And yet she felt peace. She'd won.
Maybe I haven't stopped that killer, but at least sometimes things go right. Hell of a mess, six people serious to critical, one still in ICU, but they're all going to make it. Didn't even have to call the air ambulance and ship anyone off to Naskeag General.
And Jane White's going to be okay, too. All that girl needs is a place she can call "home." Someplace she can feel safe. Damn sure the House can provide that. It even seems willing to let Gary sleep here to give her something warm to cling to when she wakes up scared in the middle of the night, a damned male under the sacred roof.
Alice thought she'd earned a break. Hell, she'd even brought Caroline up to date on Morgans and Pratts and that frigging brujo.
Erik Satie, she decided, piano, the Gymnopédie they used as a movie theme for To Kill a Mockingbird, plus some Nocturnes and stuff. It'd be a welcome change from all those damned requiems, the hellfire and damnation of Verdi or Mozart, the Teutonic gloom of the Brahms. Brightness, serenity, quiet acceptance, release, those were the ticket.
Atropos padded across the parlor rug and levitated into the chair beside her, climbed up on her lap, added purring warmth to the relaxation. Lead by example. Cats know how to relax.
Alice rubbed the cat's ears. "Old Ecclesiasticus had it right, girl. 'To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.' Always got to remember that."
She went on in her head, the relevant passage, 'A time to kill and a time to heal.' Healing pays off better, in the long run. Even if sometimes you have to kill in order to heal.
Alice keyed the remote and emulated the cat, body sinking limp into the chair as her brain sank into the music. Closed her eyes. Let music lift her, carry her, calm her, the instrument, the interpretation, the overriding genius . . .
She opened her eyes, vaguely conscious that Atropos had stirred and hopped down. The stereo had played through its hour of music into silence. Kate leaned against the door jamb to the kitchen, the cat snuggled in the crook of one strong arm, looking massive and patient and guarding like some ancient goddess, a quiet on her face and the set of her shoulders that matched what Alice felt in her soul.
"You are so beautiful when you're sleeping."
"Kate . . ."
"I'm sorry. Pig-headed stiff-necked pride seems to run in the family. You didn't know. No reason I should have thought you knew. Just, to scratch so hard for so little for so long and find out I'd been rich all along . . ."
Alice shook her head and blinked, still stupid with sleep. Kate was back. Kate . . . "Aunt Jean may have known. She talked with your grandmother a lot. But she got so forgetful the last few years, even forgot that she forgot things. And she'd never have written something like that down. It wasn't our secret, to risk putting it down on paper."
She struggled to her feet, woozy, stiff, her balance still lost somewhere in the hours of crisis and then the soft spring rain of Satie's music. She fell into a hug, a warm gentle supporting thing, not fierce or passionate on either side, both conscious of slow-healing back and shoulder and hip, more a thing of long years of friendship than the few months of sex. Kate was back.
A time to heal.
The House had let Kate in and hadn't wakened Alice. The House knew Kate belonged here. So did Atropos, warm fur twining between their ankles and purring madly. She had her favorite human back.
Alice blinked her eyes, still pulling her head together. She must have been really zonked, or in the middle of a dream she couldn't remember. She didn't usually wake up this dumb.
"What's wrong?"
Kate drew into herself, closing down her face. "That obvious, eh? Must look like shit, the big dumb ox only comes back because she needs your help. Never had any social skills."
Alice took a deep breath and sighed it out. "Don't hand me that crap, woman. I've known you for nearly forty years. Knowing you, you'd have been here sooner if you didn't have a problem. It's that 'pig-headed, stiff-necked' bit. You're so used to fighting your own battles, you don't look for friends even when you need them. Now spit it out."
Kate let go the hug and slumped into one of the Eames chairs, wincing. Atropos joined her, settling delicately against that injured hip and offering her body as a self-adjusting heating pad with built-in vibro-massage.
"I don't know what it is. Jeff's missing. We've been working on the roof over to Lew's, when the weather gives us half a chance. I left him there this morning, came back this afternoon and he was gone. His bike was still there, tools still there, he left a shingle hanging loose on the roof with only one nail in. Not like him at all."
Alice sank into the other chair. Problem, all right, big problem. She wondered if Kate ever let herself know how much that boy meant to her.
"And?"
Kate grimaced. "There's always an 'and', isn't there? He'd scratched something in the roofing felt, could have been a name. 'Jackie.' He'd left his hammer lying right by it as a flag, there on the roof." She stared away into a corner, tense, chewing on her lip. "There's something I never told you. I keep seeing Jackie around town, up on the ridge and then
