promise she’d made to Warren Emerson, and she groaned.
The cat.
Night had fallen by the time she drove up the lower slope of Beech Hill and pulled into Emerson’s front yard. She parked next to the woodpile, a perfectly circular tower of stacked logs. She thought of the many hours it must have taken him to arrange his wood with such precision, each log placed with the same care one usually gave to constructing a stone wall. And then to pull it down again, bit by bit, as winter consumed his annual work of art.
She turned off her engine and looked up at the old farmhouse. No lights were on inside. She used a flashlight to guide herself up the icy front steps to the porch. Everything seemed to sag and she had the strange illusion that she was tilting sideways, sliding toward the edge, toward oblivion. Warren had told her the door would be unlocked, and it was. She stepped inside and turned on the lights.
The kitchen sprang into view with its worn linoleum and chipped appliances. A small gray cat stared up at her from the floor. They had startled each other, she and the cat, and for a few seconds they both froze.
Then the cat shot out of the room and vanished somewhere into the house.
“Here, kitty kitty! You want your dinner, don’t you? Mona?”
She had planned to take Mona to a kennel for boarding. Warren Emerson had already been transferred to Eastern Maine Medical Center for his craniotomy, and would remain hospitalized for at least a week. Claire didn’t relish the thought of driving here every day just to feed a cat. But it appeared the cat had different ideas.
Her frustration mounted as she went from room to room in search of the uncooperative Mona, turning on lights as she went. Like so many other farmhouses of its era, this one had been built to house a large family, and it consisted of many small rooms, made even more claustrophobic by the clutter. She saw piles of old newspapers and magazines, bundled grocery sacks, crates filled with empty bottles. In the hallway she had to turn sideways to navigate a narrow tunnel between stacked books. Such hoarding was usually a sign of mental illness, but Warren had organized his clutter in a logical fashion, the books segregated from the magazines, the brown paper bags all folded and bound together with twine.
Perhaps this was merely Yankee frugality carried to an extreme.
It provided plenty of cover for a fugitive cat.
She’d made a complete circuit of the downstairs without spotting Mona. The cat must be hiding in one of the upstairs rooms.
She started up the steps, then halted, her hands suddenly sweating. Deja vu, she thought. I have lived this before. A strange house, a strange staircase.
Something terrible waiting for me in the attic.
But this was not Scotty Braxton’s house, and the only thing lurking upstairs was a frightened animal.
She forced herself to continue climbing as she called out, “Here, kitty!” if only to prop up her faltering courage. There were four doors on the second floor, but only one was open. If the cat had fled upstairs, she had to be in that room.
Claire stepped through the doorway and turned on the light.
Her gaze was drawn at once to the black and white photographs- dozens of them hanging on the wall or propped up on the dresser and nightstand. A gallery of Warren Emerson’s memories. She crossed the room and stared at three faces smiling back at her from one of the photos, a middle-aged couple with a young boy. The woman was round-faced and plain, her hat tilted at a comically drunken pitch. The man beside her seemed to be sharing in the joke; his eyes were bright with laughter. They each rested one hand on the shoulders of the boy standing between them, physically claiming him as their own, their shared possession.
And the boy with the cowlick and the missing front teeth-this must be young Warren, basking in the glow of his parents’ attention.
Her gaze moved to the other photographs and she saw the same faces again and again, different seasons, different places. Here a shot of the mother proudly holding up a pie. There a shot of father and son on a riverbank with their fishing poles. Finally, a school photo of a young girl, apparently Warren’s sweetheart, for at the bottom someone had drawn in a heart containing the words Warren and Iris forever. Through tears, Claire stared at the nightstand, at a glass of water resting there, half full.
At the bed, where gray hairs had been shed on the pillow. Warren’s bed.
Every morning he would wake up alone in this room, to the sight of his parents’ photos. And every night, the last image he’d register was of their faces, smiling at him.
She was crying now, for the child he once was. A lonely little boy trapped in an old man’s body.
She went back downstairs to the kitchen.
There was no sense chasing after a cat that didn’t want to be captured. She would simply leave food in the dish, and come back another time. Opening the pantry door, she found herself staring at dozens of cans of cat food stacked on the shelves. There was scarcely anything in the kitchen for a man to eat, but pampered Mona was certainly well-supplied.
Today she’ll be expecting tuna.
Tuna it would be. She emptied the can into the cat dish and placed it on the floor next to the bowl of water. She filled another bowl with dried cat food, enough to last several days. She cleaned out the litter-box. Then she turned off the lights and walked out.
Sitting in her car, she glanced one last time at the house. For most of his life, Warren Emerson had lived within those walls, without human companionship, without love. He would probably die in that house alone, with only a cat to witness his exit.
She wiped the tears from her eyes. Then she turned the car around and drove down the dark road for home.
That night Lincoln called her.
“I spoke to Wanda Darnell,” he said. “I told her there may be a biological reason for her son’s actions. That other children in town have been affected, and we’re trying to track down the cause.”
“How did she react?”
“I think she’s relieved. It means there’s something external to blame. Not the family. Not her.”
“I understand that perfectly”
“She’s given permission for you to interview her son.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow. At the Maine Youth Center.”
A long row of beds lined the wall of the silent dormitory room. The morning sun shone in through windows above, one bright square of light spilling down on the boy’s thin shoulders. He sat on the bed with his legs tucked up against his chest. His head was bowed. This was not the same boy she had seen four weeks ago, cursing and thrashing. This was a child who’d been beaten down, hopes and dreams trampled, only his physical shell remaining.
He did not look up as Claire approached, her footsteps echoing on the worn planks. She stopped beside his bed. “Hello, Taylor. Do you feel like talking to me?”
The boy lifted one shoulder, barely a shrug, but at least it was the semblance of an invitation.
She reached for a chair, her gaze falling briefly on the small pine desk next to his bed. It was a badly abused piece of furniture, its surface gouged with four-letter words and the initials of countless young residents. She wondered if Taylor had already carved his mark into this permanent record of despair.
She slid the chair to his bed and sat down. “Whatever we talk about today, Taylor, is just between us, okay?” He gave a shrug, as if it hardly mattered.
“Tell me about what happened, that day in school. Why did you do it?”
He turned his cheek against his knees, as though suddenly too exhausted to hold up his head. “I don’t know why”
“Do you remember that day?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Everything?”
