Into the Garden (Wildflowers 5)

"Cat got your tongue, Cathy? I remember her asking you that occasionally." He started to laugh and then stopped.

"I was able to check to see if you were telling the truth about the hospital simply by checking on my hospitalization plan, Cathy. She kept that because I had to pay it. To be admitted to any hospital there had to be contact made with the plan, even after an emergency, and none had been made, and as you know, I called every hospital anyway. So I knew you were lying, and when you went through that charade to pretend to go get her, I nearly had a heart attack from laughing. I must say your girlfriend did a nice job sitting in this chair, looking like Geraldine.

"Tell me," he said, "where did she die? Were her eyes wide open, was she grimacing in pain? She was in rigor mortis pretty quickly, right?"

I felt as if I was shrinking, melting, and soon I would disappear in the sofa. Movement, speaking, even breathing seemed out of the question. He didn't notice. He put the bottle back into his pocket and smiled again.

"When you began to do things I knew Geraldine would adamantly forbid, I began to suspect she was indeed gone, but then I thought, if she was, why weren't the police here? Why wasn't someone calling me?

"And then, after I had been here and seen what you and your girlfriends had done and were doing, it came to me. What a wonderful surprise!" he said.

"At first," he continued, "I thought you had just packed her up and taken her someplace and then I saw the changes in our backyard and realized what you and your girlfriends had accomplished."

"You... killed her?" I finally asked.

"No. I helped her out of her misery because that's what she was in ... misery. And she had no right to take you from me like that. None. She was just being vengeful, taking out her miserable life on me. On u

s," he said. "We were happy for a time before she destroyed it, weren't we?"

"No," I said, but my answer was weak and I was terrified. If he had heard, he decided to pretend he hadn't.

"It's over now, anyway. We can forget about it all. But we can't stay here, Cathy. Don't worry. I have a nice surprise for you. Guess what I did. I bought a houseboat. That's right. I don't know if you'll remember when I took you to the marina one afternoon and you were so intrigued with the sea and with the boats, and then we went on that houseboat one of my clients owned. Remember that? You thought it was a fun idea to live on the water so you could move your house around whenever you wanted to. Remember?"

I shook my head even though I did.

"Sure you do. Anyway, we have it now. We're going to have such a good time," he said. "Just the two of us, away from all this, and anytime we feel like it, we'll move." He laughed. "Isn't it wonderful?"

"No," I said. "I won't go with you."

His smile softened and then faded. The dark, gruesome face that replaced it was very frightening because I hadn't ever seen him so angry.

"Sure you'll go, Cathy. If you don't," he said, "you and especially your friends will be in a great deal of trouble. You girls buried her, not me," he pointed out. "And when they come and dig her up and examine her, they'll think you and your girlfriends killed her, too. They'll all go to prison. Do you want that to happen?"

My eyes began to fill with hot tears, so hot they burned under my lids. I shook my head.

"Good," he said, clapping his hands. "It won't happen then. You go upstairs and pack a little bag. Take what you want for now and we'll come back in a few days and get more. Eventually, we'll take whatever we want from the house and then one day, we'll have a convenient fire. Maybe Geraldine will be consumed in it. I'll figure it out for us, don't worry, and none of your friends will be in trouble. Until then, let's start to enjoy our houseboat.

"Oh, it's so much fun, Cathy. You can't imagine what it's like to wake up and smell the sea every morning. It stirs up your appetite. You'll be able to make me breakfast. It will be wonderful. Just what Geraldine would have hated to see:' he said, laughing.

"Okay." He continued moving toward the front door. "Now that I know what is happening here, I'll bring the car around. You go upstairs, pack your stuff and I'll be right along."

He crossed the room and leaned down to kiss me on the forehead.

"I'm here for you again, sweetheart. Daddy's back."

His hand brushed some strands of hair from my face and then he walked out.

When he closed the front door behind him, it was as if a clap of thunder had sounded through the house, shaking my very bones.

What evil had we buried when we buried Geraldine?

18 Treacherous Waters

For a few moments I was actually unable to move. Every muscle in my body was frozen with fear. I couldn't even take a deep breath because I felt as if I had as much-earth on my chest as Geraldine had on hers. The air around me was thick and heavy, too. Tiny electrical charges crackled and sparked. I closed my eyes and prayed all this had just been another nightmare, but when I opened them again, I realized, of course, that it had been real. He was here and he was coming back for me.

What was Ito do? With the speed of lightning, different options passed through my mind. I could get up and go out the back to hide or maybe escape over the wall. But where would I go and what would that solve? I could do what Stuart had told me to do and call the police. How would the girls feel about that? What would I have done to them? I could stay here and plead with my father, maybe try to bluff him with threats, but I was never good at that sort of thing, and I was far too fragile now to put up anything

resembling a convincing facade.