Now she was using “the look” on me. “Tell me what’s wrong; you only use that look on me when something is worrying you.”
“Mer, what about me?”
Maybe I was having a dim moment, but I didn’t get it. “What do you mean?”
“Can I stay and help?”
“Stay . . . what, here? Why would you want to?” I saw in a flash that I had hurt her feelings. I reached across the table and took her hand, squeezing gently. “Shi, you know you can stay as long as you want. I just meant, I’m not sure if that is what you’d really want to do.”
She looked startled. “Don’t you know? You’re my best friend. You’re the one who makes me feel good about myself, even when I’m having a bad day. You’re my . . . my BFF.”
Yeah, I teared up. I squeezed her hand again and released. “If you and Magic want to stay, I’d love to have you. You’re free to hang out here as long as you want, or go whenever you want.”
“That’s why I love you,” she whispered. “I’ve never had anyone say that I’m free, before.”
I swallowed hard. To know why, you have to understand Shilo. There is much about her past that is a mystery to me, and I have never pressed her on it. She’ll tell me when she feels like it. When I met her she had no apparent family, and shared an apartment with six other skinny, frightened, teenage models. She had come so far since then that I didn’t realize, sometimes that the skinny, frightened girl was still inside her.
We went for a long walk after dinner. It was a beautiful evening. In the cavernous wilderness of Manhattan, one could forget (if you never made it to Central Park) that pavement and concrete were not natural walking surfaces. We wove between the holes, some filled, most not, and waded through the weeds. The ground had been warmed all day by the sun, and as a cooler breeze puffed to life, I could feel Mother Earth radiating back that warmth under me.
We walked the entire open portion of my property, and even explored some of the outbuildings, like little kids looking for a playhouse. There was a huge garage, which the lane that circled the castle led to. Its big, double doors were locked, but when I stood on a cinder block by a window and cupped my hands around my eyes, I could barely make out that there were a couple of vehicles inside, one that looked like a gangster car—you know those long, low-slung forties cars with a running board, the ones you see in gangster movies? It might even be the one I remembered Uncle Mel picking us up in, from the train station, on that long-ago day. Would it still work, I wondered?
There was a falling-down ramshackle shed; when I sidled up to it while Shilo picked wildflowers (aka weeds), it was clear that the shed had not only been broken into, but it looked like someone had been camping out in it. Could be kids from town, or transients, but either way, it was going to stop. I made a mental note to ask McGill where I could get a heavy-duty padlock. Even farther from the castle there was a big barn, almost on the edge of the woods. I was not going to explore that; not today.
The woods were like walls around the castle, a long, straight line, a right angle, and another long straight line, the same over and over. The castle was boxed in by dense forest that was made impassable, in most spots, by thick, tangled weeds and vines along the perimeter. It was like a fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty, I think? The one with the impenetrable thicket of thorns. Once I got closer, I was eerily aware of something watching me, and I saw a spot of orange that melted back into the gloomy gray and green. The attack cat again, supposedly Becket, Uncle Melvyn’s faithful companion. But I was too distracted by the magnificence of the forest, and by a realization that struck me as I stood and stared. A pattern emerged in my vision. The trees were mostly lined up in perfect rows, like marching soldiers. “I wonder if the Wynter family planted all of these trees,” I said, pointing out the straight lines to Shilo.
“That sure doesn’t look natural.” She shivered.
Doc English had said my grandfather and Uncle Melvyn had planted trees. Could this forest be the results of their labor? “Someday I’d like to take a walk in there.”
“Someday,” Shilo agreed, “but not tonight.”
It was getting dark and the moon was rising. The cool breeze had become cold. “Okay,” I said and laughed, linking my arm through hers. “We’ll head back now.”
I made us cocoa, and we drank it, then headed upstairs. As we got ready for bed, I told her about my day—we kept both ends of the Jack and Jill bathroom open to talk to each other, then closed it at night—and my run-in with Tom Turner. “I don’t know what is up with him. Big galoot.” Uneasy, I looked out my window at the Bobcat excavator, and beyond to the black woods. “I wish McGill wouldn’t leave the excavator here. It’s like an invitation.”