Jackson sighed impatiently and leaned back into his bed. “David, when I need you, I will let you know. Until then, find something to do that doesn’t involve irritating the hell out of me.”
David scowled at the baseball game for a few minutes, then apparently decided he needed to masturbate again and stomped off to the bathroom, being far less discreet about it this time. Jackson ignored him. A message at the bottom of our screens lit up; the transcript was ready. We both hurriedly opened it. It was encrypted and the program took a few minutes to translate it; I was so full of murderous energy that I kept drumming my fingers at the edge of my laptop, kicking the wooden bed skirt underneath me, impatiently watching the agonizingly slow progress of the decryption. “Dietrich, she’s at work. She’s fine. We have plenty of time.”
I wanted to agree with him but everything about Jackson and David, this caller, this new directive to tell her … what? Another lie? Some half-truth? … felt sinister, deceptive, dangerous. Lottie was in danger. I knew it as much as I knew that Eric would go along with whatever I decided to do about it. The decryption finished, and the missing half of the conversation was there in front of me.
“Jackson?
Yes, Sir.
I read over your email. How the hell didn’t you know about this sooner?
I’m sorry, Sir, she just …
Oh, shut up. You fucked up. [pause] Are you sure this is all accurate? She’s telling the truth?
It was reported correctly, I am certain …
And did you tell her anything about this?
No, Sir, I didn’t.
Good. Then you will tell her this is exceedingly rare. That some part of her must have wanted this girl to live again. That most of us could not have done what she has done. That she is responsible for … resurrecting her.
Yes, I would be happy to …
I want you to tell her in person.
You would like for me to tell her in person?
Yes, that’s what I said, isn’t it?
When?
Tomorrow. Gauge her reaction.
Of course. I will do it tomorrow then.
You understand what this means for all of us?
Yes, Sir, I understand. [pause] Sir? Are you sure we should tell her?
We have to now. [pause] And one more thing. Tell her a judge is coming to evaluate her.
Ok, yes, I will.
Don’t fuck this up, Jackson. Call me if anything else happens.
Goodb…
[end transcript]
“Well, what the fuck does that all mean?” Eric muttered.
“We have to stop them. Tonight.”
Eric pushed his laptop away from him and faced me. He was thoughtful, contemplative. “We need to be careful. What if we … shit, Dietrich, we don’t want to start a war with some … remember that whole Independence Day thing I warned you about?”
“I’ve never seen that movie. Eric, this is Lottie. You heard David. He was threatening her. And why would they gauge her reaction? How do they want her to react? And a judge? What the fuck is she being judged for? I don’t want them around her. Ever.”
“I don’t either. But we can protect her without triggering some … intergalactic invasion.”
“You watch too many movies.”
“We’ll be there tomorrow. Let’s see how he reacts. He knows more about what’s really happened to her.”
“Yeah, and I’m planning on finding out what he knows.”
Eric thought about that. “Ok,” he conceded, “but let them meet tomorrow. We know where they’re going. We can always follow them to Waco.”
I shook my head. “Not both of us. We can’t leave Lottie here alone.”
“I’ll stay. But Dietrich …”
I shot him an I’ve-already-made-up-my-mind look, and Eric sighed. “Be careful. They’re not … Christ, we’ve never had to deal with anything like this.”
“He’ll bleed. They both will. What’s so different?”
Eric just shook his head. “That’s the problem. We don’t really know.”
Chapter 10
The next morning started off like a repeat. David had taken his position at the table again, isolated, indifferent, while the rest of us sat around the living area. Jackson was trying to affect an air of sympathy and composure, but his trembling fingers as he adjusted his glasses or set down his water glass belied him. Eric wasn’t sitting this time, but stood by the wall between them where he could reach either David or Jackson if one of them made him feel like it. Jackson was only attempting to fake coolness; Eric exuded it. His arms folded loosely, a bemused smirk playing at his lips, his posture loose and relaxed, Eric was the master here, the others his chess pieces, the king watching neutrally over his kingdom.
Lottie sat sandwiched between Lydia and me on the sofa, both of us wanting to be near her. Unlike yesterday, Lydia was nervous about this second visit. Her fingers kept twitching, and she would occasionally reach over and squeeze Lottie’s hand as Jackson continued to prattle on about how he’d never been to Baton Rouge and how nice it had been to get out of Waco, and even Texas, for a while. Lydia smiled and asked polite questions when she knew it was appropriate, but even her effervescent personality was starting to wear down. “Well,” he said at last, “I found out some information for you yesterday.” Lottie stiffened between us.
“I consulted with someone who has more knowledge about these things than I, and he said it is theoretically possible, but exceedingly rare, for one of our own to have the kind of power that it would take to resurrect a person’s mind.”
“Wait, huh?” Lottie shook her head, as if she could knock loose the tangled logic he was trying to force in there.
“You wanted this, Lottie. We had no idea you were such a powerful young woman. If we had known, we would have never let you come here. But you wanted to save her. So you did.”
Lottie stood up, her jaw set and eyes burning, her small slender fingers balled into fists. She was shaking. “Are you telling me I did this? I did this to myself? This … what? This half-assed suicide?” She was yelling. I didn’t know if I should try to calm her down or not. Lydia just looked scared.
Jackson didn’t seem concerned. He didn’t even flinch. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“No. No. No, I didn’t want this. I didn’t want any of this. I wanted me, I want me back.” She was still yelling, and Jackson was still indifferent.
Now was definitely not a good time for me to try to calm her down; I was just the guy who was here because she was still my formerly-dead-fiancée whom she was claiming she didn’t actually want to be at the moment. I looked helplessly at Lydia, who sat there, wide-eyed and pale. Great. I was on my own.
“Well, Lottie, you made your decision, whether you remember it or not,” Jackson insisted. Son of a bitch.
“I do remember seeing her! I remember her funeral and I wanted to comfort them but not like this!” Lottie was shaking. I slowly reached out for her hand, glancing at Lydia to see if she would give me some sort of warning if I was about to do something incredibly stupid, but she was cemented in that state of shock and horror.
“How did you want to comfort them then, Lottie?”
My fingers brushed hers and she didn’t jerk away from me. It took a second for her to realize I was there, trying to touch her, to remind her she wasn’t alone, then she opened her fist and let me hold her hand. I was still struggling to understand that despite her anger and fear, she loved me; not just because Lottie had loved me, but because she loved me too. And that made me hate Jackson even more.
Lottie took a deep breath, squeezing my fingers, trying to calm herself down. “Like any decent person would. How can anyone watch something like that and not feel it? What about you? Weren’t you at this man’s funeral?”
Jackson hesitated. “Yes. Of course it’s tragic, but without death, we couldn’t survive here.”
“I know. But I had never seen anything like that.” Lottie s
ank back onto the sofa with us. Lydia’s eyes had filled with swollen, fat tears. I didn’t doubt Lydia had felt the grief of Jamie’s funeral just as powerfully. “When her mother was there alone, or she thought she was … I sat next to her. The whole time. The way she was crying and, I don’t know, I thought, I would die if it could give this woman her child back, but I never thought of anything like this, I swear! I wouldn’t even know how.”
“Well, there you go. You didn’t need to know how, you simply needed the motivation to do it, and you had it,” Jackson looked so smug, I wanted to hit him. All right, I wanted to hit him for a lot of reasons, but especially now.
“No, I would have never chosen this! I didn’t bring her back, I just changed us both!”
“Lottie, listen to me, what’s done is done,” Jackson had his confession as far as he was concerned, and he continued as if her outburst was just a nuisance, like a gnat buzzing around his head. I half expected him to reach up and try to swat her away. “You’ve created quite the problem for all of us, and now …”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“And now, we will need to decide how to handle this in the best interest of our community.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I interjected. If Lottie were the annoying gnat, I was simply the open window through which it had flown in.
Jackson didn’t even bother to look at me. “It won’t concern you, Herr Dietrich.”
I gritted my teeth. His condescending attitude was aggravating enough; the Herr Dietrich part was simply fucking stupid. “Of course it concerns me. Anything that concerns her concerns me.”
Jackson rolled his eyes – he actually rolled his fucking eyes at me – and passed a glance in my direction. “She needs to talk to someone who can judge if this fiasco is salvageable. If it is, we can help her. It won’t be easy, but we can help her to remove most, if not all, of these memories.” He made a face when he said memories, like it tasted acrid and bitter.
“And what if he thinks I’m not … salvageable?” her voice was low now, quiet, raspy. Her anger had evaporated. There was nothing left but fear.
“Then we can’t help you, Lottie. Not anymore. Not ever again. None of us. Even Lydia,” he offered Lydia one of his warmer, more sincere, and this time, genuinely sympathetic, smiles, “will have to leave you.”
“So I have to choose?” Lottie sank back on the couch between Lydia and me. My stomach started rolling again.
“No. You don’t get to choose. You already made your choice when you created this ...” Jackson sighed, a heavy sigh, a very real reminder that for some reason, the man on the phone yesterday had been livid over this discovery. “Oh, Lottie. Do you even know what you’ve done?”
Lottie slowly shook her head. Lydia had reached over and taken her other hand. Lottie was squeezing it so tightly, her knuckles were blanched, the tendons in her hand stretched tightly as she held onto the only anchor she had left to her old life. Trying to separate her from Lydia seemed as cruel and merciless as the universe ripping Lottie out of my life. Lydia wouldn’t be taken from her. I couldn’t let that happen. Eric was watching them, too, and because I knew him so well, I knew this announcement had cracked that aloof façade he had constructed but he was still the owner of this room; this was still his show even though he and I were the only ones who understood it.
Tears had streaked Lydia’s cheeks and were falling onto her lap; she was trying not to devolve into hysterics, not when Lottie needed her. She had seemed so weak, so ineffectual and insipid the night I met her, and I had left with the impression of Lydia as the puppy who followed Lottie around wherever she went, even across time and space, yelping happily at her feet, but always the innocent little plaything of a stronger, more dominant force. But I was always judging too quickly, assuming people were so one-dimensional. Lydia was good and sweet and naïve, but she was also resilient, a bulwark for Lottie to lean on when she needed her, and right now, Lottie needed that rampart quite literally. She had leaned her face into Lydia’s shoulder, hiding from the second Jabberwocky to fly into this room in less than a week.
“Well,” Jackson stood up, and for the second day in a row, David took it as his cue to head toward the door, “I don’t know if I’ll be seeing you again, but … good luck.” And within seconds they were gone.
Lottie waited until the sounds of their footsteps had faded from the walkway before letting herself cry. Lydia smoothed her hair and gently, slowly, rocked her, like an injured child whose scraped knees could be healed by the power of her mother’s love. And as for me: I was trying desperately not to throw up. Eric finally moved across the room to lock the door and motioned for me to join him at the table. I didn’t hesitate; I felt like I was infringing on this private moment between two terrified and heartbroken friends, two friends whose bond had been so strong that they had risked their lives to stay together on a journey only one had wanted to take. But if Jackson were telling the truth, then she was going to lose one of us. If whatever they wanted to do to her worked, she may not remember me. But she would always remember Lydia. My stomach rolled again.
“Jesus Christ,” Eric muttered.
I nodded. “We can hide them both,” I suggested.
“Yeah, but what about you?”
I watched them for a few moments before answering. “I’ll know how to find her.”
“Dietrich, it won’t be the same, you won’t be,” but I already knew what it would mean. Hiding them so they could be together would mean Lottie and I could never be together.
“I know. But I’ll also know she’s alive, and hopefully, happy. That’s more than I ever had any right to ask for anyway.”
Eric put his head down in his hands. “I need a fucking drink.”
I glanced back at Lottie and Lydia, still holding onto each other, crying in each other’s arms, their hearts breaking with a pain I understood perfectly well, then in Russian, told Eric, “I need to get to Waco.”
I would have left later that day, but when Eric and I got up to leave, Lottie panicked. She begged me to stay with her and wouldn’t even go in to work. She called in sick, and Lydia somehow managed to pull herself together to still work her shift. Lottie insisted Eric borrow her car and that he could do whatever he wanted, but she thanked him so many times for coming to Baton Rouge in the first place, that we both knew what she was really doing: it was like being told you have a few days left to live. If there was a chance she wasn’t going to remember me, she suddenly didn’t want to let me go.
So we spent the entire afternoon lying on the sofa watching movies. She found Men in Black on Netflix and even though I groaned and tried to persuade her to watch something with more substance and fewer aliens, she was persistent, and as always, I gave in easily. And when it was over, I suggested we watch Independence Day. Somehow, as ironic as it was considering extraterrestrials and space travel were the last things I wanted to think about, the entire day turned into a marathon of watching movies about just that. We watched Spaceballs – because, really, what movie marathon is complete without a Mel Brooks film? – and we even found the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. We ordered pizza for supper and drank beer and by midnight, Lottie had fallen asleep against my arm during the remake of War of the Worlds. And as I had done so many times before, I lifted her carefully, slowly so I wouldn’t wake her, and carried her to bed. As I turned to leave, Lottie stopped me.
“Dietrich?” Her eyes were wide, watching me. “Will you stay with me?”
My mouth was dry, and I suddenly felt nervous, like I was seventeen again. I certainly couldn’t tell her that part of me was still utterly, completely, hopelessly confused as to whether or not making out on the sofa the day before had been cheating on Lottie – my Lottie – or if it didn’t matter because wasn’t this my Lottie? She was, wasn’t she? She was different now, but the same, and when I had kissed her, that was Lottie kissing me back. But for all those moments that reminded me she isn’t the same woman anymore, al
though she had every quality I had fallen in love with, there were all these other attributes that were new, interesting, mysterious and, sometimes, exciting, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t ok to feel that way.
I sat on the edge of the bed and pushed a strand of hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. She was so beautiful, so perfect. My Lottie. “I’ll stay, but just to sleep.”
Lottie smiled. “Since when?”
“Since you’ve had an emotionally difficult day and I don’t want you to make any decisions based on what some asshole told you may or may not happen.” And I don’t know if it’s a good idea for us to sleep together. Can I cheat on my dead fiancée with my not-dead-fiancée-who-is-also-someone-else now?
Lottie’s smile faltered and she rolled onto her back. “It’s going to happen. I can’t stop it. I thought we would have so much time.”
“I know.” I lay down beside her and brushed my fingers through her hair. I could smell the faint scent of pears and honey.
“At first, I thought I wanted my life back, I thought it would be easier, but then I met you, I mean really met you, and I don’t want to forget you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I moved her closer to me and nestled into her neck, that smell, the heat of her body, those loose waves of hair tickling my face. I wanted her. God, I wanted her so badly.
Lottie rolled onto her side again and wrapped an arm around my waist, burying her face against my chest, and breathed deeply. I knew I was playing with fire. This had been a dangerous idea. I should have left. Offered to sleep on the couch. On the floor. I was a better man than this. But that aching longing, that hole that had ripped open in my own personal universe when she had died, was salved; it was calmed by the presence of Lottie and Kyrieana and it was now a burning desire, a passionate hungering that may have been for both of them. I didn’t even know anymore. I only knew that I wanted her. So I stayed.
Resurrected (Resurrected Series Book 1) Page 12