by Willa Okati
Shawn’s cheeks burned dully hot. He wanted to put his face in his hands. “So the story goes,” he said, his lips clumsy. He shook his head. “But it’s just a story to me.”
“Oh, Shawn,” Della said, mild rebuke mixed with a great deal of hurt. “That’s how it is, then?”
He couldn’t deal with this. “It all is how it is,” Shawn said, standing and pushing his chair back. He shivered, cold in the controlled climate of the office. “I have places to be. I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, I wish, but—I can’t. I’m sorry. Okay?”
Della might have said something in reply to that. Shawn didn’t know. He’d already started walking out, blocking up his ears and hardening his heart. If he couldn’t believe, then the least he could do was stop being a thorn in the paws of those who did. Raleigh. Della too. Delia, as the book made reference to her. Shawn made a frustrated noise and shook his head.
He couldn’t loiter around, wasting his life with wondering. He had a job to take care of, and he’d put it off for too long already. If that was all, then at least it was more than most people had.
* * * *
There might have been a key to the caretaker’s cottage. If there was, Shawn had no idea where it might have gotten itself off to. He’d found the door unlocked the day he and Gabrielle parked under the weeping willow in the drive and let its sweepingly overgrown branches hide their junker behind a veil of winter-pale green.
He still wanted to lock the door behind them. Wasn’t that the damnedest thing?
Brushing a hand over the roof of the car to knock away bits of fallen vegetation, Shawn hoped it’d run just one more time. “Gabrielle? Come on. We need to get moving if we’re going to make it there by midday.”
Thumps and bumps answered him from inside the cottage, and then a scoff from his sister. “Hold your horses. Jeez. Who’s the slow-ass between the two of us? Spoiler warning—it’s not me. And I’m fixing my hair, so give me a minute.”
Shawn almost laughed. He shook his head instead, the smile warming his mouth silently but still a nice change for him. The day he’d left Della’s office—and she hadn’t touched base with him since, three sunrises and three sunsets ago now—he’d called the rehab center he’d chosen for Gabrielle and firmed up their plans. She’d looked pensive as hell when he did sit her down and lay out his plans, but in the end she’d only nodded while toying with the end of the fishtail braid she’d done herself. He could see the signs in her that would have preceded a lapse—the shaky hands, the impatience—and knew she could too.
“I want to get better for good, not just for a while,” she’d said. “If this is the way to do it, then okay.”
They might be the only family each had left in the world, but they had that to depend on. No one could take it from them.
She’d be a while making herself pretty, though. Shawn heaved a sigh, warned himself to keep patient, and turned to rest his back against the car. He gazed around idly, drinking in the peace and the quiet that’d been there long before he came, and would be there again after. Wild chickens pecking at the lawn were the noisiest things about save for the roar of the sea, and the only things moving were—
Shawn stilled.
Across the way, Raleigh strode across the lawn, making his own shortcut between the old house and the road. He walked with his head down, his expression stormy and his hands shoved firmly in the pockets of that old sheepskin and suede coat that suited him so strangely well. Shawn doubted he was watching where he put his feet. If he didn’t take care, he’d trip and fall and likely break his neck.
He hadn’t noticed Shawn. Might not have altogether, until a small sound escaped Shawn despite his better intentions. Not much, nor loud, but unmistakably from a human throat, and it caught Raleigh’s attention like a fisherman’s hook to the jaw.
He looked up, drawing to a short stop, searching. His gaze landed on Shawn, standing by the car, with the weeping willow branches cleared away. The old station wagon’s windows were too filthy for him to make out the details of their few bags piled in the backseat, but Raleigh was nobody’s fool. He would have known perfectly well how to sum up what he saw. He swallowed hard, the ferocious battle he fought with himself behind a stoic mask very nearly palpable even from a distance.
Shawn raised one shoulder and shook his head at Raleigh. He didn’t say anything. What was there to say?
He could see the moment when Raleigh understood that. He settled back on his heels, unbearably sad and intolerably brave about it, and nodded back to Shawn.
Damn it. Shawn couldn’t look at that. He turned his head and called to Gabrielle. “Come on! Time’s wasting.”
He did look up again. Just once, when Gabrielle sloped out of the cottage with her hair done up in cinnamon buns.
But when he did, he saw nothing but grass and heard nothing but silence ringing in his ears. What’s done is done. Raleigh had gone.
And Shawn was—
* * * *
Alone.
So strange, Stefan thought as he eased his old bones down to the edge of the bed. He laid his palm on the center, or as near to the center as he could manage. He didn’t bend as flexibly as a boy anymore. Either way, it hardly mattered. The blankets smelled only of himself, and only one pillow rested at the head. Had been for years.
So many, many years. Too many.
“Where are you now?” he asked the memory of his lover. “Are you already born, or are you waiting for me?”
No answer came from the folds in the solitary quilt. When Stefan closed his eyes, he could—if he chose—imagine he saw his lover lying in the middle of the bed. Young again, full of vinegar, pink-cheeked and smooth-skinned. Naked and eager to join with him, lustiness straining his cock full and firm against his belly. Teasing lights in his eyes, hunger in his touch.
It would be worth waiting for again, if the cost was not so high. But it was; it was.
Stefan made an impatient noise and dashed a drop of wetness away from his cheek. “Stupid old man,” he muttered. “Be merciful on yourself. And him. Be kind, you old fool. Get it done.”
He opened his eyes, and—
* * * *
“Shawn?”
A light touch to his arm jostled him out of the— Shawn shut his eyes and pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. He’d always thought of them as episodes until Raleigh called them memories. And if he couldn’t believe they were memories, he should still call them episodes.
But he couldn’t.
Again, the touch brushed at his arm, then at his elbow and his wrist. Gabrielle, plucking at his sleeve, the way she used to do when they were kids. Still did, whenever she needed the reassurance.
A fine brother he was. Couldn’t even keep it together when she needed him the most.
“Sorry. Woolgathering,” he said with a sideways motion that brought his hand away from his eyes. He blinked to focus them on her and on her room in the detox center that she’d call home for the next few weeks. Months, maybe. All depended on how well she did.
She had the motivation, though, and she’d always been tough under her cracked shell. “Woolgathering?” she asked with a quirky sort of grin. “That’s an old-fashioned word. Where’d you hear that one?”
“Where did you?” Shawn fired back.
Gabrielle wrinkled her nose at him and sat on the edge of the bed with a thump that made the neatly tucked comforter poof up around her narrow hips. She bit her lip and knotted her fists under her chin. One foot tapped the floor.
Nervous, Shawn thought. He sat beside her and knocked his shoulder against hers, taking in the details of the room. Cool pale walls, a window that surely wouldn’t open, shiny-clean tile on the floor. Nothing that could be used as a weapon against herself or anyone else, and after the fugue of herbal fragrance that permeated the caretaker’s cottage, this place smelled far too sharply of antiseptic clean. “So it’s not the Ritz.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” Gabrielle lifted a hand to her mouth and bit at he
r thumbnail. “No chocolates on the pillow. Think I ought to complain to the management?”
“I don’t know. You think some people might need to break addictions to chocolate?”
“Addiction to chocolate isn’t a fault; it’s a privilege.” Tap, tap, tap went her foot. She was nervous as hell. God.
Guilt gnawed at Shawn. Maybe he shouldn’t… “You don’t like it here, I won’t make you stay,” he blurted. He’d find—somewhere. Maybe a day program?
She shook her head. One of her cinnamon buns had started to unreel. “It’d suck just as hard anywhere else, any other time. Might as well be here and now.”
On impulse, he took her by the nape and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’ll be all right, Gabby. You’re making me proud.”
“Shut up.” She nudged his shin with the toe of her shoe. “So where are you going to go after this? Back to the cottage?”
“No. Wouldn’t feel right.” Her concern was nearly tangible to him. “It’s okay. What do I need to be there for, anyway? The work’s not an issue anymore.”
“But, Raleigh—” Gabrielle started.
He cut her off, pretending not to understand. Answering as if he thought she’d meant the city, not the man. “Nah. North Carolina’s not my speed. I figured I’d head for Boston or maybe St. Louis. Look for work. Find us a place. Somewhere for you to come home once you’re done here.”
Gabrielle blew a loud breath through her nose. “I know what you’re doing, Shawn.”
“Not doing anything, Gabrielle,” he said, very evenly. Too evenly for her not to have taken his meaning.
She slumped forward, elbows on her knees. “Stubborn ass,” she muttered.
Shawn raised one shoulder. “I know.”
“Shawn?”
“Mmm?”
From the corner of his eye, he could see her set her jaw even as she shot him a hopeful glance. “Got time for one more game, before you go?”
Did he? The clock on the wall above her door read three p.m. No matter what he’d arranged for before they arrived, only so much could happen over the phone. Shawn never wanted to see another power-of-attorney form as long as he lived, and he doubted Gabrielle did either.
But where did he have to be, really? Would it matter what time he pulled the station wagon off-road and curled up in the backseat?
“Just one,” he said, nudging her shoulder again. “You want to start?”
“No,” she said. She started to bite at her thumbnail again, made a face, and dropped it in exchange for the tip of her braid. With a deep breath, she sat up straighter. “You go first.”
Shawn found it hard not to draw a blank. But then… “Santa Fe,” he said, lifting his head. “The little roadrunners that were just every-fucking-where.”
“I remember.” She lit up. “You thought they were only in cartoons, and you didn’t believe Mom when she pointed them out.”
He hadn’t believed her because she’d reeked of the Tom Collins she’d spilled on her jeans, but probably better not to point that out. And—doing this was a good idea. Real memories were vague, foggy things. The episodes were too clear to believe what he saw.
Right?
He almost nibbled at a cuticle himself. Only just stopped in time. “Your turn.”
“Uh…” Gabrielle closed her eyes, and waved at the air. “Idaho. That one factory farm where the big blond guy worked. What was his name?”
“Dolph, maybe?” Shawn sieved through the memory. It was dim and faraway, but he thought he recalled a man with shoulders wide enough for two kids to ride, and for a while there he’d forgotten about the need to keep moving. “I think it was Dolph. Gophers in the cornfield.”
“And windmills,” Gabrielle said, delighted. “For clean energy. Way before most people were thinking about that, wasn’t it? I thought they were like those little pinwheel toys I used to love and I asked if—”
“If they were for giants,” Shawn finished for her. “You were only four.”
“Was I? It doesn’t seem like that long ago.”
“We were both pretty bratty kids for our age,” Shawn said. He eyed the fastenings on the door to Gabrielle’s room. They didn’t look like much to him. Depending on her motivation and how light-fingered she could manage to be, give her five minutes and she’d have the lock popped open.
He knew she knew how. He’d taught her—
Tiny fingers, smudged with grime, far too thin. Clever, though, and nimble. He remembered the way she’d turned her face up to his with a delighted laugh when she managed to turn the tumblers in the still-new, still-stiff padlock on the gates meant to keep her inside. She wore a neat pinafore over her silk dress, and no shoes—she always discarded those as soon as she could slip away from her governess—and two front teeth were missing from her grin. The finest young lady this city could boast of, and though Sidney was only her uncle’s ward, he cared for her as he would a sister.
“Let’s go,” Gail whispered. “I want it back. Follow me, it’s easy—”
Shawn jerked forward, nearly off the bed. No. That didn’t happen.
But he could see it in his mind’s eye. He—
Shawn shook his head hard. He could feel his pulse beating at the back of his throat, the cold sweat that’d popped up on his back and chest, and, when Gabrielle winced out loud, realized he’d taken hold of her hand and clamped down on it far too hard.
“You’re hurting me,” she said. “Shawn? What’s wrong?”
“It isn’t just us, you know,” Raleigh said in the back of Shawn’s mind. The thought made his guts twist. He’d thought—but he hadn’t thought—and what if—
“Shawn.” Gabrielle shook him harder, real worry in her face and voice. “You’re freaking me out. Stop it. Should I go find a doctor?”
“What? No.” He ran a hand over his face. “No. It’s my turn. I think…” He swallowed. “Quebec. In Quebec, there were…”
She frowned slightly, looking to one side. “Geese,” she said. “One of them stole the feathers off my hat. I was so mad. I— No.” Her frown deepened. “No. That was just one of the dreams. We’ve never been to Quebec.”
“No,” Shawn said, because they hadn’t. Not in this life. And— “Dreams?” he asked. He wanted to look at her, but couldn’t, and marveled in dismay at how even he sounded. “I didn’t know you had trouble with dreams. You never said.”
“Pfft.” She leaned back on her wrists. “They’re just dreams. What was I going to do, run crying to you to chase the Sandman away?”
“Gabrielle,” he started, though he didn’t know how to go on.
His sister kicked her heels idly. His sister, his friend, his cousin, his ward, his aunt, the waif who sold flowers, a widow. It felt real now, not just a flight of fancy—oh God. “See? This is why I never told you. I knew you’d worry, and you can’t do anything about it. It’s not like the things I saw were real. I mean, I used to think they were. But you always told me to pay attention to the real world, and you were usually right when it came to taking care of me, so…I stopped believing in them.”
Shawn said nothing. He couldn’t have. But…
Gabrielle shrugged. “I still get bits and pieces every now and then, but I know it’s just imaginary. God, that feels like it was such a long time ago. Damn.”
“Did—” Shawn had to start over, though he felt sick just looking at his hands, pressed together hard and tight against his knees. “Is that why you started getting high? The dreams started to bother you too much? I never knew the real reason. If there was one.”
She sighed. “Maybe. Sometimes? It helped at first. Just let it go, Shawn. Please? I’m going to get better. I swear I will. And then you can too.” Leaning forward, she pressed a kiss to his cheek. “And then we’ll both be okay, right?”
“Right,” Shawn rasped. God in heaven. Though he couldn’t imagine everything being right. Not ever again. He might not have managed to swallow the truth with Raleigh, but this was Gabrielle. He believed her. He
could tell the difference between her lies and her truths, and this…
He believed her.
Oh God.
All those times she drifted off, and I thought it was just needing a fix, but—it was my fault.
I did that to her, he thought, because I didn’t believe. Me.
* * * *
Shock did strange things to a man’s head. Shawn knew that. In theory.
Practice was something altogether different.
Shawn didn’t remember much from the drive away from the rehab center. Barely recalled getting in the car, only suddenly he was somehow there, behind the wheel, with the interstate stretching out before and behind him, and nothing but silence as his passenger.
Where was he headed? Shawn rubbed at his eyes as he tried to remember, but it wouldn’t come. All just—had gone blank.
Shock, a voice insisted in his memory. Strangely, like an echo. But even that faded, drifting away like cobwebs over the moon.
* * * *
He blinked, and he was in a gas station, the fuel stink ripe in his nose, a gas pump in one hand. Halfway home again. Phasing in and out with the shock. He shouldn’t be driving like this, but what other choice did he have? He just wanted to go—
Home. If home was the caretaker’s cottage. And it was—but it wasn’t—
An older man, a good old boy by the look of his overalls and flannel shirt, hung up the gas pump on the other side of the rack. He frowned at Shawn in that way strangers had when they thought they wanted to help but wasn’t sure if their assistance would be welcomed. Shawn had learned that look by heart when he and Gabrielle were skinny kids in gas stations just like these, devouring beef jerky by the handful while their mother, lost in one of her darker moods, smoked her way through a pack of menthols.
Did it happen to her as well? Was that why she was the way she was?
“You all right, son?” he asked when Shawn couldn’t stop staring back. “Look like you’ve seen a ghost.”