Little Blackbird (6 page)

His brow furrowed, and when he didn’t answer immediately, Kate’s heart dove into panic mode.

“Oh, well, um, who’s Martha? A girl? I mean, a girl from town? From school?”

If you want specifics, she’s one of the most popular girls in my class, and she’d likely never invite me to her house in a million years.
Kate wasn’t sure what bothered her more: lying to her daddy or the look of complete surprise on his face because a girl from school might actually invite Kate over to her house.

“Yes, sir. She’s a girl in my grade. She lives in town. I could ride my bike there. That way you wouldn’t have to drive me. We’ll probably just hang and do girl stuff,” she babbled.

“What’s girl stuff?”

Kate shrugged.
I have no idea.
“Brush our hair and talk about boys?”

“Sounds dreadful,” he said with a smile. “Of course you can go, but you’ll need to be home before dark. You sure you want to ride your bike? I don’t mind taking you into town.”

“No, no, that’s okay, but thanks.” She pressed the phone to her ear. “Hi, Martha? Daddy says it’s okay. I’ll ride my bike. I should be there in an hour.”

“Which means I’ll see you at our meeting spot in half an hour,” Geoffrey said.

Kate hung up and pressed her lips together so that her rapid breaths wouldn’t reveal her deceit combined with her excitement.

T
HE WIND BUFFETED Kate as she rode, pushing her back toward her house an inch for every four she moved forward. It could have been a sign that she should turn back home, but Kate wasn’t paying attention to signs. She crouched over the handlebars and pushed harder and faster until strands of her dark hair clung to the beads of sweat on her face and neck.

By the time she arrived at the designated spot to conceal her bicycle, her clothes were damp with perspiration and she sucked in gulps of air. When she climbed off her bike, her legs trembled, making her feel as though they had been replaced with Red Vines. She would have rested by the roadside, collapsed even, but paranoia that her mama would drive over the next hill had Kate pushing her bike deep into the wooded area.

Kate laid her bike on its side and dragged a fallen pine branch over and covered it. She crept to the edge of the forest and listened for the approaching engine of a car. She waited a scant few minutes before a red car drove over the hill and slowed.

The driver pulled the car onto the roadside and he leaned over and rolled down the passenger side window.

“Kate,” Geoffrey called in a rough whisper.

Kate burst out of the trees and ran to the car. She opened the door and hopped inside before she could change her mind. Once inside, she realized how sweaty and disheveled she must look. Her embarrassment heated her from the inside as though she’d swallowed a coal and now it smoldered in her stomach.

“Well, good afternoon, Miss Kate,” Geoffrey said.

She glanced at him and self-consciously pulled her fingers through her hair. “It’s windy.”

“That it is. Nearly pushed me off the road a few times.”

He watched her, and Kate noticed how tightly his skinny fingers gripped the wheel. She shifted on the seat, her legs sticking to the leather as though she was made of taffy. He reached out and turned on the air-conditioning.

“Want to cool down for a minute before we go?” he asked.

Kate nodded her head, realizing how enclosed they were inside the car, how foreign it felt to be alone with a boy. New beads of sweat dotted her forehead, and she reached up to swipe them away.

The air-conditioning circulated the scents of men’s soap and leather. Sunlight reflected off the dashboard, creating starbursts in Kate’s vision. She glanced over at Geoffrey as he wrapped his arms around the wheel and leaned forward on an exhale. His crutches were propped in the backseat, and she wondered how well he could drive while wearing a bulky cast on his right leg. He turned his face to look at her.

“Ready?”

She nodded.

“Are you going to talk this afternoon or should I start using hand signals?” he teased.

“Just drive,” she said. Her voice snapped with irritation, but her smile betrayed her.

Kate slouched in the seat until they turned off the road that led to her house. She doubted they’d pass her mama in town or on Dogwood Lane, which was Geoffrey’s street. When they pulled into the driveway, Kate leaned forward in the seat so she could see the front of the mansion.

Rudbeckia hirta
and
heliotropium amplexicaule
bloomed alongside azaleas in the front garden. “The rudbeckia and the heliotropes are beautiful.”

Geoffrey pulled into the garage and turned off the engine. “The what?”

“The flowers. The black-eyed Susans and the purple flowers.”

“Oh yeah, mom’s gardener picks out the best plants for the yard.”

“She doesn’t garden?” Kate asked.

Geoffrey looked at her with a smirk. “And ruin her manicure?” He smiled and opened his door. “Shall we?”

Kate climbed out of the car and swallowed. She smoothed her hand down her hair and tried to push the wrinkles from her pedal pushers and short sleeve shirt. She glanced down at her worn loafers and wished for the hundredth time that day that she had cute ballet flats to wear like the other girls in town.

New shoes aren’t going to make you like the other girls
, she thought.
Shut up.

Geoffrey grabbed his crutches, and she followed him in through the garage door into a small hallway wallpapered in a cream paper covered in blooming pastel pink peonies. The hallway branched to the left and to the right. He turned left and they entered the airy, light-filled kitchen, which was large enough to enclose her family’s entire kitchen and living room combined. The room smelled like lemon and wood polish. A creamy-white frosted cake sat beneath a glass dome. Sunlight gleamed off the polished, round kitchen table tucked into the breakfast nook and off the high gloss wood floors. Through the kitchen windows Kate glimpsed the backyard, and she stepped closer to a pair of French doors.

Where her mama’s garden was wild and chaotic, the Hamiltons’ garden was orderly and manicured. Most of the shaped boxwoods created separate spaces, working as natural fencing, and others were shaped into ovals that looked like green Easter eggs in terracotta pots. A winding, geometric, tile path disappeared behind a row of boxwoods, and a narrow, flowing stream divided the yard into two sections. An oak tree provided shade for part of the yard, and cardinals flew in and out of it while Kate watched. Honeysuckle vines covered the rear fence.

Kate had always felt as though she’d been watching most of the world from the outside of a snow globe, fingers pressed against the glass, wishing she could be inside just once, yet accepting she’d always be an outsider. For a moment, she smiled, realizing she’d finally slipped into their world. How long before they’d notice, before they’d toss her out?

The kitchen opened into a living room filled with antique, lavish furniture and an ornately carved wooden mantle framing a pass-through fireplace. An oil painting of the Hamiltons hung above the hearth. The sons looked like boys, and Kate thought Geoffrey couldn’t have been older than five. Built-in bookcases lined one entire wall, and an assortment of items decorated the shelves—books, photographs of the family on vacations, vases, a marble globe.

Geoffrey propped his crutches beneath one arm and opened the refrigerator. “Want something to drink?”

“Sure,” Kate said, standing halfway in the kitchen and halfway in the living room. She shoved her hands into her pockets.

Honeysuckle Hollow looked like a house no real person lived in. It reminded Kate of mansions in novels, peopled by fictional characters who drank tea all day and took strolls through elaborate gardens while ordinary people did all the work. She was afraid to touch anything, and she glanced down at her soiled loafers. Would they leave behind traces of her unworthiness?

Geoffrey used a bottle opener on his key ring and popped off the tops on two sodas. He handed her one of the glass bottles. “Welcome to Honeysuckle Hollow. Want a tour?” He clinked his glass bottle against hers.

The bottle quivered in her hand, ringing out a melancholy tone. “Who wouldn’t?”

Geoffrey chuckled before drinking half his soda. He put the bottle on the counter, adjusted the crutches beneath his arms, and pushed out his elbow.

“Is this dangerous? Me holding onto you while you try to move on crutches?”

“Aren’t the best adventures always dangerous?”

Kate hesitated before wrapping her fingers around his bicep. How was he able to make dangerous seem commonplace and acceptable? The most dangerous adventure Kate had taken before she met Geoffrey was carrying her daddy’s axe to the shed.

She felt the tautness of his muscles beneath her fingers, and she adjusted her grip. What would her mama say if she knew she was touching a boy? Kate almost laughed—touching a boy seemed further down the list of what she should be worried about, sneaking out being at the top and lying about spending an afternoon with Martha was a close second.

Geoffrey walked Kate through a sitting parlor and the formal dining room across the hall from it. Both rooms were full of opulent upholstery, velvet curtains, Persian rugs, and heavy, dark furniture—some of the most beautiful craftsmanship Kate had ever seen. A crystal chandelier hung in the two-story foyer, and Kate stared at the hundreds of rainbows flashing on the walls and across the parquet floor.

The house looked as though no one actually lived in it. Every item was carefully placed and arranged. There was no dust or scratches on the hardwood. No childhood handprints smeared on the walls, no stray books or glasses left sitting around. No plants grew in corners or bloomed on shelves. The plush draperies battled to keep the sunlight from filling too much of the rooms, which grew shadows and swirled cold patches of air. The lack of life closed in around Kate, suffocating her. She inhaled deeply. When she exhaled, the chandelier crystals tinkled together like fragile, never-played wind chimes.

“Four of the bedrooms are upstairs. Ben converted the downstairs office into his bedroom when we were older, but Dad changed it back when Ben went to college.”

College
. As soon as Geoffrey said the word, Kate realized that
he
would be going off to college in the fall just like Evan had two years before. Geoffrey would be leaving Mystic Water in a little more than a month. The French doors in the kitchen opened, and a burst of wind rushed down the hallway and whirled around them.

“Will they convert your room when you’re gone?” Kate asked.

Geoffrey shook his head. “Not right away. I’ll still come home during university breaks and the holidays, and it’s not as though they get a lot of out-of-town guests. Not except for family.”

“Geoffrey!” a male voice called.

“Come on,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze before leading her back through the house. “Let me introduce you to my brothers.”

Three tall, young men stood in the kitchen. Matthias was the most familiar to Kate because he had been good friends with her brother. Although she would have known all the young men to be Hamiltons, she would not have known Richard, the second oldest, from Benjamin, the oldest. They could have been twins except that one’s hair was darker and longer. Two of the brothers held brown glass bottles of Budweiser, and Matthias drank a Coca-Cola. They leaned against the countertops and laughed. Kate felt like a kid in a room full of adults.

“Tiger Lily has arrived,” one brother said, looking at Kate. A mighty wind pushed one of the French doors all the way open, and the doorknob slammed into his elbow. He cursed.

Kate’s jaw clenched.

“Shut up, Ben,” Matthias said before his gaze met Kate’s.

“This is Kate Muir,” Geoffrey said. “Kate, this is Benjamin, Richard, and Matthias.”

Richard lifted his bottle and said hello. Matthias smiled at her.

“Hi,” she said, not wanting to meet anyone’s gaze.

Benjamin tilted his head. “Are you Evan Muir’s little sister?”

Kate’s eyes drifted toward Matthias, who gave her a small smile. She nodded because she didn’t trust her voice to escape her too-tight throat.

“He was a helluva football player,” Benjamin said. “Want a beer?”

Kate jerked her head toward him. Did college boys really ask underage girls to drink with them? “No, thanks. I have a Coke.”

“I’ll take one,” Geoffrey said. “Sure you don’t want one?” he asked Kate.

She shook her head. Wasn’t it bad enough she’d lied so she could sneak out with him? She couldn’t come home reeking of beer. Regret skulked into the room and wrapped itself around her chest. What was she doing here, in a room full of strangers who thought it was okay to give a sixteen-year-old alcohol? She glanced over at Geoffrey, but he was already on his way to grab a beer.

“What’s the name of the family two doors down?” Benjamin asked. He tilted back his bottle and finished the rest of his beer. “Grab me another one, will you?” he asked, looking at Geoffrey.

“Down which way?” Matthias asked.

Benjamin pointed east. While balancing on one foot, Geoffrey used his opener to pop off the tops on two beers. He passed one bottle to Benjamin.