The Doll in the Garden

Chapter 1

The Cat Hater

THE DAY WE MOVED into Monkton Mills, I made an enemy of our new landlady. My mother and I were renting the top floor of what had once been a big single-family house, and the owner, Miss Cooper, was sitting on the front porch when we arrived in our rented truck. She watched us walk up the sidewalk toward the house, and the first thing she said was, "What's in there?"

She was speaking to me, but she was looking at the plastic cat carrier I was toting.

"It's my cat Oscar," I said, trying hard not to stare at her. Miss Cooper was the oldest human being I'd ever seen. Her face was furrowed with wrinkles, and her nose jutted out like a hawk's beak, sharp and cruel. The hand grasping her cane was knotted with veins, and her collarbones stuck out above the loose neckline of her flowered dress.

The real estate agent who'd helped us rind a place we could afford had warned Mom and me that Miss Cooper wasn't very friendly and didn't particularly like children. So, hoping to soften the old woman's heart, I smiled politely at her. "Would you like to see him?"

"Certainly not!" Miss Cooper levered herself up from her rocking chair, and the old dog sleeping beside her got up too and growled. He was black and not very big, but he had a sharp, pointed nose and a mean look around the eyes.

"I detest cats," Miss Cooper went on. "You take that creature upstairs right now and don't ever let me see it in the yard. If it kills one bird, I'll send it straight to the pound!"

"Grrrr," said the dog who obviously hated cats as much as his mistress did.

I looked at Mom. She was shifting her heavy typewriter case from one hand to the other, her face worried. "I'm Jan Cummings." She stuck out her free hand and smiled, but Miss Cooper merely stared at her.

"And this is Ashley," Mom continued, her smile fading. "I'm sorry you weren't here the day Mrs. Walker showed me the apartment."

"Ashley." Miss Cooper turned back to me and sniffed. "What kind of name is that? It doesn't sound proper for a girl." She poked her face closer to mine. "How old are you?"

"Almost eleven," I said, backing off a little. Up close, she was kind of scary.

"Almost? That means ten, if you ask me." Miss Cooper frowned, adding even more creases to her forehead, and the dog moved a little closer, sniffing at Oscar's carrier. "Well, I'm eighty-eight, and I know what girls your age are like," she went on. "Don't think you can get away with anything just because I'm old. There's nothing wrong with my eves or my ears, missy."

"Don't worry about Ashley," Mom said. Putting her arm around my shoulders, she drew me close. "She won't give you any trouble."

Miss Cooper turned her attention to Mom. "Where's Mr. Cummings?" she asked.

Mom's face reddened. "It's just Ashley and me," she said calmly.

"Divorced?" Miss Cooper leaned toward us, taking in every detail: Mom's tall, thin figure, her long brown hair, her faded jeans, her old tee shirt, and me, a smaller version of Mom right down to my freckles and worn-out running shoes. Then she sniffed and turned away. "Come on. Max," she snapped at the dog who was growling at the pet carrier.

Two steps later, she looked back. "I don't want a lot of noise up there," she said. 'Til complain to the real estate company if my sleep is disturbed."

We stood where we were and watched the old woman shuffle inside and slam the door behind her. In the sudden silence, Mom and I looked at each other.

"Well," Mom said, "so much for a friendly welcome." With a sigh, she followed the sidewalk around the corner to a steep flight of stairs at the back of the house. They were more like a fire escape than anything else, and I was glad we didn't have much more furniture; the movers had brought the heavy things earlier. But getting the little that was left up to our apartment wasn't going to be easy.

Mom paused on the porch at the top of the steps. "Isn't the lawn lovely?" she asked.

I stared down at the neatly mown expanse of grass that swept away from the house. In its center was a circular bed of bright flowers. Bird feeders hung from several trees, and a pair of catbirds splashed in a stone bath.

In sharp contrast, an overgrown mass of shrubbery and towering weeds cast a shadow across the end of the yard. It must have been a rose garden once, but, from the look of it, the bushes had grown wild for years. Honeysuckle, wild flowers, and weeds struggled together to reach the sun.

Tall hedges bordered both sides of the lawn, but from the porch I could see across them. Next door was a big white house similar to Miss Cooper's, trimmed with fancy woodwork and graced with porches front and back, well-tended despite the bicycles in the driveway. On the other side was an empty lot, grown high with Queen Anne's lace and black-eyed Susans.

"Can I let Oscar out of his carrier now?" I asked Mom. He was meowing and sticking his paw through the bars like a prisoner in a jail movie.

"Put him in your room and close the door, Ash," Mom said. "We don't want him to run outside while we're carrying things in."

My room was at the back of the house, and from my windows I could see the yard, the garden, and the empty field next door. Way beyond were the mountains, hazy blue against the sky. It all seemed very peaceful, and I was glad we'd come to Monkton Mills. Mom and I needed a place like this, I thought. In a new town, far away from everything that reminded us of Daddy, maybe we could stop feeling sad.

To keep myself from thinking about my father, I turned away from the window and opened the door of the pet carrier. "Come on out," I told Oscar.

For a minute Oscar looked at me as if he thought I was playing a trick on him. Then he crept forward and stared at his new surroundings. Ignoring my caress, he slid out from under my hand and ran around the empty room, meowing continuously and staying close to the walls, his belly almost dragging along the floor. Finding nothing to hide under, he darted back into his carrier and crouched at the back.

Mom opened my door a crack and looked at the cat. "Poor old Oscar," she said. "Just leave him in there and come help, Ash. He needs time to get used to moving."

***

Mom and I made at least six trips up the steps to get our things into the apartment. To make it worse, Max barked every time we went up and down the stairs. When we were finally finished, it was late in the afternoon and we were hot and tired and Mom still had to take the rental truck back to Baltimore.

"Why don't you just stay here and rest. Ash?" Mom suggested. "I'll pick up a pizza on the way home, and we can eat it on the porch."

After Mom left, I sat down on the top step. A gentle breeze stirred the bushes in the garden, and I breathed in the sweet fragrance of honeysuckle and roses.

Sitting there, staring at the jungle at the end of the lawn, I wondered why Miss Cooper had let her garden grow wild. The rest of her yard was so neat and tidy. Even bush had been trimmed into a cone or a ball and surrounded by a circle of pine mulch. The flower bed was edged with white stones, and the flowers themselves were laid out in patterns according to size and color.

But the garden was a wilderness, and the more I looked at it, the more inviting it seemed. Lush and green, the bushes swayed in the breeze, promising cool shade and privacy. It was a place to be alone, a place of secrets, a forest for me to explore and make my own.

But not now. I was too hot and tired to move. Lazily I told myself I'd save the garden for tomorrow when I felt more energetic. Yawning, I closed my eyes and stretched. But when I looked at the garden again, I saw a flash of white in the weeds. Was it a cat?

Remembering Miss Cooper's attitude toward Oscar, I forgot my fatigue and ran down the steps. If a cat had ventured into the yard, I'd rescue it before the old woman saw it and called the pound.

As I dashed across the grass, I had the strongest feeling that someone was watching me; I could almost feel eyes boring into the back of my neck. Afraid Miss Cooper had spotted the cat, I glanced over my shoulder. The shades at her windows were drawn and there was no sign of her or Max, but next door I glimpsed a flash of red in the leaves of a tall tree.

Stopping for a moment, I stared hard, sure it wasn't a bird, but I couldn't see a face or even a leg or an arm, just a bit of red that didn't belong there.

"Nosy, aren't you?" I muttered.

A mockingbird answered, and a cat meowed from somewhere in the garden. Reminded of my purpose, I turned my back on the spy, ducked my head to avoid the thorny arm of a rosebush, and pushed my way through the weeds into the cool, green shade of the garden.