“I’m going to explain. A sociopath is a person who doesn’t have a conscience, and before you ask, I’ll tell you what a conscience is. That’s what’s inside your head that tells you when you’ve done something wrong. Your conscience makes you feel . . . bad.”
“Like when I told Grandma I already practiced on the piano, but I didn’t, and then she told me I was a good girl, but I wasn’t ’cause I lied, and then I felt bad?”
“Yes, just like that,” she said. “Your mother doesn’t have any heart or soul, and that’s the truth.”
“Like the song you like to sing? Is it that kind of heart and soul?”
“Yes, just like the song,” Carrie assured her. “Jilly doesn’t have room in her heart to feel any emotion that doesn’t directly involve or benefit her.”
Avery was leaning into her side, looking up at her with those wonderful violet blue eyes that were so much more beautiful than her mother’s. Carrie could almost see the purity and goodness behind them. “Jilly’s too busy loving herself to love anyone else, but you can’t waste your time feeling bad about that. None of it is your fault. You believe me, don’t you?”
Avery solemnly nodded. “It’s my no-good mama’s fault, all right.”
Carrie smiled. “That’s right.”
“Do I have a soul?”
“Yes, you do. Everyone but your no-good mama has a soul.”
“Before Jilly hurt Whiskers and made him die, did he have a soul?”
“Maybe,” she allowed, thinking of the kitten Jilly had cruelly taken from her.
“Where is it?”
“Your soul?” Carrie had to think about the question for a few seconds before answering. “It’s inside you, wrapped around your heart. Your soul is as pure as an angel’s, and I mean to help you keep it that way. You’re nothing like Jilly, Avery.”
“But I look like her. You said so.”
“It’s not what you look like that’s important. It’s what’s inside you that matters.”
“Does Jilly love you and Grandma and just not me?”
Carrie was exasperated. “I thought you understood what I was telling you. Jilly doesn’t love anyone but herself. She doesn’t love Grandma, she doesn’t love me, and she doesn’t love you. Now do you understand?”
Avery nodded. “Can I play with the jewelry now, Carrie?”
Carrie smiled. The child, it seemed, had moved on to more important matters. She watched her sit at the vanity and begin to dig through the box again. “You know what’s the best thing that ever happened to you?”
Avery didn’t look around when she answered. “Having you for my aunt Carrie.”
“Is that what you think is the best thing?” she asked, surprised and pleased. “How come?”
“’Cause that’s what you told me is the best thing.”
Carrie laughed. “Yeah, well, there’s something even better.”
“What?”
“You aren’t growing up afraid all the time the way I was. Jilly’s never going to come back. You won’t ever have to see her . . . not ever. That’s definitely the best thing.”
A shiver ran down Carrie’s back the second the words were out of her mouth. Was she tempting fate by making such a boast? Could one summon up a demon simply by proclaiming that it didn’t exist? The chill felt like a premonition. But of course it wasn’t. She was just a worrier, that was all. Shaking off her grim feeling, she went back to work.
The following week was busy. Avery chose pink for her walls, and Carrie added white trim. She thought the bedroom looked like an explosion of Pepto-Bismol, but Avery loved it. She was all settled in the big front bedroom by Sunday afternoon. Carrie’s suitcases had been packed in the trunk of the car. Carrie was going to sleep in Avery’s old bedroom on the grossly uncomfortable daybed her last night.
They had all of Carrie’s favorite foods for dinner that night—forbidden food on her perpetual diet—fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and green beans simmering in bacon fat. Lola had made a fresh salad, using the vegetables she’d grown in her backyard, but Carrie barely touched it. Since she’d already decided to take a day off from her diet—one wonderful, guilt-free day—she ate two helpings of everything else with unbridled gusto.
After Grandma Lola had read Avery a story and tucked her into bed, Carrie went in to kiss her good night. She turned on the nightlight, shut the bedroom door, and then went back downstairs to put some last-minute paperwork in her carry-on.
One task led to another, and she didn’t get back upstairs until after eleven. Lola was already asleep in her room at the back of the house. Carrie checked on Avery—oh, how she was going to miss the pip-squeak—and she almost burst into laughter when she spotted her niece in the big bed. The child was wearing at least five necklaces and four bracelets. The tarnished tiara with most of its glass diamonds missing was tangled in strands of her hair and tilted to the side of her head. She was sleeping on her back clutching a worn-out teddy bear in her arm. Carrie sat down on the bed and tried not to disturb her niece as she gently removed the jewelry.
After she put the trinkets back in the box, she walked quietly to the door. She was pulling it closed when Avery whispered, “Good night, Carrie.”
She’d already closed her eyes by the time Carrie turned around to look at her. In the soft glow from the streetlight the little girl looked like a cherub. Carrie didn’t think she could love her any more if she were her very own child. The instinct to protect was overwhelming. She hated the thought of going away, felt as though she were abandoning her.
She had to leave, she reminded herself. Avery’s future depended on her. When she was financially secure, she would be able to support her mother and her niece in the style she felt they both deserved. Guilt was a powerful deterent, but Carrie wasn’t about to let it interfere with her plans. She had her goals and her dreams, and Avery and Lola were tied to both.
“I’m doing the right thing,” she whispered as she walked down the hall to the bathroom. She was still trying to convince herself when she stepped into the shower.
Carrie had just turned on the water full blast when the slamming of the car doors awakened Avery. She heard a deep laugh and got out of bed to see who was making the noise. She saw a man and a woman. They were standing by the side of an old, beat-up car, their heads together, laughing and talking.
The woman had golden hair. The man was as dark as she was fair. He had something in his hand. Avery peeked around the side of the window so they wouldn’t see her and maybe shout at her to stop being nosy. The man raised a bottle and took a big drink. Then he offered the bottle to the woman, and she tilted her head back and took a drink too.
What were they doing in front of Grandma’s house? Avery got down on her knees and hid behind the lace curtains. She ducked when the woman turned and started up the sidewalk. The mean-looking man didn’t follow her. He leaned against the fender of the car, one ankle crossed over the other. He took another drink, then threw the empty bottle into the street. The sound of the glass shattering was almost as loud as Avery’s gasp. It was bad to litter. Grandma Lola told her so.
The man wasn’t looking at the house. He was watching the street, so Avery thought it was safe to straighten up and get a better look. She saw something sticking out of his back pocket when he turned toward the car. What was it? Maybe another bottle?
The mean-looking man wearing the dirty T-shirt must be awful thirsty ’cause he reached behind and pulled the bottle out. Only it wasn’t a bottle after all. She gasped again. The bad man was holding a shiny black gun. Just like the kind she’d seen on television.
She was too excited to be scared. Just wait until she told Peyton what she was seeing. Should she wake up Grandma and Carrie and tell them about the gun? Maybe they’d call Officer Friendly at the police station and then he would come and take the bad man away.
Avery jumped when the banging started at the front door. It was the lady, she thought, calling on Grandma in the middle of the night.
The lady was shouting terrible bad words. Avery ran back to bed and hid under the covers in case her grandmother checked on her before she went downstairs to tell the lady to stop making so much noise. She knew what her grandma would say to the woman. “Are you trying to wake the dead?” That’s what she’d say, all right. It was the same thing she always said to Carrie when she had the television or the stereo up too loud. But if Grandma looked in and saw that Avery was out of bed before she went downstairs, then Avery would never know what was going on.
Sometimes you had to do bad things to find out anything important. Peyton had told her that it wasn’t awful bad to listen to other people talking as long as you didn’t ever tell anyone what you heard.
The banging turned into pounding as the lady demanded that Grandma let her in.
Grandma opened the door, and Avery heard the lady shouting some more. She understood every word she said. Avery suddenly wasn’t curious any longer. She was terrified. Throwing the sheet off and jumping to the floor, she dropped to her belly and crawled underneath the bed. She scooted up to the headboard and rolled into a ball with her knees tucked under her chin. She was a big girl, too big to cry. The tears streaming down her cheeks were just there because she was squeezing her eyes shut so tight. She cupped her hands over her ears to block out the terrible yelling.
Avery knew who the bad lady was. She was her no-good mama, Jilly, and she had come back to take her away.
Chapter 1
THE WAIT WAS MAKING AVERY CRAZY. SHE SAT IN HER LITTLE square cubicle, her back against the wall, one leg crossed over the other, drumming her fingertips against the desktop with one hand and holding an icepack against her wounded knee with the other. What was taking so long? Why hadn’t Andrews called? She stared hard at the phone, willing it to ring. Nothing. Not a sound. Turning in her swivel chair, she checked the digital clock for the hundredth time. It was now 10:05, same as it was ten seconds ago. For Pete’s sake, she should have heard something by now.
Mel Gibson stood up and leaned over the partition separating his workspace from Avery’s and gave her a sympathetic look. That was his honest-to-goodness, real name, but Mel thought it was holding him back because no one in the law enforcement agency would ever take him seriously. Yet, he refused to have it legally changed to “Brad Pitt,” as his supportive coworkers had suggested.
“Hi, Brad,” Avery said. She and the others were still trying out the new name to see if it fit. Last week it was “George Clooney,” and that name got about the same reaction “Brad” was getting now, a glare and a reminder that his name wasn’t “George,” it wasn’t “Brad,” and it wasn’t “Mel.” It was “Melvin.”
“You probably should have heard by now,” he said.
She refused to let him rile her. Tall, geeky-looking, with an extremely prominent Adam’s apple, Mel had the annoying habit of using his third finger to push his thick wire-rimmed glasses back up on his ski nose. Margo, another coworker, told Avery that Mel did it on purpose. It was his way of letting the other three know how superior he felt he was.
Avery disagreed. Mel wouldn’t do anything improper. He lived by a code of ethics he believed personified the FBI. He was dedicated, responsible, hardworking, ambitious, and he dressed for the job he wanted . . . with one little glitch. Although he was only twenty-seven years old, his clothing resembled the attire agents wore back in the fifties. Black suits, white long-sleeved shirts with button-down collars, skinny black ties, black wingtip shoes with a perfect shine, and a crew cut she knew he got trimmed once every two weeks.
For all of his strange habits—he could quote any line from The FBI Story, starring Jimmy Stewart—he had an incredibly sharp mind and was the ultimate team player. He just needed to lighten up a bit. That was all.
“I mean, don’t you think you should have heard by now?” He sounded as worried as she felt.
“It’s still early.” Then, less than five seconds later, she said, “You’re right. We should have heard by now.”
“No,” he corrected. “I said that you should have heard. Lou and Margo and I didn’t have anything to do with your decision to call in the SWAT team.”
Oh, God, what had she been thinking? “In other words, you don’t want to take the flak if I’m wrong?”
“Not flak,” he said. “The fall. I need this job. It’s the closest I’m going to get to being an agent. With my eyesight . . .”
“I know, Mel.”
“Melvin,” he automatically corrected. “And the benefits are great.”
Margo stood so she could join the conversation. “The pay sucks, though.”
Mel shrugged. “So does the work environment,” he said. “But still . . . it’s the FBI.”
“What’s wrong with our work environment?” Lou asked as he too stood. His workstation was on Avery’s left. Mel’s was directly in front of hers, and Margo’s cubicle was adjacent to Lou’s. The pen—as they lovingly called their hellhole office space—was located behind the mechanical room with its noisy water heaters and compressors. “I mean, really, what’s wrong with it?” he asked again, sounding bewildered.
Lou was as clueless as ever, but also endearing, Avery thought. Whenever she looked at him, she was reminded of Pig-Pen in the old Peanuts cartoon. Lou always looked disheveled. He was absolutely brilliant, yet he couldn’t seem to find his mouth when he was eating, and his short-sleeved shirt usually had at least one stain. This morning there were two. One was jelly from the raspberry-filled doughnuts Margo had brought in. The big red spot was just above the black ink stain from the cartridge pen in his white shirt pocket.
Lou tucked in his shirttail for the third time that morning and said, “I like being down here. It’s cozy.”
“We work in the corner of the basement without any windows,” Margo pointed out.
“So what?” Lou asked. “Where we work doesn’t make us any less important. We’re all part of a team.”
“I’d like to be a part of the team that has windows,” Margo said.
“Can’t have everything. Say, Avery, how’s the knee?” he asked, suddenly changing subjects.
She gingerly lifted the icepack and surveyed the damage. “The swelling’s gone down.”