Heaven (Casteel Series #1) Read online

  Everybody sleeps on theif 'Wes, on their stomachs—and no one thinks it is sinful but you. Who told you the right and wrong positions for sleeping? God?"

  "YA DON'T TALK T'ME LIKE THAT WHEN

  YER IN MY HOUSE!" Kitty screamed, livid with rage. "Saw ya, I did. Breakin my rules, ya were. Ya knows ya ain't supposed t'sleep on yer side huggin anything . . . an ya went an done it anyway. YA DID!"

  "And what is so bad about sleeping on my side?

  Tell me! I'm dying to know! It must be tied up somehow to your childhood, and what was done to you!" My tone was as hard as hers, aggressive too.

  "Smartmouth, ain't ya?" she fired back. "Think yer betta than me, cause ya gets A's in school. Spend my good money dressin ya up, an what fer? What ya plannin on doin? Ya ain't got no talents. Kin't half cook. Don't know nothin bout cleanin house, keepin thins lookin pretty—but ya think yer betta than me cause I didn't go no higher than t'fifth grade. Cal done told ya all bout me, ain't he?"

  "Cal's told me nothing of the kind, and if you didn't finish school I'm sure it was because you couldn't wait to sleep with some man, and run off with the first one who asked you to marry him—like all hill-scum girls do. Even if you did grow up in Winnerrow, you're not one whit better than any scumbag hill-crud girl."

  It was Kitty's fault, not mine, that Cal was beginning to look at rue in ways that made me uneasy, forgetting he was supposed to be my father, my champion. Kitty's fault. My rage grew by leaps and bounds that she would steal from me the one man who'd given me what I needed most—a real father.

  Yet it was she who found her voice first.

  "HE TOLE YA! I KNOW HE DID, DIDN'T

  HE?" she screamed, high and shrill. "Ya done talked about me t'my own husband, tole him lies, made him so he don't love me like he used ta!"

  "We don't talk about you. That's too boring. We try to pretend you don't exist, that's all."

  Then I threw on more fuel, thinking that I'd already started the blaze, so I might as well heap on all the rotten wood I had been saving since the day I came. Not one harsh word she'd said had been forgotten or forgiven, not one slap, one bloody nose or black eye . . . all had been stored to explode now.

  "Kitty, I'm never going to call you Mother again, because you never were and never will be my mother. You're Kitty the hairdresser. Kitty the fake ceramic teacher." I spun around on the heel of one silver slipper and pointed at the line of wall cabinets.

  And I laughed, really laughed, as if I enjoyed this, but I wasn't enjoying myself, only putting on a false front of bravado.

  "Behind those locked cupboard doors you've got professional molds, Kitty, thousands of bought molds! With shipping labels still on the boxes they came in. You don't create any of these animals! You buy the molds, pour in the clay slip—and you display them and label them as one of a kind, and that's fraud.

  You could be sued."

  Kitty grew unnaturally quiet.

  That should have warned me to shut up, but I had years of frustrated rage locked up within, and so I spewed it out, as if Kitty were a combination of Pa and everything else that had managed to spoil my life.

  "Cal told ya that," came Kitty's deadly flat statement. "Cal . . . done . . . betrayed. . . me."

  "Nope." I reached for a drawer in my desk and pulled out a tiny brass key. "I found this one day when I was cleaning in here, and just couldn't help opening the cabinets you always keep locked."

  Kitty smiled. Her smile couldn't have been sweeter.

  "What do ya know about art, hill scum? I made t'molds. I sell t’molds t'good customers—like myself.

  I keep em locked up so sneaks like ya won't steal my ideas."

  I didn't care.

  Let the sky fall, let the rain swell the ocean and wash over Candlewick, carry it to the bottom of the sea, to sleep forever next to lost Atlantis . . . what did I care? I could leave now that the weather was hot. I could hitchhike—who'd care? I'd live. I was tough.

  Somehow or other I'd make my way back to

  Winnerrow, and when I was there I'd tear Fanny away from Reverend Wise, find Tom, save Keith and Our Jane . . . for I'd thought of a way we could all survive.

  To prove my strength, my determination, I

  turned and stuffed my doll far under the bed, then deliberately fell on the bed and curled up on my side, reaching for a pillow that I hugged tight against me. It hit me then—the thing I'd not thought of before—just what was the evil thing Kitty presumed I did. The girls in school talked about it sometimes, how they pleasured themselves, and foolishly I threw my leg over the pillow and began to rub against it.

  I didn't do that more than two seconds.

  Strong hands seized me under my armpits, and I was yanked from the bed. I screamed and tried to fight Kitty off, tried to twist around so my hands could rake Kitty's face or do some other damage that would force her to let me go. It was as if I were a struggling kitten in the jaws of a powerful tiger. I was carried and dragged down the stairs, into the dining room I'd made pretty with party decorations she picked me up, plunked me down on the hard glass-top dining-room table.

  "You're putting fingerprints on your clean tabletop," I said sarcastically, idiotically dauntless in the face of the worst enemy I was likely to ever have.

  "I'm finished with shining your glass tabletops.

  Finished with cooking your meals. Finished with cleaning your stupid house that has too many gaudy animals in it."

  "SHUT UP!"

  "I DON'T WANT TO SHUT UP! I'm going to have my say for once. I HATE YOU, KITTY

  DENNISON! And I could have loved you if you'd given me half a chance. I hate you for all you've done to me! You don't give anyone half a chance, not even your own husband. Once you have anybody loving you, you do something ugly so that person has to turn on you and see you for what you are—INSANE!"

  "Shut up." How calmly she said that this time.

  "Don't ya move from that table. Ya sit there. Ya be there when I come back."

  Kitty disappeared.

  I could run now. Flee out the door, say goodbye to this Candlewick house. On the expressway I could catch a ride. But this morning's papers had spewed ugly photos on the front page. Two girls found raped and murdered alongside the freeway.

  Swallowing, I sat frozen, snared by indecision, regretting, too late, all the things I'd said. Still . . I wasn't going to be a coward and run. I was going to sit here, show her I wasn't afraid of anything she did—and what worse thing could she do?

  Kitty came back, not carrying a whip or a stick or a can of Lysol to spray in my face. She carried only a thin long box of fireplace matches.

  "Goin home, back t'Winnerrow fer a visit," said Kitty in her most fearsome monotone. "Goin so ya kin see yer sista Fanny, an yer grandpa. So I kin see my sista, Maisie, my brotha, Danny. Goin back t'touch my roots again, renew my vows t'neva get like em. Gonna show ya off. Don't want ya lookin ugly, like I might neglect ya. Ya've grown up prettier than I thought.

  Hill-scum boys will try and get ya. So I'm gonna save ya from yer worst self in a way that won't show. But ya'll know from this day on not t'disobey me. Neva again. An if ya eva want t'find out where yer lit sister Our Jane is, and what happened t'that little boy named Keith, ya'll do as I say. I knows where they are, an who has em."

  "You know where they are, you really do?" I asked excitedly, forgetting all I'd said to anger Kitty.

  "Does t'sky know where t'sun is? Does a tree know where t'plant its roots? Of course I know. Ain't no secrets in Winnerrow, not when yer one of em . .

  an they thinks I am."

  "Kitty, where are they, please tell me! I've got to find them before Our Jane and Keith forget who I am. Tell me! Please! I know I was ugly a moment ago, but you were, too. Please, Kitty."

  "Please what?"

  Oh, my God!

  I didn't want to say it. I wiggled about on the slippery tabletop, gripping the edge so hard the glass if it hadn't been beveled would have sliced off my fingers.


  "You're not my mother."

  "Say it."

  "My real mother is dead, and Sarah was my stepmother for years and years . . ."

  "Say it."

  "I'm sorry . . . Mother."

  "An what else?"

  "You will tell me what you know about Keith and Our Jane?"

  "Say it."

  "I'm sorry I said so many ugly things . . .

  Mother." "Sayin sorry ain't enough."

  "What else can I say?"

  "Ain't nothin ya kin say. Not now. I seen ya doin it. I heard what ya said t'me. Called me a fake.

  Called me a hill scumbag. Knew ya'd turn against me soona or lata, t'minute I had my back turned ya'd do somethin nasty. Had t'lay on yer side, wiggle round an round, an pleasure yerself, didn't ya? Then ya had eta me off . . . an now I gotta do what I kin t'rid ya of evil."

  "And then you'll tell me where Keith and Our Jane are?"

  "When I finish. When yer saved. Then . . .

  maybe."

  "Mother . . . why are you lighting the match?

  The lights have come back on. We don't need candles before it's really dark."

  "Go get t'doll."

  "Why?" I cried, desperate now.

  "Don't ask why—jus do as I say."

  "You'll tell me what you know about Keith and Our Jane?"

  "Tell ya everythin. Everythin I know."

  She had one of the long matches lit now. "Fore it burns my fingas, fetch t'doll."

  I ran, crying as I fell to my knees and reached under the bed and dragged out the doll that represented my dead mother, my young mother whose face I'd inherited. "I'm sorry, Mother," I cried, lavishing her hard face with kisses, and then I ran again. Two steps from the bottom I tripped and fell. I got up to limp as fast as I could toward Kitty, the pain in my ankle so terrible I felt like screaming.

  Kitty stood near the living-room fireplace. "Put her in there," she ordered coldly, pointing to the andirons that held the iron grate. Logs were stacked there, kindling laid by Cal just for looks, for Kitty didn't like wood smoke dirtying and "stinkin up" her clean house.

  "Please don't burn her, Ki—Mother. . . ."

  "T'late t'make up fer t'harm ya done."

  "Please, Mother. I'm sorry. Don't hurt the doll. I don't have a photograph of my mother. I've never seen her. This is all I have."

  "Liar!"

  "Mother she couldn't help what my pa did.

  She's dead—you're still alive. You won in the end. You married Cal, and he's ten times the man my father is, or ever could be."

  "Put that nasty thin in there!" she commanded.

  I stepped backward, causing her to step

  threateningly forward. "If ya eva wanna know where Keith an Our Jane is . . . ya have t'give that hateful doll t'me of yer own free will. Don't ya make me snatch it from ya—or ya'll neva find yer lil brotha an sista."

  My own free will.

  For Keith.

  For Our Jane.

  I handed her the doll.

  I watched Kitty toss my beloved bride doll onto the grate. Tears streaked my face as I fell to my knees and bowed my head and said a silent prayer . . . as if my mother herself lay on her funeral pyre.

  With horror I watched the fine lace dress with pearls and crystal beads burst into instant flame, the silvery-gold hair catching fire; the wonderfully alive-looking skin seemed to melt; two small licks of flames consumed the long, dark curling lashes.

  "Now ya listen, scumbag," said Kitty when it was over, and my irreplaceable portrait doll lay in ashes. "Don't ya go tellin Cal what I did. Ya smile, ya act happy when my guests show up. STOP that cryin!

  It were only a doll! Only a doll!"

  But that heap of ashes in the fireplace

  represented my mother, my claim to the future that should have been hers. How could I prove who I was, how, how?

  Unable to refrain, I reached into the hot ashes and plucked from them a crystal bead that had rolled free from the hearth. It sparkled in my palm like a teardrop. My mother's tear. "Oh, I hate you, Kitty, for doing this!" I sobbed. "It wasn't necessary! I hate you so much I wish it had been YOU in the fire!"

  She struck! Hard, brutally, over and over again until I was on the floor, and still she was slapping my face, slamming her fists into my stomach . . . and I blacked out.

  Mercifully blacked out.

  sixteen

  MY SAVIOR,

  MY FATHER

  .

  SHORTLY AFTER THE PARTY WAS OVER

  AND ALL KITTY'S friends were gone, Cal found me lying facedown on the floor in the room where I slept; no longer could I think of it as my room. He stood in the doorway silhouetted by the hall light behind him. I felt too sore and raw to move. My beautiful new dress was torn and dirty. And even though he was there I continued to lie in a crumpled heap and cry. It seemed I was always crying for what I'd had once and lost.

  My pride, my brothers and sisters, my mother—and her doll.

  "What's wrong?" Cal asked, stepping into the room and falling down on his knees beside me.

  "Where have you been? What's the matter?"

  I cried on and on.

  "Heaven darling, you've got to tell me! I tried to slip away from the party earlier, but Kitty clung to my arm like a burr. She kept saying you didn't feel well, that you were having cramps. Why are you on the floor? Where were you during the party?" He turned me over gently and gazed lovingly into my swollen and discolored face before he stared at my torn dress and nylons full of runs. An expression of such rage flashed through his eyes it frightened me. "Oh, my God," he cried out, clenching his fists. "I should have known! She's hurt you again, and I didn't save you from her! And that's why she treated me so possessively tonight! Tell me what happened," he demanded again, reaching to cradle me in his arms.

  "Go way," I sobbed. "Leave me alone. It's going to be all right. I'm not really hurt . . ."

  I sought for the right words to soothe his anxiety and my own misery, which by this time I was thinking I'd brought on myself. Maybe I was hill-scum filth, and did deserve everything Kitty had done.

  My own fault. Pa couldn't love me. If your own father couldn't love you, who could? Nobody could love me.

  I was lost, all alone . . . and never would anybody love me, never love me enough.

  "No, I won't go away." He lightly touched my hair, his lips traveling all over my sore, puffy face.

  Perhaps he thought it was that way only from crying, not from a battering. There were no lights on for him to see well. Did he think his small kisses could ease the pain? Yet they did, a little. "Does it hurt that much?" he asked with pity in his voice. He looked so sad, so loving.

  His fingertips on my swollen eye were so

  tender. "You look so beautiful lying here in my arms, with the moonlight on your face. You seem half a child, half a woman, older than sixteen, but still so young, so vulnerable and untouched."

  "Cal . . . do you still love her?"

  "Who?"

  "Kitty."

  He seemed dazed. "Kitty? I don't want to talk about Kitty. I want to talk about you. About me."

  "Where's Kitty?"

  "Her girlfriends," he began in a mocking, sarcastic voice, "decided that Kitty really needed a special gift." He paused and smiled ironically.

  "They've all gone to watch male strippers, and I was left here to sit with you."

  "As if I'm a baby . . . ?"

  I stared at him with tears wetting my face. His smile grew tighter, more cynical. "I'd rather be right where I am, with you, than any other place in the world. Tonight, with all those other people, drinking and eating, laughing over silly jokes, I realized something for the first time. I felt all alone because you weren't there." His voice deepened. "You came into my life, and truthfully I didn't want you. I didn't want to take on the role of a father, even if Kitty did feel she had to be a mother. But now I'm so damned scared Kitty will hurt you in some horrible way. I've tried to be here as much as possible. And yet I haven't
saved you from anything. Tell me what she did today."

  I could tell him. I could make him hate her. But I was scared, not only of Kitty but of him, a grown man who appeared at this very minute totally infatuated with a kid of seventeen. Limply I lay in his arms, completely exhausted, listening to his heart pound.

  "Heaven, she slapped you, didn't she? She saw you wearing an expensive new dress and tried to tear it off, didn't she?" he asked in a voice thick with emotion. Deep in my own thoughts I didn't even notice that he'd raised my hand to press it against his heart. Beneath his shirt I could feel the steady heartbeats, thumping, making it seem I was already part of him. I wanted to speak and tell him I was almost his daughter, and he shouldn't be looking at me the way he was. But no one had ever looked at me with love before—love I had needed for so long. Why was it making me afraid of him?

  He both comforted me and frightened me, made me feel good and made me feel guilty. I owed him so much, perhaps too much, and I didn't know what to do. A funny glazed look came into his eyes, as if I had unknowingly pushed some switch, perhaps because I lay so submissively in his embrace. Much to my surprise, his lips were making a trail all around my throat, savoring the taste and feel of my flesh. I shivered again, wanting to tell him to stop, afraid if I did he wouldn't love me. If I drove him away I wouldn't have anyone to protect me from Kitty, or to care any longer what happened to me . . . and so I didn't say stop.

  I had journeyed away from tears into unknown territory, where I lay trapped, not knowing what to do, or what to feel . . . It wasn't wrong, was it, this sweet tenderness he showed when he brushed his lips over mine, gently touching me as if afraid he'd frighten me with too bold an approach—and then I saw his face.

  He was crying! "I wish you weren't just a beautiful child. I wish you were older."

  Those tears glistening in his eyes filled my heart with pity for him. He was as trapped as I was, in debt to Kitty up to his hairline; he couldn't just walk out on all the effort and years of learning electronics. I couldn't pull away and slap his face when he'd given me the only kindness I'd ever had from a man, and saved me from a life that could have been so much worse here in Candlewick.