Gifted (Awakening Book 2)

by Jacqueline Brown

  Instead, I went in the other direction. I passed my sisters’ rooms. Their doors were open. Lisieux was in her bed. I wondered if she was asleep. The next room, Avi’s, was empty. I stepped inside. It was clean … it was never clean. Dad was always telling her to clean it, but she never did. Not really. She’d stuff things under the bed, into the back of her closet, and behind the bookcase. But now …. I lifted the bedspread. It was clean, actually clean. I should have been pleased by this. Her room usually was atrocious, but this … it was unnatural. This wasn’t my baby sister’s room. She wasn’t the sullen, withdrawn neat freak. I was.

  My eyes burned from the transformation Avi had gone through. It wasn’t fair to her. None of this was fair to her. She deserved better. Better from me and way better from our father. I left the room; I could stand the pristine organization no longer.

  I entered Luca’s room without bothering to knock. He was sitting by the fireplace, a laptop in front of him. Technically it was Gigi’s laptop, but she rarely used it. She’d asked him to use it to keep the updates fresh. He knew it was an excuse and appreciated having a way to get online.

  When he saw my face, he immediately came to me.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” he asked with trepidation.

  I shook my head, biting my lip in a futile attempt not to cry. I hated that I cried so easily. “Nothing. Just the same from last night.”

  “Which part?” he asked.

  I allowed my head to fall forward. Last night had been so long. “The last part,” I mumbled.

  “Your dad?”

  I nodded, staring at the fire, trying hard not to think of anything else … only the flames, the flames that rose and fell and did not die.

  “Did you tell him you saw him passed out?” he asked, his hand on my arm. He led me toward the flames.

  “Not with those words. After the others were gone, I asked, ‘How long?’ ”

  “What did he say?”

  “He was silent for a long time, so long I started to wonder if I’d spoken the words or imagined them. Then he said ‘Too long.’ ” Fresh tears of disgust escaped.

  Luca lowered his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe one night is too long, in his opinion, which it is. To drink like that, I mean.”

  “You should’ve seen him in the kitchen, cooking French toast for everyone. He acted as if nothing was wrong. He seemed to be in a great mood, yet last night he was passed out drunk on his couch. He lied so easily.”

  Luca guided me to his beanbag and sat on the floor beside me. The fire’s warmth helped me keep from crying.

  “He’s lost,” Luca said, his voice soft.

  “We’re all lost.”

  Luca was silent for a moment. “Do you think he knows he’s lost?”

  I considered his question; he was right. There was a difference between someone who accepted their brokenness and someone who didn’t. Everyone was broken, to different degrees. Was my dad able to accept the extent of his brokenness? Not in a way that caused crippling shame, but in a way that allowed him to face the truth.

  A knock on the door frame drew our attention.

  “You two are awfully cozy,” Sam said as she and Jason entered the room.

  “Paul isn’t going to be okay with that,” Jason added. “Not in his house, or anywhere, but definitely not in his house.”

  “We were talking,” Luca said, each of us sitting straighter, creating space between us where there’d been none before.

  “Of course you were.” Jason chuckled and sat on the cedar box at the foot of Luca’s bed. “That’s what all eighteen-year-old boys and girls do when they’re alone in front of a fire.”

  Sam squeezed between us and sat on the hearth. “Oh, that feels so good on my back,” she said, wiggling with joy. “Our room is still trying to get warm.”

  Luca and I didn’t respond.

  “I guess you were just talking. You both look so serious,” Sam said. “Clearly, you two don’t understand the typical boy, girl, teenage thing.”

  “You and I both know,” Jason said to his wife, “there isn’t a typical thing about either of them.”

  Sam raised her arms, stretching in front of the fire. “I don’t suppose there is,” she said with the slightest hint of sorrow.

  I put my head in my hands and stared at the pale blue rug Gigi had bought for Luca’s room. It arrived the same day as the beanbag chair and the plaid blue-and-gray comforter, all things she thought a boy simply must have.

  Jason said, “Does it have to do with your dad?”

  I didn’t lift my head. I had the feeling that Luca gave them a “not now” signal, because the room remained silent.

  After several long moments, Sam spoke again, her voice upbeat. “Never mind about that. Tell us about your dinner last night. I’ve been dying to hear all about it.”

  Jason said, “She’s been nearly killing me talking about it. Wondering what you ate, what you talked about, if you’re going to go out again. The list continues.”

  My head slumped even further toward the carpet.

  “It wasn’t good!” Sam said with a gasp.

  “Parts of it were,” Luca answered quickly.

  I moaned softly to myself.

  “It couldn’t have been that bad since you two are still sitting here next to each other,” Jason said with a surprising amount of concern.

  It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that they cared if Luca and I had a nice time together, not just because they wanted us to have a nice evening, but they wanted us to have a nice evening together. They saw something in the two of us that made them believe we could be more than friends.

  “It was nice being with Luca,” I said.

  Sam asked, “Did something happen? Was the food bad?”

  “Everything okay with the jeep?” Jason asked, beginning to stand, I supposed to go check on the jeep.

  “The food was good, the jeep is fine,” Luca answered.

  “Then what happened?” Sam asked.

  Sam’s expression was growing more worried with each passing second.

  “I have an active imagination, that’s all,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Jason said.

  Luca said to me, “I spent the night researching the restaurant. Nothing’s there.”

  “Or there could have been a trick,” I added. “The waiter was awful.”

  “What about the restaurant and Siena’s imagination?” Sam asked, with a catch in her voice.

  “Nothing. I must’ve imagined it, or the waiter … he’s friends with Beth. He could’ve done something that made me think I was seeing something when I wasn’t. Maybe I hallucinated. Food poisoning can cause that sometimes.”

  Jason said, “Did you get food poisoning?”

  I wished I could say yes. “Not in the traditional sense. Maybe my imagination getting weird was the symptom.”

  “Tell us what you imagined,” Sam said forcefully.

  “Kids. In the attic, there were terrified kids.” I wished I could believe it was merely my imagination.

  “You left them there?” Jason asked, his body activated like he was ready to fight someone in order to rescue the children.

  “They weren’t really there,” Luca said calmly.

  Jason’s posture relaxed, but his face showed increased confusion.

  I said, “I saw them when I touched a piece of wood in the attic. When I moved my hand away, they were gone.”

  Sam put her hand to her open mouth. She stood up, turning her back to us.

  “Why were you in the attic?” Jason asked.

  “I didn’t know it was an attic. I thought it was another way out of the restroom.”

  “She was trying to avoid the waiter,” Luca added. “It was a trick of her mind, or the waiter, or something. It must’ve been. I spent the whole night—or at least when I wasn’t in the basement—researching the restaurant. Nothing happened there.”

  “It’s an old building,” Jason said. “No
t that I’m believing Siena now sees ghosts. I’m just saying it’s not like that place was built to look old. It was built, and over the next hundred years or so it became old.”

  “I dug through every possible source,” Luca said with certainty. “Old newspaper articles, the property appraiser’s website, I researched each of the owners. When it was a business, I researched the people who worked there. I’m not sure what Siena saw, but it wasn’t the history of that place.”

  Sam turned to face us, her fingers against her lips. Despair had washed over her. Luca’s hope faded as he studied her expression.

  “Last night, after you left,” she said, her voice weak, “Gemma told me she never liked going to that restaurant. She said the food was good, but the place itself, she couldn’t get past it.”

  “What does that mean, Sam?” Jason asked.

  She rubbed her hands together, her right thumb pushing into the palm of her left hand. She wasn’t trying to hide her anxiety. “Gemma said it was a long time ago, long before she was born, but her mom told her and she couldn’t forget.”

  Luca went to his aunt. They looked at each other, and then she turned away. His expression became more worried.

  “Gemma said her grandparents were friends with the people who built it … just as evil.” Sam crossed her arms in front of her. “She said she could never go to the BayTree because of what happened there.”

  Luca took hold of her arms, forcing her to focus on him. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Gemma didn’t say.”

  Luca released her.

  “You don’t know anything?” Jason asked.

  Sam shook her head slowly.

  “Then why are you worrying us all?” he said, frustrated with his wife.

  “Gemma didn’t tell me because she said it was too awful to speak about.”

  Luca turned to me. “Come on,” he said, taking hold of my right arm and drawing me up to my feet.

  “Oww,” I cried. My knees were stiff after sitting a while. “Where are we going?”

  “To find your grandmother,” Luca said, pulling me from his room.

  Twenty-One

  “What happened in the restaurant?” Luca blurted out as we entered Avi’s room, where Gigi was sitting in the upholstered rocking chair in the corner. Jackson, curled up on the rug at her feet, had raised his head when we entered.

  “What restaurant?” Avi asked. She was placing a little porcelain doll onto a bed in the dollhouse.

  Gigi’s expression changed from one of calm contentment to concern.

  “The restaurant from last night, the BayTree,” Luca said, his words so rushed it was difficult for me to understand him.

  Gigi’s face darkened—she understood his meaning. Sam and Jason were right behind us.

  “What’s going on?” Lisieux asked from the doorway. Jackson stood and went to her. She petted his ears. Together they went to Avi’s bed. Lisieux sat on the bed, Jackson on the rug near it.

  “Tell me what happened there.” Luca’s voice was shaking. He paid no attention to anyone else in the room—only Gigi.

  “Did you sense something last night? Why didn’t you tell us?” Gigi asked. She was equally focused on Luca; she was concerned for him, afraid he was the one who had discovered the restaurant’s secret.

  “Tell me what happened, please,” he said, kneeling beside her, begging for an answer.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said, reaching her wrinkled hand for his.

  He didn’t correct her. “Tell me,” he said, holding her hand.

  She sunk back into the chair, appearing smaller than she was, or smaller than I believed she was.

  “It was a long time ago. It happened when my mom was young,” she said, gliding back in the chair. “Before she left this place, long before my time.” Gigi paused, as if hoping her second-hand knowledge excused her and she wouldn’t have to tell us more.

  “Go on, please,” Luca begged, still kneeling beside her.

  The rest of us stood, except for my sisters, sitting on Avi’s bed. Jackson was on his feet, and Lisieux absently rubbed one of his silky ears.

  Gigi said, “She told me she never liked the man who lived there, or his wife. But her parents were friends with them, so they went there often. It took longer to get there, back then. It took longer to get everywhere. When they went, they spent the day, but never the night. She was grateful for that. She said occasionally that couple came to visit her parents at the inn. They had one small boy. My mother would take him out to the trails to try and give him something normal,” she said, her expression becoming sadder, her body shrinking even more into the upholstered chair.

  “The BayTree was originally someone’s house?” Luca said with fear.

  That information must have been missing from his research.

  “Yes, but I don’t think it’s been one since their time,” Gigi said.

  “How did I miss that?” Luca said, blaming himself for some unknown crime. “I searched everywhere.”

  “It was built so long ago, I can’t imagine records go that far back. They built it themselves. The land had been in her family long before that. Once they were … once they were no longer occupying it, it sat abandoned for quite a while. Long enough for people to forget, I suppose,” she said, her voice drifting off. “By the time my husband and I moved to the area, a store was using the building. I’m not sure who they bought it from.”

  “Johnson’s Market was listed as the first owner,” Luca said under his breath.

  “Yes, that was the name,” Gigi said, rocking in the chair and smoothing one of Avi’s blankets on her lap.

  “They were nice people. I felt bad I never was able to bring myself to go in there. I would have liked to support them. Oh, well. They ended up leaving town after five years or so. The grocery business is hard in such a small area. They sold it to a doctor, who lived on the second floor and saw patients on the first. His family was there for a while, ten or fifteen years, I think.”

  “Sixteen,” Luca said.

  He’d done his homework … but not well enough.

  “After that, it was a restaurant, I believe,” Gigi said, trying to remember.

  “Then a bed-and-breakfast, then one restaurant after another,” Luca said, his back slumping against the foot of Avi’s bed.

  “Yes,” Gigi said. “One after another.”

  Jason said, “I’ve never heard anything weird about that building.”

  “No, no, you wouldn’t have,” Gigi said. “People have forgotten. Even by the time I moved back to town with George, people had already forgotten. But I hadn’t.” She rocked a moment and said, “How could I?” Her gaze extended to the past.

  “What happened?” Avi whispered, her hand clasped in Lisieux’s.

  Gigi blinked, returning to her granddaughter’s room. She straightened her shoulders a little. “I was never told the details, thank God. The generalities were enough. Though even if I did know specifics, I wouldn’t share them with you. But since I don’t know, it’s better for all of us.”

  Gigi’s eyes fell on Luca. “I’m sorry you felt them. I should have warned you. I was foolish to think that what happened a hundred years ago didn’t matter. I can tell by your expression it does … a great deal. I’m sorry for not warning you.”

  “Please,” Luca begged, “tell us what happened.”

  “There were children,” she said sadly. “Children who were taken, children who … I’m not sure anyone knows how many there were.”

  “Children like me?” Avi gasped in horror, Lisieux holding on to her.

  Jason turned to the wall. He was not a man who liked to show his emotions, though he was a man who felt a great many of them.

  “Like I said, I don’t know the details, I don’t know their ages, only that ….”

  “Their skin was dark,” I said meekly.

  “How did you … ?” she asked, staring at me and then Luca.

  He faded onto the floor,
his expression blank, unreadable.

  “Were you able to feel them?” Gigi asked Luca. “I’m so sorry. I should have thought it through. I should have realized it would be a problem for you.” Her fingers reached out, touching his dark face and his even darker hair.

  He took a long breath. “It wasn’t me,” he managed to say.

  “Then who?” she said kindly.

  I wondered if I should answer. Luca didn’t have the strength. But my voice didn’t come. Until Thomas died, I thought Luca was insane. Now I was seeing things that happened a hundred years ago. Thomas’s pale arm dripping blood flashed in my mind. I closed my eyes, trying to force out the image.

  Sam’s voice broke the silence. “It wasn’t Luca. It was Siena.”

  “Siena?” Lisieux said as Avi clung to her.

  Jackson’s body tensed, the hairs on his back rising as if he expected an imminent attack.

  I held my arms tight across my body. I felt so cold, so alone. “I saw them,” I said in a whisper, the only voice that would come.

  “How is that possible?” Gigi asked, doing what she could to make her voice calm.

  “I-I touched the wood in the attic, and I saw them,” I said.

  “The attic? Why were you in the attic?” Lisieux said with an accusing tone, like this was my fault.

  She was right. It was my fault.

  “I didn’t know it was the attic. There was a door off the restroom. I was trying to find a different way out,” I stated.

  Gigi’s hand fell from Luca’s face and hung limply over the chair arm. “The attic is where he kept the children,” Gigi said, her voice shaking, along with her body. “How could you have known that?”

  No one spoke. My sisters were staring at me like I was a freak. I focused on the dollhouse, half expecting the pieces in it to come to life. That could not be any stranger than my visions of the gruesome past.

  “It’s a gift,” Sam said, breaking the silence. “Some people are given that gift.” However, her tone did not give the impression it was a gift you wanted to receive.

  “Excuse me,” Luca said abruptly, standing and leaving the room.

  Jackson whined and followed him out.

  “Where did he go?” Lisieux asked.