Hidden Things

by Doyce Testerman

  She walks to the car, gravel crunching under her shoes, and stands next to the door. She doesn’t say anything; knows that anything she could say now won’t matter. Eventually, he rolls the window down, but doesn’t turn to look at her.

  “Baby,” she begins.

  “Let’s go home.” She can barely hear him.

  She starts to protest; stops. Shakes her head. Tries again and fails.

  He rolls up the window and, with nothing to say, Calli can only walk around and get in. Tears stand in her eyes, and she doesn’t know why.

  There are too many reasons.

  It was nearing dawn when Mahkah’s voice thrummed Calliope awake. “WE HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR FIRST DESTINATION, CALLIOPE.”

  Calliope blinked her eyes into focus, staring at the half-harvested cornfield they sat in. With help from Vikous and some assistance from Mahkah, she slid to the ground without too much pain and looked around. There were buildings in the distance that were familiar, if not comforting.

  “This will take me most of the day, Mahkah.” She turned back to the dragon. “I hope you—” She stopped, staring at an empty field.

  “HAVE NO WORRIES ON OUR BEHALF.” The voice shook out of the earth, everywhere and nowhere. Behind Calliope, dried cornstalks rustled in what might have been the wind. “WE WILL FIND YOU HERE AT DUSK.”

  “Look out for the hidden things,” she murmured to herself and turned to Vikous, who stood with his hands in his pockets, poking one great oversized shoe at a severed stalk of corn. “I think it might be—”

  “—better if you do this alone, yeah.” Vikous smirked. “Sounds good. I’ll wait out here.”

  “You sure you won’t be cold?” Calliope asked, but Vikous’s smirk only broadened.

  “Don’t worry about me; this last bit’s been like a vacation.” He looked up from the dirt. “It’s your journey; I’m just the guide. If you know where you’re going, then I can pretty well take it easy.” His eyes flicked to the buildings in the distance.

  Calliope said nothing and Vikous nodded. “Get walking. We’ll be here.”

  Calliope turned down the long driveway that led to the cluster of buildings she’d seen from a distance. Surrounded on three sides by thick ranks of trees planted back in the late ’30s, the farm was clearly visible only after she walked into the yard.

  Nothing had changed. She didn’t recognize the car in front of the garage, and the barn and machine shed both needed paint, but that was it. Calliope had walked down the drive a thousand times—more—dropped off by the school bus in the late afternoon. It had always looked the same.

  No one noticed her approach. No one came out to meet her. That was pretty much the same as well.

  She almost turned around at the mailbox by the road, again by the driveway gate no one ever shut, again when she walked into the main yard, and finally when she got to the base of the steps.

  “They’re not going to leave you standing on the front step.”

  “Oh, but they might,” Calliope murmured, her breath swirling around her in pale wisps. “They might.”

  She stood at the steps for a long time, then climbed them and lifted her left hand toward the door. It shook visibly.

  “We walk up and knock on the door . . .”

  Calliope let out a short, nervous laugh. “God, I wish you were here.”

  She knocked and jammed her hand back in her pocket.

  A few seconds later—the time it takes to wipe off your hands and walk from the kitchen—the main door opened. Calliope watched the face of the woman on the other side of the screen change from polite curiosity to confusion to worry and finally, as expected, drop back into its familiar stoicism.

  “This is a surprise,” the woman said.

  “Hi,” Calliope said, hoping the wind muffled the shake in her voice. “Mind if I come in?”

  It was probably only a second before her mother answered, but it seemed to Calliope that the question hung in the air between them for hours; dangerous, giving off a kind of poisonous heat.

  “Good grief, like you need to ask.” Phyllis Jenkins pushed open the screen door, still holding the rag she’d been using to wipe off her hands. Calliope stepped past her into the house—their unfamiliar proximity awkward for only a second—and Phyllis glanced at the snow-packed drive. “How’d you get here?”

  Calliope turned, unzipping her coat halfway as her eyes scanned the pictures on the walls. “I had a friend drop me off. They’ll be back this afternoon, if that’s all right.” She motioned to the walls, where each portrait had been updated over the years, except for Calliope’s sophomore head shot. “Everyone’s aged except for me, I guess.”

  Her mother glanced up at the walls. “Sort of Dorian Gray in reverse.”

  “God, do I look that bad?” Calliope forced a smile.

  Her mother made a dismissive grimace. “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Calliope chose not to reply and nodded toward one picture. “Dad’s lost some weight.”

  “That’s because of the cancer, actually,” said a voice from the archway leading into the hall beyond. “Hello, Cal.”

  Calliope turned, startled, to the speaker. Her sister, wearing a faded apron that Calliope recognized, leaned against the door frame, unsmiling. “Cancer?” She shook her head. “Sorry. Hello.” She turned back to her mother. “Cancer?”

  Phyllis shook her head. “Just some melanoma—your dad never covered himself up on the tractor like he should have.” She motioned toward the kitchen. “Let’s go sit down.”

  Calliope glanced at the couch and several armchairs in the room they were already standing in, but said nothing and followed her sister out of the room.

  “Your hair looks like you’ve been standing in front of a leaf blower.” Her mother set a cup of tea in front of Calliope at the kitchen table.

  “The . . .” Calliope took a drink, not using her right arm, but trying not to favor it. “The ride I got was windy.”

  Phyllis raised her eyebrows. “In this weather? Didn’t you freeze to death?”

  Calliope tipped her head. “I guess not, Mom, since I’m sitting here.”

  “Probably a motorcycle, that sounds crazy enough,” said her sister, sitting across from Calliope and looking at her over her own cup. There was no playfulness in her expression.

  Calliope matched the look. “Sure, Sandy, it was a motorcycle.” She tilted her head. “Aren’t you working anymore? I thought you’d be in town in the middle of the day.”

  “It’s Saturday, Cal. Did you lose track of time?” Sandy’s jaw was tight.

  “A motorcycle.” Her mother’s expression was a mix of disbelief and embarrassment.

  “It had a heater, Mom. It was fine.”

  Her mother frowned. “One of those big . . . what do they say . . . Goldwings?”

  Wings like a bomber, Calliope thought, furling in toward its body.

  “Yeah.” She hid a small smile behind her cup. “Something like that.”

  Sandy set her cup down. “Did you steal it?”

  Calliope stared at her sister, her lips parted in astonishment. “Excuse me?”

  “Sandy . . .” Their mother shook her head, her lips pressed together.

  “Oh, please, Mom; you were thinking the same thing.” Sandy made a sharp gesture toward Calliope. “She shows up looking like she’s been living in a ditch, smells like roadkill, and you said the sheriff was through here two days ago asking about her.”

  “I wa—the sheriff?” Calliope’s pulse rose as her stomach dropped.

  Sandy turned back to Calliope. “That’s pretty good. You almost sounded surprised.”

  “I am—” Calliope shook her head. “What’s going on?”

  Sandy’s eyes narrowed. “That’s what I’d like to—”

  “You’ve been on the warpath with me since I got here. I haven’t done anything—”

  “You’ve got that right.” Sandy glared at her sister.

  Calliope sat back in her cha
ir, her expression slack. Her older sister had seemed her first and best friend all through her childhood, but the woman sitting across the table from her was, in light of those memories, worse than a stranger. “You don’t . . .” She shook her head. “You don’t even know me. You’d rather listen to some ignorant hick cop than—”

  “Jim Fletcher isn’t some—”

  “—even hear anything that I’m trying to—”

  “Stop, stop, stop, stop!” Phyllis smacked the table with one hand, and both younger women subsided, each glaring at the other. Their mother reached out and put a hand over one of Sandy’s. “Sandra, we don’t know anything that’s going on, and this is your sister.” She reached out her other hand. “Calliope—”

  Calliope, blood still pounding in her ears, jerked her hand free and instantly regretted it, not least because of the look of superiority in her sister’s eyes when she did.

  Steel—the sort of strength that saw a person through year after year of living on the edge of profit—slid into Phyllis Jenkins’s eyes. “You will be civil in my house, young lady.” Her hand snaked out and gripped Calliope by the shoulder.

  The pain pinned Calliope to her seat. The wound in her shoulder seemed to stretch, like strips of Velcro being pulled apart, and her muscles locked in shock. To her credit, Calliope didn’t scream or cry out, and at first her mother didn’t realize why there were tears in her daughter’s eyes, only that she had gone rigid beneath her hand. When a bloody flower began to stain the shoulder of Calliope’s sweater, she let go with a gasp, staring first at the widening blotch, then at her own stained thumb. “What? . . .” she said in a whisper.

  “Just a bullet hole, Mom,” Calliope said through clenched teeth. “It’s nothing; ask Sandy.”

  “Perfect.” Sandy stood up and yanked her coat from a hook by the back door. “You, you just stay away from me.”

  For the third time in fifteen minutes, Calliope was left slack jawed in the face of her sibling’s rejection. “Because . . . getting shot is my fault.”

  Sandy dropped both of her hands to the table and leaned over it. “I have kids, little sister,” she said, her own eyes bright with unshed tears. “Until people stop shooting at you, stay away from them. And me.” She pushed away from the table and turned. “Bye, Mom. I’m—I’ll call you.” The two women exchanged a look and Sandy left, closing the outside door behind her as she went. A few moments later, Calliope heard the car out front start up and pull out. After that, the kitchen was silent. Calliope sat, mute and still, left hand gripping her right biceps as if she could cut off the flow of pain to the rest of her body.

  Finally, her mother said, “Are you running from the poli—”

  “No,” Calliope said. Her mother didn’t respond. “I’ve got a phone number of a detective in the city. You can call him and ask.”

  Her mother shook her head, still not looking at her. “How did you get hurt?”

  Calliope simplified things as much as possible. “A bad guy shot me.”

  “On purpose.”

  “Bad guys do that.” Calliope snapped, goaded by the pain in her shoulder and the shock of her sister’s words. She glanced at her mother, then away, uncomfortably guilty at her own reaction. “Some people don’t like me much, Mom,” she continued, her tone subdued. “It’s a mystery.”

  A faint, sad smile ghosted across her mother’s face. “Why are you here?” She caught the look on Calliope’s face and shook her head, closing her eyes as though to retract her words. “I mean . . .” She looked at Calliope, then got up and moved to a cupboard drawer. “It’s been a long time. And an awfully long drive for some coffee.”

  “I’m working,” Calliope said, “kind of.” She sighed, trying to figure out where to begin. “I started this job a while back.”

  “Two years from September.”

  Calliope blinked. “Good memory.” She frowned. “Wait, how do you know that?”

  “Your sister read us the last letter you sent her.”

  “My last—” Calliope’s brow furrowed as she pieced things together. “That letter came back Return to Sender. The last two did, actually.”

  “Well, she read it to me,” her mother replied. She pulled a bundle from a drawer and walked to the sink, wetting down a fresh dishtowel. “I don’t know how you’d get them back if she opened them.”

  Oh, I do. Sandy had been a secret ally after Calliope had first left, always staying in touch and keeping her up to date (mostly), but a few years ago something had changed, for reasons Calliope had never been able to figure out. Resealing a letter and sending it back apparently unread no longer seemed out of character for her older sister. “Anyway, my partner’s”—she hesitated, remembering that the deal with Faegos might still hold—“missing. The police and the feds got hold of me last week and told me about it. It happened out here—”

  “Here?” Phyllis returned to the table. “Let’s pull that sweater off and see how bad I got you.”

  Calliope sat forward and started to pull her left arm in through its sleeve. “Not here exactly; Iowa in general. I thought I might be able to help figure out where he was.” She pulled the sweater over her head with her left arm and, with her mother’s assistance, moved it off her right arm and shoulder. The T-shirt underneath was soaked in a circle the width of an outstretched hand.

  Phyllis blew out a long breath. “I hit the bull’s-eye, looks like.”

  “It’s all right,” Calliope said. She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped, heat rushing to her face.

  Her mother caught the hesitation and the hot flush on her cheeks. “What?”

  Calliope gave her head a short shake. “I think you owed me one anyway,” she murmured, her eyes averted.

  Silence was Phyllis’s only reply. She turned her attention back to Calliope’s shoulder and clicked her tongue. “It sounded like that job might be dangerous; I guess it is.” Her nose wrinkled. “And your sister wasn’t wrong about your clothes. Get that stuff off and I’ll get ’em in some water after we look at you.”

  Calliope started to comply, but paused—somehow reluctant to give her mother some kind of advantage. “I don’t want to be a hassle.”

  “I just shoved my thumb into a bullet hole in my daughter’s shoulder,” Phyllis replied. “I think you can impose a little.”

  The blood looked worse than it was. Whoever had stitched up Calliope’s shoulder (Vikous, spooky clown of many talents, most likely) had done a good job; two or three stitches had been pulled hard but none had torn loose. Calliope took a long, much-needed shower, and her mother found her something to wear while her clothes washed. An hour later, Calliope was back in the kitchen in a pair of sweatpants and a flannel shirt, eating her first real meal in two days.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “In town, working on tax stuff. He’ll be home late.” Her mother folded clothes as they talked. Early afternoon light shone through the west-facing windows.

  Calliope frowned. “It’s not even January.”

  “This is still from last year.” She paused. “Or the year before last, maybe.”

  Calliope made a face. “I don’t know how you do it . . . this.”

  “Oh, neither do I, most of the time.” Her mother’s voice was light, but Calliope could hear the strain. “We’ll have to retire when we’re fifty-five so we have time to get jobs that pay.”

  Phyllis glanced at Calliope and pulled another article of clothing out of the basket. “The sheriff said that a federal agent was asking if you’d been in the area. He wasn’t sure if the police were hunting for you or just trying to get in touch.”

  “The police are not hunting me, Mom.” Calliope hoped she was at least telling the literal truth.

  “But they don’t know where you are.”

  “No.”

  “They don’t know you’re doing this.”

  “Officially?” Calliope took another spoonful of thick soup. “No, but they didn’t say not to.” Her mother sighed. Calliope glan
ced at her sidelong. “What did you tell the sheriff?”

  “I told him the truth.” She turned to Calliope. “I told him I didn’t know where you were, what you were up to, who you were with, or how to get hold of you. Which he already knew and has known for years.”

  Calliope searched her mother’s face. “I’m sorry.”

  “Please don’t apologize. I’m the one who got you in the shoulder.”

  “No,” Calliope said, reaching out to lay her hand on her mother’s arm, making her stop folding clothes for a second. “I’m sorry. About everything.” The apology hung in the air between the two women. Phyllis’s face fell into an expression Calliope couldn’t read. After a few seconds, she shook herself like someone casting off a daydream and moved aside the folded laundry.

  “So,” she said. “You came looking for your boy.”

  “My partner.”

  “Your partner.” Phyllis rotated her coffee cup on the table in a way that reminded Calliope of Vikous. “Someone you know well enough to drive across the country for.”

  “Yeah,” Calliope cut in, “it’s complicated, Mom. We’ve known each other a long time. He dropped out of the band we were in and decided to do something with his degree. I wanted to—” She shook her head. “He offered me a job, and I decided to get into the new business with him.” She sat back in the chair, rubbing at her hairline. “It’s complicated.”

  “You were in a band?” Phyllis said.

  Calliope winced, internally. “We could never get a record deal,” she explained, unasked. “I sang, and it was really good in the clubs—when we were live—but our demo tapes could never—”

  You were never happy with them, came Joshua’s voice; from a dream, or her own memory, or both. You got nervous whenever things looked like they were becoming real—just like with us.

  She grimaced. “They never came out right.”

  Her mother set her cup down on the table. “That sounds like it would have been good for you,” she said. “Better than playing detective, certainly.”

  Calliope blinked. “What?”