Chapter 26

 

Cara

 

 

Jared did not want her to go back to her own house with him and Issio Thursday to see if the fly had returned, but she felt she should. Ann was stuck with an unexpected conference, so they couldn't have their coffee and she had the time. Also she wanted some of her things. Sofi had made a pretty clean sweep of the closet and the drawers, but she wanted some of her readers; her library and Jared's overlapped but there were still some gaps. And she wanted some of her own kitchen gadgets. Jared said that was fine, but he didn't think there was any room for Mother's brown and grey dishes, unless they were broken into very small pieces. "I can take care of that," said Cara.

The house had the neglected air of a place abandoned, although the cleaners had been buzzing around as always, so the carpets and windows were clean and large surfaces dusted, and they had not left much clutter Saturday. The three of them walked through the place in a cluster, looking into corners and behind drapes, but there was no sign of a fly, talking or otherwise. They went through the bathroom, closing doors carefully so as not to let any insects into the rest of the house, and Jared walked into the back bedroom, where they had left a window cracked open, with his pendant clearly displayed, but Issio said he couldn't feel anything there.

Closing the doors to the back bedroom, they went on to the living room, where Cara loaded them up with readers, making sure to include her Tolkien; Gina was gobbling up anything she could find on King Arthur and the Round Table, and Cara remembered how she, at about the same age, had loved the adventures of the hobbits and the Ring. She made a fast sweep through the kitchen – it was getting dark, and she didn't want to be there after dark. Issio wanted to capture the fly; Cara thought that was very proper, but she herself didn't care if she ever saw or, especially, heard it again.

After classes on Friday Cara and Ann walked to the coffee house across from the campus entrance and Cara listened, with great pleasure, while Ann told her what she thought of Jared, gorgeous, sexy, so intelligent, that article he had written and had Cara happened to look up his thesis; it was most impressive. "And all you have in common; he’s perfect for you, Cara! I am so happy for you!"

"I like him," admitted Cara shyly.

"And it's about time you got some good things going on in your life," said Ann, waving her teaspoon at Cara. "What you went through with your mother for all those years! I didn’t want to say anything at the time, but honestly – it made me happy I don’t have a mother."

"You have an aunt."

"And I have cousins who can take care of her when she’s old and sick and even grouchier than she is now," said Ann, flicking her relatives away with her spoon. "It’s not like she ever wanted me. And I must say the feeling is mutual. You should have had brothers and sisters, Cara, so you didn't have to take care of that old witch alone. She was,” she said firmly, when Cara winced. “You know she was."

And it looked as if she still was, Cara thought, but that wasn’t something she felt she should share with Ann, as good a friend as she was.

She made a stop on the way home, so when she got back to Jared's house she found him already there, sitting with Issio and Sofi on their porch, while Terry, cross-legged on Issio's car port roof, practiced his D'ubian flute. "Listen to the echoes," he called down to her as she crossed the small front lawn to join the others. "It makes a great sound!"

"And you will make a great sound," said Issio, "when you fall off my roof."

Accustomed to such tiresome adult comments, Terry ignored him and went back to his music. "He has a music club meeting tomorrow," Sofi told her. "It should take most of the afternoon; they experiment with their instruments."

"At the school," said Issio, "not on my roof."

So the neighborhood meeting was scheduled for Saturday afternoon, when Terry was occupied. Cara supposed they didn't want to scare him with talk of strange people appearing in the neighborhood; he was, after all, only ten, although an outstanding musician, she thought, listening to the flute on the car port roof.

Cara had the feeling again that there was communication going on without words. She would expect it between Sofi and Issio, Zamuaons and attuned to each other. But Jared seemed to be part of it too; she could see his eyes flick between them, their eyes answering him. Something concerned them, something worried them, and something amused them; at least Sofi and Issio were amused, Jared a little less so. She wanted to say something; she wanted to tell them just to talk out loud and tell her what was going on. She was almost certain it had something to do with her, although that might have been the paranoia that afflicts people listening to others conversing in an unknown language. Which, if they were all three speaking mind to mind, they really were.

And Jared was not Zamuaon. Did Earthians ever have Ears?

And since it might just be paranoia – and she might have misread the signals; she had no Ears at all, as Saizy had often told her – she didn't say anything; she just held Jared's hand and tried to pay attention only to spoken words, not whatever took place unspoken among them.

Leaving the flute player and Issio's front porch, she and Jared walked across the lawn to his front door and let themselves in. Cara put down her briefcase and unbuttoned her coat, and Jared took it away from her and turned her to face him. "We need to talk," he said, quite seriously. "I need you to tell me about that woman in the woods on Monday."

Cara was conscious of a sinking feeling, as if this were something she had expected and dreaded. "What about her?"

"Can you tell me again what she looked like? You said tall, very blond hair."

"Yes, blue eyes and blond, maybe white hair, and she had it up – curls; it made me think of our pendants. The Celtic knots."

"Oh, hell," he said, and closed his arms around her, holding tight. "Oh, hell."

"Who is she?" said Cara, knowing already, knowing it couldn't be true, knowing it was.

"Well," he said, "Sofi and Gina believe it's Maud. And this isn't possible, Cara mia, Maud is dead and her ashes scattered, and someone is trying to make us believe she's Maud."

"But why?"

He shook his head. "Odd things happened in the years I was with her. It seemed to have to do with her business dealings, and her competitors. She said she didn't want to bore me, so she didn't talk much about business, but I know there were problems sometimes, in and out of the companies she owned. There were death threats at least once; I know that. And I never did get the full story. This could have something to do with these sorts of problems."

"She didn't tell you about death threats? About what happened?"

"She said it was handled," said Jared, with a rueful smile. "That was Maud."

"But a year after she's gone – what would a competitor gain by this? I don't understand; it doesn't make sense."

"It never has," he said, and sighed. "Anyway, Gina has seen this person who looks like Maud at least once, it seems, since Maud died, with this strange man. She believes it is Maud. So does Sofi."

"What if it is?" said Cara. He looked at her. "Why should someone impersonate her?" she asked him. "Hang out in the woods here and pretend to be her? It actually makes more sense if it is her. Checking on me," she added, remembering the way the stranger had looked at her across the rain-wet lawn. "The woman you brought home with you, the woman you're sleeping with now."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "What would be the point of her faking her death?"

"Well," said Cara, "the death threats? To escape someone who's after her?"

He considered this, smiled. "Elmer Leonid," he said. "Death at Warp Speed. Good story." He shook his head. "She would have had to pay off the hospital, and the doctors. That nurse who chased us down to the parking lot for her thumb print when I took her away against medical advice. She was sick; I can guarantee that. I was with her every day. I saw her death certificate. No, sweetheart, Maud is dead. I have no idea what this is all about, but Maud is dead."

"But – "

"Okay. Just suppose. If she isn't," he said, holding her. "If somehow she is still alive out there? If she opened the back door and walked in this minute?" Cara found herself, against all logic, looking toward the bedroom, which opened onto the back porch. No one walked in, with or without white hair and a silver pendant. Jared turned her head very gently to face him. "What I told you the other night," he said. "What I had with Maud is over. Maud is the past. You have nothing to worry about."

"You loved her for years!" she exclaimed. "How can you say it's over? It's only over because she's dead; if she's not – of course I have something to worry about; I can't lose you; I love you!"

And she hadn't planned to say this; she hadn't planned to say anything at all, not now, not so early, not when it was so new, not when he was still going slowly, maybe not sure of his own feelings. It had just come out, without permission, without forethought, and she stood staring at him as he stared back, astonished.

And the light came into his eyes, and that wonderful smile, and he caught her face between his hands. "Then there's absolutely nothing to worry about," he said, very clearly and distinctly, "because I love you, too. And I don't care how long we haven't known each other. I feel as if I've known you for my entire life, and I've loved you since you walked onto that patio last Saturday."

"You have?"

"Oh, yes."

And he kissed her, and Cara forgot to worry.

 

The cooking, so far, was done by whoever most wanted to do it. Cara was out of practice, because it was no fun cooking just for herself. Mother had to have a special diet, so even while Mother was alive, Cara had been putting together her own meals separately, often soup or a fast sandwich or a prepackaged meal, nutritious but not very interesting. But it was fun planning meals for Jared, things they could share. And he liked to cook himself, and had a fine collection of recipes already programmed into the cooker; he said he had learned a great deal from a friend who was something of a gourmet cook.

"Maud cooked?" said Cara, and he laughed.

"No, her housekeeper. His name is Carter. He retired, moved away. Maud didn't cook."

"Am I asking too many questions?" said Cara, wondering if her curiosity was unnatural and if he was bothered by it.

"No. And I'll tell you anything you want to know," he said, "but just remember, it isn't that important any more."

Cara had her doubts about that, but she thought at this moment he meant it, and that was enough to persuade her to leave him in the kitchen with the cooker and slip out to her car, where she had left the shopping bag from the place in the 61^st Avenue Mall.

As she pulled it out of the back seat, she heard a car, not perfectly maintained, coming with a whoosh and a wheeze over the woods and the lawn between Issio's house and the Hardesty place; it was a battered black car and it landed, with a thump, on the pavement of the street in front of Ollie and Evvie's place, lifted with a cough, thumped down again just past Jared's house, lifted with a grunt of effort, and came down somewhere past Mimi and Clyde's, with an ominous crunch that spoke of something solid crumpled underneath its dented black body. Car doors opened; small beings in hooded robes swarmed through the gate and down the steps of the half a house on the corner.

"Our D'ubians are back," said Jared, as she came in, "and I think they got the corner of their fence again."

"Where do they go when they’re not here?"

"We don't know. Maybe somewhere where they have their elders, and their children; I've never heard of a D'ubian group that doesn't have at least fifty family members with them."

She tossed her bag into the closet for right now and came back out to see what was making those good smells in the kitchen. He had wine glasses, she saw. He didn't drink much, a reaction, she supposed, to what he had seen as a child, but he said he drank a little beer with Issio, and he would take a ceremonious sip of wine now and then. He had done this Sunday, at dinner, celebrating the two of them, he said, and it made her happy to see that this, too, this night of truths and hopes, ranked as an occasion to be celebrated.

They dawdled; they held hands over the breakfast bar and talked. The night grew quiet; Phyllis had long ago called Terry in for dinner and, no doubt, homework, and all around them the neighbors settled to their evening tasks. A rain shower started around nine and went on for an hour, and at first they left the windows open to catch the clean green smell of the rain, but it got chilly after awhile and they closed them again.

"I have never believed in ghosts," Cara said. "Mother always said that when you die, you die; only the ignorant and the superstitious believe in an afterlife." Everything considered, that was pretty funny; she and Jared looked at each other and laughed. "If that really is her," she said, "I wonder what she thinks about it. Living on as – whatever that is."

"I wonder what the point would be," said Jared. "Coming back just to hassle you? This can't be the reason for existence."

Considering her experience with her mother, Cara was less certain; it would at least provide Mother with a little entertainment with which to pass eternity, or however much of it a ghost in a fly's body might experience.

"Maud," she said, "might just have come back to be sure you were all right. Don't you think?"

"I never believed in ghosts either," said Jared. "But if anyone could come back, I would think it would be Maud." He fell silent, frowning into space, but he still held her hand across the breakfast bar. He had not gone anywhere, even in his mind; he was with her.

It was late before Jared began tossing the dishes into the dishwasher, and Cara went to check the windows and turn down the living room lights and start her bedtime routine, teeth brushed, hair combed, face washed.

And she had to put on the shimmering blue nightgown and the matching negligee, which she had made a special trip to the mall to buy. She had not needed them last week, but she needed them very much tonight, and the cologne she had bought at the same time. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and spared a glance for the back lawn, damp and empty of ghosts and memories. Maud, alive or dead, might well love Jared – how could she not? – but Cara was the one who could put her arms around him, kiss him, make love to him.

And this was a petty sort of thought – ha, ha, I have him and you don't – but Cara thought she was entitled, now and then, to petty thoughts.

She stepped out of the bathroom; Jared was taking off his shirt, but he turned, hearing her or perhaps catching the scent in the air, and his eyes, when he looked at her, made her think every plan, hope, and credit expended was worth it. He dropped his shirt on the floor and came across the floor to her, first touching the negligee and then touching her and then lifting her face to kiss her and then –

There was a shriek, the scream of souls in torment, the howl of animals in agony, the wail of pure fury beyond expression, and something hot and heavy struck Cara hard enough to knock her against the door to the porch, and then ricocheted back to hit Jared in the center of the chest and knock him backwards a step. Rutting beasts! Whores! Brainless sex addicts!

"Oh, hell," said Jared, and stepped forward, placing himself between Cara and the soaring buzzing fly. "Well," he said, "how nice of you to drop in, Mother Lindstrom." His hand dropped to the doorknob as the fly shot toward him; he swung his other hand through the air and connected, driving the small black body toward the porch as he yanked the door open, and let the Mothervoice sail onto the porch, and slammed the door after her, trapping her again.