Chapter Four

(Ratigan sits on a couch, holding his head in his hands. The others are whispering to each other)

Meg: Now explain this to me again, Luke. Very, very slowly…

Luke: Oh, erm… yeah, sometime after your car was egged and scratched and all, I found this rat-

RAEB: Shut UP!

Luke: Why do you all keep doing that? What'd I do?

Meg: Never mind. Refer to the rodent as Ratigan, and go on.

Luke: Okay… so, Ratigan was sort of wandering around in a drunken stupor.

Meg: Drunken?

Luke: Well, he was tottering a bit and sort of talking to himself. And, well, I felt bad for him, so I let him inside so he could sleep it off.

Meg: Why?

Luke: I just told you, I felt bad for him!

Meg: You let a drunk person you didn't know into this house?

Luke: He said he knew you.

Emma: So that makes it right?

Luke: Hey! Give me a break, I didn't know any better!

RAEB: Eh, Meg? Ratigan's missing a glove.

Meg: So?

RAEB: And we found a white glove by your car… and look at his claws. They look like they've been…

Lizz: Scratched.

One day Millie sent Rose out to buy some fish. She was weary from the previous night's work, but Millie was paying her to run this errand, and she needed all the spare change she could get to purchase her ticket home.

She moved robotically among the throng of working people that filled the streets, too tired to look at their faces,or to even care about them. She was sick of her fellow mice, even these dregs that she belonged to. They were loud and boisterous, shouting greetings or insults over the heads of those who separated them, dressed in their threadbare clothes wafting in the stench of heavy body odors. At first Rose had been appalled by their conditions, but over time she had fallen into them herself. She knew she was no different, no better or worse than the rest. At least she would be out of here as soon as she had enough money.

Her head suddenly snapped up. She thought she heard someone shout her name. But she looked at the other mice on the street; she recognized no one. She continued on her way.

"Rose! Rose McGeady! Rose!"

Rose looked all around her. Suddenly she saw a young man run up to her, wearing a secondhand suit and an old, slightly tattered top hat in his hands.

"Rose! Is it really you?" the man asked.

Rose peered at his face. He looked no more than twenty, and seemed so familiar…

"Greg? Gregory Rogers?"

"Yes!"

"Oh, Greg!" Rose exclaimed, hugging the young man. He had once courted her older sister Francis, until they decided that they really were better off as friends. "What are you doing here? I thought you were at the University of the London!"

"I am. But lodgings are so expensive near the University. I have a small garret by the textile mills; it's much more affordable. But Rose, what are you doing here?"

Rose blushed. "Oh… I ran away from home."

Greg nodded. "I heard. Francis wrote me. But Rose, everyone thinks you're dead!"

Rose's heart stopped, and for a moment, she believed that she really was dead. "What? My family thinks I'm dead?"

Greg sighed. "Yes."

"How?"

"When was the last time you had any contact with any of your family?"

"Not since the night I ran away."

"Oh…" Greg became grave.

"Greg? Tell me why they think I'm dead!"

"I think you ought to sit down first." He took Rose by the arm and led her to an old brush in an alley. They sat on the handle.

"Now tell me."

"First, tell me what you have been doing since you got here."

Rose was only too happy to confide her whole experience to him. She told him everything, from Giovanni's tricks to the black cape to her stolen possessions to the pride that would not let her go back home without proving a point.

When she was finished, Greg said, "Well, I suppose that you were going to find out anyway…

"When you left that night, your father, Francis, and Gwen went out to find you. They found out that you had bought a ticket to London. So your father and Francis took the next train to the city

"They searched for a day before they realized that they needed some official assistant. They had Scotland Yard on the lookout for you. They even hired a private detective, a Basil of Baker Street, to find you.

"The Yard had no idea what they were doing. They only told your family that their constables would look for a young girl of your physical appearance. Francis placed more hope in the detective. He has an amazing record of solving apparently unsolvable cases. She thought he'd pick up your trail and be able to find you."

"And?" Rose asked, practically sitting on the edge of her seat.

"He found a trail, followed it all the way to the waterfront in this section of the city. It was then that he discovered the body of a young girl, about your height, with blonde hair… The body was a bit mangled up; she had been attacked by a cat, crawled into a can that had been beaten around by the cat in an attempt to get to her… and it really was a mess. Your sister called me down to the Yard, where she was with your father, identifying the body… everyone really thought it was you, Rose."

Rose did not know what to say. She felt a powerful mixture of shame and sadness. How much grief had she caused them? Had her mother wept?

"What did they do?"

"The body was sent back to Exeter… they buried it in the old King's Hill Cemetery. Your whole family was distraught. Your mother blamed herself at first… then she started to blame your father for it. Francis told me. She was so upset… everyone worried about the unity of your family…then your mother tried to strangle Jessica."

"What?" Rose gasped.

He nodded sadly. "Francis said that your mother accused your little sister of stealing money from her purse… Jessica denied it, your mother didn't believe her, and tried to force her to tell the truth by strangling her."

Rose wanted to cry. "No…"

"Your father realized how unstable she was. He quit his job, took Francis, Gwen, and Jessica, and boarded a ship headed for the States."

"Wait, WHAT?"

Greg swallowed hard, as if he could barely say the words again. "They've left England, Rose. Your father and your sisters."

"What… no! That can't be! They can't have left!"

"Francis said that they wanted to forget about everything here. They went to start anew, to get rid of all the horrible memories."

"No!" Rose said, crying. "I'm still here…"

Greg sat with her a few minutes. After awhile, she asked, "Where's my mother?"

"Still living in Exeter with your grandmother. You could go back to her-"

"No! I will never go back to her!"

"I'm sorry, Rose."

"Greg, didn't Fran tell you where they were going?"

"No, she didn't. They really didn't know where they were going. I got a letter from Francis from New York City, about two weeks ago, but she said that they were heading out west in a few days. I could try to write to her again from that address, if you want."

"Oh, please do!"

"All right." He took out a pocketbook, wrote something on a piece of paper, tore it out and handed it to her. "This is the address of my flat. If you ever need any help, so money or just a friend to talk to, look me up."

Rose hugged him. "Thank you, Greg. Thank you."

A few days later, as she was laying out the previous day's newspaper to use as bedding, an article caught her eye: "Youth Killed in Tragic Carriage Accident."

She glanced at it, to see if it was worth reading. Then she felt sick to her stomach.

She carefully reread the article. "University student Gregory Rogers, 20, of Exeter, England… crushed to death by the wheels of a human carriage."

She let out an unearthly scream of despair.

Luke: That was depressing!

RAEB: Meg, you did it again! You turned this into a soap opera!

Meg: Nah, you should see some of my other stories. I wrote this one about this girl whose lover dies and she misses him so much that she starts to believe that he's speaking to her from beyond the grave, and she starts to go crazy, and then the people around her have to put her away in a mental institution, but she can still hear her dead love's voice, and so one night she manages to escape and goes to the cemetery where he is buried and-

RAEB: Ew! Where do you get these insane ideas anyway?

Meg: That one was from listening to too much Evanescence at midnight. This story was probably from listening to too much Evanescence as well.

RAEB: Now I seriously doubt the stability of your mind.