Running with the Demon - Terry Brooks [95]
What she remembered most, however, was Gran’s reaction. Gran had stayed behind and cried alone; Nest could tell she had cried from her red eyes and the wrinkled Kleenex wads in the waste basket next to the kitchen table where she had begun to take up permanent residence with her bourbon and her cigarettes. Gran said nothing on their return, but at dinner that night she announced in a tone of voice that brooked no argument that they had acquired their last dog. Cats were sufficient. Cats could look after themselves. Dogs were too dependent, required too much, and stole away your heart. Ostensibly, she was speaking of Riley, but Nest had been pretty certain that in an odd way she was speaking of Caitlin as well.
She stood now for a moment hi the darkness of the summer night, remembering. She missed Riley more than she could say. She had never told Gran this. She knew it was something Gran did not want to hear, that it would only suggest to her how much she, in turn, missed Caitlin.
Nest glanced at the silent house, thinking Gran might appear, that she might somehow know what Nest was about. But there was no movement and no sound from within. Nest turned away once more and crept through the shadows of the backyard, eyes searching. Miss Minx slunk from beneath a big oak, low to the ground and furtive. Another cat, a strange striped one, followed. Out in the park, beyond the wall of the hedge, moonlight bathed the open ball fields and play areas with silver brightness. It was her secret world, Nest thought, smiling at the idea. Her secret world, belonging only to her. No one knew it as she did, not even Gran, for whom it was now distant and foreign. Nest wondered if it would become that way for her someday, if by growing she would lose her child’s world as she would lose her childhood, that this was the price you paid for becoming an adult. There was that gap between adults and children that reserved to each secrets that were hidden from the other. When you were old enough, you became privy to the secrets that belonged only to adults and lost in turn those that belonged only to children. You did not ever gain all of one or lose all of the other; of each, some you kept and some you never gained. That was the way it worked. Gran had told her that almost a year ago, when Nest had felt her child’s body first begin its slow change to a woman’s. Gran had told her that life never gave you everything or took everything away.
She slipped through the gap in the hedgerow, and Pick dropped onto her shoulder with an irritated grunt.
“It’s about time! What took you so long? Midnight’s the appointed time, in case you’ve forgotten! Criminy!”
She kept her eyes directed forward. “Why are you so angry?”
“Angry? I’m not angry! What makes you think I’m angry?”
“You sound angry.”
“I sound the way I always do!”
“Well, you always sound angry. Tonight, especially.” She felt him squirming on her shoulder, leaves and twigs rustling, settling into place. “Tell me something about my father.”
He spit like a cat. “Your father? What are you talking about?”
“I want to know something about my father.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about your father! I’ve told you that! Go ask your grandmother!”
She glanced down at him, riding her shoulder in sullen defiance. “Why is it that no one ever wants to talk about my father?
Why is it that no one ever wants to tell me anything about him?“
Pick kicked at her shoulder, exasperated. “It’s rather hard to talk about someone you don’t know, so that might explain my problem with talking to you about your father! Are you having