Destruction: The December People, Book One

by Sharon Bayliss

  She shrank back, her cheeks bright red. “I wasn’t going to. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Do they want anything to eat? There are tons of Halloween goodies in the break room.”

  David showed them the break room, turned on the computer in his office, then met with his team in the conference room.

  When he came in, he heard them speaking in whispers.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Give me the worst.”

  None of them said anything.

  “David,” Liza started.

  “Yes?” he prompted.

  “There was a problem in Tangled Forest,” Andy said.

  Their largest project—a forty-acre subdivision near Magnolia.

  “Fucking Tangled Forest,” David said. “It’s always something. I was out there last week. All that’s left is landscaping. What could possibly go wrong now? The landscape architect put in red oaks instead of black?”

  “It burned down,” Mark said.

  Tears formed in Liza’s eyes. She wiped copious amounts of black eyeliner onto a tissue.

  “What do you mean?” David asked. “How much of it?”

  “All of it,” Mark said.

  “That’s not possible,” David said.

  “There was a wildfire,” Andy said. “It took out two hundred acres of forest outside of Magnolia, including all of Tangled Forest.”

  “Imagine, if it had happened two months from now, hundreds of people would have lived in those houses,” Liza said. “I guess it’s a blessing, in a way.”

  “No, Liza. They would have all been evacuated,” Mark said acidly. “And their insurance would have paid for it. The property is still ours.”

  “No one was hurt,” Andy said. “But we had sixteen vehicles on site. They’re gone. We had to stop work in Cherry Woods because that equipment had been scheduled to be moved over there. I sent the workers home without pay.”

  “Our insurance will cover the vehicles, and it will help cover part of the loss from Tangled Forest,” Mark said. “But we’re covered only for up to twenty million.”

  The words ‘disaster recovery’ floated to the top of David’s mind. He hadn’t spent much time thinking about it, and the mistake would cost him.

  “Twenty million,” he repeated

  It had seemed like an excessive amount of coverage. He had wanted to buy less. How could they lose that much in a disaster? They would have to lose a hundred homes at once. It would take a meteor hitting the Earth for that to happen. A hurricane wouldn’t do much this far inland. Tornadoes didn’t usually take out that much at once.

  “Get the claim going as fast as possible,” he said.

  “Already done,” Mark said.

  “Andy, start placing orders for new equipment so we can purchase as soon we get the money. We need to get Cherry Wood back up. We’re on a deadline.”

  “David?” Liza asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think it’s worth it to start work again on Cherry Wood?” She looked at Mark and Andy for support. “Or should we start the process of bankruptcy?”

  David stared at her blankly.

  “We’ve lost money before,” he said.

  “I’ve done the calculations,” Mark said. “We can’t come back this time.”

  “You called me in here to tell me that we’re bankrupt?” David asked. “Just like that?

  “I’ll email you the projections,” Liza said, tears still spilling down her face.

  Mark spun his wedding ring around his finger.

  David’s ears rang. He couldn’t hear anything anyone said as he left with his kids following behind him.

  “Are you okay?” Evangeline asked when they climbed back into the Mercedes.

  “Let’s go shopping,” he said. “You need clothes. I’m going to take you to the mall, and you’re going to buy clothes. End of discussion.”

  He wished he had handled it differently, but he didn’t know how much longer he could afford to buy them clothes and wanted to do it now. He took his silent, baffled children into The Galleria, the largest and loudest structure they’d ever visited, took them to Hollister, and ordered them to pick out clothes. Evangeline walked around the store with her nose wrinkled but eventually gave in and began pulling things off the rack. She went for bright colors and picked out outfits that defied all sense of matching or reason. David’s ears didn’t stop ringing until he noticed Xavier. He had his arms wrapped around his chest as he stared at a rack of cargo shorts, holding his breath. He looked as if he was trying not to cry.

  David snapped out of it.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you here if you didn’t want to come. Try to relax. You’re fine.” As an afterthought, he added, “Breathe.”

  Xavier looked at him when he said that. And, after a moment’s consideration, he did take a breath.

  “I’ll pick the stuff out for you if you want,” David said. “I’m not going to say I know what’s cool, but I know what my sons wear. You don’t have to try it on here. If it doesn’t fit when you put it on at home, I’ll take it back and exchange it. Okay?”

  Xavier nodded. He followed David around mutely while he pulled things off the rack. For Xavier, David chose simple: navy blues, grays, khakis, denims. He would want to blend in at school. Hollister didn’t sell invisibility cloaks, so he had to go with the next best thing.

  “So, I take it you don’t like shopping,” David said. “What do you like?”

  By the look on Xavier’s face, David might have asked the question in German.

  “What do you like to do for fun?” David asked.

  “I don’t know,” Xavier said.

  “Shawna from the shelter said you liked to watch movies. Maybe you want a television for your room? Or a video game console, maybe. My other sons certainly like video games.”

  “I don’t want you to buy me anything. You have too much stuff. Wizards aren’t supposed to care so much about Earthly things.”

  Three full sentences. Score. The fact he’d said anything at all seemed more important than what he had said, but David didn’t miss it. With Evangeline safely tucked away in a dressing room, out of earshot, Xavier still called himself a wizard. He believed it too.

  “Okay,” David said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know much about wizards. You’ll have to tell me what I need to know.”

  Xavier scoffed pointedly and walked away from David.

  David would count that as engaging him in conversation. He had to start somewhere.

  David holed up in his home office and forced himself to review the budget projections Liza had sent. He found himself developing a case of adult-onset dyslexia. The numbers swam around the page and lost meaning. It couldn’t be right. One disaster couldn’t bring down his whole business. 347 jobs. 347 people. 347 families. Because of one minor decision he had made one afternoon seven years ago, when twenty million seemed like enough coverage.

  And his family.

  As Xavier said, they had too much stuff. A massive mortgage, three car payments, a boat payment. Private school. Five looming college educations. Why in the hell did they have a boat?

  David rubbed his temples and watched the numbers on the screen turn into hieroglyphs until Amanda knocked on the door.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He stared at her.

  “The point of working at home to watch your kids is so you can actually watch them.”

  He perked up. “What are they doing?”

  “Go get your daughter for dinner,” Amanda said. “She’s being odd. And she won’t talk to me.”

  Whenever their kids did something bad, she liked to refer to them as his kids. Now she meant it literally.

  “Where is she?”

  “Backyard.”

  Evangeline sat on the back lawn with her bare legs folded under her. The ground must be wet and cold. From behind, she looked how David imagined Crystal as a child. Evangeline had her thick, brown hair in a
messy ponytail, and she wore the lacy white sundress David had bought her. He should have made sure she picked out winter clothes.

  “Are you all right?” David asked.

  “I’m fine.” She didn’t take her eyes off something in the palm of her hand. He thought it might be her magic rock. On closer inspection, he saw a pill bug rolled into a ball.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “Practicing.”

  “What?”

  “I’m trying to get the bug to trust me and unroll while it’s still in my hand.”

  “How do you do that?”

  She shrugged. “I just focus on making my hand feel safe.”

  “Does it work?”

  “With some of the bugs, it works right away. With others, it never works.”

  “Dinner is ready, if you’d like to come inside.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why do you ask me about magic if you don’t believe in it? Are you humoring me?” She said the word ‘humoring’ as if she had recently learned the word and wanted to try it out.

  David weighed his possible answers.

  “Because it’s important to you. I want to know about the things that are important to you.”

  She carefully placed the still-rolled pill bug on the ground. She gave him one of her mother’s inscrutable expressions. His chest swelled with grief. Because she taught it to you. Your words are her words. I want to hear her echo.

  “Are you thinking about my mother right now?” she asked.

  “How did you know that?”

  “Your eyes look different. And I can feel you being sad.”

  He kneeled down next to her, and as he suspected the knees of his slacks sank into the wet ground.

  “We could have a memorial service for her, if you want.”

  All of her muscles seemed to tighten at once, and she shrank slightly. “I don’t want to.”

  She picked up another bug and the back of her dress shifted, showing more skin around her neck. He saw two tick marks peeking out from behind her dress. His head swam. Good thing he had already knelt.

  “We can remember her however you want. Whenever you’re ready.”

  She nodded.

  “Is something bothering you?” he asked. It sounded stupid when he said it out loud. Of course something bothered her. Lots of things. He had meant, is there anything causing you to be more bothered than usual right now?

  “Amanda said I can’t do magic anymore. Not while I live in her house.”

  A burst of anger made his knees sink farther into the lawn. David couldn’t imagine why Amanda would do something as unnecessary and cruel as taking away her fantasy. Not like Amanda at all.

  “You must have misunderstood her,” David said.

  “She said magic hurts people and that I should know that better than anyone.”

  David stood and knocked the mud off his pants. “No, there is some mistake. I’ll talk to her. Come inside for dinner.”

  He took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. It had Crystal in it and he thought about taking it back, but Evangeline wrapped the jacket around herself tightly.

  When she stood, David leaned down to flick the mud and grass off her legs but stopped himself before he touched her.

  Dinner featured no fighting or breaking glass. Emmy graced the table with conversation about student government. She considered running for class President and evaluated her competition. It felt forced, as if Amanda had ordered Emmy to talk about student government at dinner.

  Xavier wore some of the shelter clothes. David ignored it, which took some self-control. Samantha sat too close to Jude for David’s liking. She ate her macaroni noodles one at a time. Weren’t her parents supposed to pick her up today?

  “I’m going out,” Jude announced.

  “It’s a school night,” Amanda said.

  “It’s Halloween,” Jude countered.

  “Where do you want to go?” David asked.

  “Party at Trevor’s house.”

  “Alcohol?” Amanda asked.

  “No. Just milk and cookies.”

  “Don’t joke around,” Amanda said. “Answer the question.”

  “His parents are home. I doubt they’re buying us a keg. It’s not a big thing. Just some people hanging out.”

  “Be home by eleven,” Amanda said.

  “It’s Halloween,” Jude argued.

  “Then make it nine.”

  “Eleven is fine.” Jude grabbed his plate and left the table in a rush. David guessed he wanted to leave before Amanda changed her mind.

  After eating, they all took their plates into the kitchen. While David passed by Amanda, he put his hands on her waist without thinking about it. She pulled away as if he’d burned her.

  “Don’t touch me,” she cried.

  All his kids, minus Jude, turned to look at them.

  “I’m sorry… it was just habit,” he said.

  “Break it,” she said, then left the kitchen.

  Emmy took Amanda’s spot by the sink and started loading dishes into the dishwasher. Her cheeks had turned red. Samantha rinsed out Amanda’s wine glass. Xavier and Evangeline stood off to the side, not yet having a spot on the after dinner cleaning assembly line. He handed them rags and asked them to wipe the counters and the table. They did.

  David followed Amanda out of the kitchen and hoped she had cooled off. His own anger simmered, and he knew approaching her now carried some risk. And even the slightest annoyance in his tone could set off the epic rage she could barely contain.

  Amanda folded clothes in their—now her—bedroom. When upset, she liked to get her hands in things. And the house had looked extra clean lately.

  “I’m sorry for what happened in the kitchen,” he said.

  “It’s okay. I probably overreacted. But you can’t do stuff like that. We’re separated. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea by me letting you live here. We’re not a couple.”

  “I never noticed how much I touched you, until I wasn’t.”

  She let out a long breath.

  “We need to talk,” David said, his tone dark.

  She raised an eyebrow that looked like a challenge.

  Before she could say anything, he continued, “You said this was about the kids, not us. And what I’m about to say to you is about the kids. Keep that in mind.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why does Evangeline think you forbade her to do magic?” David asked.

  She unfolded and refolded a pair of David’s jeans and didn’t look him in the eye.

  “Oh,” she said. “She told you that.”

  “What did you say to her?”

  “I did tell her she can’t do magic. Not while she lives here, anyway.”

  Anger bubbled up from his stomach and hardened in his shoulders. “What’s the matter with you? You said on the first night that they hadn’t done anything wrong, that you were mad at me and not them. She needs her beliefs to cope. Why in the world would you take that away? It makes no fucking sense.”

  “David,” she said. Then she stopped. She smoothed out the pants. “David,” she started again.

  “What?”

  “I understand it’s hard to tell someone you love something you know will hurt them. It’s not an excuse for not telling me about them sooner. But I understand.”

  “Okay…”

  Her statement didn’t cool his anger, but it did confuse him enough to throw him off track. If he yelled at her, she yelled back, even when they were happy.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” she asked.

  “I’m not in the mood to sit.” He paced at the foot of the bed.

  “You should probably sit for this.”

  “Amanda, if you have some brilliant explanation for why you decided to crush Evangeline’s magical narrative, go ahead and spit it out. Or admit that you had no reason and just did it to be cruel.”

  “I have a secret, to
o, David.”

  David stopped in his tracks. “A secret? You mean… like my secret?”

  “Not exactly. Not an affair. I’ve never cheated on you. But I have lied to you.”

  David’s heart raced, and he noticed the rage in his head morphing into something else, something more like fear. His tongue felt too dry.

  “To be honest, I never intended to tell you at all,” she said. “But life works in weird ways. Eventually, it will come out, whether I want it to or not. So, I think it’s better that I just tell you.”

  “I know I’m just as guilty, but if there’s another man, I swear, I will… kill… him. I don’t care if that makes me a hypocrite.”

  “I told you, it’s not another man.”

  She finally put down the laundry and stepped toward him. She leaned in and examined his eyes as if trying to solve a riddle printed on his pupils.

  “Sometimes I wasn’t sure if it really worked,” Amanda said. “Or if we just didn’t talk about it, but I guess it worked.”

  David thought he wouldn’t be able to breathe until she spit it out.

  “Amanda.” He said her name like a curse. “Tell me. Now.”

  “I asked Evangeline not to do magic because she is a witch. Xavier, too. And magic is extremely dangerous. I don’t want them doing it around my family.”

  David laughed, the same humorless way Amanda laughed when he told her his secret. Amanda never had much of a sense of humor, but this had to be some kind of joke. Some kind of cruel game to get back at him.

  Amanda didn’t smile. “Some people are wizards,” she continued. “But many wizards choose not to practice magic. They believe the benefits are not worth the risks. People like us… we’re wizards who don’t practice.”

  “Amanda, I don’t get it. Why are you saying this?”

  “Wizards have a choice to practice magic or not,” she went on, as if he hadn’t said anything. “Magic is tempting, but as I said, extremely dangerous. It’s not like in books and movies. It’s imprecise. Even the best wizards have to conduct spells without understanding their full consequences. Wizards who practice usually end up destroying themselves or the people they care about. Usually accidentally. My mom used to say humans trying to do magic is like an infant trying to defuse a bomb. They might push the right buttons and pull the right wires by accident, but more often than not, they just blow themselves up.