Hallow House - Part Two (30 page)

Katrina gazed at her wide-eyed.

"Don't act so innocent. You know you won't go either."

"I will because that's what Mama wants. They do have college courses at St. Bianca so it won't be so bad."

"You're going to let Ronal go clear across the country from you?"

"I don't think he's going to Harvard," Katrina said.

"Did he tell you that?"

"Not in so many words. But he isn't ready."

"Ready?" Naomi asked incredulously. "What're you talking about?"

"He needs--well, he needs protection."

Naomi gave her sister a disgusted look. "Too bad he can't go to St. Bianca instead of me."

"Don't be mad at him, at us. I'm sorry about what I said last night. It's just that you're so--well, you take charge. You plan all these things you want to do and you can't understand when others don't want to go along with you."

"But Ronal
has
to face his problems," Naomi said. “If you encourage him to hide away from life he'll be an emotional cripple, afraid of the dark and sudden sounds all his life. He
must
go on to law school and overcome his fears."

"Don't you see?" Katrina asked. "That's how you feel, not how he feels."

Naomi shook her head impatiently. "It's a question of what's best for him in the long run. He can't hide from life."

"Sometimes you have to do that for a time if you've been hurt enough."

"His psychiatrist told him the same thing I've been saying," Naomi countered.

"Doctors don't know everything. I've heard Kevin say that more than once."

"So you're encouraging him to withdraw," Naomi accused.

Katrina shook her head. "I'm trying to let him do what he wants to do."

"You want to keep him here, You think he'll marry you in time. Nice little Katrina who'll tell him everything he does is right."

"I want to do what's best for him."

"Ha!"

"I do!" Katrina insisted, looking ready to burst into tears. "If I thought he'd be better off with you, I'd bow out."

"I don't believe that." Naomi marched past her sister and out the front door into the harsh, hot sunlight.

Her mind in a turmoil, she hurried along the path that led to the comparative coolness under the pines. Once there, she walked among them until she came to the grotto where St. Francis stood with the owl on his shoulder.

Samara had told her that originally there was supposed to have been a deer on one side of the saint's pink marble figure, a mountain lion on the other and a rabbit at his feet. All were gone now, though Samara remembered the rabbit being there before her mother had died.

Naomi had never seen anything except the owl perched on the saint's shoulder. Comforted to see the owl was still there, she reached up to touch the marble bird. To her shock and distress the head broke off in her fingers.

She trembled despite the heat as she stared at the marble fragment. What had she done? What was going to happen to Hallow House as a result?

Chapter 40

The hot August breeze whispered through the pines as Naomi stood staring down at the broken-off head of the marble owl. Taking a deep breath, she told herself, it didn't mean anything, it could probably be mended. Mama would see to it. But when she brought the owl's head to her mother in the library, Vera stared at the pink shard for so long a time that Naomi shifted from one foot to the other.

"There's no way to mend this," Vera said finally. "But it's not your fault, Naomi. Don't blame yourself."

"Isn't there some kind of glue?"

Vera shook her head. "Once I believed superstition was ridiculous, that science had discovered the only answers worth paying attention to." She sighed as she opened the desk drawer and placed the owl's head inside. "Now that John is gone, I've given up the fight against the old legends. Once you two are gone from Hallow House I shan't worry. What must happen, will happen."

"Mama..."

Vera raised her head and saw Naomi's expression. "Don't look so concerned. I'm all right."

Naomi started up the stairs to her room. Then, deciding she couldn't tolerate any more of Katrina this morning, she continued on up to the third floor. Samara used to have a hideaway in the south tower, why shouldn't she?

Instead of entering the south room, though, she opened the door to the north tower, a place she hadn't been since the night Katrina had come to get her to save Johanna from Tabitha's room. She, herself had closed the secret panel after thrusting both the Tabitha's journal and the pendant inside the room. The perfect hiding place.

Naomi stood for a long time gazing out the windows at the hills and the cloudless sky while fragments of memory tumbled through her mind, arranging themselves into one pattern, then another, like the colored glass in a kaleidoscope.

Johanna unconscious in the room beyond the panel, the red walls and the dim light making her skin look as though flames were eating her flesh.

Daddy lying on the floor in the library and her own helplessness.

The expression in Ronal's eyes as he bent to kiss her-- surely that of love.

Katrina, her other self, taking him away....

The silver pendant. Katrina had foreseen her wearing it. Which meant… what could it mean? She turned from the window and stared at the wall. Finally she knelt to peer closely at it. Wasn’t it about here where Katrina insisted she saw the red dot?

After several minutes of prodding and pushing, the wood slid under her fingers and the dark opening was in front of her. A faint aromatic odor--herbal?--drifting to her and was gone, buried in the mustiness of a closed room. She wasn't exactly afraid, but she didn't care to enter that dark interior. Stretching out her arm, she felt around on the inner floor, searching. Her fingers touched the journal, drew it toward her through the opening and she saw the chain of the pendant was caught between the pages. Though she couldn't remember doing it, she must have.

Setting both aside, she slid the panel shut. Then she eased the pendant and chain from the book and dangled the silver chain from her hand, examining the pendant. Twins wearing hooded robes, inside a circle, holding hands. The face of one clearly human--the other a skull.

The metal felt warm to her touch, but then the third floor wasn't air-conditioned. Book and pendant in hand, she went down the steps. By her bedroom, she hesitated. Katrina might be inside and she didn't want her sister asking questions. Delores' bedroom wasn't being used by anyone, she'd leave the book and pendant where Johanna had said they came from.

When she reached the closet of that room, though, she found she couldn't. Apparently Mama had had all the clothes and shoes Johanna had mentioned removed, and also had taken away the shoe rack that once had been nailed to the wall where the secret compartment had been.

The portrait still hung on the wall, though, and Naomi felt Delores' dark eyes following her every step. Finally she slid open the empty bottom drawer of a dresser and dropped what she carried in there.

It had been a mistake to remove them from the room behind the black door, but they were safe enough here. No one was likely to find them, since no one used the room. And she certainly didn't intend to disturb them again.

Deciding a swim would feel good, she went to her room to don her swim suit, glad Katrina wasn't there. Her swim suit was, though, so there'd be no need to worry about her being in the pool.

In fact, no one was. Naomi swam a while, then climbed out and lay on one of the webbed lounges, closing her eyes against the filtered light coming through the roof screens until she heard her name. "Naomi."

She started, opening her eyes. Had she fallen asleep? Seeing Ronal standing over her, she sat up and swung her feet to the tiled floor.

"I want to talk to you," he said.

Without a word, she got up and dived into the water. He followed, catching up with her when she surfaced and swam to the side.

"Don't run away," he said.

She glared at him. "You might want to talk to me, but you certainly wouldn't care to hear what I have to say to you."

He smiled. "Probably not."

"Katrina told me."

He nodded. "It just happened. The two of you--I don't know, so much alike and yet not alike."

"Are you going to stay here and not go to Harvard law school?" she demanded.

"I don't know. As I told you. I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to stick it out."

She thrust away from the side and swam across the pool. He beat her to the other side and grasped her arm before she could thrust off again.

"Let me go," she said.

"Hear me out."

She stared at him, so close to her, touching her, and realized she still wanted to feel his arms holding her, his lips on hers.

"Naomi, you think me stronger than I am, a more positive person," he began.

"I think you can be whatever you decide to be."

He shook his head. "We are what we are. I was never forceful and I'm less so now. I'm beginning to accept myself as I am."

"But that's giving up, isn't it?"

"Why do you want to force people to change? You want me to prove myself by beginning law school and I don't really believe I care to do that."

They were both holding to the pool side with one hand. Suddenly his other arm went around her. Without thinking, she let go and clung to him with both arms. He kissed her, his lips warm and exciting.

A moment later, he thrust her away and she sank.

By the time she surfaced, sputtering, she was pulling himself from the pool. He left without a backward glance.

Naomi smiled. He still wanted her, the kiss proved that. Katrina, with her wishy-washy acceptance of failure was all wrong for him.
She
was the only one who could inspire him, to make him do what was best.

Ronal will go to Harvard next month--I'll make him go. And I won't be stuck away at St. Bianca, either, I'll be with him. There'll be a way.

That night Naomi dreamed...

She lay in bed, knowing that out in the pine grove the marble statue of St. Francis had come to life and was even now approaching the house, Moments later she heard his heavy clunking footsteps on the stairs, then along the corridor and waited in terror for him to reach her room. She knew he was coming for the owl's head and meant to enact his revenge.

But the footsteps stopped. Why? Then she understood he wasn't coming for her, but for her mother, who'd insisted the owl's head couldn't be put back. She tried to scream, to warn Mama, but no sound came. She fought to rise and go to her mother, but couldn't move. Mama was domed and she couldn't save her…

Naomi woke with the light in her eyes and Katrina standing by the side of her bed.

"You were making noises and thrashing around in bed," Katrina said. "I had a hard time waking you up. Did you have a nightmare?"

Naomi nodded, shards of the dream terror, still cluttering her mind. "Is Mama all right?" she asked.

Katrina stared at her. "Why wouldn't she be?"

Naomi jumped out of bed. "I have to go see."

Vera's door was ajar, but not enough to look in. Naomi eased it open and saw her mother sitting up in bed reading.

"Naomi. Is something the matter?"

"Not now. I had a nightmare." Noticing the time on the clock, she added, "It's two in the morning--aren't you going to sleep?"

"I've had trouble sleeping since your father died. Kevin gave me some sleeping pills but I've always hated them because the next morning you're so logy."

"But you have to sleep sometime," Naomi pointed out.

"That's what Frances says. I suppose I'd better take one. If you'll hand me the small bottle from the first dresser drawer..."

Naomi did and poured water from the carafe for her mother to swallow the yellow capsule.

"Thank you, dear. I'll read a bit more, until I get sleepy. Good night."

Katrina was waiting for her. "You didn't have a--a foreseeing, did you?" she asked.

"No, how could it be? There weren't real people in it, just a monster. There's no way a dream like mine could come true, thank God."

The following day, Naomi visited Amanda Stevens, who greeted her cordially.

"So nice of you to some by to see me, dear. Which one...?"

"I'm Naomi."

"Oh, yes, you carry yourself a bit differently than your sister. Everyone is so pleasant to me here that I know I'll miss every one of you."

"You're not planning to leave are you?" Naomi asked.