Nightshade

CHAPTER 4

“THAT DOESN’T GO there! why can’t you do anything right?”

Joan’s hands tightened on the dress she was holding. Pale blue, the bodice covered with seed pearls, the satin dress had been her mother’s favorite. But that was years ago, and even though the dress had been kept carefully hung in the closet since the one time it was worn, the color had begun to fade and the material to rot. In fact, it should have been given away years ago, while someone could still use it. Now it was beyond repair — not that it would be worth repairing, since the seed pearls were plastic and the satin was made of rayon instead of silk. But in her mother’s eyes the dress was still beautiful.

As beautiful as it had once been…

* * *

JOAN STOOD AT the door to her sister’s room, her eyes fixed on the large gray cardboard box on cynthia’s bed. She knew what was in the box, for it was all her mother and sister had been talking about for weeks.

The dress.

The dress Cynthia would wear tomorrow night when she went to the prom with Marty Holmes.

The dress that Cynthia and their mother had started planning weeks ago, on the day Marty asked Cynthia to the prom.

The dress that Mrs. Fillmore had made, making Cynthia come over for fittings day after day.

“I’m starting to hate that dress,” Cynthia had whispered to her last week. “I can never stand still enough for Mrs. Fillmore, and she always sticks pins in me, like I’m some kind of voodoo doll or something.”

“But Mom says it’s going to be the most beautiful dress anyone’s ever seen,” Joan said. “If she finds out you don’t even like it — ”

Cynthia, four years older than her twelve-year-old sister, fixed her eyes on Joan. “Why would she find that out?” she asked. “I’m not going to tell her — if she wants me to wear the stupid dress, I’ll wear it. What do I care?”

“Don’t you even want to go to the prom?” Joan asked wistfully. Since the moment she’d heard about the prom, she thought everything about it sounded wonderful. All the boys would be dressed up in dinner jackets, and the girls would wear beautiful dresses, but none of them as beautiful as Cynthia’s. The wonderfully soft and smooth satin from which Mrs. Fillmore was making the dress was the exact same blue as Cynthia’s eyes, and the dressmaker was even letting Cynthia wear a string of her own pearls.

“They’re not quite real,” she’d admitted to her mother when she brought them over. “But they match the seed pearls on the bodice perfectly.”

Joan had stared longingly at the pearls, wishing she could try them on, but knowing she shouldn’t even ask.

Maybe in four years, when it was time for her own prom…

“I don’t care if I go or not,” Cynthia said, finally answering the question that had begun Joan’s reverie. “And I sure don’t want to go over to old Mrs. Fillmore’s again.” She cocked her head then, her eyes fixed on her younger sister. “Why don’t you go to the fitting tomorrow?”

Joan’s eyes widened. “Me?”

“Why not?” Cynthia countered, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

“But it won’t fit — ” Joan began.

Cynthia didn’t let her finish. “It won’t matter if it doesn’t fit perfectly, because she’s only doing the hemline tomorrow! Stand up.”

Joan scrambled off Cynthia’s bed.

“Stand next to me.”

Joan moved next to her sister, who was standing in front of the full length mirror on her closet door.

“See? It’ll be perfect!”

Joan gazed at the two images in the mirror. There was no resemblance at all. Cynthia’s figure was almost perfect — Joan’s own chest looked completely flat compared to her older sister’s, and where Cynthia’s body was all soft curves, her own was nothing but straight lines and gangly limbs.

She didn’t have a waist, and she didn’t have hips, and she didn’t have a bust.

Even her hair — dark and straight — paled by comparison to Cynthia’s wavy blond tresses.

“See?” Cynthia said. “We’re exactly the same height! So you can go to the fitting tomorrow, and I — ” Abruptly, she fell silent.

“You can what?” Joan had asked.

Cynthia smiled. “Never mind. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

So she went to the fitting instead of Cynthia, and Mrs. Fillmore had lowered the dress over her head, and she’d turned to look into a mirror, certain the dress would somehow transform her into as beautiful a creature as her sister.

It hadn’t.

Instead of seeing the fairy princess she’d let herself imagine — even hoped for — she was still the same gawky girl she’d been before.

“It’s just not your color,” Mrs. Fillmore had tried to reassure her, reading her thoughts as clearly as if she’d spoken them out loud. “When it’s time for your prom, I’ll make you a red dress. It wouldn’t be right on Cynthia, but red will be perfect for you. You’ll see.”

Joan had made no reply, because even though she was only twelve, she was already sure no one would ever ask her to the prom. But she’d stood perfectly still, and Mrs. Fillmore hadn’t stuck any pins in her, and that night when their mother asked Cynthia how the fitting had gone, her sister lied so smoothly that even Joan almost believed it had been Cynthia who went to Mrs. Fillmore’s that afternoon.

And then the dress arrived, carefully folded and wrapped in tissue paper and packed into the gray cardboard box. And even though Joan knew she should wait until Cynthia got home and tried it on, she couldn’t contain herself. The unfinished dress had looked so beautiful that she could hardly even imagine what it must look like now.

The box drawing her like a magnet, Joan moved toward it, her fingers untying the string and lifting the lid almost of their own volition.

And then, from behind her, she heard her mother’s voice.

“What are you doing? How dare you touch that box!”

Joan spun around, her hands going behind her back as if to hide from her mother’s wrath.

“Useless!” her mother said, shoving her out of Cynthia’s room and closing the door so she couldn’t even see the box, let alone the beautiful dress inside. “What if you’d ruined it? What if you’d spoiled the most wonderful night of your sister’s life?”

* * *

BUT SHE HADN’T ruined the most wonderful night of Cynthia’s life.

And, despite what Mrs. Fillmore had promised, she’d never had a prom dress of her own.

“Useless!” she heard her mother mutter behind her. “You’re just as useless now as you ever were. I don’t know why I ever had you!”

I don’t either, Joan thought. I truly don’t. But she said nothing, reminding herself once more that her mother didn’t mean what she was saying.

It will be all right, she insisted to herself as she carefully hung the dress in the exact spot her mother wanted it. I’ll get through this.

I’ll get through this, just as I’ve gotten through everything else.

But even as she repeated the reassurances to herself, she still heard her mother’s angry words echoing in her mind.

Useless… useless… useless…

* * *

BILL HAPGOOD GAZED down the fourth fairway of the granite Falls Golf Club course. The fourth hole had always been his favorite — the fairway ran 180 yards from the tee, then veered sharply to the right to proceed another 150 yards to the hole. There was a dense stand of forest to the right of the first run, and if you couldn’t control your slice, there was no chance of finding the ball. On the left was a grove of pines that Bill’s father had planted (“Why should the hookers get off easy?” George Hapgood, a notorious slicer, had complained, instantly earning himself a reputation as being a stalwart foe of prostitution, a profession that no one in Granite Falls was practicing anyway.) But once you got successfully through the narrow slot off the tee and made the turn to the right, you discovered that your troubles had just begun. The woods were still on the right, but now there was a pond on the left, and six deep bunkers guarding the green, which most members were absolutely certain was becoming smaller every year. There were even rumors that Bill himself sometimes snuck onto the course at night to cut away small sections of the fourth green, making the sand traps even larger than they already were.

Though the rumors weren’t true, no one would have been surprised to find out that they were: indeed, there wasn’t a soul in Granite Falls who could even remember a time when a Hapgood wasn’t tinkering with the course; Bill’s grandfather carved the first nine holes out of his farm sixty years earlier, and he and his friends had built the original clubhouse themselves. Bill’s father had figured out how to add enough new tee boxes to at least half-convince the membership that eighteen holes wasn’t just a matter of going twice around the original nine, and Bill himself hadn’t missed a workday since he’d inherited his father’s membership when he was still in college. Indeed, the old hickory clubs his father had sawn off to teach Bill the game when he was four — and that Bill had used to teach Matt when he was five — were still stored in the club’s locker shed, waiting for the day when he could use them to teach Matt’s son.

Matt’s son.

His grandson.

Not his grandson, he reminded himself. His step-grandson. Not for the first time, he wondered if he’d made a mistake not adopting Matt when he and Joan first got married. But it had been impossible then, for his grandfather was still alive, and Bill would never forget the scene he’d had in the den the night before his wedding when he broached the subject to the old man, who had only reluctantly left his retirement home in Scottsdale to come to the wedding.

“Never!” William Hughes Hapgood had roared. “It’s bad enough that you’re marrying that Moore girl at all. But to even think of adopting her bastard — ”

“Come on, Grandpa! Nobody uses that word anymore. It’s archaic!”

“Morality is not archaic,” W.H. had growled, his brow furrowing dangerously. “And don’t begin prattling about modern times.”

“I won’t prattle about them if you won’t try to pretend they don’t exist,” Bill replied.

W.H.’s features had grown as hard as the New Hampshire granite from which he’d sprung. “I’m not forbidding you to marry this Joan person, am I? But I draw the line at adopting her — ” He cut himself short, reading the danger signals in his grandson’s eyes. “ — her son,” he finally went on. “We have no idea who the child’s father was, and I can only assume that since she’s never told anyone, she’s not terribly proud of whoever he was. And while you may find it old-fashioned, I still believe that in the long run, breeding will out. Know the lineage, and you know the man. But if you don’t know the lineage — ”

“You can’t trust the man.” Bill finished the phrase that had been drilled into him since childhood like a catechism, and in the end he’d given in to his grandfather’s wishes.

Just as Joan had given in to her mother’s wishes.

But it wasn’t the same thing, Bill told himself as he teed up his ball and took a couple of practice swings. Matthew Moore had never disrupted his life; if anything, Matt had been the son he’d always hoped for, and in the end even old W.H. had grudgingly conceded that Matt wasn’t “as bad as I was expecting.”

Emily Moore, on the other hand, was even worse than Bill had been expecting, and now, as he lined up his drive, his eyes rested for a moment on the chimneys of his house, just visible above the grove of trees that stood at the far end of the fairway, beyond the dogleg.

Maybe he should have gone back this morning, just to make certain things were all right. After all, if Emily could set fire to her own house, there was no reason she couldn’t do the same to his.

But no — if he’d gone back so soon after leaving, Joan would take it as a sign that he might move back in, and until Emily was gone, that wasn’t going to happen. Not given the condition Matt had been in when he’d first moved from his grandmother’s house into Hapgood Farm. Even now, ten years later, Bill remembered how afraid Matt had been to go to sleep those first few nights. Though the boy had never been able to tell him exactly what his nightmares were about, Bill was certain he knew the cause: Emily. Though he suspected the woman had never exchanged more than a word or two with his grandfather in her life, she seemed to share W.H. Hapgood’s archaic ideas about lineage and breeding, even though she had none herself.

None, at least, that anyone knew of.

Joan’s bastard.

That’s how she’d always referred to her grandson. And with her feeling that way, how could Matt not have nightmares? So Bill had come up with the Night-Knight, and stayed up with Matt, reading to him and reassuring him that there was nothing to be afraid of anymore, and afterward the nightmares that had plagued Matt in Emily Moore’s house had vanished.

But with Emily in the house, how long would it be before they came back?

Now, his hands clenched tightly on his driver, Bill began his downswing, and immediately knew that the shot would go wrong. As the ball curved off into the woods, cracked against two trees, then dropped into a thicket of mountain laurel, he heard Gerry Conroe chuckle.

“Thought you said you were just fine,” the publisher of the Granite Falls Ledger said sardonically.

“I am just fine,” Bill growled, sounding more like his grandfather than he would have liked.

“That’s the third drive you’ve blown,” said Marty Holmes, who, along with Paul Arneson, made up the rest of their regular foursome. “A couple more drives like that and I might be able to retire early.”

His jaw clenching, Bill teed up a second ball, told himself to relax, and swung again.

As the second ball disappeared into the woods, he decided that Gerry Conroe was right.

He was upset. He was very upset, and he was going to do something about it.

The only question was what. But even as the question came into his mind, so did a possible answer.

Maybe it was time to do what he’d been thinking about doing for two years.

Fishing his cellular phone out of his golf bag, he dialed his lawyer’s number.

“That better not be business,” Marty Holmes said as Bill began talking. “You know the club rule about discussing business on the course.”

“And you know how often it’s enforced,” Bill replied as he waited for the attorney to come onto the line. “But it doesn’t matter. This is just about as personal as it gets.”

As the other three started down the fairway, Bill hung back.

No sense letting the whole town know what he was thinking of doing.

* * *

“JEEZ, MOORE! WHAT’S wrong with you today?”

The anger in Pete Arneson’s voice grated on Matt, and his right hand clenched into a fist. What was Pete so pissed about? All he’d done was miss a catch!

Except that it wasn’t just one catch. So far, he’d missed every pass Pete had thrown him, and on two of the plays he hadn’t even been able to remember which pattern he was supposed to run. On the last play, Eric Holmes had somehow managed to knock him off stride as he began to run, and that had never happened before. But long before he was ready to receive Pete’s pass, the ball sailed over his head, dropping to the ground near the goal post.

Fifteen lousy yards, and he hadn’t even come close to hitting his mark!

“Screw you,” he snarled.

Pete’s eyes widened. “ ‘Screw you’?” he repeated. “That’s all you’ve got to say? Then fine, Moore — screw you too.” He turned to Kent Stackworth. “After that last play, they’ll expect me to try to run this time. So I’m passing to you.”

“Me?” Stackworth repeated. What was going on? Pete always passed to Matt — they were like a team within a team.

“Yes, you,” Arneson shot back. “You can’t do any worse than Moore, can you? As for you, Moore, you’re blocking on this play.”

A few seconds later Matt, seething, was back on the line, facing Eric Holmes.

Concentrate, he told himself. Just forget about everything else and focus. But as he crouched down, Pete Arneson’s words kept running through his mind, and when he heard the last number of the count, something happened.

Instead of launching himself into Eric Holmes and blocking him, Matt spun out to the right, letting Eric lunge past him. A second later he heard Pete Arneson’s outraged howl as Eric took him down, but it didn’t matter.

Matt was already off the field.

“Moore!” he heard the coach shouting as he started toward the locker room.

Matt kept walking.

“Moore! Hold it right there!”

Matt hesitated, but then turned to face the coach, who was walking quickly toward him.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Ted Stevens asked. “Since when do you just walk off the field in the middle of a play?”

Matt’s jaw tightened and his right hand clenched into a fist.

The coach’s tone changed when he saw the uncharacteristic anger in Matt’s face. “What is it, Matt?” he asked. “What’s going on?” For a moment Matt’s expression didn’t change, but then, as if he’d made a decision, Matt unclenched his fist and his shoulders slumped.

“I just don’t feel very good today.”

“You sick?”

Matt shrugged. “I didn’t sleep very well last night.” He hesitated, then: “And my dad left.”

Suddenly, Ted Stevens understood. No wonder the boy’s game had been off. “You want to talk about it?” he offered. “It can be pretty rough when your folks split up.”

“He’s not my father,” Matt said, a little too quickly. “He’s just my stepfather.”

Stevens knew better than to challenge the defensiveness in Matt’s words, but instead slung a friendly arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you call it a day and hit the showers? And if you want to talk, I’ll be in my office. Okay?”

Matt shrugged the coach’s arm off. “Hey, it’s no big deal,” he said. “Everybody’s folks split up, right?”

Again the coach knew better than to try to argue. “I’ll be in my office,” he repeated. “The door’s always open.”

Right, Matt thought as he went to his locker, stripped out of his jersey and padding, then headed for the showers. Everybody wants to talk about it.

He turned the hot water up until the needle spray was nearly scalding and stepped under it, letting it sluice the sweat off his body. But even the stream of hot water could do nothing to ease the tension that had been building in him all through last night and then the long day at school. He finally shut off the shower, toweled himself dry, and pulled on his clothes.

As he headed for the door he didn’t even glance in the direction of the coach’s office.

Nor did he head out Manchester Road toward Hapgood Farm.

Instead he found himself walking toward Burlington Avenue.

Five minutes later he was standing in front of his grandmother’s house. From where he stood, there was no sign of the fire at all, but even though it had been only a week since his grandmother had moved in with his own family, the house had already taken on a look of abandonment.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?”

Matt turned to see Becky Adams smiling at him. Before Matt’s mother had married his stepfather and they’d moved away from Burlington Avenue, Becky had been his best friend. Now, ten years later, he wasn’t sure if they were friends at all; it wasn’t just his family and address that had changed, but the crowd he hung out with as well. And there was Becky’s mother too. His eyes automatically flicked across the street toward the Adams house as he wondered if Becky’s mother was drunk, but a second later he pulled his gaze self-consciously away. Then he relaxed: even if Becky had noticed his glance, she couldn’t know what he was thinking.

“What’s weird?” Matt countered. “It’s just a house.” But even as he spoke the words, he knew it wasn’t “just a house” at all. It was the house of the nightmares and nameless terrors of his early childhood, along with the frightening woman who was his grandmother. Now, as he gazed at it, a thought crept into his head.

Why couldn’t it have burned to the ground? And why couldn’t she have been in it?

“All the little kids on the block think it’s haunted,” Becky said.

“I bet they think my grandmother’s a witch too.”

Though Becky shook her head, her blush told him the truth.

“Well, she’s not,” he went on. “She’s just — ” He fell silent as fragments of the last few days flitted through his memory. Crazy, he wanted to say. She’s just crazy. But when he spoke, his words were carefully tempered: “She’s just sick, that’s all.”

“How come your mom didn’t put her in a nursing home?”

“Why would she?” Matt countered.

Becky Adams’s flush deepened. “Well, I mean — ” she stammered. “Like — everyone knows how she treats your mom. And my mom said — ”

“I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” Matt said, his voice harsh enough to make Becky flinch. “Look, Becky, I’m sorry,” he quickly went on when he saw her reaction. “It’s just — oh, Jeez, I don’t know…”

His voice trailed off and he turned away, suddenly wanting to be by himself.

“Matt?” Becky called.

He turned back.

“If there’s anything I can do… I mean to help…”

“There’s not,” Matt said. “There’s nothing anyone can do.”