Page 14 of Her Dreadful Will
She withdrew herself from the mayor’s mind and set his hyacle back in its velvety hollow. Her own skin prickled with awareness and the lingering echoes of desire. She gazed at her fingers, long and pale, strung with rings of power and purpose. Fingers that only last night had slipped through soft dark hair and touched the pulse of a man’s throat.
8
When Florence Fowler saw the chance to escape from her caregiver, she took it.
Never mind that her hip tormented her with sharp little pins of pain, or that her neck and shoulder ached, or that her swollen feet refused to do more than toddle. These were all the vagaries of age, and Florence had grown used to them. A few minutes of stolen time while Nancy the Nurse argued with her ex-husband were worth a few aches and pains.
Florence grappled with the handle of the back door, her fingers stiff with arthritis. Finally she got it open and edged out onto the patio, easing the door shut behind her.
Outside. Finally.
Her caretaker Nancy didn’t like going outside often. Had a thing about bugs. Florence used to dislike bugs, too, but after ninety years on this earth, they had become a welcome symbol of omnipresent, irrepressiblelife.
She crossed the thick grass of the yard, wishing that she’d remembered to bring her—walking thing—what was it called?Cane, yes, that was it. But she’d manage well enough without it.
The large bushes by the fence beckoned her. She couldn’t remember their names, but she knew that not long ago they had been blooming, fuchsia and lavender and white. They weren’t exactly azaleas, though—something else. Long narrow leaves, oval-shaped. Woody stems. She’d loved them all her life—had taken weekly drives to Hatter’s Fall every spring to catch them at peak blooming season, clustering in abundance throughout the rocky hills and forested glades.
What were they called?
The absence of the word chafed her until she could think of nothing else. It was important, andgone, like so many things now. Faces she once loved now floated nameless in her mind. The collection of letters that used to designate them were jumbled and blurry—nearly there, but not quite. She loved those faces still, but their names were vital—each one the label on a folder of memories. It was hard to match the memories with the right faces when she couldn’t remember thenames.
It wasn’t just the names slipping away, either. She was constantly weighed by the sense that she should be doing something she’d forgotten, or that sheshouldn’tbe doing certain things, though she couldn’t remember why those things were impolite or unacceptable. The incessant niggling doubt, the swirl of perpetual confusion, the torturous thrum of the things that werealmostthere—it left her in a state of constant low-key distress.
What was once ordered and clear in her brain had been scrambled about by the long finger of Time. Neatly stacked blocks, tumbled into wreckage.
These bushes—what were they called?
Maybe if she got in among them they would tell her their names. Maybe the scratch and the scent of them would bring back the label she was missing.
Florence worked her way between two of the largest bushes. They whispered to her of soggy mulch chips and rotting leaves and crawling things in the earth. For a moment, Florence was a child again, tucked in a hidden “clubhouse” under scrubby bushes with her brother and sister, her toes black with soil and her heart full of imaginary worlds.
She caught one of the woody twigs, snapping off a piece of stem studded with leaves. She tested the broken point of the stick with her finger.
Clutching the twig in her hand, she moved out of the bushes and along the fence. She could hear something snuffling beyond the wooden panels, in her neighbor’s yard. Neighbor—neighbor—the word conjured an image of a girl with big blue eyes and a vivacious smile. In a sweet, musical voice, she had told Florence her name—hername—no use trying to recall it. The neighbor had long, wavy brown hair—a common color, but with a gloss so bright it might have been saturated with liquid sunshine. At least, that was how the girl first looked when she arrived, back in early June. She’d grown paler lately, the sheen of her hair dulled and purple shadows darkening around her eyes.
So young she was. Too young to be living alone.
Florence rounded the fence corner, her fingers traveling along the rough wood. Foggy concern for the girl and curiosity about the snuffling sound mingled in her mind, drowning the weak echo of her inhibitions, silencing a distant mental warning that she shouldn’t open someone else’s backyard gate.
She lifted the latch and pushed the gate wide.
A sharp bark exploded from the yard beyond. Florence dropped her sprig of leaves, staring into the malignant amber eyes of a huge black dog. Its feet were braced, its neck stiff, and its sharp ears pointed. Did that mean friendliness? She couldn’t remember. She thought the upright ears were a good thing; didn’t dogs pin their ears back when they were angry? She didn’t see a tail. What kind of dog was it? The name of the breed whispered indistinctly somewhere in her consciousness, but she couldn’t grasp it.
“Good dog.” Her voice quavered. “Good dog.”
Looking past the dog, she saw a body lying in the grass, stretched out on a blanket.
A naked body.
The neighbor girl.
She lay on her stomach, her brown hair swirled over one shoulder, her arms flung out wide as if to embrace the earth. Florence could see the soft rounded flesh of one breast pressed into the blanket. She could see the smooth skin of the girl’s back and the valley of her spine. The arches of her buttocks, and her long legs.
Florence stared, delighted. Vaguely she knew some might have called her creepy for admiring the girl, but she didn’t care. Hers was the purest sort of admiration, the same tugging of the heart she felt when she looked at flowering bushes or sweeping views or the curling waves of the ocean. It was a worshipful love for beauty that bordered on pain, that yearned to possess the beautiful thing—or to become it, to experience its existence, to lose herself in loveliness and wonder.
The dog barked again. The girl didn’t move. Was she asleep? Surely the dog’s noise should have woken her.
Maybe she was dead. Maybe the warm flush over her skin was only the glow of the sun.
