The Escape Artist

  "I don't like the idea of you with him," he said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because he's too…stuck on himself. And besides," he took in a deep breath, knowing he was about to change everything between himself and his neighbor, "I'd be jealous."

  Her hand froze above the sketchbook. She looked at him, but there was no surprise in her face, no expression at all. He felt embarrassed, but then she said, "I feel jealous when I see you with Rosie or Tammi or any of those girls." Her voice was quiet. "I've been jealous of your girlfriends my entire life."

  He was surprised and touched by her admission, and he let out a stunned laugh. "Well, whaddya know?" he said, thinking to himself: She's sixteen. She's been like a little sister to you. She's a virgin. And her parents are insane.

  Those thoughts held him back from doing anything he might come to regret—at least for a while—and it wasn't long after that conversation in her bedroom that he went to prison for the murder of her father. Once incarcerated, he was cut off from his friends in the band, and he never gave Rosie and Tammi another thought. Susanna was the only girl on his mind, and certainly the only girl who came to see him. He wished later that, sometime during those visits, he had let her know how much he needed her. Wanted her. How much he wished she would wait for him to get out. She would have waited, had she known. He was certain of that. And so he had only himself to blame when she fell in love with Jim.

  He never would have wished for her marriage to end. He would have done anything to protect her from the heartbreak she'd endured with her husband. Yet once she was free of her marriage and he could finally let her know his feelings, it was as though fate had given them the chance to start fresh. This time, he would not let that chance slip away from him. He refused to be locked up again, whether behind bars and barbed wire or in a prison of his own making.

  And that was why he was lying awake, anxious for morning to come so he could get up and begin taping Sunday's show.

  –22–

  She arrived for her lesson at seven, but Adam simply turned her and Cody around at the door.

  "We're going over to Jessie's for a few minutes," he said. "Victoria had her kittens today, and I promised we'd come over to look at them. I think she has it in her mind to pawn a couple of them off on you."

  "Uh uh." Kim shook her head. Her life would not accommodate a pet right now. Nor was a pet allowed in her lease with Ellen. Besides, she'd sworn off cats a long time ago. At least, Susanna had sworn off cats.

  They walked out Adam's front door to the sidewalk. It was only a few steps to Jessie's house, but they moved slowly, Cody toddling along with them as he held Kim's hand.

  Adam didn't knock on Jessie's door, but simply walked into her house as though it were his own. It was nearly identical to his house, at least in terms of architecture. The floor plan was simply the reverse of his, the kitchen to the right of the living room instead of the left, the stairs off the east side of the hall instead of the west. But where Adam's home was decorated in the stark, bold colors that mirrored his paintings, Jessie s was a soft mix of prints and textures. It offered a warmer, cozier atmosphere than Adam's house, but Kim liked the different styles equally. It made her sadly aware of the nonexistent decorating scheme in her own apartment.

  "We're here, Jess," Adam called from the living room.

  "In the bedroom," Jessie called back.

  They followed the sound of her voice upstairs. Jessie was lying flat on her stomach across her bed, peering over the edge at something on the floor. She looked up at the three of them.

  "Come see," she said.

  They walked around the side of the bed. Jessie's fat, tiger-striped cat and her squirming mass of kittens lay in a pillow-lined basket on the floor. The sight was jarring to Kim, and she had to force her smile.

  "They're adorable," she said, kneeling low. She didn't want Cody to pick up her discomfort. She set him on the floor next to her, but held him back with one hand hooked in the straps of his overalls. "Look, Cody," she said. "See the kitties?"

  Cody was clearly enamored. He squealed in delight, reaching out to touch the tiny balls of fluff.

  "Gentle, Cody," Kim said, guiding his hand. "That's it. Gentle."

  "I think he needs a kitten all his own, don't you?" Jessie asked. She reached down from the bed to stroke her hand over Cody's head.

  Kim smiled at her. She hadn't seen Jessie since before she and Adam had slept together, and she didn't feel entirely comfortable in her presence. Did Jessie know? What had Adam told her?

  "We're not allowed to have pets in my apartment, unfortunately," she said.

  "Oh." Jessie screwed up her nose. "Nuts."

  "How many are there?" Kim asked, trying to count.

  "Five."

  There had been six kittens born in her bedroom closet many years ago. Six beautiful kittens, three of them multicolored, three of them orange.

  "How old should they be before you can give them away?" Adam asked. He was sitting on the edge of Jessie's bed.

  "About eight weeks," Jessie said.

  "And then you'll get Victoria spayed, right?" Adam sounded hopeful.

  Jessie made a face at him. "You're such a scrooge."

  "I just think there are enough kittens in the world," he said. "It's not that I don't like them. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of taking one of them."

  "Really?" Jessie brightened. "Oh, Adam, that's great. How about two? They could keep each other company."

  "Don't push your luck." He stood up and touched Kim lightly on her shoulder. "Ready for your lesson?" he asked.

  Kim got to her feet and lifted Cody into her arms, ignoring his wailed protests over being torn from the kittens.

  "Coming over tonight?" Adam asked his sister.

  "No, I'm going to stay here with my babies." Jessie didn't look up from her prone position on the bed.

  "Okay. See you tomorrow, then." He slipped his arm around Kim, and they walked out of the room.

  Back in Adam's house, Kim settled Cody into Liam's bed. She sang "Froggie Went a-Courtin'" to him, trying to sing away the ugly memories making their way into her head. She thought she had succeeded until she went upstairs to the studio, where Adam was squeezing paint onto the palette. She knew she wouldn't be able to paint. Not tonight.

  "Adam?" She stood in the middle of the floor, hands locked together in front of her. "Could we skip tonight?"

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  "Did you ever have one of those days when you know you won't be able to concentrate on what you're painting?" she asked.

  He laughed. "I've been wondering if I'll ever again have one of those days when I can concentrate on what I'm painting," he said. "No problem." He put a sheet of plastic wrap over the palette, then sat down on the red leather loveseat. "Come here and talk to me."

  She joined him on the loveseat, and he put his arm around her.

  "What's got you down?" he asked.

  She'd thought it was seeing the kittens that had disturbed her, but she suddenly realized that was only one of many things weighing on her. She'd been watching the news and reading the paper, hoping that the police would find the person who planted the bombs and save her from having to do something about the information in her possession. The list of names haunted her. She had the unwanted power of being able to predict who was going to die. One more week, she'd told herself. If the police had not found the killer by then, she would have no choice but to find some way to help them out.

  "What is it?" Adam asked again. "You seemed upset over at Jessie's."

  "Did I?" She thought she'd done a good job of covering her distress.

  "You were trying to hide it, but I could tell."

  She was surprised he was so perceptive. "You're right," she said. "I was upset. Seeing the kittens reminded me of when my own cat had kittens. It's a terrible story, though." She looked at him, as if waiting for permission to continue.

  "When was this?" he asked. "What happened?"
>
  "I was about nine years old, and I found a stray cat wandering around outside my house one morning. I'd always wanted a pet, but my father wouldn't let me have one. I brought the cat into my house and gave it some milk, but when my father came home that night and saw it, he blew up. He said I had to get rid of it. The only problem was, I was already in love with it. So I hid it in my room."

  "You were a rebel." Adam chuckled.

  "No, I wasn't," she corrected him quickly. "I'd had the rebel beaten out of me by then."

  "Beaten out of you?"

  She waved away the question. "Anyway, she was a great cat. She'd come and go through my bedroom window. I didn't name her. I think I was afraid to. Deep down I knew I'd better not get too attached to her. One day, I came home from school to discover that she'd had a litter of kittens in my bedroom closet. I panicked. I ran next door—I always ran next door when I couldn't figure out what to do."

  "Who was next door?"

  "Friends. An older boy and his mother, Geri. They were always very nice to me. Geri was wildly allergic to cats, though, so she couldn't take them in, but she said she'd help me find homes for them. She wanted to call my mother and try to reason with her so I wouldn't get in too much trouble, but I talked her out of it. That never worked with my mother. I told Geri I'd just keep the kittens hidden until she could find a home for them." That, of course, had not worked either.

  "One night, I came home from school and they were gone. My closet was empty. No one said a word to me about it and I couldn't really ask 'where are my cats?' when I had never acknowledged they'd been there to begin with." Kim rubbed her hands together in her lap. "So, after this long, horribly quiet dinner that night, my father said, 'What did I tell you about that cat?' and I said that Geri was going to find homes for the kittens and I was only keeping them until then, and he said I'd disobeyed him and that he'd gotten rid of both the cat and the kittens."

  "How did he get rid of them?" Adam sounded as though he only half wanted to know.

  "I thought he'd taken them to the pound, and my mind was working really fast. I figured I could call Geri and we could go to the pound and rescue them before they were put to sleep. And then my father said, 'Don't you want to know where I took them?' And I said, 'To the pound?' and he laughed. 'Why make the taxpayers pay to get rid of those cats when I could do it just as easy?' he said."

  She could still see her father's red-nosed smirk across the dinner table from her. "I was starting to feel sick. I said, 'You killed them?'" She looked at Adam. "I saw him kill a squirrel once, with a gun. I figured maybe that's what he'd done to the cats."

  "And was it?"

  She shook her head. "He told me he didn't actually kill them. He said he just buried them in the back yard. Buried them alive." Her voice tightened as she spoke. Twenty years had passed, yet she could still tear up when she thought of those kittens.

  Adam sucked in his breath. He tightened his arm around her shoulders.

  "All I could picture was those tiny kittens," she continued, "my beautiful, nameless cats, underground, scared and trying to breathe, trying to claw their way out, not being able to figure out which way was up. I started to run out of the house, but my father grabbed me and hit me and told me to go to my room for the rest of the night. After he and my mother were asleep, I snuck out, but it was too dark for me to find where he'd been digging. I knew it was too late by then, anyhow. I went next door and told Geri and…her son what had happened. I was sick—throwing up sick—and Geri kept me there overnight." Kim remembered feeling, for the first time in her life, truly mothered. Geri held her and stroked her hair while she cried, and Linc flew around the house with the sort of rage only a fifteen-year-old boy could muster.

  "In the morning, Geri called the police. They came to my house and my father laughed when they asked him about the kittens. He said he'd given them away to a coworker of his, that he'd just told me he'd buried them to punish me. The police searched my yard and couldn't find any sign of digging, and I was so relieved." She leaned her head back against Adam's arm and looked at the ceiling. "A few years later, though, Geri's son told me that he'd found the grave in his yard. My father had buried the kittens next door. Li…Geri's son found the grave just a few days after it all happened, but he didn't want me to know about it."

  She had been fifteen when Linc finally told her. Fifteen and already so filled with hatred toward her father that the news of the kittens only served to crystallize that loathing into something hard and permanent inside her.

  "Your father beat you?" Adam asked quietly.

  "When he was drunk, yes. Which was most of the time."

  "What about your mother?" Adam asked. "Did she stick up for you?

  "No, he'd hit her, too. She was afraid of him, so she'd usually take his side against me. I think she drank to escape the misery of living with him." Kim wondered if it might be a mistake to tell Adam so much of the truth.

  "Where's your mother now?"

  "I don't know where she is, nor do I care. We've been estranged ever since my father's death when I was sixteen."

  "I thought you said he died when you were seventeen."

  She shrugged. "Sixteen, seventeen. I don't really remember."

  Adam pressed his lips against her temple. "Stay here tonight, Kim," he said. "Stay with me."

  She had not intended to spend the night with him, but now she wanted to. She couldn't deprive herself of the comfort of his arms around her tonight. It would only be the second time they'd slept together, and her memory of the first time, when visions of Linc had clouded her head, was still keen. She would have to keep Linc from creeping into her mind tonight, although that would be difficult. Over and over again, she'd imagined him reading the fax she'd sent. He would either know it was from her or he'd overlook it in the stack of requests. By now, he had done one or the other, and there was nothing she could do to change that outcome.

  "Can we watch the late news if I stay over tonight?" she asked Adam.

  "The news?" He looked surprised. "We can do anything you like."

  "I'm curious about the bombings," she explained. "I keep watching to see if they've gotten any clues. They haven't mentioned anything about it in days. It's like they're not even trying to solve the mystery."

  "Oh, I'm sure they are. The cops often know more than they say publicly, in case the bomber or whoever is following the news. They're probably setting a trap for him right now."

  She hoped he was right. They watched the news from Adam's bed, and the only allusion to the bombing was the mention of a memorial service for the secretary's children. Seeing pictures of those children reinforced her gloom, and she was glad she'd agreed to stay the night.

  Very early the following morning, she opened her eyes to see Adam propped up against his pillow, drawing in a sketchbook. She didn't stir, didn't want to disturb him, and she feigned sleep when he finally got out of bed and walked into the bathroom. Curious, she leafed through his sketchbook where he'd left it on his side of the bed. The book was about one-third full, and she recoiled from the first several pictures. They were filled with ghastly images of hollow-eyed people, wolves with their teeth bared, jagged lines, and tongues of fire. His dreams had indeed "turned to shit," she thought. The last few pictures, though, were different. Trees, flowers, dolphins, ships, a woman fishing from a dock, a small town viewed from the air.

  Adam walked back into the room as she was studying one of the sketches. She looked at him. "I hope you don't mind," she said, nodding toward the book. "I couldn't resist."

  He shrugged as he pulled on a T-shirt. "You let me look at yours," he said. "Fair is fair."

  "The beginning of the sketchbook, though." She shook her head in sympathy. "What terrible nightmares you were having."

  Adam smiled and walked over to the bed. "Ah, yes. But you, my sweet thing," he leaned over to kiss her, "have completely changed my dreams."

  Kim was working on Noel's book later that morning when someone knocked on her
apartment door. She'd heard no footsteps on the stairs, and she jumped, a small well of panic rising in her chest. Ever since seeing the police car in front of the house, she had not been able to react calmly to the phone ringing or to an unseen visitor at the door.

  "Who is it?" she called out.

  "Jessie."

  Relieved, she got up and opened the door. Jessie stood on the landing, shivering in a light sweater. "Your landlady let me in downstairs," she said. "Hope that was okay."

  "Of course. Come in."

  "I didn't want to interrupt your work." Jessie walked into the living room. "But I was nearby and wondered if you might be taking a lunch break soon."

  Kim looked at her watch, and only then realized how hungry she was. "Sure."

  "Great." Jessie smiled, but it was a guarded smile. "We could walk down to the deli, or—"

  "Let's eat here," Kim said, heading toward the kitchen. "Cody just got up from his nap and he's hungry. I've got tuna salad. Peanut butter and jelly. Grilled cheese. Or," she picked up a can from the kitchen counter with a wry smile, "mini-ravioli. Cody's favorite."

  Cody crawled across the floor and lifted himself to a standing position by hanging onto Jessie's pant leg.

  "Tuna sounds good." Jessie said as she picked up the little boy. She pressed her lips tenderly to his cheek, and Kim was touched by the gesture.

  "Have a seat." She opened the can of ravioli first, emptying the slithery pasta into a bowl and putting it in the microwave before getting the can of tuna from the cupboard. "How are the kittens this morning?" she asked.

  "Oh, they're beautiful. You liked those kitties, didn't you, Cody?" Jessie sat down at the table. "I really like having some other living beings around. I don't think I live alone very well."

  Kim dumped the can of tuna into a bowl. "You know," she said warily, "this isn't any of my business, Jessie, but I got the feeling when I met Noel that he misses you a lot. He still has pictures of you around his apartment."

  Jessie smoothed Cody's hair off his forehead. "I know he does. I miss him too, but he wouldn't acknowledge that he had a problem and…" She shrugged.