Page 95

Unfortunately, he headed for home. Sickened, dishearted, I trailed along behind, feeling I'd betrayed my father and failed him.

Lunchtime and Dad came home tired and distressed looking. "Any luck, Jory?"

"No. How about you?"

"None. My mother did not fly to Hawaii. I checked with all the airlines. Jory, both Cathy and my mother must be inside that house next door."

I had an idea. "Dad, why don't you have a long talk with Bart? Don't jump on him, or condemn him, just say nice things. Praise him for being nice to Cindy, tell him how much you care about him. I know he's behind this for he keeps mumbling about the Lord and being His dark angel of revenge."

Dad couldn't find any words to say as he digested my information. Then silently, he set off to find Bart and do what he could to make an unwanted little boy feel needed--if it wasn't already too late.

The Last Supper

. Later I went down to the cellar again with John Amos. "Corrine," John Amos called softly as he bent over stiffly. Clumsy like me, he got down on his knees and peered through the small kitty door he opened. "I want you and your daughter to know this is your last meal, so I made it a good one." He lifted the lid of the silver teapot and spat inside, then poured the steaming hot liquid into fine china cups. "One for you, one for your daughter," he said. He shoved one cup and saucer inside the kitty door, then the other set. Next he picked up a plate of sandwiches which looked stale and kinda dirty, then managed to drop the plate on the filthy cellar floor.

He picked up the little triangles and wiped them off against his trouser leg, shoved the meat that had fallen out back in, then put the plate of coal-dusted food in through the kitty door. "Here you are, Corrine Fox- worth," snarled John Amos in his hissy voice. "I hope you find these dainty sandwiches to your liking, you bitch! I took your word when you married me, truly believing you'd be my wife--and though you have never been my wife in the way I'd hoped, still I will inherit what is rightfully mine. Finally I have managed to destroy you and yours--just as Malcolm wanted to kill all your Devil's issue."

Did he have to hate my granny so much? Maybe she wasn't to blame, like me who sometimes did bad things and couldn't help it. Why was everybody doing bad things to everybody else and calling the excuse "inheritance"?

"You flaunted your beauty before me!" screamed out an enraged old man, "tormenting me when you were a child--teasing me when you were an adolescent, thinking you could have your fun and I could never harm you. Then when you married your half uncle and came back to disinherit me, you treated me like I wasn't even there--just another piece of furniture to ignore. Well, are you arrogant now, Corrine Foxworth? Do you feel haughty sitting in your own filth, holding your dying daughter's head on your filthy lap? I have made you crawl at last, haven't I? I have beaten you at your own game, stolen Bart's affection from you, made him mistrust you and trust me. You can't use your charm and feminine wiles now. It's too late. I hate you now, Corrine Foxworth. For every woman I have fantasized was you, I have paid, but no longer. I have won, and though I am seventy-three now, I will live on at least another five or six years in luxury enough to make up for all the years I've suffered at your hands."

My grandmother was sobbing quietly. I was crying too, wondering again who was right, him or her?

John Amos was saying terrible things. Nasty evil bad words that little boys wrote on bathroom walls. Grown-up old men shouldn't talk like that, and in front of my grandmother and my momma.

"John!" yelled Grandmother, "haven't you done enough? Let us out, and I'll be your wife in the way you want, but please do not punish my daughter more. She's very sick. She needs to be

in a hospital. The police will call this murder if you let her die and me too."

John Amos just laughed and walked heavily back up the stairs.

I couldn't move. I was frozen, so confused I didn't know who was good and who was bad.

"Bart!" screamed my grandmother. "Run fast to your father and tell him where we are! Run, run!"

Bleary-eyed, I just stood there. Didn't know what to do. "Please, Bart," she begged. "Go tell your father where we are."

Malcolm--was that him over in the corner, his ghost face frowning at me? Passed my smutty hand over my blurry eyes. Dark, so dark. I pretended to leave, but I snuck back. I wanted to hear more of the truth.

Out of the darkness came my mother's thin voice screaming at that old woman who was her mother, my grandmother.

"Oh, yes, Mother. I understood everything you said. We didn't stand a chance no matter who died and who didn't die when you took us into Foxworth Hall and locked us away. Now, years later, we will die just because that crazy old butler didn't inherit the money he expected, promised to him years ago by a dead man--and if you believe any of that--you are just as crazy as he is."

"Cathy. Don't deny the truth because you hate me so much. I'm telling you the truth. Can't you see how John has used your son, the son of my Bart. Don't you see how perfect his revenge is?--to use the son of the man he hated, the man he felt took his place, when it could have been him who married me if my father could have forced me to do it. Oh, you don't know how Father tried to tell me I owed it to John to marry him, and allow him to have half of his fortune--he didn't guess, or maybe he did, that John wanted it all. And when you and I die, it won't be John who is found guilty--it will be Bart. It's John who killed Clover, then Apple. It's John who dreams of having Malcolm's power, Malcolm's wealth. It's not my imagination when I hear him mumbling to himself incessantly."

"Like Bart," mumbled Momma, so funny sounding. "Bart's always pretending he's old and feeble, but powerful and rich. Poor Bart. What about Jory--has he got Jory? Where is Jory?"

Why did she pity me and not Jory? Got up and left.

Was I crazy too--like him? Was I a killer at heart-- like him? Didn't know nothing about myself. Was foggy-minded, hazy seeing, but I did manage to move my heavy legs and somehow I climbed up all those old stairs.

Waiting

. He was the only father I could remember well, and I loved him even more in that relationship. He held out his hand and told me what we had to do, and I followed, as I would have followed blindly anywhere he led. For out of every terrible situation something good had to come, and I knew now how much he meant to me.

With Dad leading the way, we went once more to the house next door. We hadn't seen Bart all afternoon. How stupid of me to let him outsmart me, and sneak away when I had my head turned, watching some cute thing Cindy did as she tried to dance like me.

Mom had been missing a full twenty-four hours.