Chapter 24

 

Jared

 

 

Issio, dripping wet, pounded out the door after the fly, waving the specimen jar, and Jared followed him, cutting to the right to surround her, but she was already out of sight in the bushes. She could hide forever among the leaves, but Issio wasn't in the mood to give up; he swung at the branches and shook the leaves and smacked the sides of the smaller trees as he ran between them. Jared ran down the far side of the hedge, looking for movement, looking for some small black flying thing to come shooting out of hiding. None came.

At least it had stopped raining, but the grass was wet and they splashed through puddles as they ran, not that it made much difference to Issio, already soaked. Jared glanced back toward the house; Sofi and Cara had stayed inside, very intelligently. "We're not going to find her," he said, and Issio swung a fist viciously at a clump of new green leaves.

"Drooling filth of demons," he snarled. "She is here somewhere. She thinks, she plans. Did you notice this? This is no insect. She will stay here, waiting for an opportunity to go back inside, to harass you and Cara further, if you are foolish enough to stay here."

And this was true. "I'm not that foolish," said Jared, making up his mind, "and I'm not going to let Cara be that foolish. We are going to my place."

"Excellent," said Issio. "We will immediately pack her things."

"I hope this is not too fast for her," Jared said. "We just met yesterday."

Issio twirled his tail, which dripped at the end. "We will proceed anyway," he said. "We outnumber her; it would be possible to carry her off if she hesitates. I like her. I have a very good feeling about her, my friend."

"So do I," said Jared, and led the way back to the house.

Sofi and Cara were in the back bedroom, where Jared saw new scars on the walls, the folding cots knocked down, the mattress on the hospital bed pulled almost off the bed frame. The west window had a crack in it. He did not think it had been there before.

He pulled Cara over to the bathroom for the illusion of privacy; Sofi and Issio knew very well what he was saying to her, and Sofi was already planning what should be packed, enough for the rest of the weekend and the work week ahead, briefcase, screen, noters. Data cubes, he told them, thinking of the handful on the big desk in the living room.

"You can't stay here," he said to her. "She was only a voice for months, but now you know about her, and look at that window; she's actually dangerous. I don't want you here; I want you safe with me. We'll go to my place. At least until we've got this settled."

He expected argument, but he had her at a disadvantage; she was exhausted and the headache had left her shaken, and the fly had unsettled her. And Sofi and Issio were not waiting for her to be talked into it; Sofi had already located suitcases in the back of her closet and had them open on the bed, and Issio was collecting data cubes and looking for any screen other than the built-in desk screen. And since Sofi and Issio were out of the room, if not out of the way, Jared trumped her protests in the simplest possible way; he kissed her as he had kissed her yesterday, standing beside the table on Vincent's patio feeling her body and his and the combustion between them. The combustion was still there.

Then he let Sofi take charge of her while he and Issio gathered noters and the portable screen on the shelf by the rocking chair, and incidentally the two or three readers scattered on the end table and the one on the bedside table, too, and packed cases into his car, checking as they went just in case the fly had decided to hitchhike.

 

Cara's car, programmed with his address, was already sitting in front of his house when they arrived. Issio pulled into the farthest car port, and Jared turned into his own, just past Cara's car. The rain really had quit, but the pavement was wet and there were puddles. There were no people in sight, but Jared suspected there were a lot of eyes glued to a lot of windows. Sofi had called Lillian on the phone when they left Cara's house, and he had felt Issio reaching out to Gina over a block away, a very respectable distance that Jared would not have ventured to try.

"I'll get the suitcases," said Jared, opening the back door of his car before Cara could insist on helping. She didn't look as if she should be doing anything at all, he thought; he did not like her color.

The front door of the big house across the street banged open and a voice shouted, "Cara! It is Cara!" All four of them looked up to see Ollie, in bright orange shorts and a striped T-shirt, racing down the front walk waving both arms.

"Ollie?" exclaimed Cara, incredulous, and Ollie burst through their gate; she and Cara met in the middle of the street and flung their arms around each other, and the door banged open a second time for Evvie, wearing a flowered sarong with a large leaf tucked behind her ear. She ran out to join them, and Cara let go of Ollie long enough to hug Evvie. "You're the Bahtan sisters who live here?" she said. "Jared said there was a group of sisters, but I had no idea – "

"You look pale," said Evvie, taking a closer look at Cara. "You have been sick?"

"Just a little accident," said Cara. "I'm all right."

"And damp," said Ollie, patting her shoulder. "Have you been in the rain? You must get out of the breeze." She hugged Cara again and looked over her shoulder. "Oh!" she said, staring at Jared and Issio, each with a suitcase, and Sofi with the bag and the briefcase, standing in a line in front of Jared's house. Both Issio and Sofi were swinging their tails, highly entertained.

"I see you're acquainted," said Jared, connecting that bitch of a patient of which Evvie complained with the battered back bedroom of Cara's house.

"Ollie and Evvie helped me look after Mother," Cara explained. "Ollie was there for four years, and Evvie came in nights for two years. And full time after Nina quit."

"So you two knew Cara's mother?" said Sofi.

"But that is over now," said Ollie cheerfully, "and Cara is –" She looked at the suitcases and then at Jared and began to smile. "Ah," she said. "Evvie. Our Cara and our Jared, do you see?"

"Certainly time; it is not healthy to be alone too long," said Evvie, regarding the peculiar mating habits of other species with tolerant resignation, returning to important matters. "But you are pale, Cara."

"Yes, and we had better get her inside," said Jared. He ushered the small army into his living room. It was reasonably neat; he had left a coffee cup on the table by the side window and a careless stack of journal readers on the end of the breakfast bar, which separated kitchen and living room, but he tried to keep the worst of the clutter under control, and he had two well-programmed cleaners.

As the group swept her through the room, Cara paused at the shelf with the Kipling and Shal f'Zahnaz and Anno Monaan and John Grisham, neat holders and boxes in a row. "You have as many readers as I do," she said, and peeked into the small bedroom he had, like Issio, turned into an office. It had a desk and a couple of screens, a clutter of data chips, a pile of folded printouts, and readers, the overflow from the living room. "More readers than I do," she corrected herself.

Ollie and Evvie, with Sofi and Issio, were already in the big bedroom, hard at work; Evvie grabbed the suitcase out of Jared's hand and opened it. Sofi and Ollie were arranging the closet, ruthlessly pushing Jared's clothes to one side and hanging up Cara's clothes; Evvie began to spread things on top of the chest of drawers. She needed drawer space; Jared cleared socks and underwear by the handful from his top drawer and stuffed them into the middle drawer. Issio, with the briefcase and the bag holding the screen, passed Cara on his way to the office. "The little table?" he called over his shoulder.

"By the window if you can; it'll do for now," said Jared, shutting the middle drawer, thinking they needed a second desk, and Evvie grabbed the smaller suitcase and dumped the contents into the top drawer. They had to have a second dresser, too; Cara would need more room.

Sofi felt for hooks on the side of the closet and put out a hand, and Ollie passed her a pair of shapeless, flowered garments of the kind Maud called housecoats, or brunch coats. Jared made a mental note to see if he could find something a little more becoming for her; she was too pretty, he thought, for those faded nightgowns and sack-shaped loungers. "Almost done," said Ollie, beaming at Cara, who had come to a halt by the bedroom door and was leaning a little shakily on the door frame. "But you should change to dry clothes." She took a second, sharper look. "You should sit down, too," she said.

"I'm all right," said Cara.

Sofi hung up the housecoats, brushing them smooth with a graceful gesture. "With your permission, Cara," she said, "I would like to tell Ollie and Evvie about what has happened. They knew your mother; it might be helpful to us. We must know everything we can, to fight this effectively." She looked around the closet door at Cara, and looked a second time, and frowned.

"Yes, certainly. You knew her much too well to be surprised," Cara said to Ollie and Evvie, and shook her head, as if trying to clear it, and her knees buckled; Jared dropped the handful of readers and caught and held her. She was conscious, but not tracking at all well; he closed his arms around her, insulating her from the stir as Ollie and Evvie made a rush for her. He let them touch her head, and Ollie peered into her eyes, and Sofi closed the closet doors and pulled down the blankets on the bed.

"The pillows," she said, and Evvie fluffed one at a time.

"I have the extra blanket," said Ollie, unfolding it.

"Suitcases in the basement," said Issio from the doorway, and Ollie thrust the empty suitcases into his hands. Limp in Jared's arms, Cara laid her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes, and he lifted her into bed. While Sofi took off her shoes, he pulled the shirttail out of the waistband of her skirt so that Ollie and Evvie could see the sealed wound and the bruises over her ribs.

"She fell," he explained. "And I think she hit her head; she's had a hell of a headache."

"You took her to a doctor?"

"Dr. Frank. Cracked ribs. He couldn't find any damage to the skull."

"This heals well," said Ollie. "I think she is only very tired; the best thing would be to let her rest, quietly."

"We will leave," said Sofi, "but do not hesitate to call us, any of us. And take good care of her."

"I will," he said. "Count on it."

 

Cara slept; the neighborhood, most of whom had yet to meet her, reached out anyway. Mimi and Clyde paused with a loaf of bread, still warm from the cooker, and tiptoed away again, and Al ran in with a plate of cookies. Mutai came across the street with a jar of preserves from last year's berries. Phyllis sent a generous share of the dinner casserole with Gina and Terry, both serious and wide-eyed; Gina had the casserole and Terry had a handful of very early spring flowers wilting in his fist. "I won’t be able to go fishing tomorrow," Jared warned him, and he nodded.

"Clyde and Issio told me," he said. "I'm going with them. Unless it rains some more."

Jared felt Gina's mind reaching toward the bedroom, falling back. I can't read her, she said.

Neither can I. Some people can't be read.

And Cara slept, as if, having reached a safe place, she could finally rest. He stored the offerings in the food keeper and got himself a cup of coffee and went back to the bedroom, leaning against the dresser, watching her breathe, which seemed like a silly and absolutely essential occupation. He could not believe that she was there, her pale hair spread over his pillows, and he could not imagine how he had lived when she was not there. They barely knew each other, he reminded himself. There was a powerful sexual attraction, that was true, and she was right that they had many essential things in common, but still, they were not even so familiar as to be called friends yet.

Which was fine; they had all of that ahead of them, he thought, a delightful exploration of their private worlds. And when she stirred, a little uncomfortable, he put down his coffee and kicked off his shoes and slid into bed beside her, putting an arm around her.

Fast asleep, she moved against him and was still again.

She woke late, seeming unsurprised to find herself in his arms, only a little embarrassed to have collapsed in front of everyone. "You just reached the bottom of the fuel cell," he said. "You used up everything you had. And now you're going to rest, just like Dr. Frank said." He brought their dinner on a tray, and put the flowers from the children in a bottle of water beside the lamp.

"You have amazing friends," said Cara, sampling the bread with appreciation. "They really love you."

"Oh, they did this for you, sweetheart. You haven't met them all yet, but Ollie and Evvie have given them an outstanding report on you, and so have Sofi and Issio. You're already part of the neighborhood."

She seemed content to lie in bed, watching night in the back yard. The sky was clearing, and there were stars visible through that old-fashioned metal mesh. Jared dumped their dishes into the dishwasher and filled his pitcher with juice and tried to think if there was anything else she might like. Her readers were on the nightstand by the lamp and the flowers. He had remembered to bring her pills; he scooped up the bottles on his way back to the bedroom. The best idea, he thought, was to let her sleep through the night, if she could, and see how she felt tomorrow morning. If she wasn't better, he could always ask the opinion of the sisters across the street. He had great respect for their medical knowledge.

As for that passion they had yet to consummate – well, that could wait until she felt better. He was aware that by now she had had time to reconsider – or, worse, build very inflated expectations. And, an intelligent woman, she had had time to remember that such expectations were usually unrealistic, and to decide not to risk disappointment. He wasn't about to let her back away, not now, but it would take time and gentle handling to get her back to the point where the fly had interrupted them Friday night. He was fully prepared for this, but tomorrow would be the best day for it.

She was sitting up in bed wearing one of those tired old nightgowns, her hair soft and loose around her bare shoulders; she had a very early ryei flower in her hand, plucked out of the bouquet. As he came into the room she looked up, with her beautiful smile and that mischief dancing in her eyes. "I have flowers already," she greeted him. "And we've had a lovely dinner, and I shouldn't have wine with all those pills, should I. But we could have music. And do you have any candles?

"Cara mia," he said, "we don't have to rush at this – "

"I'm not rushing," she said. "We're a whole twenty-four hours behind schedule right now. We should have done this last night. Candles?"

He probably did have candles in the back of some drawer or other, but they didn't seem the highest priority of his life at the moment. "We don't need candles," he said. "We have moonlight and starlight and the light in your eyes, sweetheart."

"Romantic," she said, approving.

He put down the pitcher and took her into his arms. It took no time at all to get back to where they had started, he found, and no more than a breath or two to get beyond that point into wonderfully new territory, and this time there were no interruptions.