Blackthorn Winter (10 page)

"Stupid woman," Duncan muttered to me as he and I continued along the corridor. At the end was another flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs we walked down another hallway and came to a closed door that had a poster of Mount Everest taped to it. Duncan reached out and twisted the doorknob. The door swung open.

His bedroom. Duncan stepped away from me and I felt a stab of sadness to be standing alone. But at least the only
smell around was his nice boy smell, and the only sound was his friendly voice saying, "Welcome to my lair."

We sat on his bed. My head was clear now. I looked around with interest at the crowded bookcases, the overflowing dresser drawers, the piles of CDs and stacks of mountain-climbing magazines. I smiled at the big brown teddy bear perched on his pillow.

"Want to tell me what happened?" Duncan asked after a few minutes.

I nodded slowly, deciding suddenly that I
would
tell him. I reached out for the bear and sat cuddling it. "You want to hear
my
tale of woe?" I asked the bear. I looked over at Duncan. "I'm not sure he's old enough."

"Oh, he's plenty old enough," Duncan said. "'Normous is sixteen, same as me."

"Norman?"

"No, it's 'Normous. Short for
E
normous. Which he is. My dad gave him to me when I was born, or so I'm told. Anyway, he's definitely old enough for whatever secrets you want to tell us."

I lay back on his bed with 'Normous in my arms and took a deep breath. Where to start with my story? Probably at the beginning—or, at least, what was all the beginning I knew about. I told Duncan how I was five when my parents adopted me. "Five
years
old, that is," I clarified. "Not five months, like Edmund was when we got him from Russia."

I told him how my parents had thought even before they got married that adoption was as good a way to build a family as any other way, and so they decided to adopt after they'd been married for two years. They went through
the process to adopt a child from the foster care system in California. The way it worked, I explained to Duncan as it had been explained to me, was that kids got taken into foster care when their birth families couldn't take care of them for whatever reason. Sometimes the birth parents died, and there were no relatives to take the kid. Or sometimes the birth parents just couldn't handle raising kids. Some of the kids in the foster care system had been abused or neglected by their parents, and nobody else in their family was able to take them in, or do any better raising them, or whatever. Kids in foster care either moved back with their birth families eventually—if the troubles got ironed out—or else they were put up for adoption. I had been living in foster care for about six months when my parents adopted me.

I stopped. That was the easy part to tell. After a moment of silence, Duncan reached out and touched my hand, which was still clutching his teddy bear. "'Normous suspects there's more to the story," he said. "And he wants to hear it."

I remembered those foster parents, I told him—an elderly couple in a tidy little trailer park. They were very sweet and gentle and always spoke to me in soft, encouraging voices. I could remember sitting at their table doing puzzles with the lady. I could remember watching a football game on TV with the man, both of us sitting together in his huge reclining chair, and him yelling his head off when his team made a touchdown.

"Oh," said Duncan, "you mean American football. Here we say football when we mean what you call soccer."

"It was football," I said. "Regular American football.
Big guys with huge, padded shoulders tackling each other to get the ball. I remember it."

"Okay," he said. "Sorry to interrupt. Go on."

I remembered football, I continued, but the thing was, I didn't remember anything
before
football. I didn't remember how I came to be living with those foster parents. It bothered me terribly, because the official records my mom and dad were given just said that I had been found wandering on the beach, all alone. A little waif of a five-year-old, hungry and tattered. Apparently I was able to tell the people who found me my name and age and even my birth date, but I didn't seem to know where I lived or why I was on the beach or how I'd gotten there. They took me to the police, of course, and Child Protective Services found me the foster home.

I didn't remember my birth father at all, and I had a vague sense that he had died—something to do with a motorcycle crash. My birth mother later also died ... and that's why I had to go into foster care. Apparently someone who remembered her from living on the streets was questioned by the police, and this guy said that my mom was a drug addict who had overdosed. The guy said she had an accent, maybe British or maybe something else. He didn't know her name or any more about her—he'd always just called her "Majesty" or "Your Highness" for a joke when he saw her, which wasn't often. But beyond my hazy memory of being little and playing with a yellow plastic duck in a warm bath, with someone sitting nearby—someone I loved who was laughing with me while I splashed—I couldn't picture anything from that previous life. The next memories were of sitting at the table in the foster home doing puzzles,
or sitting in the big chair shouting for touchdowns. Edmund and Ivy, not to mention all of my friends, could remember
lots
of things that had happened when they were much younger than five. So why couldn't I?

I felt like I had a hole in my head.

"And so that's my tale of woe, 'Normous," I said, lying back against Duncan's pillows and holding the big bear up in front of my face. "What do you think of that?"

"You win the Tale of Woe contest," Duncan said gently. "It must be scary for you."

"Well, it's weird," I said, sitting up and handing him his bear. "But it was never particularly scary before. It's only turned scary since I've been here in Blackthorn, and I keep getting a whiff of—I don't know how to explain it. Some sort of smell that reminds me ... of something. I don't know what! And I keep hearing a voice in my head—yes, that
is
scary."

He was silent for a long moment. "Scary ... because maybe you're beginning to remember. Maybe something happened to you then—something that you're blocking out. And something here, now, is reminding you."

His words shook me. Edmund had said the same thing at the beach. I had to take a deep breath because I had this gut feeling what they said must have some grain of truth to it.
Something
had caused this stupid amnesia—or else I just had the worst memory in the history of the world. I looked up and met Duncan's wide green eyes and was glad I'd told him as much as I had. But what could have happened
then
that would link the smell and the urgent voice to
now?

"You could be right," I murmured, reaching out to stroke his big teddy bear's head, trying now for humor. "Something happened that I can't
bear
to remember. It
must be something I can
bearly
bear to think about, in fact!"

"Thank you beary much for telling me, though," he said, straight-faced. And although we were lightening the mood with our puns, I knew we both knew that a line had been crossed. We had each shared something important about ourselves, and now the two of us were on the way to being more than just new acquaintances. "Seriously, though. It might have been some sort of trauma that made you forget stuff. Maybe you need to go through some other sort of trauma to remember again."

"Oh goody!" I said heartily. "Something to look forward to!"

We rolled off the bed and started acting silly, goofing around with 'Normous, making him dance to Duncan's favorite CDs. Duncan showed me his electric guitar and played a riff. He showed me his collection of detective novels, and his mountain-climbing magazines. "I want to scale Everest someday," he told me. "
And
be a rock star when I grow up.
And
maybe a famous detective." I laughed and said I'd be a detective, too, when I grew up. Or maybe a famous scientist. "A
mad
scientist, I hope," teased Duncan.

"Of course! My little brother would tell you those are the best kind. He's in training to be one himself, I think."

"Trained by the master herself?" Duncan wiggled his eyebrows at me.

"You're the one who's mad," I countered. "As in loony tunes!"

"Mad about
you,
" he murmured, "or at least getting there." He blushed—bright red cheeks clashing with his orangey red hair, and I just sat there staring at him because I was so surprised—and thrilled—that he'd said such a
thing. Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before. And this wasn't just anybody—it was a really cute Brit with very cool red hair. Forget old Tim Raglan—who was
he
when there was Duncan MacBennet? For a minute I felt a little bit of magic in the room. Or sparks between us. Or
something.

But then he broke the spell by jumping up and suggesting we go down and get some food. So we took 'Normous along to the kitchen. Mom was working with Quent Carrington in the kitchen to replenish the food offerings. From the sound of the guests still gabbing away out in the Great Hall, the party was in full swing.

"Liza was so good to arrange all this food for the party," Mom said, sliding little salmon puffs off the baking sheets onto serving plates. "But I do wish she'd stuck around to help serve it instead of going off someplace. I suppose she's out there somewhere, but I haven't seen her. I thought she was with you."

"Nope. She was so out of it when I stuck her in the guest bedroom, I told her to stay put until Oliver could come back and get her. But it looks like she got up and went off home on her own. Or else she's wandering somewhere around here, in search of more to drink." Quent shrugged. "She can be one determined woman. That's what I was talking to Oliver about. He was very put out because Liza never spends time with him anymore, and is so focused on her own painting that she won't help out in the shop. He was hoping that tonight, at least, they could attend the party as a couple. She basically ignores him whenever they're out in public, and she was doing it again tonight. So he went home." Quent shrugged again. "I'm surprised she left, really. It isn't like her not to stay till the
party's last gasp!" He arranged little cakes onto another platter and slid it into the microwave oven. "Oh well, in the words of Duncan's granny, Hazel Cooper, 'if you want something done you have to do it yourself,' right, Dunk-o? Good thing we're equipped here with all the modern conveniences we could want."

"For such an old house," Mom commented, "the kitchen looks pretty up-to-date. I love the countertops!"

"Nora had this room remodeled about two or three years ago," he answered. "Isn't that right, Dunk-o? Just before she died, in fact. But the house itself is ancient."

"Duncan gave me the whole tour," I said. "He told me some parts of the house are over four hundred years old. Nothing is that old in America."

"I'm impressed," Mom said.

"Can I impress you with a cup of coffee?" asked Quent with a laugh. "I made some for Liza, but after Oliver left she had only a few sips before heading back out into the fray to see who else among our guests she could piss off tonight. Or I can make tea."

"Yes, thanks, I'd rather have tea," said Mom.

The water boiled and Quent poured it into a fat brown teapot, swirled it around, then dumped the water out into the sink. "Must warm the pot first," he said to me when he saw me watching. "I hope your mum has taught you to make a proper cuppa over there in America! As Duncan's granny always says, 'A cuppa tea can save your life!'"

"Mum always said that, too," Duncan said.

"Yes, I remember." Mom nodded. "She made a fine cup of tea, your mum did."

Quent scooped tea leaves from a tin and dumped them into the pot, then poured the hot water. He set out milk
and sugar. At home Mom didn't really drink tea much. Since Dad preferred coffee, they both seemed to drink coffee. But after only twenty-four hours in England, tea was clearly once again her beverage of choice. Quent handed around cups of freshly steeped tea, then suggested we get back to the party.

The guests stayed late, and Duncan took me as well as Edmund and Ivy back up to his bedroom to listen to music and play with his bear. I was often impatient with the Goops, but I really did appreciate it when someone was good with them, and Duncan was
great.
Duncan acted as if he really
liked
them. Maybe he got lonely sometimes being an only child.

I was about to fall asleep on Duncan's bed when Mom came up to say we were going home. The last of the guests had departed, and she and Quent had cleared all the things from the dining room table. She had offered to stay and help with the last of the dishwashing, but Quent said it wouldn't be necessary. We went out the kitchen door—the quickest route back to our cottage—and for a second I thought Duncan was going to hug me good-bye. Instead, he and Quent stood in the doorway, waving, and Duncan, since Ivy had carried his bear downstairs, made 'Normous wave, too. "See you tomorrow!" we all said. It took only seconds to walk back across the lawn and along the flagstone path to the door of our dark little cottage.

It had drizzled most of the time we were gone, and although the rain had stopped now, the bare branches of the trees were dripping on us while Mom fished in her purse for the key. It was hard in the dark to see anything, and she had to find it by touch. Finally she did, but then looked
surprised when she discovered the door already unlocked. "I guess I forgot to lock it," she said vaguely.

I couldn't see that it mattered, really. "This isn't the Bay Area, remember," I said, as if anyone would ever mistake sleepy Blackthorn for San Francisco or Oakland or Berkeley. "It isn't as if we're living in a high-crime area, you know."

All I knew was that I was totally ready for a good night's sleep. We came inside and brushed our teeth, and hauled ourselves up the stairs to our little bedrooms. I was ready to drop in my tracks, but while Mom tucked Ivy and Edmund into their beds, I was sent on a mission to search for Ivy's polar bear, which I finally found under Edmund's bed ("No idea how it got there," Edmund maintained with a sly grin). I kissed Mom good night and was
finally
able to stretch out in my own bed. I was lying there, thinking about Duncan and musing dreamily over the whole evening we'd just spent together and reflecting that, although I was looking forward to getting to know Kate Glendenning, I wasn't at all sorry she'd had to leave so early ... when the phone rang and Mom answered it in her room, and I heard her cry out. It was a sound in between a shriek and a groan.