Turtle Moon (22 page)

"She did that?" Lucy says.

"If Bethany's a friend of yours, you might want to remind her about the rocking horse. I can't hold it forever."

"No," Lucy says. Her lips are dry, and she runs her tongue over them.

"Of course not."

Most probably, Lucy is standing in the exact same place where her neighbor stood when she put down the deposit for the rocking horse. An impulse buy, Lucy thinks, a toy so exceptional she wouldn't have cared about the expense, or maybe, back then, she didn't have to care.

"I haven't seen her in ages," Lucy says. Her heart skips one beat as she lies; she imagines the same thing happens to Keith all the time.

"If I had her address, I'd go right over. That rocking horse is so cute it's a shame not to have it."

"Well, no one responded to the cards I sent, the shop owner says. "And when I phoned I got a recording, because the number had been changed to an unlisted one. But maybe you'll have better luck."

She looks up the address in her card file and writes it down for Lucy, then has Lucy sign her MasterCard receipt.

"Your little boy will love this," she tells Lucy.

Lucy runs all the way to the parking lot. She throws the dragon into the backseat of Evan's car.

She's in such a rush that she doesn't look at the address until she is stopped at a red light and can finally pull a local map out of Evan's glove compartment. As it turns out, she has to head back toward Kings Point. The street where Bethany used to live is lined with lilac hedges, and Lucy's eyes start to water even though all the car windows are rolled up. When she sees the house number, her stomach lurches.

It's a lovely house, bigger than hers and Evan's; there are baskets of potted fuchsias hung along the porch ceiling and the driveway is paved with heavy bluestone. Lucy parks halfway down the block and walks up to the house, but when she gets to the door, all she can think of is her neighbor down in the laundry room and the look on her face when she heard her baby cry. Lucy realizes that she may have to give someone horrible news. She has always wondered how it was decided that her next-door neighbor should be the one to tell her that her parents had died; she'd wondered, back then, why it was her neighbor who broke into tears when Lucy was the one who had suffered the loss.

Standing beneath the fuchsias and a bluepainted ceiling, she finally rings the bell. She's rummaging through her purse in search of a comb when the door opens.

"I thought I was picking you up tomorrow night."

This is the voice of her neighbor's husband, and it turns Lucy to ice.

She has to shield her eyes against the sunlight so she can see him.

He's just showered and he's wearing slacks and a clean white shirt.

"Don't tell me." Randy grins. "You couldn't wait."

"Right," Lucy says.

She goes in through the open front door, into the cool foyer, her cheeks and throat burning hot.

"What did you do?" he asks. "Follow me?"

"My cousin Andrea knows where everyone lives." It's amazing how easy it is to continue lying once you ve started. You don't even know why you're doing it; it just feels necessary. "It's a beautiful house,"

Lucy says.

"Let me show you around," Randy says, leading her into the living room.

"I just had it redone. I think it might be too much."

"I'm sure it's great," Lucy says. She really doesn't want to go any farther than the front hall. "Look, I have to talk to you about your wife," she tells him. This is going to be horrible and she knows it.

He may not believe her, he may break down and cry.

"Ex," Randy corrects her. "I'm no longer married. Remember?"

"Right," Lucy says.

"She was Dutch," Randy says. "I met her when I was traveling through Europe, and after the divorce she went back. She took the kid, naturally. That's the roughest part, the damned custody."

He has such beautiful eyes; they keep changing color as he lies. If she hadn't lived with a liar for so long, Lucy might not have noticed the way he ran his hand through his hair, she would never have recognized the flicker of yellow light behind his eyes.

"Now it's my turn, Randy says. "I get to ask about your past."

There are bands of panic expanding around Lucy's neck and shoulders.

She had considered going home with Randy last night, she'd wanted to.

"Were you sleeping with Evan in high school?"

Each time Randy was in a drama club production, the first three rows in the auditorium would be filled with girls, and every one had made certain to apply extra mascara and lipstick. Andrea wouldn't go into the lunchroom until she knew what table he was sitting at and could position herself near him. Lucy wonders if he was a liar, even back then.

"During senior year," she says.

She will admit to anything, but she won't tell him about the rocking horse, she won't say a word about Bethany.

"I thought so!" Randy says. "I could always tell. Now there's only one more thing I need to know." He has moved much closer to Lucy.

"Are you sleeping with me?"

"Never on a first date," Lucy says.

Randy studies her carefully. "Then why are you here, Lucy?"

She has Evan's car keys in her hand, and without thinking she moves them between her fingers, as though they were a weapon.

"If I came here today, tomorrow wouldn't be our first date," Lucy says.

"Ah." Randy smiles.

It's the smile he has used so well a million times before.

"Let's forget about the restaurant," he says.

"Why don't you just come back here tomorrow."

It is so hard to breathe in this house, Lucy can't imagine how Bethany managed it. Randy moves toward Lucy; his hair smells like coconut shampoo. He kisses her once, a brief, practiced kiss that has always left women asking for more.

"Seven-thirty," he whispers, and Lucy nods before she goes out the door. She walks down the driveway and along the street, but when she reaches Evan's Celica, she doesn't stop. It's not morning anymore, yet the street is quiet, except for the droning of hedge clippers in the backyards as landscapers tend to the shrubbery. She knows from experience, where there's one lie there are bound to be more. She keeps walking until the Mustang comes into view. It's there at the corner, parked beside a stop sign, still covered with red dust. All along the hood the seeds of strangler figs are embedded in the paint; nothing will ever get rid of them. Lucy grabs the door handle and gets inside. The car smells like french fries, and she has to swing her legs over the empty Coke cans that litter the floor. She doesn't turn to look at him until she's locked her door, and when she does Julian Cash takes off his sunglasses.

"Let me guess," he says. "You think you found yourself a murderer."

The meanest boy in Verity knows the difference between right and wrong though not everyone would agree with the choices he makes.

Since the night when he discovered he couldn't run away he's been breaking a rule, not out of spite but because he knows in his heart it would be wrong not to break it. That's what happens when someone comes to depend on you. You begin to consider feelings other than your own.

You know what it must be like to be caged as the darkness falls and the owls call from the trees.

That is why every evening, after Arrow has eaten his dinner and been given a bowl of fresh, cool water, the boy unlocks the chain-link gate and carefully swings it open. The first time he did this, the dog looked at him, puzzled. He wouldn't move until the boy crouched down and softly clapped his hands. Arrow tilted his head, then slowly walked out of the kennel. He looked out at the woods, where the scent of cypress and pine was thick and the darkness settled quickly, covering the air plants that grew wild, and then he stopped and sat down beside the boy.

The boy clapped a hand against his thigh and began to walk through Julian's yard, toward the woods. Still the dog sat where he was, watching.

The boy nodded and clapped his hands again, and after a moment the dog took off. He passed rigLLt by the boy, and kept going. At first the boy could hear him running through the undergrowth, and he followed, but then there was nothing, not a sound. The boy sat down on a tree stump, realizing that he might have gotten himself lost. He could hear things moving in the woods, hats in the treetops, the soft, padding steps of opossums and cotton rats. He sat there in the dark, wondering how he could ever explain himself to Julian if the dog didn't come back, but when he looked up, the dog was suddenly beside him. He'd been running, hard, and his body was trembling. In his mouth was a large stick, an old root or a fallen mangrove limb. He carefully laid the stick at the boy's feet before backing away. The boy took the stick, lifted it over his head and threw it, as far and as high as he could.

Since then, they have played this game every night, walking farther and farther into the woods each time. Tonight, the boy made certain to coat himself with bug spray before leaving Miss Giles's house, and he's brought along a flashlight, even though his night vision is rapidly improving. He jogs all the way to Julian's, and when he gets there the dog is waiting at the gate. Arrow yelps happily when he sees the boy; his tail starts to wave, slowly at first, then faster and faster. As soon as he's let out, the dog races for the woods, but he waits every now and then for the boy to catch up. There's some moonlight tonight, and the boy feels that he never in his life has seen a creature more beautiful than Arrow; he's grateful that the dog has the decency to wait while he lumbers through the underbrush. When they are deep within the woods, in a place where no one has gone since Bobby and Julian Cash were children, the boy finds a good stick and lets it fly.

Squirrels and yellow bats scatter in the trees. Dark swirls of mosquitoes rise to the highest branches. He throws the stick again and again, until his arm aches. When he stops and sits down on a log, the dog trots over and lays his huge head in the boy's lap.

Since losing his voice, the boy has realized that he never did have all that much to say. The panic he felt at first when he opened his mouth and nothing came out is gone. He's said enough nasty words to last a lifetime; the absence of sound makes him feel a kind of peace. He thinks of all the people in his life who thought they knew him.

They didn't know him, they just listened to what he said. No one has ever known him the way this dog does. He knows when the boy's about to rise to his feet before he does; he knows exactly how fast the boy can travel through the woods back to Julian's house, and that the boy will return the following evening to set him free once again.

Running away is no longer a possibility. That's just the way it is.

Some people understand this when they first look into their newborn baby's eyes, or when they fall in love; the boy knows it from the way the dog waits for him in the woods.

They walk side by side toward the kennel, until the boy realizes that the dog has stopped at the edge of the yard. The ruff 9f fur around his neck seems thicker, his ears are straight up, as though he is listening to something only he can hear. His legs shudder slightly as he considers whether or not he should run. The boy walks back toward Arrow, looking past him. There is nothing out there, just some old owls and the merlins nesting in the trees. The sound of a branch breaking perhaps, or the low crooning sound of the wind.

The boy reaches down and pets the dog's head, and Arrow startles; he has a wild look in his eyes.

The boy keeps stroking his head, comforting him, I until whatever disturbance the dog has sensed fades. Now the dog can follow the boy to the kennel; dust rises whenever he sets his feet down.

Dogs can gauge disaster long before it strikes; they can smell a person's truest nature. Arrow steps back inside the kennel with the full knowledge that the boy who closes the gate behind him doesn't have a mean bone in his body. But something out there does. Something in the woods, disguised as the wind, has been watching them, and that is why when the boy double-locks the gate and heads off toward the road, the dog puts his head back and howls, and by then the moon has disappeared into a band of dark blue clouds, so that you couldn't see a man's shadow in the woods even if you tried.

Julian Cash spends the night in the car again, but he doesn't fall asleep until dawn. In the middle of the night he thought briefly of climbing up the trellis, then through the guest room window, but he didn't do it. Instead, he folded himself up in the driver's seat and rested his head against the window. When he wakes it's nearly eleven and all his muscles feel twisted. Evan's car is gone, so Julian walks Loretta, then grabs his suitcase and uses his MasterCard to enter the house. He can hear Lucy in the kitchen, but after thinking about her all night, he's not ready to see her. He lets Loretta off her leash, then goes upstairs, to the guest bathroom, where he takes a shower in the largest bathtub he's ever seen. There are dials and jets and all sorts of Jacuzzi things he stays away from, and he also stays away from the shampoo, which smells like coconut and lemon grass, and washes his hair with Dial soap instead. It gives him some pleasure to discover that even in a bathtub like this you can run out of hot water too soon.

When he's through he puts on his old jeans and a clean shirt, which is a relief, since he hasn't changed his clothes since leaving Florida.

There's still some red dust on his jeans, and when it falls onto the white-tiled floor Julian has to get on his hands and knees and clean it up with a washcloth, although all that seems to do is spread the sand around.

He shaves quickly, without looking in the mirror. He's done this so often he never nicks him- self; he figures he can shave better than most blind men. He's got to be crazy to be here. He doesn't even like New York tap water: it's too soft, and it has a metallic taste that you never get with well water. He's left Loretta downstairs, because the truth is he doesn't want Lucy to be; alone. That's the reason he hasn't checked into a - I motel, not that he could afford one around here.