Karen Harper - Deep Down

“I don’t know which way’s up, that’s all,” her friend said, taking another big swig of the tea. “What you’re seeing and hearing is sheer exhaustion. I just feel so weak—helpless.”

“I got some mushroom soup and corn bread, if you’re hungry for that kind of food ‘fore you go to bed.”

“My system’s so screwed up from time zone changes and I have stomach cramps from being afraid and grieved—”

“And on edge back with Drew again. Like most men, he may be dense as a wall on that, but you’re not. Anybody like you who can look in a microscope and find a way to stop killer cells can—”

“Can find a killer?” Jessie blurted and, to Cassie’s dismay, burst into tears. She banged the cup down and covered her face with both hands. Her shoulders shook and the curly blond hair Cassie had always thought was way better than her own straight red hair bounced against her hands. “It’s just,” Jessie got out between big, choking sobs, “I think something awful—might have happened—to her. She knows the woods, she’s always safe in the woods …”

Cassie jumped up and went around the table to hug her from behind. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to set you off, and I shouldn’t bring up Drew like that. I promise, I won’t say no more about it till you’re ready to admit it.”

“You’re so damned annoying and stubborn, Cassandra Keenan.”

“That’s me,” she said and went back to her place across the table as Jessie reached in her purse, looking kind of surprised to find it still over her shoulder, and took out a tissue. “‘Member how Elinor told us that Cassandra in some old Greek stories was a woman who always told the truth, even predicted the future, but no one believed her?” Cassie asked.

“Elinor said a lot of things,” Jessie muttered and blew her nose. “She once made me read a book she loved called You Can’t Go Home Again, and here I am. And I hated the book.”

“Jessie, anything I can do to help, I will.”

Jessie reached across the table, past the plants, to put one hand on hers. “I’d better get to sleep. Morning and Drew will be here early.”

“I’m gonna sleep with Pearl, and you take my bed. Want to wash up?”

“In the morning. Right now, I just need a couple of things out of my carry-on bag and a bed.”

Cassie rolled Jessie’s big suitcase into her bedroom, the one that had been her grandparents’ and parents’ room before it was hers. In truth, she was glad to give it up, ‘cause after watching the smothered desire between Jessie and Drew, she might be too het up and not sleep well in there tonight. Too often she didn’t, remembering her own sweeping passion in that bed and then how the midwife had helped her birth the result of that there.

She’d buried that love and lust now, put it away and closed up all her wounds, though they still festered under the surface. Sure as rain, she was laying plans to make him pay for his betrayal of her and Pearl. She knew people whispered that she never spoke his name nor hinted who he was because she was too shattered over the desertion, still so much in love that she was giving him a pass, protecting him.

Well, they were all dead wrong. As soon as she got her herbal potions mixed, no matter how important a man he was, he was the one who was gonna wish he was dead.

Something woke Jessie instantly. A shifting sound. Movement. Shadows huddled in the room. As out-of-it as she was, she became instantly alert with her pulse pounding in her ears.

Was that noise inside or out? Yes, another sound, but from where? Someone sneaking in through the door she’d left ajar? Had Cassie locked the outside doors? What if someone who wanted to stop her mother from handing in her ginseng count had heard Jessie was back and thought she knew more than she did? What if …

She didn’t move, didn’t breathe, concentrating, straining to listen. Yes, something outside. Maybe a branch scraping or tapping against the glass. She wished Cassie had a clock in the room.

With a groan, she got out of bed and shuffled to the window, shifting the left edge of the homemade drapes slightly aside. Black as it was outside, a half moon etched the bizarre backyard in faintest silver.

The usual clutter stretched across the back of the house between two herb gardens. Jessie saw the solid, black silhouettes of the old iron kettles where her friend boiled the natural dyes she used to make wild plant mordants, which weavers used to set colors in cloth. Above that, lines of barbed wire dangled from tall post to post, not to keep people out but to dry moss Cassie sold to florists and craft stores for about five dollars a sack. Humps of moss were draped there now, looking like the tops of furry heads peering over the wire at the house.

Then one of them on the top wire moved. It rose, turned away, then disappeared.

No. No, she could not have seen that. It was just the breeze moving the moss, the slant of moonlight or even her tired eyes playing tricks on her.

She squeezed her eyelids tight, then opened them to look again. The moss-heavy barbed wire shifted in the breeze, gilded by moonlight, that was all. Surely, she had not heard something scratching on the window or seen a big, hairy head move. She was getting back in bed at least until dawn or until Cassie, ever an early riser, woke her up. Even now, her stomach did a little roll and plunge to think that Drew was coming for her, even if it was to find out what dreadful thing must have happened to her mother.

Back in bed, she tossed and turned. She didn’t think she slept again, but she must have because she saw strange shapes of huge, hairy ginseng roots come to life and chase her, through the trees, through the Hong Kong market …

“Aunt Jessie?” came the tiny voice and then the little face peered up over the side of the bed in the graying room. “I heard you was coming. But why isn’t Mommy here in this bed ‘stead of you?”

“Pearl, sweetie, how are you? But your mommy’s in with you. She let me sleep here for the night.” As her head cleared, she helped the child climb up beside her. “You mean she’s not in bed?” she asked.

Pearl shook her head, making her reddish-blond hair swing. “Maybe she’s in the bad part of the garden. Even in the dark, she’s there.”

Jessie frowned at the child’s babble, but covered her up with the blanket, then got out of bed to be sure that Cassie was around somewhere. Surely, those nearest and dearest to her weren’t just disappearing.

She glanced out her window first at the drying moss and iron kettles. Yes, that’s what she’d seen last night, nothing else.

“Stay here,” she whispered to Pearl. “I’ll be right back.”

She checked the bathroom—empty—then peered out a side window. In the first dusting of dawn, Cassie was in her eastern garden, gone to riot in late-summer growth. She was cutting herbs with a long, curved knife, hacking away as if she were angry at them. Jessie knocked on the window and waved. Startled, Cassie looked up and held up a finger to indicate “just a minute,” then bent back to her work.

Her friend had always been a hard worker, but then she’d had to be, especially lately to eke out a living for herself and Pearl. Cassie would not take donated money. But why work out there in the dark and chill of morning? Maybe she’d gotten behind, since, like so many Deep Downers, she’d spent time looking for Mariah.

Jessie padded back to the bedroom, checking her watch as she went by the dresser. Seven. She had to get moving to take a bath—no shower here, just a big, old claw-footed tub you could almost swim laps in—and get ready for a grueling day before Drew arrived.

“She’s outside, just like you said,” she told Pearl, who looked like a little elf in the middle of the big double bed. The child had a pert, freckled face; her pale complexion and reddish hair were a clear heritage from her mother. No hints of who might have sired her in the child herself. If Mariah didn’t have a clue who might have made Cassie pregnant—or so she’d said—no one but Pearl’s parents must know.