Love Over Matter

by Maggie Bloom

  We step aside and study the menu. (I use the term loosely, since Pinhead’s offerings are limited to a handful of fried items, hamburgers, hot dogs, and an array of not-so-fizzy sodas.) I take my eyes off Aleks for a second, glimpsing the craziest thing ever through Pinhead’s smoked-glass entrance. And THE CRAZY has a name: George Alfred Brooks.

  My heart starts hammering at lightning speed. “Um, be right back,” I say, dashing off without explanation. By the time I get to the door, my pulse has peaked at a level synonymous with death. I lean into the vestibule and whisper, “George?”

  There’s no reply, but something flickers outside in the dusky twilight. I bump past a new crop of bowlers and venture outdoors. The air is thick with the scent of lilacs, even though they’ve mostly died off this late in the season. “George?” I try again. For some reason, I’m convinced my love has returned to me—or at least his spirit has.

  I’m listening hard—straining my eardrums until tiny stabs of pain invade them—for a sign, my eyes furiously scanning the parking lot, the adjacent tree line, even the grass and the sky.

  When the voice comes, it startles me. “Is everything okay?”

  It’s George—or Aleks (unless, of course, there’s a triplet out there I have yet to stumble across).

  I pinch my eyes shut and pray for a miracle, the emotional half of my brain insisting the words are heaven sent, my logical mind knowing they’re something else. Keep talking, please, I beg. Say something only George would know.

  A friendly hand hangs over my shoulder. “Cassandra?”

  My heart sinks. I don’t want to turn around. “Uh, yeah,” I mutter, clinging to hope in the face of defeat. “I’m fine.” I force my eyes open, my brain winning the tug-of-war with my heart. “Just fine.”

  Aleks’s fingers travel down my arm, stopping to make nice with my palm, which is embarrassingly clammy. “C’mon,” he says, pulling me back toward Pinhead’s. “They’re waiting for us.”

  chapter 14

  Mr. Brooks left a late-night message for Aleks and me that reads like a bomb recipe, the details of which are scrawled across a paper plate in Mom’s angular handwriting. “Don’t ask me,” she said with a shrug when I questioned her about it. “Since George, well, uh . . . you know . . .”

  To be honest, the Brookses never quite fit in in Willow Crest. Now they’re practically pariahs.

  * * *

  “I think we did everything,” I tell Aleks, mentally ticking through the protocol George’s father has prescribed.

  We’ve called ahead and confirmed our identities. Our cell phones (and all electronic devices, for that matter) are safely out of our possession. And now, per the note’s instructions, we’re slipping into the Brookses’ backyard and heading for the rose bush, a beastly thing that, in full bloom, is a blue-ribbon prizewinner.

  Aleks draws the creased plate toward his face and squints. “It says the red door,” he reminds me, as if I could forget. I mean, who else has a rainbow array of entrances occupying the rear wall of their house?

  “How many times do we knock?” I ask, pulling up short by the specified door, which, if you ask me, is more mauve than anything else.

  “Four times, then wait three seconds,” he says robotically. “Then four times again . . .”

  “. . . then wait three seconds?” I finish.

  He rolls his eyes. I don’t remember him doing that before. It’s very George-esque. “That’s the idea.”

  “Okay, here goes nothin’,” I say with a chuckle. Before I begin tapping away, though . . . “Does it say how loud to knock?”

  He scans the plate. “I’d go with medium.” He shakes his head. “George must have been a very patient guy.”

  Ouch. Hearing him say George’s name—in George’s voice—jabs me in the gut. “Sometimes,” I say, and leave it at that.

  Rap, rap, rap, rap—pause—rap, rap, rap, rap—pause—rap, rap, rap, rap . . .

  The door opens inward on a playroom for the Brookses’ vicious, seldom-seen cat, Otto. “Hello?” I call ahead.

  Mr. Brooks’s voice is weak. “Yes, come in.”

  I look to Aleks for approval, forgetting he’s less familiar with the Brookses’ house than I am. He gives a polite wave. “After you.”

  I nudge the door open wider with my foot and lead the way inside. The room is exactly as I remember: rich wood paneling, diamond-patterned black-and-gold carpeting, even a cluster of furballs in the corner. And it’s dark. Much darker (and spookier) than seems right for this time of day.

  The door drifts shut, Mr. Brooks’s silhouette coming into view. Once my eyes adjust to the light (or lack thereof), I’m surprised to see him dressed in a pair of pressed khakis and an equally starched white polo shirt (honestly, based on my last visit, I’d expected a silk robe, a pipe, and a monocle). He’s even gone as far as trading those fringed slippers for a pair of chunky leather moccasins. I skip the pleasantries and ask, “Where’s Lillian—I mean, um, Mrs. Brooks?” If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he’d offed her and buried her under that precious rose bush.

  He smiles wickedly, exposing a row of browned lower teeth; meanwhile, I wait for the creepy organ music to kick in. “She’ll be along.”

  Aleks steps forward and extends a hand. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

  The air crackles, as if on the verge of a thunderstorm. “I’d rather not,” says Mr. Brooks, “with the flu making the rounds and so forth.”

  Okay, I’m not the most medically knowledgeable person on Earth (or even the most observant, generally speaking), but isn’t flu season like a few months off? “This is Aleks,” I offer, trying to introduce a bit of cordiality to our meeting before it catapults off a cliff.

  The wood floor groans as Mr. Brooks steps for the hallway. “Very well,” he murmurs without looking back.

  By the direction he’s heading, I anticipate another stiff exchange in the parlor. But at the last minute, he swings left for the library. I breathe a sigh of relief when I spot Mrs. Brooks seated behind a heavy oak desk, a spread of books and documents laid out before her. “Good mor—” she starts to say, her gaze (and her voice) stopping dead at the sight of Aleks. Her eyes widen as she rises to greet us. “Oh, my. It’s uncanny.”

  I feel for her. It’s not easy seeing a dead loved one brought back to life. “Hi, Mrs. Brooks,” I say, bracing myself for the hug she’s marching over to deliver. When her arms wrap around me, they’re as flaccid as Clive’s injured wing. “How are you?”

  Her touch is so light it takes a few extra seconds for the drop in pressure to register when she releases me. “Us?” She shakes her thinning blond hair, which, thanks to all those chemicals, is a pretty close match to mine. “We’re”—she shoots a questioning look at her husband—“well, we’re super, I’d say. Just humming along over here.”

  Mr. Brooks clears his phlegmy throat. “I’ll get the tea,” he announces. Then he’s off.

  I point with my eyes at the bamboo settee. (I could call it a sofa, but that wouldn’t quite capture the fragility of this particular furniture specimen.) “Wanna sit down?” I ask Aleks, who has gone suspiciously mum.

  “Please, do,” says Mrs. Brooks. She attempts a smile, but it’s rejected by her surgically sculpted permaface.

  Aleks and I crunch together on the settee, our thighs rubbing. “I like your house,” he says, scanning the built-in bookshelves, which are stuffed to bursting with everything from The Cat in the Hat to War and Peace. I’m embarrassed to admit that George and I used to sneak in here and read aloud to each other from Lady Chatterley’s Lover. “Have you lived here long?” asks Aleks.

  “Ten years,” Mrs. Brooks reports, her eyes going misty.

  I want to act as a mediator, but I don’t know how. “Aleks is from New York,” I say. “His dad’s a professor at Columbia.”

  Mrs. Brooks: “Yes, we know.”

  They do? “I might apply there,” I say, drawing an enthusiastic grin from Aleks, who seems to be checking my ear for
mites.

  Mrs. Brooks shoots me a doubtful look that should be insulting but, due to her lack of expressiveness, falls flat. “Let us know how that turns out.”

  From the corner of my eye, I spot Mr. Brooks wheeling a food trolley along. He parks it in front of his wife and settles into a reading chair by the dormant fireplace. When I get a look at the trolley, its mirrored serving tray and crystal pitcher make me feel woefully underdressed.

  As Mrs. Brooks reaches for the pitcher, Aleks bolts to his feet. “I’ll get that,” he says, snatching the handle out from under her French-manicured fingernails. She gives a stammering gasp of surprise but quickly relents, taking Aleks’s place beside me.

  By the amount of interest Mr. Brooks is showing in his dead son’s twin (he’s now moved on to reading the Wall Street Journal and actively ignoring us), you’d think we were asking him to watch grass grow. Or paint dry. Pick your boring clichéd analogy.

  While I await my lemon-fresh tea, Mrs. Brooks starts a rambling monologue in my ear that leaves me with a couple of nagging questions, like: Do they make Botox for vocal cords? (I’m suddenly grateful George’s mother hasn’t cozied up to me before now.) And what is taking Aleks so long to slosh those glasses full of sweet, honey-colored liquid?

  I scoot to the edge of the settee and offer, “Want me to serve those?” I mean, I’ve got loads of experience waiting on people.

  Aleks gives me the cold shoulder. “Almost done,” he promises, clinking the pitcher against the final tumbler in the quartet. He walks a glass over to Mr. Brooks and then hits the trolley for two more. When I reach for the glass in his right hand, though, he crosses his arms and thrusts his left at me instead.

  There’s not enough room on the settee for Aleks to join us, so he leans against the desk and studies Mrs. Brooks and me as we sip. From the reading nook, Mr. Brooks asks, “Will you be in town long?”

  “Not really,” Aleks replies with a shake of his tousled hair. “I’m assisting my father with a research study, so I have to be home by Wednesday.”

  Mr. Brooks raises an eyebrow. “What kind of research?”

  “A field study at Camp Laurel. It’s the final week, so I’m helping him wrap things up.”

  “Fascinating,” says Mr. Brooks.

  I can’t take much more of this mundane conversation without nodding off. “So, uh, Aleks,” I say, hoping to goose things along, “don’t you have questions for”—I flail my arm through the air—“these guys?”

  “Yeah,” he agrees, going pale in the face. He takes a gulp of the tea and focuses on Mrs. Brooks’s forehead. “If you don’t mind . . . how did you end up with George?”

  I’ve wondered that too, since Aleks somehow landed with his biological father.

  Mrs. Brooks starts hiccupping softly. “Excuse me,” she croaks, an embarrassed hand covering her mouth. On the subject of George’s adoption, she eventually says, “Oh, who can remember now? That was so long ago.”

  Well, that’s evasive.

  A restless, dissatisfied (and quite understandable) look colors Aleks’s face. “It’s just that . . . my father . . .”

  What exactly is Dr. Smullen’s take on this? I wonder. Did he even know about George? If he did, why didn’t he reach out? I mean, I’m sure George would’ve appreciated a relationship with his dad, even if the guy has a history of fornicating with a traitor. As the saying goes, blood is thicker than espionage.

  Mrs. Brooks has gone from hiccupping to coughing, drawing her husband out of his lair. From behind the settee, he gives her a couple of quick jabs between the shoulder blades, then proclaims, “That ought to suffice.” I twist around to catch a smug grin on his face that quickly fades into a straight line.

  Aleks refills his glass, his hand trembling as he sets the pitcher back on the tray. I get a pang of guilt over bringing him here, since he’s clearly no match for the Brookses, who have become exponentially more aloof and abrasive, it appears, since George died. “Should we . . . ?” I say with a head bob at the door. “Maybe we should . . .” I can’t quite bring myself to suggest leaving, as this might be Aleks’s only chance to interrogate the two people (other than me) who knew his brother best.

  Soon my hesitation is irrelevant, though, because as Mr. Brooks makes his way back to the reading chair, his wife starts listing toward me. Her frail neck bumps off my shoulder before she sinks into a lump against the arm of the settee. I give her thigh a pat, hoping to rouse her. “Lillian? Lillian, what’s the matter?”

  She lets out a sloppy gurgle, her eyelids fluttering. “Erm . . . something . . .” she says in a breathy voice. “I’m dizzy.”

  Mr. Brooks snaps to attention, parades back over and takes his wife by the shoulders. “Is it your heart, dear?” he asks, kneeling in front of her.

  Not again. Please, God, don’t let another person keel over from heart problems on my watch. I search my shorts for my cell, forgetting we’ve been ordered to leave all electronics behind. “Where’s your phone?” I ask in a panic, my brain refusing to retrieve the information. “I’ll call 911.”

  “Let’s get you to bed,” Mr. Brooks says, ignoring my plea as he hoists his wife to her feet. She’s limp and clammy looking, her complexion the hue of baked cement.

  Aleks plants a firm grip on Mr. Brooks’s arm. “Do you think that’s wise?” he asks in a tone that defies argument. “She should see a doctor.”

  His decisiveness knocks me for a loop, the way it recalls George. And apparently it throws Mr. Brooks off-kilter too. “You have a point,” he admits, staring incredulously at Aleks’s fingers, which remain clamped around his withered bicep. He pulls back and looks his wife in the face. “The hospital is only ten minutes away. It’ll be faster to drive.”

  I’m sure he’s underestimating, but whatever. “Here,” I say, offering my arm. “She can hold on to me.” And she does.

  In no time, Mrs. Brooks is loaded into the front seat of the Camry. With his normal delicacy, Mr. Brooks backs out of the garage, immune to the potential emergency on his hands. “Geez, that was weird,” I say to Aleks, the garage door humming to a close and sealing us inside. Instead of reaching their target, though, my words evaporate in a void of stale air. “Aleks?” I say, doing a pirouette.

  But I’m alone.

  “Aleks?” I repeat. Maybe he’s wandered off, a behavior George was famous for too.

  The garage is locked, something Mr. Brooks made sure of with his handy remote control before sputtering out of the driveway, forcing me to take a tour of the gift shop (a.k.a. Brooks Manor) before exiting.

  The house is oddly still as I ramble through, giving the impression of a museum. I want to call out for Aleks, but the calm is too thick (read: menacing) to shatter. He must have stepped out of the garage when I wasn’t looking, I tell myself. That’s the logical explanation.

  I leave the mauve door unlocked while I scour the grounds. If need be, I’ll make another sweep of the house, though I can hardly imagine Aleks having gotten waylaid en route to the great outdoors.

  “Psst! Aleks!” I yell into a neat row of trees (topiaries, Mom calls them) on the west side of the Brookses’ property.

  The only reply is the flutter of bird wings, a flock of pigeons flapping away from me. What an idiot, I think, unable to refrain from berating myself. You misplaced a boy—the friendly, attractive twin of your dead love—within a hundred-yard radius of your front door. Brilliant.

  I’ve nearly completed the loop back around to mauve-ville when a flash of movement in an upstairs window—the Brookses’ bedroom, I believe—catches my eye. In case I’m hallucinating, I give a couple of solid blinks, but the image refuses to budge. Nuh-uh, I think. It can’t be. Not now. Not after everything I’ve tried to . . .

  But it is.

  Framed by a pair of brocade drapes and knocking around without a care in the world is George—or Aleks. I can’t tell which, since whoever it is goes from wearing George’s green hoodie to Aleks’s striped tee every time my eyelids flap s
hut.

  I have no choice but to haul ass for the Brookses’ bedroom, in hopes of catching the culprit, whoever he is, in the act of . . . well, who knows what. I take the steps two at a time, nearly spinning out at the landing. When I round the corner for the master bedroom, what confronts me is, in a word, curious.

  “George?” I whisper, feeling ridiculous as my eyes widen on the scene. In TV cop-drama speak, the Brookses’ bedroom has been “tossed”—dresser drawers yanked out and tipped over, mattress shoved off its foundation, closet contents heaped up and strewn about. Somehow I doubt a ghost could have wreaked such havoc. Or at least not George’s ghost. Nor do I have evidence to implicate Aleks in such a dastardly deed, until . . .

  “Oh,” he says, moseying out of the master bath. “How’d you get in here?”

  The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “Excuse me?”

  He stalks toward me. “I thought the door was locked.”

  “Not the one from the garage,” I say, unsure whether to go all kickboxing ninja on him or turn tail and run. My gaze rolls around the bedroom, settling on an empty box—a shoe box, it looks like—that has been shredded to within an inch of its life. “What’re you doing?”

  He throws a nod over his shoulder. “I had to use the bathroom.” His hands rub across his thighs, as if he’s drying them on his cargo shorts.

  With gloves on? I should be asking, if the sight of those thin little surgical suckers hadn’t sent an icicle of terror dancing up my spine. Maybe, for an encore, he plans to dismember me. “Ready?” I say, like we’re just going to pick up where we left off.

  He cracks a smile. Or a smirk. There’s no telling now. “Give me ten minutes?” he replies, as if he’s requesting an audience with the Queen instead of burglarizing the quiet suburban home of his dead twin.

  I don’t dare move. “You want me to stay here, you mean?”

  He shrugs. SHRUGS! “Eh, it’s up to you.” He twirls a finger through the air. “Just don’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”