Shirley Murphy - Cat Cross Their Graves

Dulcie was not near anyone’s phone, she was crouched in Genelle Yardley's garden, the wind carrying the smell of bacon to her so powerfully that her pink tongue stuck out, tasting that lovely scent. Peering down from among the boulders, enduring her hunger with what she considered incredible fortitude, she studied the little group on the terrace. The child and the two women had taken forever to finish that lovely feast; and still they lingered, pushing back their empty plates. The morning was brightening, dawn chasing back the shadows, bringing up the bright yellows of the acacia trees and broom bushes so that, in spite of the gray and stormy sky, the garden appeared to be washed with the magic warmth of sunshine. How intently Cora Lee was watching Lori.

Surely Cora Lee was curious about this child who had made such an early visit to Genelle, but her interest seemed far more than that. Cora Lee seemed quite enchanted with the frail, brown-haired child whose dark eyes burned so very big and intense in that pale little face.

Did Cora Lee see herself in Lori? A gangling little girl adventuring out in the night all alone, as Cora Lee might have done when she was a child? Did Cora Lee see a child filled with her own bold spirit? But a child very frightened now.

Dulcie worried sometimes about Cora Lee. Since her friend had been attacked last year, and hurt so badly that her spleen had to be removed, she had seemed frail indeed. Cora Lee no longer had the stamina and strength that had sustained her when she could work most of the day at waitress jobs, paint stage sets in the evenings and on weekends, found time to rehearse, and at night had belted out wonderful songs in the productions of Molena Point Little Theater.

Watching Cora Lee rise at last to leave, Dulcie supposed that someone else from the seniors' group would come later to clean up the dishes and help Genelle dress for the day. Without the assistance of those four ladies, and of Charlie's cleaning service, Genelle would long ago have moved to a nursing home, an idea she detested. Dulcie wondered if Friends of the Library, and Charlie and Wilma and the older ladies, still meant to have the special tea for Genelle-and if Genelle would feel well enough to attend her own party.

Wilma said it seemed barbaric to enjoy a lovely party in the face of Patty's death. But, she said, it was after all Patty Rose's party; Patty and the volunteer group had planned it and, even from her grave, Patty would pitch a fit if the party was canceled; Wilma was quite certain of that.

As Cora Lee left the terrace and garden, slipping out through the front gate, Genelle glanced up to the back of the garden, not for the first time, and far too intently for Dulcie's comfort. Genelle was watching her.

But why? To Genelle she was only an ordinary cat; the old lady could have no notion that she had followed Lori's scent here to the garden and was listening to every word. She had, heading up through the night for the seniors' house while searching for the kit, stumbled suddenly across Lori's scent. A trail as clear as, to a human, would have been a path of stones. Leaping through the wrought-iron gate into Genelle's garden, she'd had no idea why the child was out in the night. What could the child possibly want badly enough to disturb an old woman in the middle of the night, an old woman dying of lung cancer? Genelle's fatigue was plain to see in her pale color, in her labored breathing and the slow clumsiness of her movements. Several times during breakfast she had turned on her oxygen and held the mask up to her face for a few moments, her body rigid with her distress.

But now down at the gate, Cora Lee was coming back, letting herself in again, hurrying across to the terrace. "Lori?"

Lori watched her apprehensively.

"You don't really want to walk down that hill alone." Cora Lee took Lori's hand. "Have you run away, Lori?"

Lori didn't answer.

"Okay. If we don't ask questions," Cora Lee said, "if we don't pry, will you stay with us? You could come home with me; we have lots of room, and two nice dogs for company."

Lori's cheeks flushed; she looked and looked at Cora Lee, and lifted her hand as if to touch Cora Lee's hand, but she didn't reach out. "I have to go back. All my things are there, I have to go back. I… I'll be fine."

Dulcie wanted to race down the garden and shake the child, tell her to go with Cora Lee, tell her this might be her one opportunity to keep herself safe. Why was she so reluctant? What was she afraid of? At times, this morning, fear had seemed to spill out of the child so powerfully… and yet she did not want Cora Lee and Genelle to help her.

Surely coming here in the dark seeking out Genelle had not been, in any way, asking for grown-up protection. There was something else involved, Dulcie was sure of it.

"Lori?" Cora Lee said softly. "You can get your things, I'll come with you. You can stay with Genelle or with me."

"I… I have to go back. I can't… I have a nice place."

Cora Lee looked steadily at Lori. "Then I'll get my car, and take you there when you're ready."

"No, I…"

Genelle put her hand on Lori's. "Cora Lee can keep a secret. And so can I. Child, it would be so nice having someone here with me. Someone who cares, to stay with me, read with me. And for you… Even if you were to go back, wouldn't it be nice to have someone who knows you're safe, someone who cares about you? Where is it, child? Where are you… hiding?"

Lori looked at Genelle for a long time. "The library basement," she whispered at last, so faintly that Dulcie could barely hear her. "A hole in the basement."

But Genelle laughed out loud, a shout of laughter that startled them all. She choked and coughed, and had to have oxygen again, and was still laughing.

When finally she was better, she looked at Lori. "I used to play there, that was my hiding place, that basement. When I was your age and younger. The hiding hole under the alley."

Lori's eyes had widened; she was very still.

"I grew up in that house, Lori. Before it was the library. I used to play in the basement. That little part under the alley was open then, with a door. It was a walkway long ago, even before my time. A walkway for the servants to go back and forth. But how are you getting in? It was all bricked up. Bricked up from both sides. How…?"

"I take the bricks out," Lori said. "In the wall of the library workroom. They were loose, they were just fitted in."

"And you just walk into the library through the front door? And go down and…?"

Lori shook her head. "I go in one of the sidewalk windows." She looked up at the sky, which was now bright silver. "Before it gets light, though. Before the library opens." She shifted nervously.

"I will take you down the hill when you want to go back," Cora Lee said. She looked at her watch. "But it is getting light, Lori."

"Sometimes I go in when it's open, then I hang around the children's room."

"If I'm with you, it will be different. We'll get you safe inside. I'll just get my car," Cora Lee said, touching the child's shoulder. "I'll be a few minutes, time to shower and dress properly."

But Cora Lee's answer made Dulcie smile. Cora Lee hadn't said she'd allow Lori to say there, and she hadn't said she wouldn't. Dulcie watched the little scene, wondering. Strange, Lori seemed far more frightened this morning. But maybe it was being so far away from the library, up here in the hills in the dark that had scared her. A journey into a strange neighborhood in the middle of the night would be far more stressful than slipping out to run the shore at dawn.

Down at the table, the child looked very nervous, as if she'd like to disappear before Cora Lee got back. Was she afraid Cora Lee wouldn't let her stay there after all, wouldn't let her return to her cave? Dulcie was fidgeting, herself, shifting from paw to paw with curiosity and with worry.