Second Child (25 page)

Phyllis’s sharp voice broke into her thoughts. “Do you think I don’t notice?” her mother demanded. “You don’t fool me, young lady. I know you’re always awake when I come in.”

Awake? What was her mother talking about? “But I wasn’t,” she began.

Her mother silenced her with an angry look. “Don’t lie to me, Melissa. I know you hate the restraints, but they’re for your own good. How do you think it makes me feel when I come in in the morning and you just stare at the ceiling, then pretend to be asleep when I start taking them off? If you don’t want to say good morning to me, fine. But don’t insult my intelligence by pretending to be asleep.”

Suddenly Melissa understood.

It wasn’t she who had been awake when her mother came in.

It had been D’Arcy, watching over her, letting her sleep through the night. She shuddered slightly, wondering how D’Arcy could stand it, remembering the panic she herself always felt when her mother came in with the horrible straps. But D’Arcy didn’t seem to mind them at all.

“I—I’m sorry, Mama,” Melissa murmured. “I just—I guess maybe I wasn’t quite awake yet.”

Phyllis, slightly mollified by her daughter’s apology, nodded. “All right,” she said. “It’s almost eight. Teri and I have already had breakfast, and we’re going to the club.”

Melissa nodded automatically, and a moment later her mother was gone. Melissa went into the bathroom, stripped off her pajamas, and took a shower. As she was pulling on
her favorite pair of faded jeans a few minutes later, she heard Tag’s voice drifting in through the open window.

“Blackie! Here boy! Come on, Blackie!”

Melissa’s heart leaped. She must have been wrong last night after all. If Tag was calling Blackie—

But then she remembered the pearls. Instantly, her eyes went to her nightstand, where she’d put them last night.

They were still lying there, exactly as she’d left them.

She pulled a T-shirt on over her head and ran to the window. Tag was moving along the edge of the lawn that bordered on the woods, calling out to the dog every few yards. She watched him for a moment, her throat constricting as she realized what she had to do.

She shoved her feet into a pair of sandals and hurried downstairs. Cora, alone in the kitchen, smiled at her, tilting her head toward a glass of orange juice on the counter. “Your mama and Teri are already gone,” she said. “I saved you some juice, and I’ve got some bacon in the oven. And I could fix some eggs.”

Melissa shook her head at the offer, and Cora looked sharply at her. “Is something wrong, honey? You look—”

“Blackie’s gone, isn’t he?” Melissa asked.

Cora caught her breath. “Well, now, I’m not sure you could say that, but—”

“But he is, isn’t he?” Melissa insisted, reading the truth in Cora’s expression.

“Well, he didn’t come in last night,” she admitted. “But like I told Tag this morning, that’s right normal for a dog. I mean, all it’d take is one female in heat, and you have to expect him …” Her words trailed off as Melissa dashed out the back door, running across the lawn toward Tag, already calling out to him.

“Tag? Tag!”

He was just about to go into the woods when Melissa’s words stopped him. He turned around to see her trotting toward him. A few seconds later she was beside him.

“He’s gone, isn’t he?” she asked, her breath coming in quick pants.

Tag’s brow furrowed slightly. “How’d you know?”

Melissa hesitated, remembering once more the look on her mother’s face last night when she’d told her about seeing Blackie’s body hanging from a rafter in the attic.
Would Tag look at her that way, too? “I—I saw him last night,” she said. “Anyway, I think I did.”

Tag cocked his head uncertainly. “What do you mean, you
think
you saw him?”

“Well, I don’t
know,”
Melissa went on. “Mama said I had a nightmare, or made the whole thing up. But I didn’t.” Slowly, she told him the whole story, starting from when she’d awakened and heard the footsteps in the attic. When she was finished, Tag’s frown deepened.

“And there wasn’t anything there at all when your mom took you back up?”

Melissa shook her head. “Nothing but a dumb old mannequin with a dress on it,” she told him.

“Well, mannequins don’t make footsteps,” Tag replied. “Maybe we should go up there and see what we can find.”

Melissa’s eyes widened slightly. “Do you think we should?”

“Why not?” Tag asked. “I mean, it’s your attic, isn’t it? Did your mom tell you not to go up there?”

Melissa shook her head, and the two of them started back toward the house.

Twenty minutes later their search was over.

The mannequin still stood in the attic, but there was no sign of Blackie.

“But it still could have been a dream,” Tag insisted as they went back downstairs.

“It wasn’t!” Melissa insisted. “I wasn’t dreaming, and I wasn’t sleepwalking. I know what I saw! Besides, what about the pearls? They were around Blackie’s neck!”

“Hey, take it easy,” Tag protested. “I wasn’t accusing you of lying. I just meant—Well, you
do
walk in your sleep sometimes. Maybe—Well, maybe you took the necklace up there yourself.”

Melissa’s eyes darkened. “I didn’t! I wasn’t sleepwalking, and I know what happened.”

Tag backed away a step or two. “All right,” he said, his voice rising in the face of Melissa’s anger. “Then you tell me what happened! What did you do? Kill him yourself?”

Melissa’s mouth dropped open. “I—I—”

But she could say nothing more, for suddenly she realized that what Tag had just said was exactly the same thought that had been lurking in the back of her own mind.

It had been
her
necklace around Blackie’s throat.

If she hadn’t put it there, then who had? Nobody else even knew where she kept it.

Was it possible that she
had
been sleepwalking?

Could she have done it and not remembered?

The footsteps.

What about the footsteps?

What if she hadn’t heard them at all? What if they had only been part of the dream she’d had?

Suddenly she felt as if her head were stuffed with cotton. Nothing made sense anymore—she couldn’t figure out what was real and what had only happened in her own mind.

She felt as though she were going crazy. Her eyes welled with tears and a sob rose in her throat, threatening to choke her. “Y-You really think I could have killed him?” she finally asked, her voice trembling in spite of her efforts to control it.

Tag groaned. “Aw, come on. Why would I think that? I just said it because you were acting like you were mad at me. Of course you didn’t kill him. Why would you have?”

“But if I didn’t, where is he?” Melissa countered, her voice bleak as the tears in her eyes finally began running down her cheeks. “Where is he, Tag?” she repeated. “What if I killed him and don’t even remember it?”

Without waiting for an answer, she fled into her room, slamming her door behind her.

Teri lay stretched out on a chaise longue, her eyes closed against the brilliance of the morning sun. She felt good—she’d played a set of tennis with Phyllis, which she’d managed to let Phyllis win, then beaten Ellen Stevens in straight sets. After that, she and Ellen had gone for a swim, and ever since then she’d been lying by the pool, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the babble of voices around her.

A shadow fell on her face, and she opened her eyes to see a dark silhouette looming above her. She squinted, trying to make out who it might be, and was just about to sit up when a splash of icy water hit her legs. Gasping at the shock, she jumped off the chaise, then spun around to
see Brett Van Arsdale standing at the edge of the pool, grinning at her. “You looked like you might be burning, so I decided to baste you,” he said.

“Oh, really?” Teri replied. “Well, how’s this for a basting?” With a quick shove she pushed him into the pool, then dived in after him, hitting the water just as he broke the surface. Grabbing his shoulders, she shoved him under again and pushed away, twisting out of his grip as he reached for her. He caught up with her halfway across the pool, and she barely managed to snatch a breath of air before he pulled her below the surface. She struggled for a moment, freed herself, then shot away, finally slithering out of the pool a fraction of a second before he caught up with her. By the time he’d scrambled out of the water, she was already drying herself off with the towel one of the pool boys had brought her the minute she’d appeared on the terrace. Finished with it, she tossed it to Brett, then stretched out on the chaise again. A moment later Brett dropped down on the one next to her.

“You going to the dance next weekend?” he asked.

Teri cocked her head. “What dance?” she asked.

“The costume party,” Brett replied. “It’s next Saturday, and if you’re not going with anybody …” His voice trailed off, and Teri grinned mischievously at him.

“You mean you want me to go with you?” she asked.

Brett flushed, nodding. “If you want to.”

Teri was about to accept his invitation, then hesitated. What about Melissa? Would she be allowed to go if no one asked her half sister? She glanced over to the table where her stepmother was sitting talking to Brett’s mother. After this morning, she suspected that Phyllis wouldn’t care whether Melissa went to the dance or not.

But what about her father? In her mind she heard his words once again. “Take care of Melissa for me, okay?”

And then, once more, an idea began to take shape in her mind.

“It sounds like fun,” she said, smiling at Brett. But then she let her brows form into a frown. “But—Well, what about Melissa?”

The grin that had spread across Brett’s face wavered. “Melissa?” he repeated. “What about her?”

Teri’s eyes shifted demurely to her lap. “Well, it would
be kind of mean of me to go without her, wouldn’t it? I mean, I just got here, and hardly know anyone. How would she feel if I went with you, and no one asked her?”

Brett’s tongue ran nervously across his lower lip. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Find a date for her, too?”

Teri looked up at him, her expression a perfect mask of surprise. “Could you?” she asked. “Could you really?”

Brett swallowed. Now what had he gotten himself into? Who did he know who would be willing to go anywhere with Melissa Holloway? “I—I don’t know,” he hedged.

Teri’s smile faded away. “Well, then I don’t see how I can go, either. I just don’t think it would be right for me to leave her sitting at home by herself.” Then, as if she’d just thought of it, she brightened. “What about Jeff Barnstable?”

Brett stared at her. “Jeff? What made you think of him?”

Teri hesitated, then lowered her voice. “If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell anyone else?” Brett nodded. “Melissa has a crush on him,” Teri went on. “If you can get him to ask her, then I’ll go with you.”

“What if I can’t?” Brett asked.

Teri shrugged. “You can,” she said. “You’ll find a way.”

An hour later Brett found Jeff Barnstable sprawled out on a towel on the beach in front of Kent Fielding’s house, a pair of earphones on his head and a magazine in his lap. Kent himself was stretched out on his stomach, apparently asleep. Dropping down on the sand next to his friend, Brett turned the volume on the Walkman all the way up, then snapped it off. Jeff jumped at the sudden blast of sound in his ear, then glared up at Brett.

“Hey, man, what the hell’d you do that for?”

“I’ve gotta talk to you. I’ve got a problem.”

“Melissa?” Jeff howled after Brett explained what he wanted him to do. “Gimme a break, man. You think I’m going to ask Melissa Holloway for a date? Do I look crazy?”

“Aw, come on,” Brett replied. “What’s the big deal? What about that cousin of yours I went out with last year?”

Jeff rolled his eyes. “It’s not the same thing. My cousin is at least human.”

“Barely,” Brett shot back. “Besides, what’s so terrible about Melissa? She wasn’t so bad at the bonfire the other night—”

“Riiight,” Jeff drawled. “Until she got all upset and went running home to her mommy. Of course,” he added, his voice taking on a sly note, “if you want to make a deal …”

He let the words hang in the air. “What kind of deal?” Brett asked suspiciously.

“The Porsche. Let me drive the Porsche Saturday night and all day Sunday, and I’ll think about it.”

Brett hesitated. He’d only had the car six months, and so far he hadn’t let anyone else drive it at all. And then, unbidden, an image of Teri came into his mind.

She was smiling at him, and in her eyes …

“All right,” he said, agreeing to the deal before Jeff had a chance to change his mind. “We’ll call them this afternoon. Okay?”

Jeff, who’d been almost certain Brett would turn the deal down, hesitated. But then he saw himself behind the wheel of the black sports car, speeding along the road that wound in a series of hairpin curves along the coast. Surely he could put up with Melissa for a couple of hours, he decided. And maybe he could even figure out a way to bribe some of the other guys into taking her off his hands every now and then. “Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll ask her.”

Kent Fielding rolled over and sat up, blinking in the sun. “And you might get lucky,” he suggested, grinning at Jeff. “I mean, you could always get sick on Saturday night, couldn’t you?”

Jeff and Kent stared at each other for a moment, and then both of them burst out laughing as they imagined the look on Melissa’s face if Jeff were to stand her up.

“It’s perfect,” Teri declared, her eyes reflecting her excitement as she examined the dress she’d just found on the rack at the back of the Historical Society thrift shop. “Don’t you just love it?”

Melissa’s brow furrowed as she tried to see the dress through Teri’s eyes, but to her it looked like exactly what it was—an old prom dress, maybe from the fifties, with a princess waistline and puffed sleeves. The skirt, made of satin, had a stain on it, and its hem was partially ripped out. Over the satin was a layer of tulle that might once have appeared to float like a cloud around the dress but now hung limply, its netting badly snagged. It might once have been pink, but its color had faded badly, and was now a sort of uneven peach.