Here Lies Daniel Tate

by Cristin Terrill

  Finally, I couldn’t lie there any longer, playing scenarios in my head, preparing lies. It was late; the rest of the family had to be asleep. I climbed out of the bed. If I wasn’t leaving tonight, I needed to learn the layout of the house. The Tates were less likely to get suspicious of me if I seemed at home here.

  I padded on bare feet to the end of the hallway and started there. The farthest room was an office, lined with built-in bookcases and dominated by a massive desk. The next room was the bathroom I’d hidden in earlier, then a linen closet, then Danny’s room. Nicholas’s room, I knew, was next to mine. I was surprised to see the light on underneath the door and walked past extra carefully. Mia’s room was next, a night-light plugged into the outlet beside her door. There was one final room on this side of the stairs, a guest room that had probably belonged to a nanny once. Jessica didn’t strike me as the type to change diapers in the middle of the night.

  I reached the stairs and ascended to the third floor, where I discovered just one set of locked double doors. The entire level must have been the master suite. I went back down to the second floor and turned left to explore the rooms in the wing on the other side of the stairs. I found two guest rooms, another bathroom, a bedroom I judged to be Patrick’s old room from the band posters on the wall, and then Lex’s room. A light was on inside. It seemed everyone was having trouble sleeping tonight.

  I spent another twenty minutes exploring the first floor and the basement, walking from room to room until I had a good handle on the layout. I checked the alarm panel by the front door—it wasn’t activated—and then ventured out of the French doors and onto the back patio. It was overhung with a wooden lattice crawling with ivy and some kind of white flowers, and beyond that was a pool that glowed in the dark like a chlorine moon. I dipped a foot in the water. It felt good, just warm enough in the cool night air. It must have been heated.

  I looked back at the house. It was dark; Nicholas and Lex must have finally gone to sleep. Fuck it, I thought. I might only be rich for this one night, so I might as well enjoy the perks while I could. I stripped down to my boxers and slipped into the pool, the shallow end, since I didn’t swim too well. The world went silent beneath the surface of the water. I kicked and twisted and spun and surfaced laughing. Then I floated there, weightless, looking up at the starry sky above me.

  When I finally returned to Danny’s room, I fell straight to sleep.

  • • •

  At some point in the night, I woke. I opened my eyes and blinked at the dark figure standing in the doorway. At first all my eyes could pick out was the silhouette against the glow from the hall. Forgetting where I was, I thought that it must be Jason, returning from a raid of the pantry at Short Term 8.

  But then I remembered.

  “Nicholas?” I murmured.

  He silently turned and walked away, closing the door behind him, and the chill that raced up my spine had nothing to do with the aggressive California air-conditioning.

  • • •

  When I woke the next morning, I wasn’t sure it had really happened. The memory felt fuzzy around the edges and hollow in the middle, like a dream.

  What was definitely real was the weight in the bed beside me. I scrambled back and threw aside the comforter. Underneath I found Mia curled up, the tip of her thumb lying between her lips. I took a couple of deep breaths to calm the pounding of my heart and then nudged her.

  “Hey,” I said. She was lucky I hadn’t hit her when she tried to climb into bed next to me. I must have been exhausted to have slept through it.

  She frowned and blinked as she woke. “Morning,” she said blearily.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  She shrugged and sat up.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “I used to come and sleep in here sometimes,” she said, “when you were gone. Lex caught me once and got mad. Don’t tell her, okay? She wanted me to stay in her room with her, but she kicks in her sleep.”

  I swallowed. “Why did she want you to sleep with her?”

  “She said she didn’t want me to bother you by accident if I got up in the middle of the night,” she said. “Sometimes I wake up at night, and Magda used to help me go back to sleep, but she went home to Ukraine a few days ago.”

  “Magda was your nanny?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Lex said I could only sleep in my room if I stayed inside and kept the door locked so I wouldn’t bother anyone. I don’t want her to know I broke my promise.”

  “I won’t tell,” I said. Was Lex worried her damaged, potentially destructive little brother might do something to Mia? It was a reasonable thought, but one that seemed at odds with the way she’d been treating me.

  “Thanks, Danny,” Mia said. “Did you sleep good?”

  “I . . . not really,” I said. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to talk to a kid this young. She was like a little alien creature to me.

  “It’s always weird being in a new bed,” she said. “That’s why I bring my pillow with me anytime we go on a trip, so the bed isn’t totally new.”

  I smiled. “That’s pretty smart.”

  “Well, tonight your bed won’t be new anymore,” she said, “so hopefully, you’ll sleep better.” She climbed awkwardly out of the bed. I wondered again about the brace on her leg. It had pins that went into her skin. Had she gotten hurt, or was it some kind of disability she’d been born with? If the problem with her leg was something Danny had known about, it would be suspicious if I asked, but if Danny hadn’t known, it would be suspicious if I didn’t.

  “I better go back to my room before Lex wakes up,” she said, and then she leaned toward me and wrapped her thin little arms around my neck, squeezing me with so much passion I could hardly breathe.

  “I really missed you, Danny,” she said. And she sounded like she meant it, even though she couldn’t possibly remember the brother who’d disappeared when she was just a toddler.

  I raised a hand to her back and gave it a couple of awkward pats. “Missed you, too.”

  • • •

  Mia returned to her room, and I brushed my teeth and changed into my one set of clean clothes before heading downstairs. Nicholas was in the kitchen, his wet hair looking almost black and dampening the collar of his shirt. He was pouring glasses of orange juice, and there was already a plate of toast on the table in the breakfast nook.

  “Morning,” he said when I walked in.

  I tried to smile like I thought I should. “Morning.”

  “How’d you sleep?” he asked.

  I looked at him closely. The question sounded almost too innocent coming from him, like he was daring me to ask why I had woken in the middle of the night to find him standing over my bed like some creepy fucking wraith.

  But it was possible I was being paranoid.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Great,” he replied, turning back to the fruit he was cutting. “Have a seat. Breakfast is almost ready.”

  As I took a seat at the table, Mia came bounding in and sat across from me. I sipped my orange juice while she slathered a piece of toast with raspberry jam. Nicholas had a cordless phone on the counter beside him, and when it began to ring, he hit a button and it went silent.

  “So what’s on the agenda today, Mimi?” he said.

  “I don’t know. I was supposed to go to Eleanor’s house,” Mia said, “but Magda was going to take me.”

  “I can take you,” Nicholas said. “What are you two going to do?”

  “Work on our play,” she said around a mouthful of toast.

  “You have a play?” I asked while I wondered why Magda had left with such apparent abruptness.

  Mia nodded and licked some stray jam off her finger. “We’ve been working on it for a long time. It’s about a mermaid with magical powers. I play the mermaid, because I want to be an actress someday.”

  “Acting’s pretty cool,” I said. “Getting to pretend to be another person.”

>   “Yeah, I’m really good at it. Eleanor does the costumes.”

  “Does she want to be a fashion designer?” I asked. It turned out the kid was actually pretty easy to talk to.

  “Not really,” she said. “She’s just not a very good actress, and she needed something to do.”

  I started to laugh but stopped when Nicholas approached us, balancing several plates in his arms. He set a raisin bagel with cream cheese and honey down in front of Mia and a bowl of cornflakes with freshly cut strawberries in front of me.

  “I decided to make everyone their favorite for breakfast today,” he said with a smile, “in honor of Danny being home.”

  “Thanks, Nicky!” Mia said, pushing aside her toast in favor of the bagel. “What about Mom’s?”

  Nicholas sat down beside her with his plate of scrambled eggs and took the uneaten half of Mia’s raspberry toast. “I don’t think she’ll be down for a while. Eat up, before it gets cold.”

  Something seemed different about him. I frowned as I tried to put my finger on it, and he noticed.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  I shook my head. Behind him Lex walked into the kitchen, rubbing her head and making straight for the coffee maker.

  “Morning, guys,” she mumbled.

  “Morning,” we all replied.

  I raised a spoonful of cereal to my mouth, and suddenly Lex was sprinting across the kitchen and knocking it from my hand.

  “Danny!” she snapped. “Don’t touch that! Who gave him strawberries?”

  “I did,” Nicholas said.

  “He’s allergic!” she said. “What were you thinking?”

  Nicholas looked at her and then me with wide eyes. “I’m so sorry, Danny. I completely forgot.”

  The air was thick with tension. Nicholas stared at me and I stared back, and in my peripheral vision I saw Lex clench her hands into fists.

  Then she sighed, and the room seemed to exhale with her. “Well, there’s no harm done,” she said. “I’ll make you something else to eat, Danny. What would you like?”

  She took the bowl of cereal away, pouring it down the drain, while I looked at Nicholas, who just stared back at me. Did he suspect?

  “Did you forget too?” he asked.

  I nodded slowly and started my eyes watering. I’d always been able to make myself cry whenever I wanted. It was a useful trick.

  “I guess . . . ,” I said. “It’s been so long since I’ve had fresh fruit that . . .”

  Nicholas’s stony expression wavered.

  “Oh, honey . . . ,” Lex said.

  “I’m sorry.” I got up from the table. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to . . .”

  I fled the kitchen. Behind me, I heard Lex going off on Nicholas and him apologizing, and I smiled.

  • • •

  I was holed up in Danny’s bedroom for maybe ten minutes before a soft rap on the door signaled that Lex had come to find me.

  I curled into the most pathetic ball I could manage on top of the bed. “Come in.”

  “Hey,” she said softly as she inched the door open. “You okay?”

  “I guess,” I said. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I freaked out. I just want to be normal, you know? But I can’t, and it makes me so mad sometimes . . .”

  “Hey, hey.” She sat down beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I upset everyone.”

  She rubbed my shoulder. “No, you didn’t. We’re all just . . . feeling this out. It’s going to take a little time, and there are going to be some bumps. But don’t you ever blame yourself, you got it?”

  I swallowed and nodded.

  “You know you can talk to me anytime, about anything, right?” she said. “I don’t want to push, but I’m always here.”

  “I know,” I said.

  She smiled and nudged my leg. “And don’t let Nicholas get to you, okay? I love him to death, but he’s an idiot sometimes.”

  I cracked a smile.

  “Aww, there’s my baby brother!” she said, ruffling my hair. “Come on, how about we go do some shopping? It’ll be fun.”

  We climbed into Lex’s car and headed into town to buy me the essentials I was missing. It turned out my definition of “essential” was pretty different from hers. For hours we went from store to store, buying clothes and toiletries and shoes and a cell phone and a laptop, everything charged to the shiny platinum credit card Lex produced from her wallet. If I liked something, she bought two of it and never looked at a single price tag. It shouldn’t have surprised me after seeing the house or climbing into Lex’s tricked out BMW, but there was something almost magical about how she could trade a swipe of plastic for anything she wanted.

  “We’ll go to the bank on Monday and get you your own card,” she said as we ate a late lunch. “We all have one for the family account. For emergencies.”

  I guess our definition of “emergency” was different too. For me it was not having any money for a bus ticket out of town when I needed to disappear. For her it was seeing some shiny thing in a store window that she wanted.

  I preferred her definition.

  “I’ve always loved this color on you,” Lex said as she brushed the sleeve of the new blue button-down I was wearing. I looked down at the shirt. I had always understood the lack of money; growing up poor etched it into your bones. But in the clothes Lex had pushed into my arms to try on, in this fine cotton shirt, I was getting a glimpse of what life was like with money. It was easy to sit up straight and take up space when everything that touched your skin was clean and soft and expensive. “Makes your eyes look almost green.”

  The glow in her face as she smiled at me was so full of warmth and affection that I felt something move inside my chest. The lurch of a dormant heart trying to wake up.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said, and headed for the restroom. Somehow I kept finding myself hiding in bathrooms. I washed my hands and then stared in the mirror until my face stopped being something I recognized and morphed into nothing but a collection of shapes and shadows. I blinked at the shapes and took deep breaths until they became a face again.

  When I returned to the table, Lex was throwing back a pill with the glass of wine she’d ordered with lunch. When she spotted me, she gave a little shrug.

  “Headache,” she said, stuffing the bottle back into her bag. “Are you ready to go?”

  I nodded, and with another swipe of her magical plastic, lunch was paid for, and we left the restaurant.

  “So,” she said as we climbed back into her car, “I think you have everything you need now, right? I gotta say, I much prefer shopping to class.”

  “Is that where you’d usually be?” I asked.

  “Yep! I’m the loser who’s still in college at twenty-four.” Her smile was bitter around the edges. “I haven’t exactly been a model student.”

  “I guess that’s my fault, huh?” I said, angling an air-conditioning vent away from me.

  “Please,” she said. “That was all me. But I’ve been getting it together, and I should graduate next semester. And I’ve got my own place now, out in Century City. It’s a dump, but at least it’s mine.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I thought you lived—”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m just crashing in my old room for a while. Patrick and I thought it would be better for everyone if I was around while you got settled in.”

  I was suddenly nervous. What constituted “settling in”? If Lex left, I’d be stuck practically alone in that house with Jessica and Nicholas, the two members of the family I was on the least stable ground with.

  That is, if I decided to stay.

  “How long will that be?” I asked.

  She glanced over at me and smiled. “Don’t worry, you’re not getting rid of me for a good long time. We even let Mia’s nanny go, since I’m going to be around for a while.”

  Slowly, I smiled back.

  • • •
>
  On our way back to Hidden Hills, Lex stopped at a Starbucks. The backseat of her car, which was otherwise pretty neat, was littered with discarded coffee cups, and as she parked, she tossed the empty one in her cup holder back onto the pile.

  I followed her inside, surprised again at the gust of cold air that hit me as I stepped in. I guess Southern California had to manufacture its own winter. Lex joined the line, drawing her phone out of her bag and immediately typing out a message. I was amazed at how quickly her thumbs moved. I’d never had a smartphone before, just a shitty pay-as-you-go flip phone that quit going pretty quickly since I quit paying.

  With Lex occupied, I looked around the coffee shop. This was one thing that wasn’t different from my old life at all. Starbucks was Starbucks whether you were a homeless guy in Canada or a rich teenager in California. It was strangely comforting. And also irritating. Like it was trying to remind me who I really was.

  I looked at the array of pastries in the case by the register and then at the customers in the seating area. An old Hispanic man with a paper, probably a widower just trying to fill his day. A bored white woman in yoga pants and expensive sunglasses—a reluctant stay-at-home mom—who talked on the phone while her toddler dismantled a muffin. An Asian girl a little younger than me working at a laptop in one of the leather chairs against the wall, her legs folded underneath her in a way that looked extremely uncomfortable. I watched her a little longer than the others, trying to figure out her deal, like I automatically did with everyone, so of course she looked up and caught me. I immediately looked away.

  “Do you want anything, Danny?” Lex asked.

  I shook my head, and Lex gave her order and handed over her credit card. I flipped through the CDs at the cash register while Lex waited for her receipt, but I found my gaze drifting to the girl in the chair again.

  For the second time she looked up and caught me. Dammit. I turned my head away. But when my eyes slid back to her a third time, she was still looking at me.

  She crossed her eyes.