Brian Freeman - The Cold Nowhere

Dory’s lips had trouble forming the words. Her voice slurred. ‘I had to talk to you.’

‘You’re freezing, come inside.’

‘No! I’m going away. It’s better for you if I leave town for good.’

‘Are you kidding? Don’t talk like that, Dory.’

Dory put her bare hands on Cat’s cheeks, and her fingers were cold and wet. A sad, crooked smile played on her aunt’s face. ‘I wanted to see you before I left.’

‘Please come inside. Let me help you.’

‘No. I can’t.’

Cat’s heart filled with worry. ‘Dory, you didn’t do something bad, did you? Tell me you didn’t. They found a knife in your room. It was covered in blood.’

‘A knife? In my room?’

‘It was the knife that killed the woman I was with. Did you — did you hurt her?’

‘I didn’t! Cat, how could you think that?’

Dory held out her hands to embrace her, but Cat recoiled. All she could see in her head was the image of the knife. And blood. Blood everywhere. Blood making a spider on the floor. It was so vivid that her stomach churned, as if she were about to be sick.

‘You have to believe me, I didn’t!’ Dory insisted. ‘I would never put you in danger. You know that. The only thing I’ve ever wanted is to protect you. To rescue you. That’s what Michaela would want.’

‘But Dory, the knife-’

‘Someone put it there! Someone was in my room waiting for me. That’s why I ran.’

Cat wanted to believe her. She’d sworn to Stride and Serena that Dory was innocent, but she would have said that even if it weren’t true. Dory was her only family. You didn’t betray family. If they needed your life, you gave it to them.

‘If you didn’t do anything, then tell Stride what happened,’ Cat said. ‘If you run, he’ll think you’re guilty.’

‘It doesn’t matter what anybody thinks. I just want to get as far from this place as I can. Somewhere warm. Somewhere where the past doesn’t exist anymore.’

‘What about me?’ Cat asked. ‘You’d leave me alone? What would I do without you?’

Dory held out a hand. ‘Come with me.’

‘What?’

‘Come with me. Listen to me, Catalina. The two of us, we can go together. We’ll be safe. No one will ever find us. Can’t you see it, you and me starting over? It would be like nothing ever happened before. We can forget all the people who have hurt us. Forget them! Like they never existed!’

Go away. Escape for ever.

Cat wanted to say yes. A fresh start, a new life, sounded like paradise. She wanted to leave now, without another thought. They could live in a place where William Green didn’t matter. Where Vincent didn’t matter. Where the things she had done didn’t matter.

The trouble was, she knew there was no such place.

She also knew that she had a new life already. Inside her.

‘Dory, I can’t leave. I need to stay here. I’m pregnant. I’m going to have a baby.’

Her aunt’s mouth fell open, half in shock, half in fear. Cat had no illusions about Dory. She wasn’t strong. For something like this, she was little more than a butterfly in a hurricane.

‘Well, I could help you,’ Dory said without a glimmer of conviction.

‘I know you could,’ Cat lied, ‘but this is my choice, not yours. I have to do this myself.’

She could see relief in her aunt’s face. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘It is, but I wish you’d stay. I want you close.’

Dory shook her head. ‘No, you’re better off without me. Especially now. I just came here to tell you something.’

‘What is it?’

Dory’s fists squeezed open and shut. She looked as if she were trying to drag words out of her chest. ‘It’s about your father,’ she said. ‘He was shit. He was nothing but shit. I know you don’t like me to talk like that, but I’m sorry, it’s true.’

Cat’s face clouded over. ‘Stop it, Dory.’

‘No! No, you have to hear this. I have to tell you. Marty always said I was the one who turned Michaela against him. He said I was poison. He loved it when the drugs took over my life. When I dropped out, when everything went to hell, he’d come by to laugh and tell me how worthless I was.’

Cat said nothing.

‘That winter, that last winter, Marty came by in the night. I was at the end of my rope, Catalina. No money. No food. I was curled up in a ball like a little baby, and all I could think about was how was I going to get more drugs. That was the only thing I cared about. He stood there and he called me names. He said I was the most pathetic person on the planet, and I was. I was. He said he would give me money. Five hundred dollars! Cash! I needed that money, bonita , you have to understand, I needed it. All I had — all I had to do …’

Dory crushed her hands against the sides of her temples, as if she could squeeze the memory out of her brain.

‘He made me … I mean, I had to let him … I had to let him …’

‘You whored yourself with my father.’

‘I’m so sorry! God, Catalina, I’ve carried it with me all these years like a knife in my chest. And then to lose Michaela, to have him do that to her. I always thought … I always imagined he told her about it as he was killing her. He would have told her what I did, so it was the last thing she ever heard, the last thing in her heart as she died.’

No no no no … oh God … oh God …

Please … I’m dying … I’m dying …

‘He didn’t,’ Cat said. ‘He didn’t say anything about you.’

‘You remember?’ Dory asked.

‘Some things. It’s been coming back to me for days. I wish it would stay away.’

‘Can you ever forgive me, Catalina?’

Cat opened her mouth, but she didn’t have time to say a word. The cold night broke apart into the pieces of a kaleidoscope spinning in her brain. She was conscious of a car on the street, of a window opening. It was a black car, a death car. Dory took two steps toward her, spreading her arms wide for an embrace the way an angel spreads its wings. She didn’t see the car behind her. She didn’t see the mortal danger looming from a gun in the open window. Cat began to shout a warning, but it was too late.

She saw the desperate plea that lingered in Dory’s face — forgive me — and in the next instant, the light snapped off in her eyes, turning them black. Her forehead exploded, showering Cat with blood and brain. Cat heard a scream gurgle out of her own throat, simultaneous with the blast of the gun. Dory spilled forward, crumpling against her body, taking them backward onto the cold ground.

Covering her. Protecting her.

The blasts went on, again, again, again, again, again. Snow and earth erupted around her. She screamed until she had no breath. When the bullets finally stopped, when the engine roared and the car vanished, Cat couldn’t get up. She clung to Dory, who was motionless in her arms. No matter how hard she shook her, no matter how many times she called her name, Dory lay atop her like a dead weight. The remnants of her aunt’s life were splattered on Cat’s face. Dory’s blood was warm on her skin, but in the frigid air it had already begun to cool.

‘ Cat! ’

Stride bolted to his feet. The gunshots came in rapid succession, punctuated by screams, and then they stopped. No more than five seconds passed from beginning to end. He ran the length of the house and threw open the door to Cat’s bedroom, but the room was empty, and the window was open. A gust of snow and wind blew through the wavy curtains.

‘She’s outside!’ he called to Serena.

Behind him, Serena ripped open the front door and skidded onto the front porch. He heard her shout. ‘There’s a body on the front lawn, and we’ve got lots of blood! Get an ambulance fast!’