What Comes After (21 page)

“Please sit down, Iris,” Mrs. Tuten said. She and Mr. Tuten and the ferrets had the sofa, so I took a straight-backed chair by the front window. Mr. Tuten had one hand over Hob and the other hand over Jill, as if they might attack me if he didn’t hold them back.

Mrs. Tuten looked at her watch, but that was just for dramatic effect. She already knew what time it was. “You’ve been out?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You didn’t leave a note,” she said.

“No.”

“Do you want to tell us where you’ve been?” Mrs. Tuten asked. “And what you have in your bag?”

I kicked the bag lightly. I’d planned to smuggle my things in and hoped they wouldn’t notice the new additions to my wardrobe. “These are just some of my clothes,” I said. “I went out to my aunt’s farm. I needed to feed and milk the goats, and check on Jo Dee, the one that’s pregnant.”

Mrs. Tuten’s face reddened. “I see,” she said. “So despite what we told you yesterday, you decided to go anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I had to.”

“Whether you had to or thought you had to, all that is beside the point,” Mrs. Tuten said. “Mr. Tuten and I were very clear when we said no. That’s your aunt’s private property. It’s considered trespassing for you to be out there.”

“But nobody’s really taking care of the goats,” I said. “Nobody’s been milking them. The barn doors were left wide open. I doubt the Animal Control officer has been out there more than once or twice.”

“I’m sure it will all be taken care of,” Mrs. Tuten said. She looked at Mr. Tuten, then back at me. He kept petting the ferrets. She did all the talking.

“Iris,” she said, changing the subject, “how did you get out to the farm?”

“I took a bike. I found it in the shed.” I didn’t mention Aunt Sue’s truck. They’d probably think my taking the Tundra was grand theft auto.

“You did not have permission to do that,” Mrs. Tuten said, wringing her hands. “This is not a good way for us to be starting out. We need to be able to trust you. We simply cannot have this.”

Mr. Tuten leaned forward. “We need you to understand — there can be no more trips out to your aunt’s farm.”

“Please,” I said, the panic making my voice quaver. “They need me. I’ll walk out there. I’ll feed them and milk them and come straight home. I’ll do whatever chores you want here. I’ll keep walking your ferrets. But I have to see my goats. I have to take care of them. Please.”

And in a smaller voice I said it again: “Please.”

There was a long silence. The ferrets climbed out of Mr. Tuten’s lap and came over to inspect my legs.

“We’re sorry,” Mrs. Tuten said. “If you’re going to stay here with us, you’re going to have to abide by our rules.”

I trembled with frustration and anger, but fought to hide it.

“We’ll need you to promise,” Mrs. Tuten said, “that you won’t go back out there. To the farm.”

“It’s just that we’re responsible,” Mr. Tuten added, apologetically. “We don’t want anything to happen to you.”

I stared at their shoes for a long time. Then I told them I understood, and I told them I wouldn’t go back out to the farm. It was a lie, of course; there was no way in hell I was going to stop taking care of the goats. I just had to figure out a way to do it without the Tutens finding out.

Mrs. Tuten and Mindy took me downtown the next day after school for an appointment with the guardian, Mr. Trask, though I didn’t want to see him — then or ever.

Mr. Trask didn’t look at me when the receptionist showed us into his office. He spoke to Mindy while Mrs. Tuten and I just sat and listened. For ten minutes they discussed me as if I wasn’t there: my condition, my situation, my placement options — which didn’t seem to exist, except for the Tutens’.

“And as for the estate,” Mr. Trask said, finally shifting his gaze my way, “everything was liquidated after Miss Wight’s father’s death. Her aunt was fully authorized to make expenditures.”

He turned back to Mindy. “As I have explained to Miss Wight before.”

“How much is left?” I asked. “You didn’t tell me
that.
”

He continued addressing Mindy. “The balance is forty-two thousand five hundred and eleven dollars”— he paused —“and thirteen cents. Social Services can draw from the account to pay the foster-care stipend to the Tutens, and a small allowance for incidental expenses for Miss Wight — clothing, school lunches, that sort of thing. The rest will transfer to Miss Wight on her eighteenth birthday. This is not an account to which Miss Wight will have access otherwise until that time. And I suppose it goes without saying that Miss Wight’s aunt, Miss Allen, has lost her executorship of the estate.”

Mindy asked about the status of the cases against Aunt Sue and Book. Mr. Trask said he wasn’t directly involved — Book and Aunt Sue both had court-appointed lawyers — but he understood that they had a preliminary hearing in a week, and he expected that the case would go before the grand jury.

“Will they be allowed to get out on bail?” I asked. “Why aren’t they already?”

Mr. Trask leaned back in his chair. “It is my understanding that Miss Allen was unable to make her bail, or her son’s. You do understand that the state is treating this as a very serious felony.”

“What do you mean ‘treating it’?” I said.

He leaned back even farther. “I simply mean that it is a very serious felony. That’s all.”

“But you said ‘treating it,’” I said, leaning toward him until I was practically out of my chair. “Don’t you think it’s serious, what happened?”

Mrs. Tuten laid her hand on my arm. We were sitting in matching straight-backed chairs next to each other, about a mile away from Mr. Trask on the other side of his desk.

“Of course he does,” she said in a tone I hadn’t heard before — as if she were giving Mr. Trask an ultimatum.

Just before we left, I asked about going out to Aunt Sue’s farm. Mrs. Tuten seemed surprised that I brought it up, but it was all I had been thinking about.

“Now, Iris,” she said. “We have already discussed this.”

“I know,” I said. “I just wanted to see if it was possible.”

Mr. Trask was unequivocal, though: No, I couldn’t go on the property. And no, I couldn’t tend to the goats or Gnarly.

My heart sank, but only briefly. Because I was going back to the farm no matter what.

Tuesday morning I pretended to take the bus to school but ducked around the corner from the Tutens’ and drove the truck instead. I parked in the student lot, then snuck out of study hall later in the day and raced over to the farm, ten minutes away. I felt as if I’d been holding my breath the whole time I was away. Gnarly’s dish was empty — I doubted Animal Control had been there — so I got busy right away, feeding Gnarly, giving grain to the wethers, gathering the eggs, milking the goats. I pasteurized the milk and started some new cheeses — out of habit, and because I didn’t know what else to do with the milk.

The goats hated that I rushed through everything; they wanted to play. Tammy butted me in the side, hard, after I let her off the milking stand. I yelled at her but immediately felt bad about it — and bad about having to abandon them again so soon. I thought Jo Dee was going to batter down the gate trying to follow me out of the field when I had to leave.

I nearly got in trouble for being late to English class, but I said I was having my period and Mrs. Roosevelt let me in. Littleberry was watching me as I sat down at a desk by the door. He gave me a crooked smile, as if he knew something was up. I didn’t look at him again the rest of class.

I continued to slip off to the farm the rest of that week and into the next — sometimes leaving during study hall, sometimes during lunch. Twice I skipped homeroom and first period. I figured the Tutens wouldn’t find out about the tardies for a while.

The goats were always happy enough to see me, but I could tell they didn’t understand why I came and went so quickly, why I didn’t stay, and why I milked them only once a day. Tammy attacked me a couple more times, even after I freed her head yet again from the fence. Jo Dee, whose pregnant belly hung so low that she practically dragged it through the grass, pressed herself so close to me that my jeans took on her goaty smell. I was afraid the Tutens might notice it, so I starting leaving a pair of jeans in the truck to change into and out of, just for the farm.

There was trouble with Gnarly, too. I didn’t want to tie him up to the clothesline, even if he could still run back and forth. Plus his barking alone wouldn’t keep wild dogs or coyote from getting at the goats, and I needed him to be able to protect them — and to protect Aunt Sue’s chickens, which for some reason he never bothered. But then one night he killed another one of the neighbors’ chickens. He didn’t even eat it or anything, just laid the carcass on the bottom porch step, I guess thinking I’d appreciate the gift.

Dad had shown me how to deal with a chicken killer, though. I found an old protective dog collar in a closet — a giant, hard-plastic cone — and strapped that on Gnarly. He wasn’t happy about it, but he couldn’t scratch or bite it off. I made sure he could still get to his food and water bowls with it on. Then I tied the chicken’s legs together, and its wings tight to its breasts, and tied the whole thing under Gnarly’s neck. He went crazy trying to get at it, but couldn’t because of the collar — not with his teeth, not with his paws, not scraping against the goat fence, not flinging himself onto the ground and crashing and rolling around.

Finally he gave up and just sat there, looking up at me with his best sad dog eyes.

“Forget it,” I said. “You can’t kill chickens, Gnarly. You have to take care of the goats when I’m not here. That’s your job. No more chickens.”

I left the bird there for three days while it turned rancid and rotted — and hoped Animal Control wouldn’t show up, which, judging from what I’d seen so far, wasn’t likely to happen. The smell nearly made me vomit, and the goats couldn’t get far enough away from Gnarly. They ran to the farthest corner of the field every time he climbed under the fence. Gnarly could barely eat for the first two days, and not at all on the third. When I drove out that afternoon to milk the goats, he looked so miserable and pathetic — and stank so bad — that I cut the carcass loose and tossed it away deep in the woods.

It took three Murphy’s Oil baths to wash off the smell. But Gnarly didn’t kill another chicken.

All of the sneaking around was making me so anxious that I couldn’t eat. I felt guilty about lying to the Tutens, and worried about getting caught. Plus I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, especially after Mrs. Tuten stood up for me in the meeting with Mr. Trask. I was still getting harassed at school — people defacing my locker, bumping into me in the halls, shouting “Ninety-one!” at me. And someone must have seen me driving the Tundra, because I came out one day to find that it had been keyed down the side.

I couldn’t report any of it, though — and couldn’t have said anything about the truck even if I’d wanted to, since I wasn’t supposed to have it in the first place. I got shakier after every act of vandalism. Once, walking to the truck after school, I suddenly heard footsteps on the sidewalk behind me and turned and shouted “Get away!” But it was just some kid, probably a freshman. He stuttered out an apology, and then practically took off running to get away from me.

The only thing getting me through it all — aside from the goats and Gnarly — were my talks with Mr. DiDio. Mindy had arranged for him to be my counselor — not just my school counselor, but also my mental health counselor. I was supposed to see him once a week during study hall so he could check on how things were going with me. I didn’t tell him about the vandalism, or the harassment, and I didn’t tell him about sneaking out to take care of the goats. But it was kind of nice meeting with him all the same, sitting on his carpet, having a temporary refuge. So far he hadn’t mentioned what happened out at the lake, or anything about Aunt Sue or Book, which I appreciated. I guess he was waiting for me to bring all that up when I was ready.

The day after I yelled at the freshman, I asked Mr. DiDio about confidentiality. “Our talks, or sessions, or whatever,” I said. “Are they private, between just the two of us? Like confessing to a priest? That sort of thing?”

Mr. DiDio had made us some herbal tea. I balanced mine on my knee. He got up to add more honey to his. He seemed to like a lot of honey in his tea. Lemon, too. “Yeah,” he said. “Pretty much. Unless there’s a situation where I’m concerned that you might be in danger. That would include if I thought you might be a danger to yourself.”

He offered me the honey bear, but I shook my head.

“Is there a specific reason you’re asking?”

I took a deep breath. And then I told him about the goats, and the truck, and sneaking out to Aunt Sue’s farm. He listened in silence, mostly looking into his mug of tea, not even nodding or anything. Just listening.

When I finished he didn’t say anything for a while. I could tell he was struggling with how to respond.

I held my breath.

Finally he asked if I knew anything about situational ethics.

I shook my head.

“OK,” he said. “Here’s an example. You’re a vegetarian. You think it’s unethical — maybe even immoral — to kill an animal and eat its meat.”