Bentley Little - Dominion

She smiled at him. "So this is what you call home."

He reddened. "It's usually cleaner," he said, apologizing. "If you'd called and told me you were coming, I could've at least straightened up a bit."

Penelope laughed. "I wanted to catch you in your natural habitat."

Vella looked uncomfortably toward the window. "We heard what happened,"

she said. "We heard you got suspended." His face felt hot, flushed. He wanted to explain but he didn't know how, wanted to apologize, but he didn't know what for. Instead he stood there stupidly, nodding, looking at Vella, not wanting to meet Penelope's eyes.

"No one likes Paul much anyway," Vella said. "You're a big hero." But he could tell from her tone of voice that she didn't think he was a hero.

"It just happened," he said. He looked over at Penelope. "He called you a lez."

She blushed.

"Hey," he said, changing the subject. "You guys want something to drink?

Coke? 7-Up? Dr. Pepper?"

Vella shook her head. "No, We've gotta go. I'm supposed to just drive straight to school and straight back. I'm going to be late already. My mom'11 go ballistic if I'm any later."

"I thought you might want to come over," Penelope said quickly. "Vella could drop us off and I could drive. you home."

"But we have to hurry," Vella said.

Dion nodded, grinned at Penelope. "Let me write my mom a note."

Ten minutes later, Vella was dropping them off in front of the winery gates. They said good-bye, Penelope thanked her friend, and then Vella drove off and Penelope opened the black security box with her key and punched in the access code. She frowned as she did so, and Dion lightly touched her shoulder, not making the gesture too intimate, aware of the security camera trained on them from the top of the fence. "Something wrong?" he asked.

Penelope started to shake her head, then nodded.

The gate swung open, and they stepped onto the driveway.

"What is it?" Dion asked.

She turned to face him. "My mothers."

He was not surprised by her words, found, in fact, that he'd been expecting them. His heart was pounding. "What about them?"

She shook her head. "That's just it. I don't know. Not exactly." They began walking slowly up the drive. She told him what had happened Saturday night after she'd gotten home, described the way in which Mother Mar geaux had sneaked into the house after midnight, her blouse torn and covered with blood. "I love my mothers," she said. "But I don't know them." She took a deep breath. "I'm--I'm afraid of them."

"Do you think--"

"I think they might've killed my father."

They stopped walking, stared at each other. From the vineyard, carried on the slight breeze, came the low, musical hum of a conversation in Spanish. Somewhere near the buildings ahead, a car engine started.

"I have no proof," she continued quickly. "Nothing to go on, really.

It's just a feeling, but ..." She trailed offjf Her voice when she spoke was lower, and she glanced to the left and right as if making sure that no one was listen-i ing in. "I pretended I was sick yesterday. I stayed in myl| room. The reason I wanted you to come over today was! not because ... you know. It's because I was scared to,| come home alone."

She took a deep breath, and there were tears in her eyes.

"I don't know what to do."

"You should've called me."

"I couldn't."

"Is that why you weren't at school today?"

"I came after lunch. I--I spent the morning in the library."

Dion licked his lips. "What can I do?"

"I don't know."

He reached for her, hugged her, held her, and she began crying. He could feel her shaking, sobbing against his shirt, and though he wanted to be sympathetic and understanding, he could not help becoming aroused, and a powerful erection pressed outward against his jeans. She had to notice, but she didn't seem to mind, and he held her tighter, closer.

He thought of the man his mom had brought home, the man who'd been murdered, and the parallels were just too close for comfort. He thought of telling Penelope, but didn't want to worry her any further. He himself had dealt with the situation by ignoring it, not thinking about it, but Penelope was reacting in exactly the opposite way, and he tried to imagine what it must be like for her, living with people she suspected were murderers. He looked over her shoulder at the Greek-styled buildings at the top of the drive and shivered.

Too much was happening, there was too much going on. He didn't know what to do, didn't know what to say, didn't know how to react. This wasn't a simple situation where there was a problem and a solution, where there was someone he could talk to, someone he could turn to who would set things right. He couldn't just go to the police and say that he was having weird dreams and there seemed to be something creepy about Napa and, oh, by the way, Penelope thinks her mothers are murderers. He couldn't talk to his mom because ... well, because he had the feeling that she might be involved somehow. He could probably tell Kevin, but Kevin wasn't in any better position to do something about it than he was.

Do something about what?

That was the main problem. That was the most frustrating aspect of this whole business. Nothing had happened. Nothing concrete, at least. There were hints and feelings and hunches, but there was no one specific thing he could point to that would convince a rational outsider that his fears were justified.

Penelope was afraid too, though.

That counted for something.

She pulled away from him, dried her eyes, tried to smile. "Sorry," she said. "I think I got mascara on your shirt."

"Don't worry about it."

They were silent for a moment.

"So what do you want to do?" Dion asked.

"I want to look in the lab. I want to walk into the woods. I want you to go with me."

"What do you think you'll find?"

"Nothing probably. But I want to know why I've been kept away from them all these years. I thought about it yesterday, and I feel like I'm some type of Skinner experiment, like I've been conditioned and trained to act and feel certain ways. I mean, I've never even been curious about the lab. I've just accepted that I can't go in there. I've been curious about the woods, but I'm afraid of them, and I feel like those are the responses I've been conditioned to have." She looked into his eyes. "I

want to break my conditioning." He nodded slowly. "What if we do find something?"

"I don't know. We'll figure that out when we come to it."

Mother Felice was in the kitchen, baking bread, and Mother Sheila was out in the vineyard somewhere, but the rest of them had all gone into San Francisco for a meeting with their distributor.

"Perfect," Penelope said to Dion over glasses of grapej juice. t "What?" her mother asked.

"Nothing."

They had some fresh bread with the juice, then went upstairs for a moment, ostensibly to Penelope's room. She stationed Dion on guard at the top of the stairs and quickly ducked into Mother Sheila's bedroom, emerging a moment later, holding a key which she quickly pocketed.

They walked downstairs and outside, walking clockwise around the house from the front, coming at the main winery building from the side not visible from the kitchen window. Inside it was dark, only the security lights on, and Penelope did not turn on the rest of the lights as they went in. They walked past the pressing room in the dim halflight, and stopped in front of what looked like a small closet door. "Wait here,"

Penelope said, opening the door and walking in.

"What is it?"

"Security. I'm going to turn off the cameras." There was a click, a hum, and a beep, and Penelope walked back out, closing the door behind her.

"Come on."

He didn't remember exactly where the lab was. He thought it was somewhere far ahead, at the opposite end of the building, and he was surprised when Penelope stopped at the next door down.