown, at least not to Ellie...or her brother. She gave birth to a son at the local hospital. Ronald and his wife had adopted the child, naming him Andrew.

  Ellie continued to live with her mother, and six years later she gave birth again. This time at home, to a daughter she called Mariposa. Ronald and his wife didn’t take this child, for whom there was no record of birth. By this time, Eleanor’s increasing disability had made it impossible for her to work and Ronald’s monetary support had become inadequate as he struggled with the cancer that would eventually kill him, so Ellie entered the workforce. She held a series of jobs, being fired from a number of them and quitting others.