Purebred (10 page)

Carole thought back—if Jessie had married Lawrence fifteen years ago, then Joy, if she had lived, would have been close to Carole’s age. She would have been close to Louise’s age too.

Suddenly Carole felt she had found a key to understanding the close, protective relationship between Jessie and Louise. Once when Carole had gone on rounds with Judy Barker, Pine Hollow’s veterinarian, she had seen a mare whose foal had died at birth. The mare seemed lost and unhappy without a foal to care for, but over the next several weeks she had gradually “adopted” another foal, as a way to soothe her grief. She had licked and fussed over and even nursed her adoptive baby, and the foal, cared for by two attentive mothers, had thrived.

Jessie and Louise reminded Carole of that mare and foal. Who was Carole to say that they hadn’t both benefited by being so close to each other? For a brief moment Carole envied Louise. If Jessie had been nearby when Carole’s mother had died, perhaps they could have leaned on each other. Carole would have liked that.

The music ended, and the silence broke Carole out of her reverie. Her father and Grand Alice stopped dancing and Grand Alice took a seat at the edge of the dance floor. Colonel Hanson went into the kitchen and came back with something to drink for both of them. That was a good idea—Carole was thirsty too. Plus, Jessie and Louise had gone into the kitchen. Carole would get a soda and apologize to Jessie at the same time.

But the big room was empty except for two little kids racing toy cars across the tiled floor. Carole looked back into the party rooms, but she didn’t see Jessie or Louise—or Christina either—there. She did see Emile, sitting by himself on the sofa. He waved to her, and she was just about to go ask him where everyone was when Christina came through the lean-to door.

A blast of icy air came in with her. Christina was heavily dressed in a thick parka and boots, with a scarf wrapped around and around her face. “Brrr! It’s
really
getting cold out there!” she said to Carole through folds of scarf.

Carole helped her unwrap.

Christina’s cold fingers fumbled with her parka zipper. “I’m half numb.” She took off her hat and shook out her hair.

“Have you seen Louise?” Carole asked.

“Sure. That’s where I’ve been. I just gave her a ride home on my snowmobile.” Christina set her dripping snow boots on the mat by the door and hung up her coat on a
hook. “She said she wasn’t feeling well, but her parents are having fun and she didn’t want to make them leave the party.”

That didn’t sound right to Carole. Louise had been feeling fine all day long. But why would she lie to Christina? Carole had a sudden bad feeling. “What about my aunt Jessie?” she asked. “Have you seen her?”

“Uh-uh.” Christina shook her head. “I think she’s gone, too, because her truck isn’t in the driveway. Didn’t she come over separately from the rest of you?”

“Yes.” So Jessie was gone, and now Louise too. Carole still didn’t believe that Jessie would ride out to Lover’s Point, but clearly she had at least gone home. Gone home to sulk, Carole thought. No, that wasn’t right—gone home because Carole had upset her. Carole felt like she had spoiled the party for both Jessie and Louise. In the back of her mind, she considered how disastrous it might be if Jessie actually did go to Lover’s Point—but the front of her mind wouldn’t let that be a possibility. Still, she felt responsible. She should do something. She would go home and persuade them both to come back to the party.

“Can I borrow your snowmobile?” she asked Christina. “I’d like to go home and check on Louise.”

Christina frowned. “Gee, Carole, do you think that’s really necessary? It’s awfully cold out there, and I don’t think Louise is very sick. She said she just had a bad headache. Stay here—you’ll have fun with me and Emile.”

“I know I would, but I’d rather be sure Louise is okay,” Carole said. “I don’t want to bother Aunt Lily and Uncle John either—Louise was right, they are having fun. But I’d really like to go.” Carole smiled; she hoped persuasively. She didn’t want to let Christina know how worried she felt.

Christina looked out the window and shivered. “It’s just that I don’t think I should let you go alone.” She looked at Carole doubtfully.

“Oh, come on,” said Carole. “There’s no reason for you to get cold all over again. I’ll wrap up and be careful, and besides, you know I can drive your snowmobile. It’s not like I have to drive it on roads or anything—it’s a straight shot home through the woods. I can follow the tracks you just made. They’ll be easy to see in the bright moonlight.”

“Well …” Christina looked into the living room. Emile waved and beckoned to her.

“Please,” Carole said. “I’ll come right back. You’ve already spent plenty of time away from Emile. I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“Okay. But do be careful.” Christina handed Carole the snowmobile keys, and Carole ran upstairs to get her coat. She put it on quickly. She hoped everything would be all right.

T
HE WOODS FELT
dangerous at night. The trees cast dark and terrible shadows under the full moon’s bright light, and the heavy blanket of snow made stumps and fallen trees look menacingly large.

Carole, following the trail Christina had made, found herself becoming more and more frightened. She told herself firmly not to be scared. She reminded herself of how beautiful the trees were by daylight—how peaceful, how serene. She told herself that she had been in forests before: she had camped out many times; she had even ridden down a mountain trail in the dark. But then something swooped past her with a terrible screech and she felt panic rising in her throat. She tried not to scream.

She hit the throttle hard and the snowmobile shot
ahead. It was difficult to control on the uneven ground; it shook and rocked as it hit things she couldn’t see. She was afraid to go too fast because she might hit something and wreck the snowmobile, but she was afraid to go too slowly because she wanted to get out of the woods as fast as she could.

She began to have a hard time following Christina’s tracks—she couldn’t see them very clearly—and looking up, she saw a huge bank of clouds sweeping in from the northwest to cover the bright moon. The clouds were moving fast. The wind was blowing hard, and Carole had never been so cold. Her stomach muscles tightened into a ball. Her teeth were clenched too hard to chatter. Already her fingers and feet were growing numb.

The woods grew darker.
Whump!
The snowmobile hit a fallen tree, careened off the top, and nearly overturned. Carole fought for her balance. It was worse than being on a bucking horse. At least a horse had some sense. The snowmobile did not. She gathered her courage around her and kept going.

The compound couldn’t be too much farther ahead. She felt as if she’d been traveling for hours. She pushed the snowmobile as fast as she dared, faster and faster as the woods began to thin, and finally she saw lights ahead. A wave of relief washed over her.

The snowmobile began to slow down. Carole pushed the throttle harder, but the snowmobile sputtered and choked
to a stop. Carole felt another flash of panic—had she broken it?—before she saw that the needle of the gas gauge pointed firmly to E. Empty. Out of gas.

Reluctantly she left the snowmobile in a snowdrift and struggled the rest of the way to the house on foot. A snowflake fell, and then another. She put up a mittened hand to catch them. Snow. This was what the dark clouds meant. There was going to be a storm.

Inside, the warm air greeted her like a friend. Ginger, Louise’s dog, rushed up to her and began to lick her excitedly. “Down, Ginger,” she murmured automatically. She quickly took off her sopping wet shoes, and shook the snow from her pant legs. “Hello?” she shouted. “Louise? Aunt Jessie?” No one answered. Carole ran through the house, calling their names. No one was there.

Next she tried Jessie’s apartment. The lights were off and the rooms were dark and quiet. Then she tried the photo lab. The lights were on there, but the lab was empty. “They didn’t really go, did they?” she asked Ginger, who was following her from room to room. Ginger wagged his tail. Carole felt almost sick. She looked around at Jessie’s camera equipment, but the lab was too disorderly and Jessie had too many cameras for Carole to tell if anything was gone.

“We’ll check the barn,” she said to Ginger. At the door she pulled on the boots she had borrowed the day before
and hurried back into the cold. Snow was falling, lightly but steadily.

The aisle light was burning brightly and the horses looked at her inquiringly. One horse, two—Carole counted them and her heart sank. Jiminy and Kismet were gone. Kismet’s blanket was neatly folded and her stall door was latched shut, but Jiminy’s door hung open and his blanket had been quickly tossed on the ground.

So, Carole thought, Jessie had gone out alone, and Louise had followed her in a hurry. Mechanically she picked up Jiminy’s blanket. It was still warm from the heat of his body. Louise hadn’t been gone long.

They must have gone to Lover’s Point. It occurred to Carole that Aunt Jessie’s recklessness might to some extent be because she really didn’t care what happened to herself. That was okay for Aunt Jessie, maybe—but now her attitude involved not just herself, but Louise, Jiminy, and Kismet too. Something had to be done to stop them before one of them got hurt. Carole knew she was the only one who could do it.

She went back to the house to call for help, dripping snow across the kitchen floor. Frantically she searched the drawers for the phone book. What was Christina’s last name? She thought hard. Johnson! She had to take off her mittens to open the phone book—and then she stared at the page in dismay. Of the hundred or so families listed in the tiny directory, eighteen were named Johnson. She
looked in the drawer where she’d found the phone book, then back at the phone. It had a row of autodial buttons—one was labeled “Christina.” She pushed it thankfully, and put the receiver to her ear.

Nothing. Not even a dial tone. She whacked the
reset
button over and over, and jiggled the cord in its socket, but nothing happened. The phone was dead. Carole remembered Aunt Jessie’s words:
“The roads aren’t always passable, and the phones don’t always work.”
She couldn’t call Christina’s house. She couldn’t use the snowmobile either.

She thought of the other two horses. They weren’t as fast as the snowmobile, but they were the only alternative she had. She didn’t have time to waste. She would saddle up Spice and go after them herself.

She went back to the barn and rummaged through the tack trunk. What would she need in an emergency? She found some rope, and a few extra stirrup leathers that she thought might be useful. She slung all of them over her shoulder. In the bottom of the trunk she found a large gray flashlight, and she took that as well.

Next she led Spice to the aisle where she could saddle him. The big horse stood quietly, blinking as if half asleep. Carole’s hands shook as she tightened the wide girth and buckled the bridle. She grabbed the flashlight and reins together in her left hand, and hauled herself up onto Spice’s broad back.

Never mount inside the barn
, she heard Max’s voice inside
her head.
If the horse should rear up under the doorway, you’d be in trouble.

She turned Spice’s head toward the woods. Max’s voice, once begun, wouldn’t stop reminding her of all the safety rules she was about to violate. Never go out alone, in unfamiliar territory. Be very careful riding at night. You can’t see danger spots, and neither can your horse. Never go out in bad weather. You’ll increase your odds of having an accident, and increase the odds that the accident will cause injury.

Carole was doing everything wrong. I do know better, she said to herself, but I haven’t got any other choice. Right now she was more worried about Louise and Jessie than she was about herself. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong, that her aunt and cousin were already somehow in trouble.

Willing though Spice was, Carole wished she were riding Jiminy, the sturdy Morgan, or Kismet, the stalwart Arabian. She hoped Spice had the courage, ability, and steadiness to do what she needed him to do. Still he was the best horse she had. She had no choice but to take him.

She shouted to Ginger and gave Spice a cluck and a kick to send him forward. They rode out into the darkness. Ginger followed. The wind blew stiff and cold, and the snow was falling hard.