Trip Wire_ A Cook County Mystery - Charlotte Carter [14]
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I simply held my face in my hands.
“I guess this is your family, huh, Sandy?” Cliff asked.
I began to giggle insanely.
When I recovered, I asked them in. Ivy’s manners won out, after all. She was coolly gracious as I introduced her to all my roommates. Woody, on the other hand, was barely civil as he looked at one after another of my rumpled friends. His long, thin frame remained tight almost to the point of snapping.
I was finally able to put a few rational words together. “We’re all hungry. Nobody’s had anything to eat.”
“You what?” Ivy fell back into outrage. “You mean between the five of you, you can’t manage to put any food on the table?”
“No, no. I don’t mean it like that. It’s—never mind. Please, just sit down a minute. Will you please?”
I settled my aunt and uncle in the front room and told the others to go on without me. “That your old man?” Barry asked on his way out.
“More or less.”
“That old dude is clean. I love those kicks he’s wearing.”
I hadn’t noticed Woody’s shoes. But then, I didn’t need to. I knew he was always shod in something English. He polished them every night before going to sleep. Like it was some kind of manic ritual for him.
From the hall, I watched Woody and Ivy for a few minutes before joining them. I could see, mixed in with their fear and anger, their distaste at the messiness of the room. This sure wasn’t how I had envisioned their first visit. A far cry from me serving them sherry and Mia’s almond cookies and introducing my buddy Wilton to them. I took a long breath and then walked in. “Don’t say anything,” I announced, startling the hell out of them.
“Cassandra—” Woody began.
“Don’t say anything,” I bellowed. “I’m not leaving here until they find out who killed Wilton and Mia. I’m not ditching on my friends. And I am not going back with you.”
“You most certainly are,” my aunt said.
“No, Ivy. No way.”
She placed a restraining hand on Woody’s thigh. He was about to spring up at me.
“Look,” I said. “You don’t understand. Wilton meant the world to me.”
“Cass,” she said, “why wouldn’t we understand that? You mean the world to us.”
“This is different.”
“You mean you were living with that man,” Woody said petulantly.
“Yes. No. I mean, I loved him in a different way. Kind of the way I feel about the other people who live here, only stronger.”
“Not stronger than you love your family, Cassandra,” he said. “You don’t love strangers more than your family.”
I tried to choose my words carefully. “Okay. You’re right. In a way. But I can feel close to other people—strangers, if that’s what you want to call them—in a way I can’t feel close to family. They just get things that you don’t. We’re all going through the same stuff.”
“Cass, no one is saying you can’t keep these people as friends. But that doesn’t mean you have to live in the same house with them,” Ivy said. “You can feel just as strongly about . . . these people . . . living at home.”
“I am at home, Ivy.”
“No, you aren’t, honey.”
“You’re not getting it, are you? I moved out of your home. This is my home.”
“There’s been some killing done in your precious home,” Woody shouted. “You had a safe place to live with us, girl—with your own. Everything you needed. But you had to run off to be with these people. You’re not like these white youngsters, Cassandra. They got the way paved for them from the day they were born, and they still live this foolish kind of life. Now just look what it got them. You must be out of your mind to stay here after somebody’s been murdered.”
“Goddammit, stop calling him ‘somebody.’ He had a name.”
He stood then, spent a few seconds attending to the crease in his trousers. Then he fixed me with one of his terrifying looks. “Cassandra, I have had just about enough of this nonsense. Get your bags.”
I guess the totality of the thing had finally undone me. I was only 50 percent coherent when I started shrieking at them.
“You are driving me crazy. Suffocating me. You’re fucking tyrants, both of you. You don’t respect