“Tell me about it, sugar.”
“You know,” Benny turned another page, “if I had any idea you were going to leave me a whole book of instructions, I’d have come yesterday.”
“They’re just-in-case things.” Savannah laughed. “And it’s easier for you to mark sales in the notebook than keying them into the computer. I’ll do that after I get home.”
“You’re such a control freak.”
“I don’t deny it.”
“You need an accountant.”
“I can’t afford one.”
Benny ducked suddenly, dodging a fly Savannah couldn’t see for the life of her.
“You let it in.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Get the swatter.”
“I don’t have one. Benny, there’s nothing there.”
“There is! There is!” Benny squealed, racing about the kitchen as if chased by a tiny, zapping demon. She blew out the back door and down the steps, stopping near the parked cars.
“What’s up with you, sugar?” Savannah came more slowly down the steps. No flies, not even a cloud of gnats in sight. Benny stared beyond her, at the screen door slapping, eyes wide and jaw slack and her face pale as the moonlight blooming. Savannah hurried down the steps to grasp her elbows. “What is it? Benny, what’s wrong?”
“There’s something in your house,” she whispered. “There’s something…”
Benny shuddered, broke away from Savannah’s grasp and ran to the front of the house where Ade was still swaying, crooning. Softly. He put a finger to his lips. Benny’s shoulders slumped.
Savannah turned her around. “What happened? What do you mean there’s something in my house?”
“Don’t think I’m strange.”
“Too late.”
“I’m serious, Savvy.”
“So I am. What happened?”
Benny bit her lip. “I saw something.”
“What did you see?”
“I’m not sure, but…” Benny pulled Savannah in closer. “Listen, I know this is going to sound nuts-o, but I have a little experience with otherworldly things. I’m sensitive to them.”
“And you saw something otherworldly?”
“The buzzing, Savvy.” Benny shushed herself. “You said it yourself. There was nothing there. But there was. I swear it. I’m not kidding.”
“I don’t believe in spooks, Ben.”
“That doesn’t mean a thing to them. I’m telling you, there’s something…someone there. And that someone is bad. Really bad. Murderously bad.”
A shiver sliced through Savannah, clean as a newly sharpened knife. She clenched her jaw, refused to react further, refused to even think the thoughts trying now to scream to life.
“I know this woman,” Benny was saying. “She lives in Brooklyn but she had family here in Bitterly once. Her grandfather was married to a Weller girl. He built the house I live in. She’s better at this sort of thing than I am. Will you let me bring her here?”
“For what purpose?”
“To show me up for the nut I am. Come on, Savvy. Please? You’ve got nothing to lose.”
Only my mind, sugar. “I don’t see the point.”
“The point is, what if this…bad energy is what’s causing your headaches?”
Savannah groaned. “Come on, Benny. You can’t be serious.”
“I’m dead serious. And I didn’t mean the pun until I said it. Pretty good, huh?”
“Brilliant.” Savannah took her friend’s hands. “You know I love you, Benny, and I mean no disrespect to your system of beliefs, but there is no spook causing my headaches.”
“I know what I saw, Savvy. I know what I felt. And you said yourself that these headaches started once you moved here to Bitterly. What if something was already living in your house? What if something bad happened there and needs to be…oh.”
“Oh?”
Benny squeezed her hands a little too tightly. “The drowned girl. What was her name? Augie told me…Tilly. Tilly Tully. I wonder if this is where she lived. Or if this is where she was murdered.”
“Mur—?” Savannah choked on the word. “In Bitterly?”
“I was surprised to find out too. But yes. There was a murder in Bitterly back in the 1950s. Come on, Savvy. Let me call my friend. She’s old and she probably won’t leave Brooklyn but let me try. Okay?”
The rock and the hard place Savannah was standing between closed in on her. Benny made no secret about her belief in those otherworldly things Savannah had no patience for. Neither did she want a strange woman coming to her home, telling her there was some kind of evil energy drifting about that was causing her headaches. It didn’t make sense anyway. The headaches followed her from the house, to work, to town. Everywhere. And she’d lied. To everyone. The headaches didn’t start in Bitterly. They started after she sold the house she lived in with Doc and the girls. No one knew that. Not even Margit.
“Please?” Benny said. “Appease your crazy friend?”
“You’re not crazy.” Savannah let go of Benny’s hands and rubbed at her temples as the throbbing suddenly became intense. “All right, fine. If it makes you feel better, call her.”
“You all right?”
“Tired. I need to take a pill and go to bed.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You absolutely did not upset me, sugar.” Savannah kissed her cheek. “And thanks for minding the store.”
They went quietly to Ade still swaying a sleeping Irene but no longer crooning. He carried her to Benny’s car, strapped her expertly into her car seat and closed the door quietly.
“I’m going to call you at four in the morning when she decides it’s playtime.” Benny crossed her arms. “What did you do?”
“I sang to her,” he said. “An old Spanish lullaby. La jefa swears by it.”
“La jefa?”
Ade grinned. “It means the boss. That’s what the family calls my mother. Affectionately, of course.”
“To her face?”
“If we are feeling brave.”
They all laughed softly, careful not to wake the baby. Benny kissed Savannah’s cheek, hugged Ade and got into her car. “I’ll take care of everything here while you’re in New Haven. Just don’t worry. And I’ll let you know about my friend as soon as I hear.”
“I know you will, I won’t, and okay,” Savannah whispered back. She and Ade waved as Benny pulled away. She was sweet and slightly nutty, but she meant well. If the woman from Brooklyn came out to the house, she could work whatever spook-banishing ritual she wished. It would make Benny happy, if nothing else.
“Irene certainly took to you,” Savannah said as she and Ade walked back to the porch. “You have no idea how unusual that is.”
“As unusual as it is for any child to like me. They tend not to.”
“Really? Why?”
“I’ve just never been…good with them.” He looked away. “That is a small lie. I’ve never had an interest in them. Children are sensitive to such things.”
“That’s true. Well,” Savannah sighed, “things change.”
“People change,” Ade added. “Things change with them.”
“Deep.”
Ade looked away.
“Hey.” She touched his arm. “I was just teasing.”
“I know.” He looked up, sorrow in his eyes. “My couch awaits. Good-night, Savannah.”
She loved how he said Sah-vah-nah, not Sa-van-na, like everyone else pronounced it. No accented syllable, just a name rolling like a chant off his tongue. She almost called him back. “Good night, Ade,” she whispered, but he didn’t seem to hear.
* * * *
Well, isn’t this a revolting turn of events. They think I’m the one giving Savvy headaches? That I was the one who chased them through the house? I wasn’t even in there. I was listening to Ricky Ricardo sing to the baby. Of all the nerve. It would serve th
em right if I just left them alone with their ghoul. I should go back to haunting stupid teenagers and fiddling with the traffic lights.
Dang it. Who am I kidding? I can’t leave Savvy just when everything’s getting juicy. But nobody better accuse me again. I like scaring people but I’m nothing like that thing. I’m smarter too. I accidently almost let Ricky Ricardo see me in the stupid mirror, but Savvy’s ghoul did it on purpose. And not just a fleeting glimpse either. He wanted that other woman to see him. It felt like a challenge. Maybe he doesn’t know he’s not allowed to do that. Maybe he just doesn’t care.
* * * *
It was no use. Ade’s eyes wouldn’t stay closed. At three o’clock, he got up, shuffled into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator door. The thing was packed full of prepared food his mother and aunt would never believe their husbands consumed when not in their care. Fishing a beer out from behind a take-out container of Chinese food, he cracked the cap and took a deep gulp.
“Revolting,” he murmured, but he took the bottle out to the tiny landing that served as a porch for the double-wide and sat on the top step. Sipping the beer, listening to night sounds, Ade attempted to ease his mind. More than Anita’s ongoing harassment, more, even, than Savannah’s headaches was the deepening sense of betrayal burrowing into his gut.
Ade tossed back the rest of his beer. Hindsight was ever cruel. Caution had kept him quiet about Savannah’s past. The lesser, meaner Adelmo Gallegos had tempered that caution with cunning. One never knew what information was going to come in handy. By the time he realized his mistake, it was too late, and it got worse with each day, with each glance, and every smile.
A light went on across the yard in Savannah’s kitchen. She passed from window to window. What was she doing up at such an hour? Same as he, more than likely. Ade set the bottle down, rose to his feet. Whether it was sleeplessness or courage, he started through the yard. “Más vale tarde que nunca,” he muttered. Maybe, just maybe, she would be as weary as he and the ungodly hour would work in his favor after he confessed his sins.
He moved quietly up the stairs, peeked in the window. Savannah stood at the stove, stirring something in a small pan. Though the door was closed, the kitchen windows were open. Her soft humming joined the cricketsong serenading the night. Ade tapped softly on the edge of the screen door. Savannah jumped, dropped the spoon, and spun about, hand to heart.
“What are you doing up at this hour?” she asked as she let him in.
“I came to ask you the same question.”
“I suppose neither of us can sleep.” She gestured to the pot on the stove. “You want some warm milk and honey?”
Ade moved to the stove, sniffed the steam coming out of the pot. “This reminds me of Lita.”
“Everything here seems to remind you of her.”
His heart stitched. “She used to make it for us before bed. I’d love some.”
Savannah turned off the burner, poured milk into mugs and handed one to Ade. She gestured him to the parlor couch. Only the light coming from the kitchen illuminated the room full of shadows and moonlight. Ade waited for Savannah to sit before doing so himself. The confession he came to make suddenly did not seem like a good idea. Maybe he didn’t have to. Maybe there was another way.
“Who used to make you warm milk and honey?” he asked. “Parent? Grandparent?”
“My Auntie Bea,” Savannah answered. “She’s actually my great-great-aunt on my father’s side. Or something.”
“She must be quite old.”
“Very.” Savannah sipped. “She’ll be one-hundred-five next May.”
“That is old. Lita is not quite there yet.”
“Is she your father’s mother? Or your mother’s?”
“My father’s,” Ade answered. “We have almost no contact with my mother’s family.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.”
“It is.” Ade sipped, licked away his milk-mustache. “I met my maternal grandmother once when I was thirteen, at my older sister’s quinceañera. We are Ecuadorian on my father’s side, mountain people for as far back as anyone can recall, but my mother’s people are Spanish aristocrats so bent on maintaining the purity of their line that when my mother married my father, she was disowned completely. A quinceañera, however, is a very big event in our culture. Abuela insisted upon not only attending for this granddaughter she never met, but paid for an elaborate celebration the community still speaks of.”
“And that was the only time any of you met her?”
“Constantina, my sister, visited her several times after that. Through her, I came to understand that despite the fact that we lived in the twentieth century, it was quite brave for Abuela to disobey her husband. Doing what she did for my sister was an act of rebellion. I admire her for that, and I honor her even if her rebellion never extended to me.”
“I imagine your mother was well on her way to being disowned when she married your dad. She must be strong-willed to have earned her nickname.”
Ade laughed into his cup. “That is putting it mildly.”
“I think I would like your mother.”
“I know she would like you,” Ade said. “My father and uncle have been talking about you for years. Everyone knows you by now.”
“Well fiddle-dee-dee.” Savannah fluttered her eyelashes. “How many fans do I have?”
“Too many to count. I honestly don’t even know how many cousins there are at this point.”
“What was it like,” she asked, “growing up in such a large family?”
“Chaotic. But happy. Taytay and Tio started splitting their time between the United States and Ecuador when I was twelve or so. I missed them terribly, but there were other uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings. And always a lot of work to do. Between the farm and school, I was never bored.”
“And you were a good student?”
“I was. Very good. You must have been as well, no?”
Savannah nodded, eyes downcast. “I was, thanks to Auntie Bea.”
“How so?”
“My parents died when I was a baby,” she said, her eyes still on her cup of milk instead of him. “I barely remember them. I think I only do because of pictures. My father’s cousin took me in, raised me with her own kids, but I was always aware that I was only a favor to a poor, dead cousin. I didn’t get to play sports or take dance lessons. Any money there was for that kind of thing went to my cousins.
“Auntie Bea took me to the library once a week. She was kind of a stray too. I’m not even sure whose aunt she actually was, just that she was old for as long as I can remember and lived in the sunporch-turned-bedroom of my aunt’s house.” Savannah looked up, smiling and wiping a tear from her cheek. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I’m not. At all. It was good of my aunt to take in the strays no one else wanted, especially considering money was so tight.”
Ade’s jaw clenched. Strays? He sipped at the warm, sweet milk. “Did you get along with your cousins?”
“Well enough.” She shrugged. “We didn’t fight or anything. I was a lot younger, and they pretty much ignored me. If it weren’t for Auntie Bea, I’d have been a very lonely child. I miss her something fierce.”
“When did you last see her?” he asked, though he could guess. Even Taytay and Tío, who claimed to know little of what happened in Georgia, knew she had not been back in all the years she lived in Bitterly.
“Too long.” Savannah’s eyes met his. She bit her lip. “I should probably go see her. Is that what you’re thinking?”
Ade reached for her hand. How easy it had been to call up the skills he’d renounced. Another few moments and she would tell him all those terrible things he already knew. She never had to know he’d snooped into her past before they ever met. He’d be free of one burden, only to shoulder another. In another life, with other women, the trade-off would have been acceptable. With Savannah, it was not.
“I’m thinking”—he brought her fingers
to his lips—“that you are very beautiful.”
Savannah looked away, but let him keep her hand. “Thank you?”
“Is that a question?”
“No?”
“That sounds like another one.”
Savannah snatched her hand away. She gathered their empty cups, dropped one that bounced on the carpet but didn’t break. Ade suppressed the urge to pull her into his lap and kiss her fluster calm.
“Allow me.” He took the cups into the kitchen and rinsed them clean instead. Secrets and more secrets. Which was more painful? Keeping them, or telling them? Until he figured it out, he would let them stand. His. Hers. There would be time, the right time. He simply had to be patient.
Ade turned off the water, dried his hands. Sleep still eluded him. Tomorrow was going to be a long and exhausting day. For him, and for Savannah too.
“I suppose I should…” He stopped in his tracks. Savannah sat on the edge of the couch, head in hands. Ade went to her. “Savannah, what is it?”
“Nothing.” Her voice trembled. “I’m just so tired, Ade.”
“Then you must sleep. I will help you.” He grabbed a blanket from basket beside the couch. Shouldering himself more comfortably into the cushions, he gestured her into the crook of his arm.
“Ade, I can’t.”
“Of course you can. Come. If I can get Irene to sleep, I can do the same for you. It won’t hurt to try, right?”
He held out his hand.
“Oh, all right.”
Savannah curled into the crook of his shoulder, her head resting upon his shoulder. Ade covered them both with the blanket. She fit so perfectly into his side. The feel of her, the scent of her should have undone all resolve to chivalry, but the need to protect and comfort held strong against his body’s response. Gathering her close, Ade sang:
“Cierras ya tus ojitos.
Duermete sin temor.
Sueña con angelitos
Parecidos a ti.
Y te agarrare tu mano.
Duermete sin temor.
Cuando tu despiertes,
Yo estare aqui.”
Savannah relaxed into his side. Her arm slipped across his waist. Ade’s heart filled to capacity, quite possibly for the first time.
Waking Savannah Page 10