“Of course,” I say, extending my hand to her. Her grip is weak and her hand is moist. Her hazel eyes look sad and she’s got dark circles under her eyes like my mom. “I’m glad Pastor West found a good use for the swing set.”
“Thank you,” she says slowly, forming the words with what appears to be great deliberation. “Silvia will be most grateful too, I am sure.”
I sit down across from her and my mother sits between us. “We are so sorry for your losses,” Mom says. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, losing your one sister and your other sister’s medical issues.” Mom is being tactful, those “medical issues” being mental in nature.
It makes me think of my trip to Saint George with Helena to meet her mother. What Helena has been through with her unstable, knife-wielding mother. Physical illnesses are difficult, like the big-C, but I can’t imagine how hard it is to cope with mental illness.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Edwards says, bringing her cup to her lips and blowing on the steam. The smell of mint is strong, Mom has served mint tea to us all, and I am grateful for it. My stomach isn’t doing well at all and the mint is helpful. “And I’m sorry to hear about your…” she adds, looking at me.
“My relapse,” I finish. Mrs. Edwards nods sharply and bites her lower lip. “It’s okay to talk about it.” Past Ann Edwards I can see Joe Edwards, Pastor West, and my father eyeing the swing set. I feel a brief pang of longing for the time when I was young and healthy and my mother had to yell at me to get off the swing.
“You are very brave,” Mrs. Edwards says.
I shrug. “So are you, and kind to take in your niece.”
She tries to smile again, but the attempt seems to be in vain, it’s a twisted little thing. Her smile conveys only sorrow. I find myself wondering what Lionel saw in her, but maybe that was a happy time then. Maybe the burden of what has happened has changed her. How could it not?
No one talks for a bit, the clanging of tools against metal from outside and the sipping of tea really the only sounds. It’s awkward.
“When does Silvia arrive?” my mother finally asks.
“We are driving up to Salt Lake tomorrow to get her,” Mrs. Edwards says.
“What a big change to your household,” Mom says. “If there is anything I can do, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Thank you,” she says.
It’s all so awkward. I am trying to think of an excuse to go back to my bedroom—I could fake a puke attack—when my mother takes a deep breath and straightens up.
“So much tragedy for you in the last year,” Mom says.
Ann bites at her lower lip again and nods. That lower lip biting seems to be a nervous habit.
“Did you know Lionel Malak well? So terrible what happened to him.”
I am watching Mrs. Edwards closely. When Lionel’s name is mentioned, her eyes look even sadder and I can see them mist up. She doesn’t cry, but it looks like she wants to. She takes a sip of her tea to, I believe, try to cover up her reaction.
“Not the kind of thing we see in our town,” Mom continues. “It makes me worry about Henry and Aaron at the bookstore if there is some crazy person running around.”
Mrs. Edwards reacts to the words “crazy person.” She jumps, just a bit, as if there had been a loud noise or someone had yelled.
“And they never caught the perpetrator,” Mom says, her forehead wrinkled in concern. I have to wonder how much of it is put on. I had no idea my mom had so much Nancy Drew in her.
“Are you okay, Mrs. Edwards?” I ask. She’s gone a bit pale and is blinking too much.
“I’m sorry,” my mom says, leaning towards her. “Have I upset you?”
“No… No…” she says, holding her hand up. “I am fine. It’s just… Well, you are right. There have been too many tragedies. I hope that is all behind us now. That we can just go about our lives in peace.”
The way she says it makes me believe she hasn’t had much peace in her life lately.
Lionel Malak is furious with me. It’s strange seeing a ghost flush red with anger, but I guess it is possible. It’s dark and we’re in my room. I excused myself early from dinner, I couldn’t eat much anyway.
“WHY DID YOU AND YOUR MOTHER FEEL THE NEED TO UPSET HER SO?” he asks, pointing at the letters on the Ouija papers so quickly I can barely keep up.
I’m really not in the mood. I meet his anger. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having an affair with her?” I hiss back.
He folds his arms, his gaunt face looking suddenly petulant. “LEAVE HER BE. SHE DIDN’T DO IT.”
“But you did have an affair with her, didn’t you?”
He folds his arms across his slim chest, takes what appears to be a deep breath (he’s a ghost, not sure why he would need to do that), and slowly nods.
“Did her husband know?” It’s an important question.
“HE DIDN’T DO IT.”
“That’s not an answer.”
His eyes dart up and to the right, he appears to sigh, and then he shakes his head “no.”
“So he didn’t know… Maybe he found out, maybe—”
Lionel is in my face and I swear to god I can almost hear him speak. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I hear him shouting “no” in a reedy, strained voice.
My heart is pounding, this is feeling less like a friendly conversation with the afterlife and a little more like a haunting. “I think you should leave,” I say, I don’t even bother to whisper. He steps back, blinking as his jaw moves. If he is still speaking, I can’t hear him. “I’m trying to help you,” I whisper. “But if you aren’t willing to consider the Edwards, to be honest with me, I think you just have to learn to live without knowing.”
I swing my legs out of bed and stand up. I feel dizzy, spots swimming in front of my eyes. I make my slow way to the bathroom. Lionel does not follow.
37
Monday, July 25, 1977
I’ve got a cough today. It’s not bad but in my condition it is worrisome. Leukemia is all about the immune system. My body is producing some crappy white blood cells which don’t work very well. On top of that, the chemo kicks what’s left of my immune system in the teeth.
I didn’t sleep well last night. After my encounter with Lionel, I lay awake in bed thinking it over. Murders are most often done by someone the victim knows. Murders are often crimes of passion. I am beginning to believe that Joe Edwards did it after he found out about Lionel’s affair with his wife.
But what do I do with that information? Tell the sheriff? He’s not going to believe me, and even if he did, there is no proof. And the accusation itself could cause lots of problems. Because if he is a murderer and I accuse him, that puts me and my family in danger. If he isn’t, then that creates a rift in our small town.
And then when I finally sleep, I have a nightmare. I’m in a big abandoned building, some kind of factory. It’s got red brick walls and high ceilings. It’s dark, with only a crescent moon sending silvery shafts of light through the high square windows. I hear a scrape of foot against bare concrete, I see the shadow of a person with a long thin knife in their hand. A knife like the one that was found in Lionel Malak’s back. I run and hide, but I keep hearing the scrape of a foot, seeing the knife-wielding shadow.
I wake up with a start, sucking air deep into my lungs and coughing it out. I had heard a sound, like that scrape of a foot against pavement like in my dream. I look around, rubbing at my eyes, feeling my heart thumping in my chest. It’s my mother. She’s sitting on the edge of my bed, a concerned look on her tired face. I think the creaking of my box spring when she sat is what woke me up.
“You don’t look good,” she says, holding the back of her hand to my forehead. “You’ve got a fever.”
I rub at my face some more trying to come back to reality. I look over at my clock, it says 8:52. I never sleep this late. Something must be wrong.
“Don’t move,” she says and gets up and leaves the room swiftly.
I
groan. This is not good. My lower back hurts, my chest is tight, and my head feels like it’s not screwed on properly. Not good at all.
If I was a normal, healthy person, this level of sick would not be a big deal. Could be a twenty-four-hour bug. Easy. But I am not normal and neither is my immune system. Any kind of infection like this is a big deal. I could tell by my mother’s demeanor.
She comes back with a glass of water, a thermometer, a mask over her mouth and nose, and her kit for drawing my blood.
I take the water and drink it down. I’m very thirsty, but when she goes to put the thermometer in my mouth, I shake my head.
“What?” she asks, her blue eyes shading towards sapphire. I don’t know if this is a real thing, but when she’s so concerned that the lifesaving nurse part of her takes over, her eyes always seem darker.
“We need to talk first,” I say. I know what’s coming and it’s all about survival. There may not be time later.
Her eyebrows furrow as she considers. There seems to be a bit of a battle between nurse-mom and friend-mom. She bites her lip and grabs my arm. “You can talk while I draw some blood.”
And I do. I tell her about my talk with Lionel, and I don’t leave anything out. I tell her of my suspicions of Joe Edwards and that Lionel confirmed the affair with Ann Edwards. “What do we do?” I ask when I am done.
She pops the thermometer in my mouth and says, “Right now we focus on getting you better.” Her voice is a tad muffled behind the mask. I hate it when the masks come out. It happens any time I get sick when the big-C is visiting. My parents wear them, and visitors—if I’m lucky enough to have them—do too.
And then a thought comes crashing down on me. It’s Monday, Wednesday is just two days away. I have to be well enough to go out with Helena. I just have to be. I mumble “date” around the thermometer.
“We’ll see,” my mother says. Friend-mom is definitely on vacation.
Her forehead crinkles as she studies my face. “And I’m going to have to bring your father in on the whole Lionel Malak murder thing.”
“Buuut…” I say, the thermometer really starting to annoy me.
“No buts, Aaron. We have a suspect and a motive. I don’t know what to do next, we need him.”
I nod and smile. She said that we have a suspect. Looks like friend-mom is still in there a bit, but I am very worried about my father’s reaction to Mom and me keeping secrets from him and going directly against what he said.
She takes the thermometer out and I swear I can tell there is a frown under the mask. “99.5. It’s not much of a fever, but it is a fever.”
I sigh and lie back down, I know what’s coming.
“Stay in bed. I’m going to run your blood over to the hospital. I’ll be back.”
I nod, I am sure the disappointment about this is showing clearly on my face.
“We’ve been through this before,” Mom says from the door. “We’ll get you better.”
“By Wednesday?”
“We’ll try,” she says, but I know the odds are stacked against it. When I get sick, especially with the double whammy of leukemia and chemo, I don’t get well quickly.
I throw the covers over my head and groan.
What I am about to say will probably make me sound like a grumpy old man, but what the heck. Life is hard. It is. For everyone. At least for everyone I know.
My mom and dad in their barely-there marriage, my mother probably really wanting to be with her boyfriend, my dad… well we haven’t really talked about it and it feels awkward anyway. On top of that they’ve got me and my multi-part dance with the C-monster.
Look at Helena, she’s the “lady of the house” and has had to deal with some of the harsher realities of mental illness. She also has had a terrible time with boys.
Lionel Malak is dead and we may have found his murderer, but he can’t face it. Not even in his death does “life” get easy for him.
Even Billy doesn’t have it easy. He’s chubby, terrible at sports, has never had a girlfriend, and gets teased a lot. He wrestles with the dichotomy between his faith and the world he lives in. That and he longs for Barbara Bach in a way that can’t be comfortable.
Everyone has their challenges. Everyone. We all seek to escape these kinds of difficulties, but it just seems impossible. There is so very much about this life that is completely out of our control.
So my days as a bedridden sicky have begun. And my life has gotten even harder. Monday passes slowly. I’m not sick enough to sleep that much, so I stay in bed and read. I have my mom bring me The Lord of the Rings and read it for the fifth time. I need something that is reliably distracting.
Billy comes over in the afternoon. My mom lets him visit for a whopping twenty minutes. Even with the mask, she is extra vigilant. Billy is worried. He’s got this little line between his eyebrows. It’s a subtle thing, I don’t think he knows he does it, but when he’s got something that is really bothering him, it’s this bit of tension that shows on his face.
“Joe Edwards?” he says slowly, scratching at a pimple on his forehead. I filled him in on all the latest. He also brought me a pile of comics to read while I’m down. Some Doctor Strange, Silver Surfer, and The Avengers. Stuff I haven’t read in a while.
“He had a reason to do it,” I say.
Billy bites his lip. “What do we do?”
I’m heartened that he used “we” just like when my mom did. “Not a clue. I have no idea how we prove it and Lionel is MIA.
Billy gets quiet. He’s sitting on my desk chair, he pulled it up next to my bed. That line between his eyebrows is deeper and his eyes aren’t focused.
Here’s the tough thing about being sick. What it does to other people. They think about your mortality. They worry about what is happening to you. They get feeling all helpless and don’t know what to do to make things better.
With Billy, I know he is worried about me. He’s been on this whole adventure, so he knows how serious a cold can get.
“Don’t worry, B,” I say with a smile. “I’m going to kick this thing’s ass and we’ll be back to normal in no time.”
His face stays in the worried configuration for half a minute before a smile flicks onto his face. “I know, A. You’ll be up in no time.”
I’m not telling him because I have this great faith in my ability to get better. I’m saying it because it hurts to see my friends and family like that.
“You don’t break easy, right?” I ask Helena. It’s about seven and she is sitting on the same chair Billy was, dressed in her La Familia outfit, her face made up.
The last time I saw her like this was in the graveyard. Now in real light, I can see how old she looks in the makeup she has on, even with the mask she is wearing over her nose and mouth. It’s really quite stunning. She looks like she’s at least twenty. So mature. So beautiful.
“You know it,” she says.
I nod and hand her my diary. “Then I need you to do something.”
Her brows furrow as she looks at my writing. “This is encoded or something, right? Because if it isn’t, I’ve got a major problem.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “Time to teach you how to read it.”
She puts the diary down and stares at me, her mouth a thin line. “Why?” she asks, her voice low and cautious.
“Truth or truth?”
She nods slowly but doesn’t speak.
“I’m afraid. I—” A coughing fit cuts me off. I’m feeling worse than I did in the morning. Some of that could be the normal nighttime sicky stuff. But it could also be something else. Judging from my mother’s face last time I saw her, she seems to think I’m getting worse too.
“I’ve written a lot,” I begin again. “About Lionel and the clues we followed. About my family and what we’re going through. And… And about you and how I feel.”
She’s blinking a lot now, a light blush of red on her cheeks. I’m not sure, but I think her eyes are a bit moist too.
I take a
breath, a shallow one, I don’t want to start another coughing fit. “I need you to take care of these if something happens.”
“You’re going to be fine, Wade. This is just a little bump. This—”
I hold up my hand. “Truth or truth, Helena. Please.” We started this game together when we first met. I need someone I can lay it all out for. And she doesn’t break easily, right?
She swallows hard. Now I’m sure there’s moisture in her eyes. I hate this, but she’s the only one I can imagine being able to handle this right now. Being strong enough. She shifts uncomfortably in the wooden chair and looks away, but I watch her face. She bites on her lower lip, sniffs, and blinks a few times.
“I need you to do this. I don’t know who else can…” I trail off, a tear is now running down her cheek and I feel sick to my stomach (sicker than normal, that is).
She sniffs again, straightens up, and turns to me. “Okay. How do I read this thing?”
Teaching Helena is actually quite fun. She’s quick and picks it up pretty fast.
“It’s a letter shifting algorithm,” I say.
She looks at me blankly. I guess if you haven’t read about these kinds of things those words don’t mean much. I have her get a piece of paper from my desk and I write out all the consonants.
BCDFGHJKLMNPQRSTVWXYZ
“When I write, I shift letters in the words in a particular way.” She nods. “I cooked this up myself and I think it is unique. I shift only consonants, I alternate how they are shifted, and I reset at the beginning of every sentence.”
She’s looking confused, but I expected that. So I show her.
“So if we are starting a sentence with the word ‘Helena,’ we are going to shift only the consonants in a +5, -5 pattern. So ‘H’ plus 5 turns into ‘N’, the ‘L’ minus 5 turns into ‘F’.” I look up and she is nodding.
“So the ‘N’ would be plus five.” She leans over and I allow myself a glance at her cleavage, which is well displayed in her La Familia blouse. I take this as a good sign that I’m still alive. She runs her finger along the paper with all the consonants, her face close to mine. Even with the mask I can smell the cigarette-mint scent that is so her. I don’t want the moment to end. I want her close as much as possible. “So that’s ‘T,’“ she says, sitting back in the chair.
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