Shimmer: A Novel

by Passarella, John

  Again, Liana rushed to her sister’s side to comfort her.

  “Warm, warm, like the light,” Thalia said, still staring at Fallon. “Make her promise. Please, Liana, make her promise.”

  “You’re safe, Thalia,” Liana assured her. “Nobody will hurt you.”

  Thalia pointed an accusatory finger at Fallon. “You say it!”

  “I won’t hurt you,” Fallon said. “Promise.”

  Thalia giggled and the tension seemed to drain out of her in that moment. “I was right about you, I was. Right about Fallon. You’re different.” She let Liana lead her from the office, but her voice carried back to them with a haunting, sing-song clarity. “I saw her. I saw Fallon. Right there, like before, but different. It’s always dark, so dark, but I could see her, up there… I could. She shines, doesn’t she?”

  Fallon heaved an audible sigh, releasing some of her own incredible tension. Her neck and shoulders ached again, while her legs trembled like those of a newborn foal. She held up her hands and saw they were shaking as well.

  Ambrose reached for her hand, perhaps to lead her to an armchair, but she jumped back with an almost self-preservation instinct. “No more touching!”

  Nodding, Ambrose said, “Please, sit, Miss Maguire. You look terribly pale.”

  Logan shadowed her to the chair, but respected her wish not to be touched. Maybe he thought she would stumble and fall. At the moment, she wouldn’t argue against the possibility. But she found her way to the nearest chair and lowered herself into it, following the effort with another sigh.

  Logan leaned close and whispered, “Should have warned you about Thalia. Never thought she’d come down from her attic studio.”

  “May I fetch you a beverage, Miss Maguire?”

  “Water would be great,” Fallon said. Then, as an afterthought. “And it’s still Fallon.”

  “Of course,” Ambrose said. “Back in a moment.” Then he left the two of them alone in his office.

  Logan sat in the chair next to her. “You okay?”

  “Do I look okay?”

  “Honestly?”

  She frowned. “No.”

  “You look great.”

  “Thought so.” She sighed.

  “Tried to warn you.”

  “Warn me? There should have been a restraining order to keep me one hundred yards away from this house.”

  “Wasn’t time,” Logan said. “All the paperwork.”

  Fallon smiled, but the edges faltered. “I want to go home,” she said. “I need to go home.”

  “I understand,” Logan said. “I’ve had my whole life to adjust to this craziness. I’ll borrow the keys to Liana’s van and take you home.”

  “I’ll drive,” Liana said as she returned to the office alone. Before they could ask, she added, “Thalia’s sleeping already. On the sofa. Too tired to climb the stairs. That”—she looked curiously at Fallon—“took a lot out of her.”

  “Likewise,” Fallon said. “Feel like my head hasn’t touched a pillow in days.”

  “Logan and I should check on Barrett,” Liana said. “We’ll drop you off on the way.”

  Ambrose arrived with a tall glass of water, ice cubes clinking against the rim. Fallon took the glass from him, holding it gingerly in both hands. She gulped down as much as she could before coming up for air. “What—what just happened?”

  “A manifestation of your catalyst abilities,” Ambrose said. “That’s the most I’ve heard Thalia speak since… well, in a very long time.”

  “Was she afraid of me?”

  “Oh, no,” Ambrose said. “Thalia is afraid too often these days. Poor girl.”

  “Major trust issues,” Logan said.

  “Though the source of her fear is gone,” Ambrose said. “The scars remain. Clearly, she was drawn to you. And you were two floors apart. Impressive.”

  “Impressive? Right! Wiped out both of us.”

  Liana shook her head. “Thalia has repressed everything that happened to her. It’s like a… poison inside her, locking her away from us. Someday we hope to learn, to help her heal, but…” Liana took a deep breath. “As Ambrose said, this is the most she’s talked about it. It’s jumbled and confusing, I know, but it gives me hope we’ll have the real Thalia back someday.”

  “She wasn’t always like that?”

  “No, no,” Ambrose said. “Thalia was much like Liana. In many ways.” Fallon thought he would continue, but he lowered his head wistfully, as if he couldn’t bear to speak anymore. He cleared his throat and addressed Fallon again. “Tell me,” he said. “When Thalia approached you and raised her hand to your face, you appeared frightened, no?”

  “Yes!”

  “What made you take her hand and place it against your cheek?”

  “I don’t know,” Fallon said honestly. “Seemed like the right thing to do.”

  Ambrose nodded. “I’m sure it was. A good choice.”

  Fallon thought back to that moment of contact, the electrifying rush of jumbled emotions. “I saw the best… and the worst in her.”

  “Well, she has been through so much,” Ambrose said. “But can you be more specific? Was there anything else that might help us her?”

  Fallon shook her head. “It’s just a… feeling.” Her jaw stretched wide in a monstrous yawn. “Can’t explain it any better than that.”

  “Ambrose, we’re taking Fallon home now,” Liana said.

  “What? So soon?” he said forgetfully.

  Not soon enough! Fallon thought.

  “This has been a little overwhelming. Right, Fallon?”

  “Understatement of the millennium.” Fallon frowned. “Wait—did I say that out loud.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Liana said to her. “We understand.” She turned back to Ambrose. “Plus, there’s Barrett.”

  “By all means, yes,” Ambrose said. “Do be careful.”

  “We will.”

  “Anima spes est,” Ambrose said with a wave of his hand as they departed. Then, for Fallon’s benefit, he translated. “Life is hope.”

  In a daze, Fallon followed Liana and Logan out to the two-door garage where they piled into a white conversion van. From the front passenger seat, Fallon pointed the way to her home, which seemed light years from where she’d been moments ago. A thousand questions tumbled around her head, but the first one she blurted out was, “Why does he speak in Latin?”

  Liana chuckled. “Not touching that one.”

  “What?”

  Logan, sitting in the second row, in the driver’s side captain’s chair, said, “According to Ambrose, as long as he speaks Latin every now and then, it’s technically not a dead language.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Fallon said. “Lots of people speak Latin.”

  “According to Ambrose,” Liana said, “it makes perfect sense.”

  “And those paintings,” Fallon said, shifting topics but staying clear of questions about herself; she might not be ready for those answers. “Is Ambrose—are the Walkers—rich?”

  “Ambrose has amassed and lost several fortunes over the—over time,” Liana said. “Some of those paintings have been in the family for generations. Good thing he can pay the bills, because the rest of us, as you might imagine, have a hard time holding down steady jobs. Over the years, with all our moves, some of us have compiled what looks like fugitive resumes.”

  “Centuries ago, the Walkers had benefactors, patrons, even the support of various organized religions, people who made sure we could continue to fi—function,” Logan said.

  “Patrons?”

  Liana nodded. “Ambrose is fond of saying that the Medicis were not merely patrons of the arts.”

  “Whew!” Fallon said. “Feel like my head’s gonna explode.”

  “You need rest, young lady.”

  “But there’s so much I want to ask. So much I need to know.”

  “The answers can wait.”

  “Pull over,” Fallon said. She pointed to a modest brick hou
se, which seemed all the more modest after spending time in the sprawling Kemper place. “That’s my home. Number forty-eight.” After Liana parked the van, Fallon opened her door, and grabbed her backpack from the floor in front of her. “Thanks for the ride.”

  Liana caught her upper arm. “Remember, Fallon,” she said with quiet compassion. “You’re not alone.”

  Chapter 16

  From the sidewalk, Fallon waved to the occupants in the departing conversion van. She stood there for a moment after the van turned the corner and disappeared from view. After rolling her neck to ease her residual tension, she trudged up the cracked walkway to her front door. Although her mind swirled with hundreds of unasked questions, she had felt the need to escape, to get away from Logan’s family, to decompress.

  She had pushed herself, darting toward the flame of knowledge, backing away from the heat, then rushing forward again. Exhausting, to say the least.

  Despite her hunger for answers, her rational mind wanted to rail against everything she’d heard or witnessed in the last few hours. She felt as if she’d been trapped in a dreamscape held together by insane dream logic that, in the first glare of morning light, crumpled under the weight of its own implausibility—a spun glass creation shattered by the braying of the alarm clock in its daily role as merciless talisman of real-world sensibility. Can’t blame this on a dream, she told herself. Unless, of course, I’m asleep this very instant. That’s the only logical explanation. But how can I be asleep and feel sooo tired?

  “The only logical explanation,” she muttered to herself with mock seriousness, “is that logic’s parameters have expanded into the realm of the illogical. We have irrational numbers. Why not illogical explanations?” Face it, Maguire, crazy logic now rules your life.

  She slung her backpack over one shoulder as she twisted her house key in the deadbolt lock. Her weary smile transformed into a frown when she registered her father’s rust-dappled blue Ford pickup truck in the driveway. Due to chronic absenteeism, he’d lost his phone company job almost two months ago, and he was still looking—half-heartedly, she thought—for gainful employment. Not so long ago, he’d been working days and taking evening courses, trying to earn a business degree. But that was back when he still cared about the future, before Fallon’s mother had checked out of their lives.

  For a while, the night classes carried the burden of her father’s guilt. He assumed that if he’d been home more often, she might not have become so desperate. Therefore, he abandoned his academic dream. But that decision proved too little and too late to assuage his guilt. Fallon worried that nothing would ease his grief. And his continued downward spiral seemed to confirm her worst fears.

  She found him in the family room of the dim house—no matter how many lights she turned on, their home always seemed dark—and he was surrounded by a half-dozen empty beer bottles, sprawled in his recliner, watching a twenty-four hour news station with a talking head anchor, recycled video clips, and an informative news crawl banding the bottom of the twenty-seven inch screen. Sometimes she wondered if he watched television simply for the human noise it provided. He never talked about any of the news stories or sports scores or entertainment programs he watched. Rarely reacted to them. Like they were white noise that allowed his mind to idle safely in neutral.

  Though exhausted, she tried to sound upbeat. “Hi, Dad!”

  “Hmm,” he mumbled, lacking the verve to form an actual word.

  She pecked him on the cheek, felt the scratch of stubble, and noted he was wearing a ripe T-shirt, sweatpants, and scuffed running shoes. “Any interviews?”

  “Waiting on some calls.” They’d been through this routine long enough that she knew he hadn’t left the house all day, a supposition confirmed by his next remark. “We’re out of milk.”

  “Did you put it on the list?”

  “Forgot.”

  Fallon handled grocery shopping and food preparation. Otherwise, she doubted her father would eat. His appetite was feeble at best. Her mother and father had been high school sweethearts, together and inseparable for over twenty-five years. Without her, he was lost. And Fallon could only push him so far. As much as she tried to take over the role of parent, she lacked the authority and the ability to force her father to embrace life again. They’d gone to grief counseling together for a while, but he’d abandoned that too. He was convinced he would find no answers, at least no satisfactory answers for what he’d lost in life.

  In bed at night, when she thought about her father enduring his days, basically marking time on his “life sentence,” she would sob helplessly into her pillow. At first she thought that she should be reason enough for him to want to live, that his responsibility as her father would keep him focused. She’d hoped he would eventually come back to her. But as weeks turned into months, she’d begun to accept that she must not be important enough in his eyes for him to care about tomorrow.

  In the wake of her mother’s death, in order to take control of her life, she’d had to become more self-sufficient. Unfortunately, her growing independence gave her father the excuse he needed to turn inward and surrender to depression. Because she feared the consequences of the milestone, she’d let her eighteenth birthday pass unmentioned, uncelebrated. She dreaded the day her father took notice of the calendar.

  “What would you like for dinner?”

  “Whatever.”

  “I can grill some chicken… or heat some beef stew leftovers?” she suggested. “Frozen pizza, maybe? Or vegetable soup?”

  “Anything’s fine,” he said before taking a pull from the beer bottle clutched in his hand. “Make what you want.”

  “Right,” she said, and pressed her lips together before she spoke out of anger. Her father never argued with her. Arguing would involve participation, actual involvement in her life. Negative emotions she directed at him merely fed his growing emotional void. Making him feel guilty would simply exacerbate the problem. He wanted to feel worse. Her only counter to his dark moods was to exude light. To be cheerful even when she really wanted to cry.

  For the same reason, she could never tell her father about her prophetic dreams or about any of the strange things Ambrose had said about her. Too many parallels to what had happened to her mother. Either her father would worry about her, or the information would push him over the edge. Then she imagined another possible reaction: apathy. What if her father couldn’t care less about her welfare? Entertaining that idea was making her nauseous.

  She wandered into the kitchen, absently opening and closing cabinet doors, hoping for culinary inspiration but probably too distracted to recognize its arrival. Instead, her gaze kept returning to the basket in the center of the kitchen table, the little orange bottles: prescriptions filled but unused. Her father’s doctor had prescribed chemical cures for emotional wounds. A solution he’d rejected as soundly as grief counseling.

  Fallon shook her head bitterly. Before you can be helped, you have to want help. You have to accept help.

  She plucked the magnet-backed grocery pad from the refrigerator door, pulled out a chair, sat down quietly, wiped tears from her eyes and—not for the first time—considered grinding the pills into his food.

  But he self-medicates with alcohol. When she’d suggested he attend an AA meeting, he hadn’t argued. Said he would consider it. When she reminded him later, he said ‘okay’, but he never went. If I was a better daughter, he would argue with me.

  “The choices you make…”

  She grabbed a pen from the basket in the center of the table and began to write the word ‘milk’ at the bottom of the list. A shudder raced down her spine, and the pen slipped off the edge of the pad. She looked down at the pad of paper and saw that instead of ‘milk’ she’d written ‘murder.’

  “Oh, my God,” she said with sudden intuition. “Chelsea!”

  Chapter 17

  Laramie, Wyoming

  According to the project schedule on Gideon’s clipboard, the Beaumont Professional
Building project was a week ahead of schedule. So far the weather, his suppliers, the building inspectors, and his employees had cooperated in rare harmony, like a planetary alignment, obviating the need for delays or contingencies.

  Though he was the boss, Gideon’s only concession to formal attire when touring his construction sites was the tan blazer he wore over his chambray shirt, worn jeans and scuffed Timberland boots. Gideon imagined that anyone visiting the site would instantly spot the man in the blazer and know who was in charge. Unless he happened to be looking for Gideon’s foreman, in which case he would have to ask somebody on site to point him to Alan Griggs, because unlike Gideon, Alan completely blended in with his crew, except when he happened to be barking orders at them.

  Alan, who was tall and lean, with rust-colored hair, pale blue eyes, and a jovial demeanor, met him at the corner of the lot and tossed him a spare hardhat, which Gideon caught in his free hand. “Hell on morale if the boss screws up our safety record.”

  “Right,” Gideon said and donned the helmet. “See you got the trusses,” he said, nodding toward the stacks of prefabricated triangular roofing trusses.

  “First thing this morning,” Alan said. At that moment, some of the men were attaching the stacks of trusses to a crane, which would lift them to the top of the office complex’s finished framed walls, most of which had already been sheathed in pink house wrap. “Expect to have them up by day’s end.”

  “Terrific,” Gideon said. “Any problems?”

  “Not a one,” Alan said. “Go figure.”

  “It’s early,” Gideon said and both men chuckled.

  Gideon had a lingering smile on his face when he noticed a tall, thin man dressed in black standing motionless on the other side of the lot. “Who’s that?”