The Tramp (The Bound Chronicles #1) (13 page)

chapter fifteen

Steph balanced the stacked Pyrex containers against her hip with one hand, hauling grocery bags onto her shoulder with the other, then slammed the trunk shut with all the force she could muster. She had already hooked her key fob into a belt loop, and she fumbled blindly to find the lock button. “Beep, beep,” said her shiny silver Honda and flashed its headlights.

“Oh—thank you, Henry.” She turned around to see the kindly old janitor walking up to her with a rolling dolly. Steph had called ahead, like she always did, to confirm that she would be arriving early to set up for the PTA meeting that evening, and Henry had agreed to meet her there to unlock the school library doors. She squinted into the persistent summer sun, still blazing hot doggonit, but with shadows lengthening faster into twilight than they did the week before. The meeting started at seven but, she knew from experience, everyone would arrive early with new-school-year-fever. “You are so sweet to help me get everything inside.”

“My pleasure, ma’am.” Henry plucked the Pyrex stack out from under her arm, and set it on the dolly in one fluid motion, then deftly lifted the grocery bags without touching her person. Steph sighed at the sudden lightness in her shoulders.

“You have a nice summer?” she asked, her hands now free to fluff up her hair and straighten her shirt to flatter her considerable bosom.

“Aw, you know Martha always loves to have the grandkids runnin’ around to tickle and fuss over.”

Steph smiled up at him; she liked to encourage the storyteller inside every old gentleman. “That’s so nice they can come stay with y’all in the summers.”

“I tell you, that Sammy…” he began, launching into a tale as he pushed her refreshments up the sidewalk to the open library doors. He eased the wheels over the threshold, and Steph nodded and murmured appropriate exclamations at his grandfatherly revelations about mischievous little boys. She appraised the library, unused for months, for signs of dust or stale trash leftover from the previous school year, and she realized that Henry had arrived much earlier. He had already cleaned the floors, wiped down the tables, opened the windows to let some fresh air in, and probably even vacuumed the upholstery.

My mama was right; sugar really does attract more flies than vinegar.
Steph laughed at Henry’s finishing joke and he returned a deep chuckle. “You have made this place sparkle like new, and you’ve done half my work for me, Henry.”

“Y’all have a good meetin’, you hear?” Henry placed her supplies carefully on a table and took his leave. Steph approved. He was accommodating, but it was best not to socialize too much with the help. She noticed that Henry had placed fresh garbage bags in all of the trash cans throughout the room and also left a pointed box of new bags on the counter for replacing. The message was clear: I did my share, now you grown adults do yours. “We’ll clean up after ourselves, don’t worry,” she called through the door.

“I thank you, kindly,” Henry answered, his voice already receding into the parking lot.

Humming a random tune, Steph peeled the tops off of her containers and placed paper doilies on serving plates. She breathed in deeply, smelling the homemade cookies and muffins she had spent the past few days preparing. She thought fondly of her youngest son, Tristan, as she arranged the food. He loved everything she baked and never forgot to tell her so.

“Mom, your cookies are almost as sweet as you are,” he always said.

If you can’t find a perfect man, make one of your own.
She chuckled as she sorted through the deserts, inspecting for perfection as she pulled them out. Each of the four platters got a little of everything—chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies, cinnamon apple and blueberry muffins, and of course, brownies.

As she distributed the platters through the room, she thought again of her mother, and as her role as a mother to her own children. Steph could feel her youngest daughter becoming distant. “Mandy—
Amanda
,” she corrected herself with a little stomp of her foot, “…that girl is so easily annoyed lately.”

A lot of love went a little way sometimes. She supposed she had been the same with her own mother when she was a teenager, but things had certainly turned around when Brandon was born. At only twenty, with one unruly toddler running rampant, a tiny newborn to care for (and that had been only the first two), and her husband always out working, Steph sure appreciated her mother then. Friends hadn’t been so easy to come by, suddenly, but the real ones had stuck with her. And she with them.

Vanessa and Meghan. Kerry, too.
Reminiscing on group picnics turned awry and buckets of dirty diapers at afternoon house parties, she looked towards the windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of them, bouncing up to the door, their familiar voices asking how to help.

“Whatever happens tonight, I will have my friends with me,” she soothed herself, her stomach turning over in anticipation. The foreign exchange debacle would be brought up that night, she was sure of it. “Bestfriends.”

She pinched her cheeks to make them rosy, knowing one of them would show up soon. Feeling buoyed, Steph divided the plastic cups into four neat towers and positioned them in a semicircle around her Tupperware pitchers—one of iced tea, one of lemonade, and both of them fresh. “Everyone is more pleasant with a full belly and a wet whistle.” She fluffed armchair pillows and pushed chairs under tables. “I’m ready for anything.”

Footsteps echoed behind the adjoining door leading into the main corridor of the school. She paused to listen and heard the unmistakable sound of someone fiddling with the locked doorknob. Wondering why in the world someone would try to enter the library that way, she walked over to investigate. The only person with keys to the school was the headmaster, who was still out of town. Tracing the stranger’s obvious path to that particular door, she realized that someone would have had to break in through a side door to get there.

She heard a muffled exclamation, then a woman’s voice behind the door, “Why is this door locked?”

“Who is that?”

“This is Mieke Walsh. Who is
that
?”

“What?” She could hear Mieke jiggling the handle with increasing insistence. “Hold on a minute, it wouldn’t be locked from this side. It’s probably just stuck or something.”

Mieke pounded the door with what sounded like a fist. “Well, unstick it.”

“It won’t unstick that way, Mieke.” Steph heard a dull thud towards the floor. “Don’t kick the door—just hold on a minute.”

What in tarnation is she doing here?
Steph turned the handle to make sure it was, in fact, unlocked and stepped back to check for a deadbolt or latch that might be keeping it from opening. Not seeing any other obstruction, and knowing the wood was probably just warped in a building so old, she grabbed the doorknob, straightened her elbows and hefted up with her back. She leaned all her weight in towards the library and the door came open with a creek.

Mieke stood on the other side, frazzled and offended. “Well, sheesh. Why is everything so complicated in this town?”

“We don’t like to go through the main school building without an authorized school official—it’s actually against the law. How did you get in there?” She locked the door from the other side before wrestling it closed again. “We’re supposed to use the library’s front door.”

“Sure, next time,” Mieke said, ignoring her question.

“Next time?”

“Well, now that I’m the parent of our newest teenage resident, you know. I mean, Antonio will be here in a few days.”

Steph was so caught off-guard by the other woman’s imagined status of motherhood that she couldn’t think of a better response than, “Oh. Well.”

“So, where should I set up?” asked Mieke.

“Set up?” Her eyes scanned Mieke from immaculate bob to expensive shoes.
A pants suit at a PTA meeting. Jeez Louise.

“Yes.” Mieke threw up her hands in exasperation. “I’m sure all the other parents will want to know about Antonio. They’ll have plenty of questions, of course.”

Do you really think you’re going to run my PTA meeting, with your laptop and pamphlets? Not gonna happen, honey.
Steph would not allow her meeting to be high-jacked—certainly not by someone who was practically a stranger in Shirley County. As head of the PTA, she had plenty of important subjects to discuss before the start of the year. They would discuss them and be home for supper. “Oh, darlin’.” Steph employed her most solicitous tone, “You are our guest this evening, and I want you to relax. You don’t have to worry about a thing. I’ll let you know when it’s time for that subject and we’ll just have a simple question and answer session.”

“Well, I don’t mind at all, if you need help organizing the meeting.”

“Already done. You just sit yourself here where I’ve got the pillows all fluffed for you.” Steph knew that people like Mieke needed to feel important and special. “I heard you loved my brownies at the July Fourth barbeque, so I made them just for you. I’ll just get you some.”

“Oh, people are starting to show up. I’ll go welcome them,” Mieke said, breathless, as she rushed to meet parents walking up the path from the parking lot.

Steph kept her smile in place until she was hidden behind the door in the library office. If there was one good thing about being married to the town sheriff it was taking people like Mieke Walsh down a notch. She pulled out her cellphone to text Mike, who was probably already on his way. She typed in a quick message and hit send, muttering, “Break into my school? Oh no, Mrs. Insta-Mother…”

§

“This is going to be the best Homecoming week yet, I just know it, y’all.” Steph said into the microphone. She glanced toward the front door of the library, and was again disappointed to see it standing open, empty. She saw her husband walk out with Mieke over an hour previously, and the two—maddeningly—had never reappeared. “And I think that just about sums up tonight’s meeting…”

“I have a question, Stephanie,” Nurse Meyers asked, standing, her hand waving in the air, “about this foreign exchange student?”

Alright, here we go.
“Yes, Ms. Meyers, I think we’ve reached the final Q & A segment of the evening. I know everyone is pretty tired and ready to turn in for the night…”

Another hand shot up from the middle row of folding chairs. “Actually, I have a question about that, too.”

“Please, Ms. Meyers is first. What is your question, ma’am?”

“I’ve heard that this boy is not a boy at all, but a man!” Nurse Meyers burst out. “We’ll need all different forms filled out for the clinic, if he’s an adult.”

Someone spoke up from the back of the room, “What do you mean? He’s an adult?”

Steph shielded her eyes from the spotlight to discern the identity of the speaker. “Um, hold on a minute. I am not sure that information is correct.”

“He’s actually nineteen-years-old,” George Vale supplied with an expectant grin. “I heard it from Ian a few days ago.”

Steph fumed inwardly. “Ian Walsh? Is he sure about that?”

“Very sure. Antonio took a year off his school studies for a dual-enrollment program. You know, to work for a year. So, now his senior year is a year after it would normally be; hence, he’s nineteen, not eighteen,” George finished triumphantly and sat back to watch the circus.

“But, Sharon’s a senior this year, and she’s only seventeen,” a confused mother said somewhere.

A helpful response from the back: “That Italian boy must have an early birthday, Pam.”

“Okay, if everyone would wait to be called upon, so we can all hear both questions and answers.”

A woman stood amidst the chairs, with her hands on her hips. “I’m not going to sit here with my hand raised like a child, Stephanie. This is important. Why didn’t we
begin
the meeting with this information? How long did you think you could keep this secret?”

“Becky, please. I would never withhold something like that, I assure you.”

“Oh my god. You didn’t even know, did you?” Becky shook her head in disbelief.

“This isn’t a joke? He really is nineteen-years-old? Can he still play football legally, then?”

“So, you’re saying that we’re going to have an Italian man in class with our kids—with
my daughter
?” Steph squinted her eyes and saw Barry Donahue standing on the top step of the control booth, and he was enraged beyond reason. He had been so helpful manning the controls up until that point; his anger felt like a slap. “I thought you were supposed to be in control of these things as the darn PTA president.”

“Excuse me, but being the president of the PTA gives me quite limited power, Barry,” Steph retorted.

“Well, maybe someone else should take over, if you can’t handle the job,” muttered an anonymous audience member.

“The foreign exchange program is not part of my job,” Steph pressed her hands together in prayer to the group of angry parents, begging for decorum. “This was something that the Rotary Club set up.” She casted around for help—Mike was only supposed to threaten Mieke about the break in, not gosh darn leave with her.
This is the one time Mieke could help out a little and where is she now?

“But, you’re supposed to be our liaison, Stephanie. How could you do this to us?” Margie Tillman’s frantic wail was a stark contrast to her soft, bulging form. She jumped to her feet and shook her fist towards the podium. Steph felt like crouching down and hiding behind it.

“Don’t scream at her, Margie.” Vanessa moved to stand in front of the stage, shielding her friend.

“Don’t tell her what to do—Margie has a right to be upset,” someone whined. “I’m upset.”

Where the heck is Mieke? Where the fudge is Mike?
Steph seethed, understanding finally how violently her plan had backfired. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and stomped off-stage, plugging her ears with her fingers, as her PTA meeting erupted into chaos.

part two:
old friends &
new enemies

chapter sixteen

“Here, take this.” Vanessa ran after Meghan, holding a small white garbage bag in front of her. “It’s just one we missed, that’s the last,” and then she added, with a pinch on her friend’s behind, “from the bathroom.”

“Gross.” Meghan wrinkled her nose and took the bag between two pinched fingers, raising her other hand to cup it around her mouth, “That floor is spic ‘n span, Kerry.”

“Okay, I’m done.” Kerry dumped the remnants from her dustbin into a toilet in the girl’s bathroom and flushed it down, then skipped over to the checkout counter to pour four lemonades. “And I’m thirsty.”

“Alrighty then,” Meghan sang, reappearing from outside with a grocery bag over her shoulder. She grabbed Steph, who was lingering in the foyer checking that everything looked as perfect as old Henry had left it. They pulled their seats around an educational coffee-table with a scuffed, world-map finish. Meghan dropped her bag on the map, “Gimme your lemonades, girls, cuz I’m fixin’ to make them hard lemonades. Not yours, Kerry, I know.”

Kerry was the accepted teetotaler of the gang, as the wife of Greg Davis, a devoutly religious member of Shirley County who campaigned to keep the county dry. But she always kept a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it came to her best friends’ illegal habits.

“Watts’ Sportsman Store; you get more than you bargained for,” chanted Vanessa, accepting her plastic cup from Meghan.

“Especially the morning after,” joined in Meghan and Steph, tipping their cups to their foreheads with affected frowns. Kerry kept her lemonade pure, while Steph handed hers back for extra vodka.

“Meghan, make mine a tad stronger, will ya?”

“Wish those Watts hillbillies would sell my chardonnay,” said Vanessa. “I’d probably drink less if I didn’t have to buy it by the box in Tenakho Falls. Wait, wait. We have to toast.”

Everyone spiked and seated in their frumpy circle of lived-in chairs around the map of the world, the women raised their cups with gleeful eyes and burdened hearts. But they were buoyed to the storm by being linked together. “To us,” was their simple toast.

Vanessa slammed hers down first. “I’m gettin’ a re-fill.”

“Just bring the whole pitcher back to the table, honey.”

“Where did Mike disappear to? He get a call or something?” asked Kerry.

Steph steeled herself and sorted through the automatic replies she always kept in her back pocket; replies learned from being married to a man for twenty-four years who had been called away constantly, no matter what the occasion. First birthdays, a family with the flu, spring recital, Christmas Eve, dead father—nothing was sacred. And she was left behind to do the explaining. Even closer still did she hold her gut-wrenching suspicions about where Mike ‘disappeared’ to; she would not show that kind of weakness, even to the girls. “You know how duty calls.”

“Well, hope it’s not anything dangerous.”

“You know what I say is dangerous, is that Margie Tillman,” said Vanessa. “I mean, she would have ruined the whole night if we’d had to call an ambulance for her. Lady that size…” She put her fist to her forehead and let it explode. They were all sensitive to the possibility of stroke since Big Joe’s collapse.

“But what about this Italian kid being nineteen, Steph? What are we going to do about that?”

They had talked of little else from the time the library cleared out and Steph was about to become very unpretty about it. “Please, Meghan. I thought I’m supposed to be relaxing now, done with the cleaning and with all the kids away for the night...”

“I’m sorry, honey. You’re right.” Meghan prayed to the cracked and moldering ceiling, “Thank you, Annie Ryan, for taking the monsters off our hands. We’ll figure it out.” She patted Steph’s knee.

“There’s not much to figure out. I mean, why worry?” Vanessa reiterated. “It’s illegal for the guy to mess with a minor. Statutory rape.”

“But, Vanessa,” Kerry wailed. “Who wants her daughter involved in a ‘statutory rape’ case? You only have boys, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Excuse me, but your girls are like my own daughters, thank you very much. Anyway, I thought Greg doesn’t allow Missy to date. And Ashley and Tristan are practically married…”

Steph let them argue about protecting the ‘weaker sex’ while she mused over her own daughter. An older Italian boy would be exactly the kind of thing that would excite Amanda, if only to make her mother squirm. The boy being legally an adult was the best thing Steph had heard in weeks. Mike would forbid Amanda from dating a legal adult, and use the law to reason with her when she let loose the inevitable ‘Please, Daddy’ routine.

“Did you see how upset Nick Richards was, that the foreign kid—”

“Antonio.”

“Yeah, Antonio, might not be able to play football?”

“What—are we short a player? That’s not going to mess up Homecoming, is it?”

“Did you hear that John Robinson will be here for the whole fall semester this year?” Steph pretended to suddenly remember. “I bet he would be into it, if we’re short of players. His daddy played real well.”

“Jamie Robinson, back in Shirley!” Vanessa hooted. “I wondered when you were going to mention it, girl.”

“Steph’s high school sweetheart, so sweet.”

“Oh, please.” Steph, red-faced, hastily mixed herself another glass of their makeshift brew. “That was centuries ago, y’all.”

“So very, very sweet,” said Vanessa. “Some flames are never snuffed out.”

“Well, that one
was
.” Steph fired over a warning look. John Robinson’s father Jamie had been her steady boyfriend all through her first two years at Andrew Jackson. To most of the oblivious audience of Shirley County, they had carried on the perfect, respectable courtship. Vanessa knew differently, since she was the sole confidant to whom Steph poured out her lustful, adolescent heart. She and Jamie had shared most of which two young rural kids could imagine physically sharing. When he graduated two years ahead of her and took off, it was devastating. She started dating Mike in solace.

“John sure is a cutie-pie, though. Blonde curls galore,” Meghan said. “I don’t know if he plays football or not.”

“I like it when Nick Richards gets all passionate like that. Did you see how upset he was?” Vanessa said, not caring a lick about football, though Steph knew she had her eye on the coach. She swirled the ice around in her cup, “He’s usually just a little too…stodgy or something.”

“Yeah, Nick is pretty good-looking. But, you’re right—too serious. Maybe if he just popped a few of those buttons loose up top.” Kerry mimed tearing open her shirt collar and sweeping an arm across her brow to illustrate the possible release.

“It’s all that finance brain having to deal with his loony artist wife,” said Meghan. “You should hear that woman sometimes. She’s got some lungs on her, I swear.”

“What, you mean like they fight?”

“So loud you can hear from your place?”

“Well, no. But you know I walk Trudy all up and down Forest Lane, and then into the brush to hunt. It’s not like I’m eavesdropping or anything—they keep their windows open most of the time.” Meghan sat back and twirled her straw, but Steph could tell she was brimming with a story and so could the other girls.

“Spill it, Meghan,” said Vanessa, affecting boredom in her tone, but not her eyes.

Meghan didn’t need much bait. “I hear a lot more than that, when I take Trudy down into the woods south of our place, let me tell you.”

“Like what?” breathed Kerry.

Everyone leaned in at once.

“Well, one morning last week, when Trudy and I were out early—like break of dawn, when the mist was still heavy and the light was just starting to filter through the trees,” she primed them, lowering her voice. “There’s a place where you can walk out over a big outcrop. You know, Zebadiah’s Bluff? It’s actually the top to an old cave, and you can look down into the forest below. About a hundred feet down.”

“Why is it called Zebadiah’s Bluff again?”

“Shhhh. Don’t you remember from history?”

“No.”

“I don’t know, it’s just always been called that,” Meghan dismissed the confusion and continued her story. “Anyway, way down below, there’s an old wooden shack that’s been there since as long as I can remember. It’s rickety and falling apart, sort of growing back into the forest, but still a weird little house, you know? I know the boys have hung out there before—Chad and Preston, for sure.”

“Why would Chad and Preston have gone there?”

“Uh, to smoke pot.”

“No way, Chad?” Vanessa chuckled. “Well, boys will be boys, especially in the woods.”

Steph wondered why Mike had never mentioned anything about the boys smoking pot up in the mountains. She was sure her oldest son Brandon would have known about such a secret hide out; all the kids had been fast friends since babyhood. She couldn’t imagine Mike not having caught wind of such a clandestine affair. Apparently her husband had more secrets than she realized. “Marijuana—that’s terrible. How do you know it was marijuana?”

“Because I smelled it,” Meghan answered, ignoring the real question. “So, one morning right at the break of dawn, like I said, I see Candy Vale coming out of the old shack with none other than that new boy Sam Castle.”

The other women looked at her, stunned and puzzled by the unexpected revelation.

“Like, you know…they had been there during the night? Like,
been together
?”

Kerry was aghast. “Sam Castle, that boy who moved here at the end of last year? He’s in Ashley’s class.”

Steph kept quiet. She had seen the way Amanda looked at that boy.

Kerry tried to reason through it, always a little slow on the uptake, “Well, her dad owns the gas station just down the way from there. She lives right up the road…”

“The next house north of ours, correct,” Meghan narrowed her eyes and nodded slyly. “So why would she be sleeping in that shack?”

“Only one reason,” Vanessa said simply, “and no surprise. That Sam Castle, whew. You gotta admit.”

“What a little…” Kerry spluttered.

“Please, they’re just kids, guys,” Steph admonished. “That’s dangerous, though. That area has weird stuff going on there. Why would you go out there at night, Meghan?”

“It was dawn, and I had a pit-bull with me.” Meghan collapsed back into her chair, her story over, ready to settle in with her second lemonade.

“Candy Vale did, too, I guess,” Vanessa tittered, and then stuck her tongue out when Steph narrowed her eyes over her plastic cup.

“What do you mean, ‘dangerous’?” Kerry, who had always been valley-folk and decidedly more vanilla, wanted to know.

“Well, not dangerous.” Steph relented some, never really knowing how serious Kerry was about her possibly self-imposed ignorance of worldly (and maybe otherworldly) affairs. “Of course, you better watch your step over by the bluff’s edge; it’s definitely a steep drop. You’ve been there, right?”

Kerry looked bewildered. “No.”

“There’s a sort of mystery or legend about the spring and the cave,” Meghan helped. “I mean, a cave is always kind of creepy, right?”

Vanessa always grew tired of Kerry’s Pollyanna routine faster than the others. “This is something that we all know about from history classes. There were several Indian tribes that lived in this area, before European settlers moved in and there was some kind of strife or breaking of the peace between them a long time ago. Some say that it happened in that cave under Zebadiah’s Bluff. There used to be cave drawings in there, but some scientists up at the University found a way to take them off the walls a couple years ago and move them to their laboratories.”

“My dad has an original piece,” Meghan proclaimed.

“Yes, people started
defacing
the anthropological treasure, and so the town council decided to have the cave paintings preserved.”

“That doesn’t sound so creepy,” said Kerry.

“The creepy part is the spring,” Meghan blurted, and then amended in lieu of Vanessa’s withering look, “I mean, not terribly creepy, no big deal. Just sort of strange, is all.”

“So, in front of the cave, probably not too far from this shack thing?” Vanessa waited for Meghan’s affirmation before moving on, “There’s a natural spring that is…”

“Blue,” Meghan continued, nodding in agreement at Vanessa’s sudden loss of words. “And icy cold, even in the hottest months of the summer. The blue comes from the source of the spring deep in the ground, you can tell by looking at it. It’s dark and murky down there—but the water is crystal clear—and it gradually becomes lighter like a sapphire catching the sun, then glowing in aquamarine, until finally fading out completely at the edge of the spring.”

Kerry was confused. “We learned that in History? About the spring?”

“Kinda…”

“It’s a natural phenomenon,” said Vanessa.

“Natural what?” asked Meghan. “Look, I don’t know why it’s blue. But Trudy won’t go near it. They say it’s poisoned.”

“Poisoned with what? Come on.” Steph didn’t see any reason to freak Kerry out more than necessary.

Vanessa sighed. “Environmentalist scare. They just don’t want people diving in it. Some kind of rare algae they’re trying to protect.”

“Who would dive in there? It’s so cold and deep.” Steph tried to stop the shiver rolling over her.

“No, it’s more than that,” insisted Meghan. “I dipped my toe in once—Trudy was barking and freaking out, so I took her home and came back.” She looked at the ceiling, then her hands, as if unsure where to find the right words. “I have never felt so cold. So alone and desperate. So scared and angry. I never want to feel like that again. That spring is so frightening because it is somehow alive and...”

Kerry looked like she didn’t want to know, but couldn’t help herself, “What?”

“Vengeful.”

chapter seventeen

It was well past midnight when John turned into his grandparents’ driveway. The Mustang’s headlights swung around the bend and flashed into the massive oak tree that shaded most of the front lawn. The convertible top was down and he savored the sweet aroma as he passed the gardenia bushes, sucking in the perfume of his childhood summers. Where was the old magnolia tree?