Gypsy (The Cavy Files Book 1) (28 page)

Chapter Twenty

Everyone works it out so that we can meet by four thirty the next day to get to Saint Catherine’s House before they close at five. There’s some disagreement about getting into trouble or worrying our families, but in the end the situation with Flicker wins out.

The Cavies will always win out.

Even Reaper comes, but I had to pry her away from Dane Kim after school so we wouldn’t be late. They stopped talking as soon as I came around, which irritated the crap out of me, but when I questioned her on the walk back to my father’s house she says she thinks she’s close to finding out more about him. It might be our best shot on that front, since Dane knows I know he’s not being honest, and our budding friendship dissolved in the process.

I keep my mouth shut about the likelihood that,
if
we’re right and Dane’s a trained government agent, he won’t tell her anything useful. We all want so badly to be doing
something.
There’s no reason she can’t try to crack Dane.

The twins pick us up in a car they “borrowed” from their dad’s collection, and I feel like they’ll be lucky to escape without a whipping for driving the vintage Jaguar over an hour into town. No one else had to resort to thievery, since Mole and Pollyanna took the bus from a temporary foster home, but Haint had to cut last period to meet us on time.

Saint Catherine’s House is twenty minutes south of the city, on a quiet island called Edisto. It’s more secluded than the urban islands that surround Charleston, which are more like suburbs than beach towns, and we don’t pass much of anything besides houses and the occasional gas station or grocery store.

The House itself rests all the way on the southern tip of the island, and from the outside might be just another three-level, blue-painted vacation home. It sits on stilts to help avoid hurricane damage, and the bright white shutters must have been recently painted. We traipse up the front steps, Mole holding lightly to Pollyanna’s arm while an invisible Haint hovers next to the front door and Goose lurks around back, waiting for her to let him in once she’s safely inside.

That leaves five of us on the steps when Pollyanna—Tate, today—rings the doorbell.

It’s ten minutes until the end of their posted visiting hours, which isn’t much time, but we’re not exactly visitors, anyway.

A woman in a black nun’s getup, complete with giant black-and-white habit, peers at us through a crack in the door. “Can I help you children?”

We elected Mole to be our spokesperson, because he’s the best spoken and least unintentionally offensive of the bunch. “I hope so. I don’t know if you watch the news, but recently the police liberated a group of teenagers from Darley Hall, an old plantation just a little bit up the road?”

The nun nods, her lips pursed. “We’ve been praying for the souls of everyone involved.”

Her unmoved expression stirs irritation in my blood, and I work to keep it off my face.

“Well, you’ve been praying for
our
souls, then, and we appreciate it.” He pauses, waiting for a reaction that never comes, then plows ahead. “We’ve recently learned we were all born here at Saint Catherine’s. As you can imagine, we have some questions and were hoping that someone here would be willing to talk to us.”

The silence that follows sets us all on edge. Polly’s and Reaper’s fingers curl into fists, and the twins pop their knuckles in unison, sending a shudder up my spine. The nun glares their direction, her beady, cold eyes sliding over the lot of us as though maybe we’re cockroaches in disguise.

After what seems like an eternity, she opens the door wider. An invitation. “Our administrator has been here for over twenty years, so she might remember something. She might not. We get a lot of girls in here with similar stories. Hard to remember them all.”

“Thank you, ma’am. S—sister,” Mole stutters, stepping past her into the dark foyer.

It’s odd to find the interior of a beach house dark and unwelcoming, but the earth has mostly turned its back on the sun for another day. The ornate chandelier overhead also seems out of place, even on its muted setting—a little too fancy for a home that’s run by religious women hiding pregnant teenagers.

If they still do that.

I bet they do.

An Oriental rug stretches across the living area to our left, which is decorated with furniture that looks expensive and horribly uncomfortable, with a baby grand piano on one end and a polished wet bar on the other. On the right, an office or a library waits behind a pair of glass French doors, shelves and shelves of books serving as the main decoration. A staircase sweeps upward, made of polished wood, and a few creaks and groans from overhead proves that we’re not alone.

The place gives me the creeps, and even breathing in the air at Saint Catherine’s feels as though we’re willingly sucking down poison—a draught of lies and shame, of babies being stolen and passed off to scientists instead of families. It takes a few tries to force back the bile swishing into my throat.

The nun leads us past the stairs, by a kitchen that smells of Italian food, and pauses outside a plain, wooden door that doesn’t fit with the ornate, pristine condition of the rest of the ground floor. She knocks, and a moment later, a voice calls out, “Enter.”

We get the briefest glimpse of another woman seated behind a desk before the door closes behind the nun. We stare at one another, raising eyebrows and shrugging shoulders, but we’re too afraid to speak for fear of being overheard.

Haint and Goose must be inside by now, and by the looks of things there isn’t much staff here. We haven’t seen a single other person, nun or patient… girl, whatever, so there’s a good chance they won’t get caught, but now I’m worried most of the records are behind this door.

The nun who greeted us reappears, looking ready to invite us into the office, but if we all go in there then Haint and Goose aren’t going to find a thing.

“Do you think we could sit out front, in the drawing room?” I blurt, hurrying on to cover the tremble of fear in my voice. “I’m sort of claustrophobic. I’m in therapy.”

The nun frowns, and her lips start to form the word
no,
but an older woman appears behind her and gives me a tight smile. The nun who answered the door is no spring chicken, but compared to this woman, she’s youthful and spritely.

The old woman’s smile should relax me, should say she’s going to be more helpful and less full of disdain, but it doesn’t. A storm brews inside me, sloshing anger and resentment.

How dare they treat us like this? Like us coming back here is nothing but an annoyance. As though we have no right.

I don’t know how all of these emotions radiate from her smile, but they do.

“It’s fine, Sister Margaret. I’ll take them out front. Please ask the cook to bring us some tea.”

She toddles past Sister Margaret, who complies but doesn’t bother to hide her disapproval. At least the office will be empty if Haint and Goose can find a way in.

After Margaret walks toward the kitchen and the old nun takes the lead toward the front of the house, Mole bumps me with his hip and gives me a thumbs-up. While I’m pleased that my ploy succeeded, this awful place has me too worked up to relax.

A rush of air brushes past my cheek, one that’s out of place in the closed-up house. The nun pauses and glances back our direction. She feels it, too.

But Goose is fast and Haint’s invisible, and it assuages my anger a tiny little bit to think they’re already in that office, trying to find out the truth.

The old nun continues to the sitting room and takes a seat in a large wingback chair that threatens to swallow her in maroon velvet. The rest of us settle on a pair of love seats arranged around the fireplace, and my observation about how uncomfortable they are turns out to be true. A silent woman in street clothes rattles in with a tray of tea and cups and other necessities, and serves us each in turn before leaving again. No one has ever served me tea before, and I have no idea how I take it, so I ask for plain. The rest of the Cavies do the same.

Once the distraction is gone, the nun sips her tea, then nestles it on a china saucer, a slight tremble in her hands. “Sister Margaret tells me that the five of you were born in our facility. What can I help you with?”

The way she says
facility
sets my teeth on edge. It’s not like a hospital, or a house, as it claims. It’s more sterile than that.

“Well, Sister… ?” Mole waits, polite and staring at a spot on the wall over her shoulder.

“Mother Nan,” she corrects, gentle enough.

“Mother Nan, we were hoping you might be able to tell what you recall about our mothers.”

“We’re also curious about our adoptions,” Pollyanna adds, her eyes pleading in a way that makes me want to look away. “About how we ended up at Darley.”

“Our privacy policies are in line with state legal codes, and I’m afraid they prevent me from revealing the details of your adoptions. But I might be able to tell you a few small facts about your origins that could set your minds and hearts at rest.” She frowns, sipping her tea again, and glances out the window as though she’s wishing God would take her home right now, if only to avoid having to discuss such banalities.

Origins.
It seems an odd choice to describe our births in this place. More clinical than religious.

“Thank you. We really appreciate it,” Athena breaks in, his gaze flicking to the entryway.

I can almost read his mind, and it says,
We haven’t given them enough time.

“Maybe if we tell you our names, you’d remember at least some of our moms. I mean, I know it’s a long shot…” I trail off, waiting for anything from her that suggests she’s even going to try. That she cares about what happened to us at all.

“That would be fine, although I do need to attend dinner with the girls at five thirty.”

Twenty more minutes should be plenty of time. It would have to be. I swallow, looking around at my friends. My family. They encourage me with smiles and nods, but it’s clear from the way their eyes focus inward that their mothers are the last thing on their minds right now. We’re all wondering what’s happening with Haint and Goose, and whether or not they’re having more success. There’s nothing this old bat will reveal about our moms that our families haven’t, except maybe when it comes to Mole and Pollyanna.

They should have gone first. “You go, Tate.”

My offer takes her aback, returning her gaze to the present, and her expression softens with gratitude. “Okay. My name is Tate Annabelle Donovan. My mother’s name was Annabelle Stephens, and she came here from a small town called Seabrook when she found out she was pregnant.”

Pollyanna’s mother’s story is virtually the same as the rest, which means she didn’t come here of her own volition. Maligning this woman and the House’s practices would be counterproductive, no matter how much sitting here playing nice gives me the urge to smash every single elegant decoration to smithereens.

“And you, young man?” Mother Nan fixes Mole with a questioning look.

“Shiloh Adams Lee. My mother was Lauren Davis.”

“Yes, your history I recall, due to the prominent nature of your father’s family. Your mother, poor dear, came from humble birth and would never have done as a match for a Lee boy. There was a disagreement between the families after Lauren chose to place herself under the legal protection of the Lees, and they felt you would be better off with older parents who could better care for you.”

A different story—a sad one, a scary one—tangles with Mother Nan’s. It’s darker, like a shadow of truth beneath the glaring lie, but seems easy to guess at. If the Lees are as powerful as she suggests, they no doubt coerced a frightened girl with no money and no options into trusting them, then sent her here.

Maybe that’s not the way it happened, but it’s how it happened in my mind. Nausea feeds the storm in my center until it crashes with rage and contempt for these women who seem so indifferent to the pain they caused. I need to get out of here, and there’s only ten or so minutes left until Mother Nan kicks us out, anyway. I nearly fall over the arm of the love seat getting up. Everyone looks at me, their expressions ranging from annoyed to confused.

“I’m sorry, I need some air. Y’all stay.”

The entryway looms, then disappears behind me as I barge through the front doors and back onto the white-painted porch. It’s still too close to this place, where our lives began and our mothers’ ended. Too near that woman whose motivations are obscured, who is able to ignore the humanity in those she’s tasked with helping, to let me feel safe.

I stumble down the steps and across a small expanse of loose sand and grass onto the hard-packed beach. The constant, calming suck of the waves stops the angry swirl inside me from exploding, manages to trap my screams at the unfairness of it all.

Footsteps cross the sand behind me. The cautious, halting gait announces Mole, but I’m too upset to turn around and help him find me. He’ll do it on his own, and the extra time will give me a moment to get my shit together. Everyone in that room has been through the same thing, but they’re not freaking out.