Hope Triumphant II: Sister

CHAPTER 7
(World population: 7.35 billion)

The Devil You Know

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September 2013
Edinburgh, Scotland
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"A new family came to the shelter last night," Maureen told Cathy at their usual Thursday morning meeting. "A mother with three: twelve, seven, and a baby."

Cathy looked up from watering the ivy plant that sat on the top of the filing cabinet. The plant had sent out runners into every corner of the room: across the window frame, over the bookshelves, looped through a water pipe, even making a great leap to the light in the middle of the ceiling. The ivy had grown hugely these last four years, when Cathy had first brought in a tiny three-leaved sprout. The women's shelter had grown too, sixteen rooms and eight suites now, almost all of them filled all of the time, and the drop-in nursery busy as well. The shelters in Glasgow and York were filled up, too. Good thing they were building more.

Cathy nodded, flipping her long braid over her shoulder so that it hung down her back, all the way to her waist. Maureen gave a silent sigh of envy. She had always wanted really long hair.

Cathy put the watering can down then turned to open the blinds on the single, narrow window in the small room as she asked, "What are their names?"

Maureen checked her clipboard. "Dottie Tilton's the mother. Her boy's Ned—he's the eldest, and a big lad he is, too—the girl's Jessie, and the baby's Ross. Five months old."

Cathy pulled out the hard wooden chair at the desk and sat down, back perfectly straight and both feet on the floor, as always, just like the nuns had always said to do in school, and like Maureen never had. "I had determined teachers," Cathy had said when Maureen had mentioned it three years back, and Maureen had laughed and said, "So had I. But I was determined, too." Which was why she was working at the shelter, wasn't it?

"Which suite are they in?" Cathy asked, taking out a pen from the center drawer.

Maureen didn't need to glance at her clipboard again. She'd settled them in herself just last night. "They're in the elephant suite." The rooms had numbers, too, but each door was decorated with a fanciful animal so that the younger children could find their way, and Maureen liked the animals better than saying 2C or 3A. "The giraffe suite would have been better, with the three bedrooms instead of two, seeing as there's the baby, but Mrs. Quincy and her six kids need the space even more."

"Yes, that's fine," Cathy said, making a mark on her schedule for the day. "I'll stop by and see her now; I have a meeting with the staff therapist at ten. Mrs. Tilton had the usual reasons, I suppose?"

"The usual," Maureen agreed, stretching out sideways on the much more comfortable easy chair near the door, with her head leaning against one arm and her feet hanging over the side of the other. "The drink, the dole … the dumps."

Cathy rubbed a hand across her eyes and sighed. "Is she worried about him coming here?"

"She wouldn't say it—kept insisting he was a nice fellow, you know?—but yeah, I think she is."

Cathy flipped shut her calendar and stood. "I'll go talk to her."

"Going to have a talk with the husband, too?"

"If need be."

"Like usual?" Maureen said, wondering for the hundredth time exactly what Cathy said to those fellows, because after the first angry husband had thrown a rock through a window and broken down a door trying to get at his wife, Cathy had started going to have a talk with some of the men, and the shelter hadn't had any trouble since then.

"Like usual," Cathy agreed then disappeared down the hall with her graceful dancer's stride.

That afternoon, Maureen joined Cathy for lunch in the courtyard, sitting on a bench near the flower/vegetable garden set right in the middle of the odd-shaped space, away from the shade of buildings and walls and the one bedraggled tree. Cathy was crackers about plants, and people who came to the shelter were expected to help out with the garden. Most of them grumbled at first, but after a while pretty much everybody got to like it, or not to mind. The kids had fun with the dirt, if nothing else. Some of the shelter's food came from their own garden, the tomatoes and peppers mixed right in with the marigolds and petunias. Not for much longer, though, not outside. Autumn was almost here. That wouldn't stop them next year; Cathy was planning a greenhouse on the roof.

"Dottie Tilton got Jessie a kitten this morning," Cathy announced.

Maureen shook her head as she unwrapped her burrito. "Another animal?" She took a bite of the spicy beans and rice.

"Kittens aren't much work, not like puppies," Cathy said, stirring her noodles with a chopstick. "Mrs. Tilton loves cats, too. When I left their suite they were picking out a name."

Maureen looked up, only just remembering to close her mouth with all the food half-chewed. Cathy's table manners were always perfect, like her nails and her hair. Not that Cathy was lah-di-dah fancy or gave herself airs, she was just … neat. Maureen wanted to be neat. The nuns had wanted that, too, but try as she might, Maureen could never get her mop of black curls to do anything else but stand up every which way, and her clothes never seemed to hang right, and her feet always looked too big. Maureen had given up on that sort of thing a long time ago. She finished her chewing and swallowed hastily. "Cath …"

"Mr. Tilton wouldn't let them have one," Cathy said. "They're trying to start a new life. And we've had animals here before. We can't ask people to leave their pets behind."

"I know," Maureen said. She'd taken her goldfish with her when she'd left Johnny, because she didn't trust him not to set it out in the sun to watch it die. "I'm just remembering Mrs. Glennor's dog."

"This is a two-pound kitten, not an Irish wolfhound."

"All right," Maureen said, dipping her burrito in the salsa dish. "Only don't expect me to take care of it."

She didn't take care of it, but a few days later in the children's lounge she did play with it a bit. The gray tiger-striped kitten was chasing a piece of paper that Jessie had tied to a string, and Maureen stopped to talk to the little girl and admire the ball of fluff. "Her name is Fiona, because of her white paws," announced Jessie then scooped the kitten into her arms. "She's mine. My mum picked the name. Want to pet her?" Maureen let the kitten sniff her fingers then stroked under the furry chin, getting a contented purr from the kitten and a delighted giggle from the girl.

"The Tiltons are settling down," Maureen said to Cathy that Thursday in the office. "Jessie loves her kitten, Ned was playing with the toddlers in the nursery, and Dottie actually smiled at me the other day. We need to have the baby looked at by the nurse, though. I don't know as it's gotten all its shots."

"I'll put that on the public health nurse's schedule for her visit on Monday," Cathy said, making notes on her calendar. "The older children, too. I hope Mrs. Tilton's ready to be looked at now. She said no last week."

"The bruises were too fresh," Maureen said.

"And she didn't want to be seen that way," Cathy said. "I know."

Maureen did too, only she'd never let it get that bad, or go on so long. "Dottie said he'd been beating on her for thirteen years—started when she got pregnant, as usual. Last week, he started in on the boy, and that's when she decided it was time to go."

"A good reason to leave." Cassandra capped the pen tightly and set it down, then stood and went to the window, staring out across the alley at the grimy brick wall. "But why did she stay?"

"The usual," Maureen answered, even though it sounded like Cathy had been talking to herself. "Not a bad fellow when he wasn't drunk, she said, and the sex was hot. That's part why I stayed with John."

Cathy turned around so fast her braid swung, too, the tip of it slapping her on the arm. "You stayed because the sex was hot?"

"Oh, and it was!" Maureen said, a smile already on her face. "He was something, was my Johnny. He could make me climb the walls and beg for more." She nearly laughed aloud, remembering the squeaky bed in their first tiny flat, and the way Mrs. Hennesey had pounded on her ceiling with her broomstick from the floor below. She'd stopped that soon enough, when Johnny started bellowing filthy lyrics and humping in time to the beat. Maureen had giggled so hard she'd fallen out of bed. But Johnny had gotten angry when Mrs. Hennesey had called the landlady, and when Maureen had tried to calm him down, he'd gotten angry with her, too. "Even after he—" Maureen stopped herself from remembering that part and shrugged. "It was good then, too, afterwards. Sweet. He'd be so sweet." Six years it had been, since she'd smacked him in the head with a spanner and walked away. She missed him sometimes, and a part of her loved him still. "What part was good for you, Cathy?"

"What?" Cathy said, like she hadn't heard the question at all.

"What part did you like?" Maureen asked. "When you were with your fellow?"

"I …" She shook her head. "There wasn't. None."

"Ah, come on! You must have liked some part of it, else you wouldn't have stayed."

"No." Cathy shook her head again, folding her arms across her chest. "No."

"All right then," Maureen said, shrugging it off. She stood and stretched her arms high over her head, then let them flop down. "I'm off to check the kitchen. That Quincy boy never does get all the pans cleaned, and the girls keep breaking the crockery. You'd think they were raised in a barn."

"Yes," Cathy murmured.

"But, they need to learn and we need the help," Maureen said cheerfully. "You said you were going to have Jessie and Ned go with you to pick some vegetables for lunch today, right?"

"I … No. No, I'm not." Cathy flipped her calendar shut and tucked it into her bag. "Maureen, I need to leave."

"Leave?"

"Yes," she said, already picking up her cape—blue and purple and green, like a peacock's tail—from the coat stand in the corner. "I'll be back."

Maureen stared, bewildered. "When?"

Cathy paused at the door, one hand gripping the frame. She started to speak then stopped and shook her head instead. "I'll be back," she said again, and she was gone.

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Autumnal Equinox, 2013
The North AtlanticCoast
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Cassandra went to the sea. Just hopped on a train and headed north, away from busy streets and crowds of people, away from the shelter and Maureen and her questions, away from the church, away from the magic lessons with Sara and the un-magic lessons with Colin, just away.

Before she'd left, Cassandra had called Alex and asked her to take care of Phoenix. "Yes, of course, I'll go to your flat and feed her, or ask Sara or Colin to go," Alex had said then asked carefully, "Cass … is this business?"; business being Connor and Alex's code word for "Pardon me, but I have to go chop off somebody's head."

"No," Cassandra had answered. "It's just me. Again." She trying to hold on, but she could feel the foundations of her life cracking, the earth splitting open beneath her feet. She needed to get to holy ground, her kind of holy ground, and she needed to be there alone. She had a history of trying to kill people when she was in this kind of mood. "I'll be back."

"When?"

Cassandra didn't know. She wasn't even sure of where she was going. Her first thought had been to go back to her therapist, but halfway through dialing Jennifer's number, Cassandra had clicked off the phone and decided to deal with this on her own. She was at least going to try. She could always call Jennifer later, if need be.

Cassandra's ticket read Inverness—she'd punched that button almost automatically as the computer screen flashed "Destination Please" and the people behind her waited impatiently in line—but Cassandra didn't want to stay in Inverness: too many memories from centuries past, and too many changes in the last few years. And entirely too many oil derricks in the North Sea. She hadn't come this far to look at those.

She bought another ticket and took the coach to Ullapool on the west coast of Scotland, found that too busy and so went south to the village of Gairloch, arriving there in the late afternoon, still in time for tea. In a small tea shop, she sipped the hot, bitter brew and marveled yet again at the changes of the last few hundred years. It had once taken weeks to travel so far.

With the summer season over and most of the tourists gone, Cassandra soon found a room. "And how long will you be staying?" asked the desk clerk at the long two-story hotel built of sand-colored stone.

"I don't know," Cassandra said. She went to the beach to watch the sun disappear into the western waves, while the perfect circle of a harvest moon rose from behind the hills.

The next morning she woke early and went back outside, watching not the sunrise in the eastern hills, but the setting of the moon and the changing of the light upon the slow swells of the sea. About an hour after dawn, when the moon had gone and the light was clear, she started to walk. She walked all morning—along beaches of pale pink sand, over surf-pitted and wet-blackened rocks, across grassy dunes, and sometimes into the sea itself, cold and surging around her knees, all the while listening to the eldritch cries of gulls and the hypnotic hush of waves, and thinking about why she had stayed.

At the beginning, of course, she hadn't had a choice. Roland had either kept her in a locked room or chained or surrounded by deaf guards. Oh, she had managed to escape, and more than once, but Roland always found her again, sometimes right away, sometimes not for years. He hadn't liked for her to run away.

But even without that, she had stayed. During the ten years of therapy, Jennifer had asked her why, many times and in many ways. Cassandra had come up with a whole host of reasons to satisfy Jennifer, and to satisfy herself. The "I was brainwashed" justification was a classic, and she had used that to explain her time with Methos and Roland both. The "He made me feel worthless and so I was lacking in self-confidence" was another good one. The list went on. "I was afraid. I felt embarrassed … lonely … ashamed … guilty … I didn't have any money. It was illegal to leave; the slave-catchers were waiting. He would have hurt other people if I had left. I wanted to help him. I didn't think anybody else would want me. I cared about him and he cared about me. We had good times. He wasn't really that bad, not all of the time, and he needed me. I needed him." And, of course, the final stamp upon it all: "He loved me, and I loved him."

Each of those reasons was true, but it wasn't the truth.

"What part did you like?"

"None of it," she had told Maureen, but that was a lie.

"What part did you like, that made you stay?"

Jennifer had never asked her that. Not once. Not once in ten years. She should have. She should have asked. She should have known; it was her job to know … This was her fault—

Cassandra slammed to a halt, all of her, feet and brain, stopping that thought right there. She knew this insidious little ploy. She'd seen it thousands of times over the years. Avoid the truth by getting angry and then putting the blame on someone else. She wasn't going to do that anymore. Cassandra started walking again, slowly, concentrating on the squish of cold sand up between her toes, and trying to think again.

"What part did you like?"

It hadn't been the sex. Cassandra was sure of that. The sex had been good, no doubt about that, sometimes even great, but she'd never enjoyed mingling sex and pain, and memories of punishment had haunted their bed.

It hadn't been the money. Roland had liked to live well, and his homes had always been luxurious, but Cassandra knew what it was to own a duchy or to be without a single rag. She wasn't afraid of poverty, and she wasn't addicted to wealth.

The punishments? No. She wasn't a masochist. How about the flip-side of that, the relief from tension and pain that had flooded her with obscene joy when he was finally done? No. Physical-emotional roller coasters like that were addicting, but the physical part wasn't that good, not for her. Some people played at sadomasochistic games on the weekends, enjoying the spicy taste of fantasy submission or control, but she and Roland had lived that way, every day for years, and they hadn't been acting out roles.

So, what was it that she had liked? And maybe still did? Cassandra scrambled up a great black sentinel of rock, half in the sand and half in the waves, scrabbling for handholds and toeholds and scraping her knees, until finally she reached a knobby wind-worn top. She perched there, her chin on her knees and her arms wrapped around her legs with the wind tugging at her hair, and she stared out to sea until she stopped lying to herself and the answer came clear.

Power.

Power and vindication.

Methos hadn't wanted her, but Roland certainly had. He'd been obsessed with her for centuries, followed her across oceans and continents, killed hundreds to be by her side. "Roland would do anything for me," she'd once boasted to Jennifer, and it had been true. And wasn't that kind of devotion flattering, in a sick and twisted way? After the bruises had faded and the broken bones had healed (and she was immortal; that never took long), hadn't she liked it when Roland had come crawling to her to apologize, weeping, pleading with her to love him, begging her not to leave?

Just as she'd begged Methos, long ago.

Oh yes, she had liked having the man kneel before her and beg, for a change. She had reveled in knowing that she was in control, in knowing that he wanted her. There'd been times she'd even goaded Roland into beating her, just so they could "reconcile" and she could get the reassurance she craved. She'd done it to Connor, too, on a smaller scale, and even to Duncan in a way, being subtly obnoxious, using overtones of the Voice to annoy, until he got angry enough to snap at her, then later accepting his apology with gracious aplomb. Some of her anger and irritation had been honest, but some of it had been a ploy to make him "prove" that he still cared. She'd done the same thing with other people through the years.

Cassandra buried her face on her knees, her shoulders shaking with laughter of bitter despair. She had thought she knew all the possible ways to lie, and yet here was one more, opening the door to a thousand more. Just how much of what she remembered of her life—what she thought she remembered of her life—was a lie? Joe Dawson had once called her delusional, and maybe he was right. Maybe the horror and abuse she remembered were exaggerations, justifications for her own warped soul.

Or maybe nothing she remembered was real.

Cassandra jumped from the rock onto the sand, falling to her knees when she landed, then getting up and starting to run. The sand was hard packed near the water's edge, and Cassandra ran all afternoon. The next day, she went hiking in the hills, and the day after that she walked on the shore again.

That evening found her where she'd been the first night, sitting on the beach in front of the hotel and watching the sun set into the western waves, but calmer now. That tarot card about "the start of self-awareness" had been dead-on, and she felt ready to start setting down the load she'd been carrying for so long, piece by piece, the good and the bad.

The ten pebbles she'd gathered over the last few days lay in a pile in front of her, and Cassandra picked up the rounded pink one on the top and laid it in the palm of her hand. First: she wasn't delusional. Her memories were real; those things had happened to her. She had been a slave, a priestess, a whore, a queen, all of those and many more. She'd traveled, lived, loved, and died, over and over again. Methos had broken her fingers, and Roland had abused her through the years. Her memories were true.

But they weren't the truth, not all of it. Even the tale of the brothel that she'd told to Amanda had been subtly rearranged. Cassandra had spoken of killing some of the men who had patronized her brothel, of crushing them in her hands between pleasure and pain, but she'd conveniently avoided mentioning—or even thinking—of what she had done to the women in her employ. No, not "in her employ." The women under her control. The memories she'd allowed herself to remember had been edited and biased, rearranged and cut to fit, seen through a haze of self-pity and the desperate need to justify and excuse.

Which took her to pebble number two, a gray oblong with a crack along one side. It clicked against the pink stone already in her palm. Cassandra squeezed them in her fist as she thought about the many ways to lie. "Be honest with me," Connor and Jennifer had often demanded, and Cassandra had sincerely tried. She'd told the truth as she remembered it, and what else could anyone do? No two people ever remembered a story in exactly the same way, or remembered it the same from day to day. "What really happened isn't so important to you as what you think happened," Jennifer had told her on a winter afternoon over a decade ago. "You react to your memories. You feel because of your memories. They're real to you, and so that's what we need to talk about today."

Cassandra hadn't told "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," but she had been honest in telling her truth, as she had seen the truth in those days. She was seeing things differently now. For centuries, she had been convinced that she deserved to be punished, that Roland was justified, that it was all her fault he abused her so. Then, she'd spent a decade in therapy, convincing herself that it was all his fault, that she was not at all to blame.

Neither of those beliefs was true.

Onto pebble number three, a small black one that had been polished by the waves. Cassandra faced this ugly truth head-on: Roland wasn't the only one to blame. Yes, he'd been sick and twisted and pathologically obsessed, but so had she. She'd hurt him, too. Their relationship had warped them both, and they had fed off each other, trading roles of parasite and prey.

But Roland had started it, not her, and he'd been the one to track her down through the years. With a sigh of enormous relief, Cassandra picked up a fourth pebble, a white lozenge of stone, and laid the blame for Roland's initial obsession squarely on Kronos where it belonged. Kronos had been the one to pervert her son, not her, and the Horsemen had been the first to betray. She'd made mistakes as a mother, yes—who didn't?—but she had truly done the best she could.

Or at least, she had when he'd been young. Cassandra picked up pebble number five, its fractured edges sharp against her fingertips, a clouded crystal of quartz. When Roland had been older, when they'd been wallowing in that cesspit of their mutually inflicted pain, she'd listened to his pleas for help and she had done nothing, silently gloating over his impotence with malicious glee.

"I don't want to hurt you, Cassandra," he'd often said, his eyes bewildered and full of despair once the rage had gone. Cassandra had seen that same look in three-year-old Colin's eyes, after a full-bore screaming tantrum of stomping feet and flailing arms. Alex had held him down—sat on him, actually—through the screams, telling him matter-of-factly: "No, you can't have your purple dinosaur shirt; it's dirty right now, and also, you may not behave this way." Then she'd rocked him while he sobbed, all the while murmuring "I love you" over and over again. He'd fallen asleep in her arms and woken up two hours later, his usual cheerful self. Colin had been a child, and Roland a full-grown man, but Cassandra could see now that she'd withheld—subconsciously, perhaps, but still deliberately—the calm, authoritative guidance Roland had craved, because to help him learn self-control was to give up her own control over him.

Malicious mothering at its worst. Power and control … and revenge.

That was what she had liked. That was why she had stayed. Maureen's artless question had sliced straight to the center and shredded the protective shroud of half-truths and delusions that Cassandra had woven into and throughout her life. Now her hand was full of pebbles, as her heart had been full of stones.

It was time to start anew. Cassandra stood and walked to the water's edge, then went deeper in, breast-high, shuddering at the cold. With a sweep of her outstretched arm, she cast those stones into the sea. The pebbles disappeared, their circles of ripples merging and spreading before being swallowed by the ocean's larger waves. The next wave caught her and lifted her feet from the ground. Cassandra let it carry her, floated with her head back so she could watch the moon. It wasn't full now, but Cassandra knew that in a few weeks time it would be full again, then new, then full, as it always had been and ever would be, always changing and always the same.

When her feet touched bottom, she dove under the surface and swam for shore. Five pebbles of the original ten remained, questions for her future instead of issues from her past. On the train ride back to Edinburgh the next day, Cassandra sewed a tiny pouch then tucked the five pebbles inside. She hung the pouch on a string around her neck, held close to her heart, next to the necklace of the triple crescents that Alex had given to her nearly seventeen years ago. The Five of Wands in the tarot meant unfinished struggle, and Cassandra knew she wasn't done yet.

Dead on Arrival

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September 2013
Edinburgh, Scotland
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Back in Edinburgh, Cassandra called Sara and told her she was back, she was fine, but there would be no lesson for Sara tomorrow afternoon, and no lesson for Colin on Thursday night.

"That's OK," Sara said. "We have a huge calculus test on Friday anyway, so we need to study for that."

"Is your mom there?"

"She's making a salad for dinner. Should I get her on the phone?"

"No," Cassandra said. "Just ask her if I can stop by tonight." She desperately wanted to talk, and she knew she needed advice.

"Mom says welcome back, and that around eight would be fine," Sara reported a moment later. "And she'll tell Dad you're coming."

Which meant Cassandra wouldn't have to worry about being met at the door by a sword. She and Connor had surprised each other before. "Thank you," Cassandra said. "I'll see you tonight."

"Great!"

But when Cassandra went to the MacLeod home that evening, Colin was the one to answer the door, and Sara was nowhere in sight. "She and Dad are in the exercise room in the attic," Colin explained, a bowl heaped high with strawberry ice cream in one hand. "Mom's in the library on the phone." He loped his way upstairs, all long legs and floppy hair.

Alex was sitting on the sofa in front of the fireplace with the phone still in her hand, though she wasn't talking anymore. When Cassandra came in the room, Alex didn't get up or even say hello.

"Alex?"

"My brother just called," Alex said, the words dull and evenly spaced. "His daughter died today."

"Oh, Alex, no," Cassandra sat down by her side.

"It was pneumonia, that new strain." Alex turned her head slowly to fasten on Cassandra, a blindly accusing stare. "One of those diseases Grace wanted to cure. Elaine was fine a few days ago, and just yesterday morning they thought it was only a cold. She was thirty-two." She stared straight ahead again. "I got married when I was thirty-two." She added softly, "Nineteen years ago."

"I'm sorry," Cassandra said and took Alex's hand.

Alex pulled her hand away. "Are you?"

Cassandra closed her eyes and silently swore. Not this again. Not now. But death was never convenient, and she'd known this confrontation was coming for years. It always did, whenever a mortal realized just how unfair dying really was. "I'd never met Elaine," Cassandra explained gently, "so no, I don't feel grief for her, but I am sorry for your family's loss, and for you."

Alex didn't seem to hear. "You've done it so often," she said. "Buried someone you love. Aren't you used to it by now?"

Cassandra had heard that before, from other people in other times. "How do you keep going, after so much loss, so much pain? How can you love me, when you've had so many other loves before? How do you manage to feel?"

How do you stay human, during all your years?

You didn't. Or at least, Cassandra hadn't managed to. She'd lost touch with her humanity for centuries at a time. She hadn't cared whether she—or anyone else—lived or died. But she knew why she'd suffered that deadness of the soul: she hadn't dared to love.

She loved now. She had friends, even though she knew that one day she would have to say goodbye. Cassandra tried to explain what it was to keep living while all those around you died. "Alex, burying a loved one is like … giving birth. No matter how many times you've done it before, it always hurts."

"And just how," Alex asked, with devastating accuracy and fine-honed rage, "would you know anything at all about that?"

Alex was grieving, Cassandra reminded herself as she walked rapidly away, out into the cool night air. All the books said that anger was one of the first stages of grief. Alex was hurt, she was angry, she was feeling guilty, and she was afraid.

She was being a bitch.

Cassandra stopped walking and gripped the square bars of a black iron fence that bordered an immaculately manicured lawn. The edges of the cold metal cut into her palms, but they didn't cut nearly as deeply as Alex's words.

"I've always wanted to bear a child," Cassandra had confessed to Alex years before, sharing her most cherished dream, cautiously daring to open her soul to another, after she'd kept her true-self locked away and hidden for so long. "I've always wanted to be able to give birth, to give life to another living soul." Alex had taken her hand and held it, a warm and human touch. "You already are a mother, Cass," Alex had reassured her. "Even if you can't give life that way, you do give love."

Cassandra tilted her head to look up to the sky and saw no stars and no moon, only thick clouds. "My best friend," Cassandra said softly, not really surprised, but aching all the same. After a moment, she let go of the bars and started walking again.

"Mom's at the American embassy to get travel permits to go to the funeral," Colin said when Cassandra called the next morning, so Cassandra went to work at the Phinyx school. She called again that afternoon, but Alex wasn't home. She left the country without returning Cassandra's calls.

On Thursday, Cassandra went back to the shelter again. "Cathy!" Maureen called, with her usual glad smile, and Cassandra found herself smiling in return. Maureen was always so solid, so real. No pretensions or airs, no squeamishness or delusions. No lies. Cassandra treasured that honesty most of all.

"Are you all right now?" Maureen asked. "I've been worried since you left so fast last week."

"I'm fine," Cassandra reassured her. "I'm sorry; I should have called. I just … I realized there was something I needed to do."

Maureen rolled her eyes in sympathy. "There's always something that needs to be done, isn't there? We had the gutters cleaned on Monday, and then the man said the roof had a leak, out on the south side. Come along, I'll show you."

They were in the stairwell when they heard the shouting, a woman's shrill voice. "East corner," Maureen said, her head cocked to the sound. "Second floor."

"The Tiltons," Cassandra said, and they both started running for the stairs. Cassandra passed Maureen halfway up. On the landing, she rapped on the door marked 2A and decorated with a purple elephant lower down.

There was no answer, but that wasn't surprising. The television was on, the woman was still shouting, and now Cassandra could hear a child crying and a baby's wails. Cassandra tried the knob. It didn't budge, and she got out her keys.

The door finally opened, and she and Maureen burst through. The baby was wailing in the cot in the corner, and the television was blaring some nonsense about better sleeping pillows for dogs. Maureen snapped off the TV on her way to check on the baby, while Cassandra looked in the two small bedrooms and found no one there. The woman's shouting suddenly stopped, but the sobs of the child went on.

The water closet. Cassandra stepped over a heap of laundry and kicked aside a box of toys to get to the door. It was locked too. "Open it, Mrs. Tilton," Cassandra ordered.

"Go away," Dottie Tilton said then snarled, "Hush up, you!" The sobbing went on, and the command was followed by a slap, and then a frantic giggle. The baby was now held securely in Maureen's arms, but it was still wailing, a thin ululating screech that grated on the nerves.

Cassandra pulled out her keys again. Privacy was a privilege at the shelter, not a right. All kinds of hell could happen behind locked doors, in walled estates, in private homes, in sacrosanct bedrooms, in places secure from outside eyes. Secure, but not safe, not for those who weren't permitted the keys.

Cassandra unlocked the door. It opened easily; at least they weren't trying to hold it closed. All three of them were in there, in a room not much bigger than a closet. Dottie Tilton stood glaring defiantly between the toilet and the sink, arms crossed, wisps of graying hair straggling across her face. Her pink sweatshirt and faded blue jeans were splashed darker with water, and her feet were bare. Ned was standing in the far corner, his hands in his pockets, a large-boned, hefty boy. His lopsided grin didn't match his darting eyes.

Jessie, now … Jessie was the one who had been crying. Jessie was the one who had been slapped. Her face was streaked with tears, and her cheek bore the bright pink outline of a palm. She hiccuped and gulped back a sob.

"What's wrong?" Cassandra asked, keeping her tones soothing, not going to comfort the girl as she wanted to do. It might be something simple. Maybe Jessie hadn't wanted to wash her hands or brush her hair. Cassandra had seen worse flare-ups over smaller things.

"My—," Jessie started, then went immediately silent at her mother's sharp movement and glare.

Behind Cassandra, Maureen had finally gotten the baby to stop crying, and instead of a wail there was only a "Hush, now. Hush."

"Mrs. Tilton?" Cassandra prompted.

"It's not your concern," Mrs. Tilton declared. "They're my children." She smoothed back her hair with one hand. A single strand flopped forward again. Ned giggled, a high nervous sound.

"Yes," Cassandra agreed, but flipped the possessive around. "You are their mother." She turned to the girl. "Jessie, can you tell me what's wrong?"

Jessie looked at the toilet, and now she was crying again, large silent tears. Cassandra took a step into the room so she could see.

And there it was, a limp bundle of gray, floating in the bowl. Dirty socks or perhaps a towel, Cassandra hoped for one hopeless fraction of a second, but she knew already what it was. One white paw was waving slowly, and a tiny triangle of an ear poked up above the surface. Cassandra gently retrieved the dead kitten from the toilet. Thin circles of ribs made ridges under the wet matted fur. She picked up a towel from the shelf above the toilet and wrapped the kitten close and warm, then knelt to hand it to the girl. "I'm sorry, Jessie," Cassandra whispered, and she was crying too, with the same silent tears.

Ned giggled again, that familiar mocking laugh, and Cassandra rose and whirled, her hand already raised to strike. He shrank from her, his eyes suddenly widening with fear, but his back was against the wall and he had nowhere to go. Cassandra moved forward, savoring the moment. He was hers.

"What are you doing?" the mother cried, grabbing Cassandra's arm from behind. "Leave him be!"

Cassandra turned on her, knocking her hand aside. " Did you get here too late?" Cassandra demanded, her voice cold with rage. "Or did you stand by and watch him drown the kitten in front of your daughter's eyes?"

"It wasn't him that did it," she said scornfully.

Not him? But— An accident? Then why the shouting, why the locked door? Why—

"It was me," the Tilton woman announced, a proud tilt to her chin.

Cassandra had to blink twice before she could breathe. "You?"

"I told Jessie to keep it away from the baby. I told her, and she didn't. It's her fault."

"Her fault?" Cassandra repeated, and the taste of ashes came with each word. "Her fault?" Dimly, Cassandra heard someone calling for Cathy in the distance, and then someone was pulling hard on her arm. Cassandra shoved the person away.

"Cathy!" The tugging turned into a yank. "Cath!"

"What?" Cassandra snapped then turned to see Maureen, black eyes only inches from her own.

"Get out of there," Maureen said. "Get out." Cassandra looked back at the woman, and Maureen ordered, "Look at Jessie. Look at Jessie now."

Cassandra looked and there was Jessie, standing right by her mother's side, with the dead kitten still clutched in her arms. "Don't hurt my mother," Jessie pleaded. "No more hitting. Please."

Cassandra let Maureen pull her from the room. The Tilton woman came out, too, then went straight to the cot where Maureen had put the baby down. "See here!" the woman demanded, picking up the baby and pulling back the blanket to reveal a red line half an inch long. "See here! It scratched him. It hurt my baby. I've enough to take care of without adding a mewling cat to our lives."

"You wanted the kitten," Cassandra said coldly. "You helped pick out the name."

"I agreed to marry that good-for-nothing louse of a husband of mine, too," she snapped back. "I even picked out his ring." She tossed her head, a girlishly impudent gesture in a woman with graying hair. "People can change their minds."

"That doesn't give you the right—"

"Right? Right? What would you know about right? You!" she spat. "You with your fancy clothes and snooty airs, filling my daughter's head with crazy dreams, making her go 'Miss Pelton this' and 'Miss Pelton that.' I'm her mother, not you." She snatched up another blanket from the back of the sofa. "Ned! Jessie! Get your shoes on. Pack your things! We're not staying here."

"That's for certain," Cassandra said grimly, then once again found herself being propelled through a door.

"Get out of here," Maureen ordered, blocking the way back into the room. "Take a walk. Take a three-hour hike."

"I—"

"Go. You need to calm down, Cathy. You're not doing anybody any good here."

She wasn't doing good at all. Cassandra nodded stiffly and walked away.

After ninety minutes of running, Cassandra had burned off most of her immediate rage. At the top of a hill in the Princes Street Gardens she slowed to a stop, gripping the back of a bench with both hands and breathing hard. She hadn't needed to run like that in years. She hadn't been that angry in years.

"It was her fault."

Her fault.

Cassandra knew better than to entrust an animal to a family that had lived with abuse for years. But Jessie had been so delighted, and the mother had seemed so enthusiastic, and what reason could Cassandra have given to take the kitten away?

"Progressing normally," the therapist's second evaluation of Dottie Tilton had read, but "normal" in abuse cases did not mean "good." It was normal to be hypersensitive, normal to wake screaming from nightmares, normal to lash out in rage. As Cassandra, of all people, should know.

And going after the boy … Just what had she been thinking?

Nothing, Cassandra realized sourly. She hadn't been thinking at all. She'd blamed him, automatically and unthinkingly, because—and only because—he was male. That, and the smile. Roland had smiled.

Cassandra started running again, but not so fast nor so furious as before. After a few miles, she stopped at the base of an old willow tree and leaned her forehead against the bark, closing her eyes. When her breathing had slowed to a normal rate, she turned around and sat at the base of the tree, then took out the pouch and poured the five tiny stones into her hand. Four went back in, and she held the fifth—an irregular nugget that resembled a broken tooth—in her hand.

This was a lesson she had forgotten again and again. She had to remember that men weren't the only ones who caused pain. Women could be—and were—just as bad. And that included herself.

Cassandra didn't cast this pebble into the sea. It went back into the pouch, to be carried for the rest of her life.

After lunch, Maureen started to keep watch for Cathy's return. She came back about half past three, walking along the street in a completely different set of clothes. She'd probably gone home to see her own pet cat and then decided to change. Her hair was neatly braided, and she'd even put some makeup on, a little mascara and eyeliner, not that she needed it to look gorgeous, of course, but Maureen was glad to see that Cathy looked neat and calm, like usual. Cathy had scared her earlier today.

Maureen opened the gate for her, and Cathy came inside. "I sent the Tiltons to the shelter across town," Maureen told her.

Cathy nodded but didn't say anything until they had walked halfway across the yard. "I would have liked to have seen Jessie before she left," Cathy said, which didn't surprise Maureen, but then Cathy added, "And Mrs. Tilton and Ned, too."

"To take their heads off?" Maureen asked, because she'd been certain that Cathy had been ready to kill the boy.

"To tell them I understand." Cathy opened the door to the office and went to sit behind the desk, back straight, feet together, just as perfect as before.

Only she wasn't. Maureen could see that now, when all these years she'd thought Cathy was so strong. Maureen stood in the doorway, waiting.

"What?" Cathy asked, looking up.

Maureen came into the room and shut the door behind her, then half-sat on the arm of the chair and kept watching. "I've never seen you get that angry before. I've never seen you get angry at all." Not once in four years, not even when Janna Mackenzie had beaten her infant son black and blue because, as she later explained, "it cried." Maureen had wanted to have the woman keelhauled, but Cathy, though she'd been saddened and sickened, hadn't been angry even then. She'd simply called the doctor, notified the therapist, and ordered that the mother never, under any circumstances, be left alone with the child. "That boy should be taken from her," Maureen had said after they'd left the room. "It may come to that," Cathy had replied, "but while Janna's here at the shelter, we'll give her the chance to learn how to love." Janna had stayed for two years, learning, and now she came back once a month to help in therapy sessions for women who abused their children, just like she had once done.

Cathy took her time in putting the cap back on a pen that Maureen had used earlier that day, then set it down just so. She put her hands in her lap, under the desktop, out of view. "I don't get angry much," Cathy said, looking down. "Not anymore."

Maureen nodded. "He hurt your cat, didn't he?" No need to say who "he" was, and anyway, Cathy had never once mentioned his name. But it didn't matter. "He" said it all.

Cathy's lips were two tight lines. "It was a long time ago."

"But it still hurts."

Cathy shoved back her chair and went to the window, turning her back on Maureen.

Maureen wasn't giving up that easy. "What color was your cat?" Cathy was taking deep shuddering breaths trying to hold it in; Maureen could see her shoulders tremble.

"Gray," Cathy said finally. "With white paws and a white chest. It was barely two months old."

Maureen got off the chair, moving closer. "What was its name?"

Cathy started shaking her head. "I hadn't yet named it. I'd found it only three days before. He wasn't there. I thought it was safe, but … I wanted to stop him, but … he …" She shrugged, quick and desperate, and the next words were hard to hear. "I didn't. I didn't do anything, except watch." Her head went back, her face all twisted, and Maureen was right there to catch her when the tears finally came.

"Hush," Maureen said, holding Cathy tight. They sank to the floor, and Maureen held her all the while as she cried. It took a long time. "Hush now," Maureen said again when it was over, gently stroking Cathy's long beautiful hair.

"Oh, Maureen," Cathy said, almost like a sigh, close against Maureen's shoulder. "Thank you."

"I'm glad I was here," Maureen said, and she was. She'd never thought Cathy would need her. But now—after today and after last week, when Cathy had just up and left, obviously bothered—Maureen knew that Cathy was really just a normal person, no matter how beautiful and organized she was. "I've never seen you cry before, either," Maureen said.

Cathy sniffled, just a little, and Maureen found herself smiling, because even Cathy's sniffles were neat. That much hadn't changed. "I haven't," Cathy said. "Not about that, not for years and years."

"This was good then," Maureen said. "We need to cry."

"We do," she agreed. After a few moments Cathy sat back a little, and they faced each other, sitting on the floor and scrunched in between the desk and the wall. "I must look a fright," Cathy said with a rueful smile, and Maureen had to laugh, because it was true. Cathy's hair was all wispy on top, and her mascara had left purplish-black fringes under her red-rimmed eyes.

Maureen reached out to wipe at the smudges and let her fingers brush away the tears on Cathy's cheek. Then Cathy turned her head, leaning into Maureen's palm, almost like a cat pushed against your hand when it wanted to be petted, and Maureen found her touch turning into a caress. Cathy's eyes were gold on green, like the leaves on a summer tree with the sun shining down. Maureen had never noticed them being so gold before, gleaming, like liquid fire.

"Cathy?" Maureen asked carefully, stopping her hand but not pulling away, because she'd never once suspected this, and she knew the signs.

"I'm sorry," Cathy said immediately, pulling back and looking down.

"Wait, Cath—" Maureen reached out and grabbed her hand before Cathy could run. "Wait!"

Cathy had stopped, half up on one knee, but she pulled her hand away and said again, "I'm sorry, Maureen. I'm … not myself right now."

"No?" Maureen was pretty sure that Cathy was more herself right now than she had ever let Maureen see before. "You don't have to hide, Cathy," Maureen said. "Not from me."

Cathy opened her mouth to answer, then slowly settled back down on the floor. "Oh, Maureen," she said again with the same kind of sigh as before. Her smile seemed sad. "It's not so simple as it seems."

It never was, not at first. But it got easier as you went on. "I've been with a woman," Maureen offered, making it clear right up front so Cathy would know and maybe feel more comfortable talking about herself.

It didn't take her long. "So have I," Cathy admitted. "But not for a long time." She looked at her hands, held loose in her lap. "Not with anyone."

"What about Mark?"

"He's fun to dance with, but we're friends, nothing more."

"And Arch, last year?"

"He liked paintings, and so do I. We went to shows."

"And Michael? John? Ed?" Maureen couldn't even remember all their names.

"Fun to date, but nothing serious. I've been trying to get comfortable again," Cathy explained, and that made sense. "What about you?" she asked.

"There was Johnny, of course, since I was nineteen. Then Denise. She was great. She's the one who introduced me to 'another way.' But she and her ex shared custody of the kids, and when he got a job in England, she moved right after I got the job here, and … well." She shrugged.

Cathy tilted her head to one side. "Are you seeing anyone now, Maureen?"

"Me? Oh no," Maureen said with a laugh. She'd been looking, now and again these last few years, but the men she met at the shelter weren't the kind any woman in her right mind would want, and the decent men she did meet were either already spoken for or not interested in her. She'd tried a few lesbian places (even though she wasn't lesbian, and she only barely qualified as bi), and she'd gone out on a few dates. But none of the women she'd met were anything like Denise, and Maureen had given up on that scene over a year ago. "No. I figured when the time was right I'd find someone."

"And here I've been thinking the same, while you and I have known each other for years," Cathy said. Then she smiled, happy this time, and the sunshine came back to her eyes. "Would you like to go out with me?"

Continued in "The Beast Below" wherein things start moving faster all around