The Unwanted (21 page)

She felt a tear well in her eye, but didn’t brush it away until she’d turned her back on Lisa.

At last the minister finished his prayer and reached down to pick up a clod of earth. He crushed the lump between his fingers and the dirt dropped onto the casket the pallbearers were lowering slowly into the grave.

As the casket disappeared from view, Sumi slipped out from behind one of the gravestones and darted over to peer into the open grave. The fur on his neck rose, and a soft
mewing emerged from his throat. Then he backed away, his eyes fixed on the yawning chasm in the earth, until he came in contact with Cassie’s leg. She bent over slightly, and he leaped up into her arms and licked gently at her cheek.

As the casket touched the bottom of the grave, Cassie had a sudden urge to look up into the sky.

So high up it was barely visible, the white hawk was floating above the graveyard, its wings fixed as it effortlessly rode the wind coming in off the sea. As Cassie watched, it turned and soared away.

Finally it was over, and with Sumi still cradled in her arms, Cassie was led out of the cemetery and back around the church to the house on Alder Street.

Before she went inside, she glanced out toward the marsh. It wasn’t fair, she thought. She’d barely met Miranda, and already she was gone.

Except that deep within her Cassie had a feeling that Miranda wasn’t gone at all.

This funeral—Miranda’s funeral—hadn’t been at all like her mother’s. All through the ceremony she’d found herself reliving once again those few moments she’d spent with Miranda, feeling once again the power of the connection between them, hearing once again the words Miranda had spoken to her.

“You are mine. You’ve come home again, and now you belong to me. Forevermore you belong to me.”

And Cassie knew that she had heard those words before. The memory was becoming clearer, though it was still not complete.

But Cassie knew that though Miranda was dead, she wasn’t gone. Not the way Cassie’s mother was gone.

Miranda’s spirit, the spirit to which Cassie had felt herself drawn from the moment she’d first seen the strange woman who lived in the marsh, was still alive.

Alive within Cassie herself.

Gene Templeton tipped back in the large chair behind his desk and propped his feet up on the open drawer which had been designed to hold an array of files but had long since been converted into a convenient storage bin for the endless snacks with which he filled his stomach. Someday, he supposed,
he would pay for his constant grazing, and his stomach would begin bulging out over the wide black belt of his uniform. But it hadn’t happened yet, despite the dire warnings of his wife Ellie. His weight hadn’t changed an ounce from the two hundred ten pounds he’d carried when he graduated from college thirty-odd years ago. Though Ellie liked to tease him that forty of those pounds had converted themselves over the years from muscle to fat, Gene knew it wasn’t true: his body was as hard as it had ever been. Metabolism, he always told her. That was the key to it: a good, healthy metabolism.

Except that the whole thing with Miranda Sikes was making him overeat, and if he wasn’t careful, he would throw that precious metabolism off balance. Then watch out. He could picture himself ballooning up fifty pounds overnight, and having to forego most of the meals Ellie liked fixing for him.

Which wasn’t, he knew, really the point. He was thinking about food to avoid thinking about what had happened to Miranda and what the implications of his investigation might mean. Besides, things like finding Miranda Sikes’s body in the marsh weren’t supposed to happen, not in quiet little towns like False Harbor.

In Boston, where he’d worked for more than twenty years, you expected bodies to turn up unexpectedly dead, and more often than not you wound up never finding out exactly what had happened, or why.

But Miranda Sikes had lived in the marsh all her life and knew every inch of it as well as Templeton knew the inside of his snack drawer. Could she really have simply wandered off one of the paths in the middle of the night and gotten caught in quicksand? Of course, it was possible that she had committed suicide. But suicide didn’t really make much sense either; if she were going to kill herself, surely she would have found a less macabre way to go than to hurl herself into quicksand.

And there was also the question of Cassie Winslow.

It wasn’t simply the fact that Cassie had not only been in the marsh when Miranda had died, and even been able to lead him to her body. That could have been coincidence, and it was, in truth, the hawk that had led both of them to the body.

But there were also the words she had spoken to her father on Saturday afternoon.

“She’s going to die.…” Had Cassie had some uncanny premonition? Had she somehow known what was going to happen? Or had she been somehow involved? Templeton leaned forward in the chair and heard the springs screech in protest at the sudden shift of his weight. The words, written in his own hand, seemed to leap off the page at him. But what, exactly, did they mean?

If Cassie had known Miranda was going to kill herself why hadn’t she told anyone? You didn’t listen to someone announce she was going to commit suicide, and then just not tell anyone, did you?

On the other hand, he remembered watching her at the moment they had discovered Miranda’s corpse. The expression on her face had been one of pure horror. Nothing about her had suggested that she knew what they were going to find, nor did anything she said. “She needed me, and I had to come.” Those had been her words, and Templeton was certain that she had hoped to find the old woman alive.

He sighed heavily. He had to make up his mind what to do. Should he talk to Cassie again? But what good would it do? What could she tell him that she hadn’t told him already?

He also had to consider the harm it might do. Nothing had been easy for Cassie since the day she’d arrived in False Harbor, and it wasn’t about to get any easier. And if he kept after her, the rumors that had already begun—the rumors that she must have had something to do with Miranda’s death—were only going to spread.

Spread, and grow.

And in the end what would be accomplished? Nothing. For in the end there was no evidence. No weapon had been involved, and no injuries had been apparent on Miranda’s body. Nor was there a motive.

In his gut Templeton didn’t truly believe that Cassie Winslow had killed Miranda.

He made up his mind, and filled in the one remaining blank on the report of Miranda Sikes’s death.
Cause of Death: Accidental Drowning
.

Then he closed the file on Miranda Sikes.

*  *  *

Cassie knew she had to be alone for a while, had to deal with everything that had happened. As soon as she’d changed her clothes, she slipped out of the house and started toward the marsh. But when she got to the park, she found herself unable to cross it and move into the marsh itself.

The memory of Saturday night was still too raw, too painful.

Instead she turned toward the beach, walking slowly, reliving the night Miranda had died.

She came to the beach finally and walked out into the dunes, settling in a patch of grass from which she could see both the ocean and the marsh.

She sat gazing out at the cabin, thinking again about the vision she’d had Saturday night, the vision that at first she’d thought was a dream.

She had said nothing to the police chief about the vision—had said nothing to anyone. Who would believe her?

No one.

But ever since, she’d been going over the vision again and again, trying to see clearly the figure that had been looming over Miranda while she died.

It had done no good. Even in the vision it had been too dark and she’d been too far away.

Since that night a knot of grief had held her in its grip, and the cold shroud of loneliness that had wrapped her in its folds so long ago closed even tighter around her.

Sometimes—times like now, when she sat alone in the dunes, staring out at the sea—she wished that it was she herself who had died in the marsh.

And yet there were the words Miranda had spoken to her in those hours they had spent together. They were, indeed, the last words Miranda had spoken.

“It’s all right. I will die soon, but I will never leave you. Remember the things I’ve taught you, and I will live on within you. I will live on, and you will never be alone again.”

But what did the words mean?

Cassie didn’t know, but as she sat watching the heaving sea, a certain knowledge began to grow within her that soon she would find out.

Even from the grave Miranda would find a way to tell her.

*  *  *

Eric Cavanaugh had avoided the village square after school that day, knowing that his friends had made plans to go down and watch the burial of Miranda Sikes from outside the cemetery fence.

What they really planned to do, he knew, was watch Cassie Winslow.

He’d been listening to them talking about her all that day and the day before, speculating on whether or not she would come back to school on Wednesday.

Or, possibly, not at all.

“I hope she never comes back,” Lisa Chambers had said angrily at lunch hour. Her injured arm, freed of the unnecessary sling she wore around her neck, was displayed on the table as if it were an indictment. “If you ask me, she’s just as crazy as Miranda was, and even if she didn’t kill her, she doesn’t belong here. And if she comes back, I don’t think any of us ought to speak to her at all!”

Eric had said nothing, and when Lisa—and most of his other friends as well—had trooped down to the square after school, he’d gone to the beach instead, and spent an hour walking slowly along the dunes, watching the birds and enjoying the feeling of the wind on his face.

And enjoying the solitude.

When he’d seen a figure in the distance, he almost turned away and started walking west again. But then he’d realized it was Cassie Winslow and quickened his step. She was sitting on the grass in the dunes, looking out over the marsh. As he approached, she’d looked up at him, her eyes large and rimmed red with tears.

“Hi,” he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, uncertain about what to say. Finally, deciding it didn’t really matter, he dropped down onto the sand beside her. “Is it all over with?”

Cassie nodded, and bit her lip. “Some of the kids were in the square while they were burying her,” she said softly, her eyes still fixed on the marsh.

“I know,” Eric replied. “They wanted me to go with them, but I wouldn’t.”

Cassie turned to see him then. “Why not?” she asked, her voice bitter. “You could have laughed at me too.”

Eric flinched, and the pain she saw in his eyes made her wish she could take back the words. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I just … well, I wish you’d come to the funeral.”

“I—I couldn’t,” Eric stammered. “I had to go to school.” He looked away quickly, afraid his face would betray his thoughts. Cassie only nodded silently, then, after what seemed an eternity to Eric, spoke again. “Nobody else came either.”

Eric’s eyes widened. “Nobody?” he echoed.

“My dad, and Rosemary, and Jennifer. But they had to go, I guess. And then afterward, in the cemetery, everyone was staring at me from across the street.” Her voice broke, and Eric saw a tear welling up in her eye. She blinked it back, then looked at him shyly. “Are you going to start staring at me too?” she asked, her voice barely audible. “Is that why you came out here?”

Eric frowned. “Why would I do that?”

“Because that’s what everyone else is doing. They all think I’m crazy, don’t they?” She saw Eric start to shake his head then think better of it. “Well, I’m not,” she went on, her voice rising slightly, “and Miranda wasn’t either! And I didn’t do anything to her. I don’t care what anybody thinks, I didn’t do anything to her!”

“Hey,” Eric protested. “How come you’re mad at me? I didn’t say anything, and if I was going to start staring at you, I would have been with everybody else, wouldn’t I?”

Cassie hesitated, her eyes flickering with uncertainty. “Does that mean you’re going to be my friend?” she asked, and once more her voice had turned shy.

Eric looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “I thought we were already friends,” he said carefully. “If I wasn’t your friend, I wouldn’t be here right now, would I?”

Now Cassie turned to face him squarely, and as their eyes met, he had a peculiar feeling that she was looking beyond his eyes—was looking straight into the depths of his soul. It was a strange sensation, almost frightening, and for a moment he wanted to look away again. But then she nodded, and smiled at him.

“You
are
my friend,” she said quietly, and stood up. “Would you like to see my house?”

Eric frowned. “Your house?”

Cassie nodded, and pointed out into the marsh.

“Miranda’s house,” she said softly. “It’s mine now.”

Hers? Eric thought. What was she talking about? Miranda wouldn’t have given her the cabin. She
couldn’t
have.

“I think that …” Cassie went on uncertainly, “Well, I just have a feeling she wants me to have it. So I’ve decided it’s mine.” She smiled crookedly. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? I mean—well, I guess it sounds sort of crazy, doesn’t it?”

Eric hesitated only a moment. “I don’t think so,” he said. “If that’s the way you feel, that’s the way you feel.” Pausing, he added, “I guess she wasn’t going to give it to anyone else.” His eyes went to the cabin, and he saw the white hawk on the rooftop suddenly lift up and spread its wings. A shrill whistling sound drifted across the wetlands.

“It’s all right,” Cassie said, certain she knew what he was thinking. “He won’t hurt you. He won’t hurt anyone who’s my friend.”

Eric shook his head. “I can’t stay,” he told her. “My dad—I promised my dad I’d be home early.”

Cassie smiled sadly. “All right,” she said. “Tomorrow. I’ll show it to you tomorrow.”

As Eric hurried away, she started walking slowly out into the marsh. The white hawk rose up off the rooftop, his wings beating rapidly as he flew toward her.