by Megan Hart
“Trish,” he muttered so softly she wasn’t sure she’d heard him.
At the sound of her mother’s name, Sunny’s soothing fingers stopped. “Chris?”
Every part of him touching her tensed and tightened.
“Get up,” he barked, pushing at the same time as he tried to stand. “Jesus Christ. Sunny, what the hell?”
She nearly tumbled off his lap, but caught herself. Her feet tangled in the hem of her nightgown, but she managed to keep herself upright as she tugged it free. Her heart pounded. Her head, too. She moved away from him, uncertain and ashamed. Again.
“I’m sorry,” Chris said before Sunny could say anything. “I was…dreaming. But I shouldn’t have… What were you doing?”
“I was thirsty. I came to get a drink of water. You sounded like you were talking. I came in to see what you were doing.” Every sentence slipped from her mouth in a soft, unassuming tone. She waited to see if he’d call out against her lie, but he didn’t. “Are you okay, Chris?”
“You should…” She heard the click of something in his throat when he swallowed. “You should call me Dad. I’m your father.”
Would that make what had just happened better or worse?
“Are you okay…Dad?”
“I’m fine. I was having a nightmare, that’s all. I’m… I was dreaming.”
Silence.
“You should go back to bed,” Chris said.
She wanted to tell him it was okay, that nothing had happened that couldn’t be forgotten, but even in the dimly lit room she could see he wasn’t looking at her. She wasn’t sure he would’ve taken it as comfort, anyway. When she got to the doorway, his voice made her pause.
“You look so much like her.” The words sounded as if they hurt him to say.
She hoped they did, because they really hurt to hear.
Chapter 22
Rod hadn’t been happy about Liesel leaving work early, but after the incident with the stove she didn’t want to leave Sunny home with the kids all day long by themselves. It had been a little tricky—Liesel didn’t want to insult her husband’s daughter, but on the other hand it was very clear that even though Sunny’d lived a life that should’ve made her as much of an adult as someone years older, she was still very much a child. So Liesel had told Rod she’d be working from home in the afternoons until further notice, had dealt with the fallout, and now pulled into the driveway with her trunk full of groceries. At least this time there wasn’t any smoke in the garage when she opened the door. That had to be something, anyway.
Laden with plastic grocery bags, Liesel called Sunny’s name as she headed down the hall from the laundry room toward the kitchen. She stopped, caught short. Not like yesterday when she’d come home to find her oven on fire. That had been panic inducing. What greeted her now made her instantly, ridiculously angry.
Every cupboard, every drawer hung open. Pots and pans taken down from their usual place on the pot rack hanging over the kitchen island were piled high on one side of the double sink. The dishwasher emitted a steady, low thudding noise that meant something had been placed incorrectly so that the water spray moved whatever it was with every spurt.
Liesel dropped the bags from her hands. They hit the tile floor with a crash, spilling several cans of chicken noodle soup, which rolled across the floor. One bag split, tossing a tube of Pringles chips, and Liesel muttered a curse. Now the chips would be crumbled.
“Sunny!”
“Liesel,” Sunny said from her place at the counter. “Let me help you with your bags.”
“What’s going on in here?” Liesel watched as Sunny knelt in front of her to gather up the plastic bags and take them to the island to unpack. “What are you doing?”
Sunny looked at Liesel over her shoulder. “I thought that since I made such a mess yesterday it would be my job to clean it up. There was a lot of smoke. And dust,” she added.
Liesel frowned. She cleaned as often as seemed necessary so as not to live like pigs, and had a cleaning woman come in twice a year to handle the major stuff. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d dusted. Then again, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d burnt a chicken into charcoal, either.
Liesel looked around her formerly, if not immaculate, at least approximately neat, kitchen. “You’ve torn everything apart.”
Sunny set a can of baked beans on the counter next to the soup she’d picked up. “The only way to do the best job is to start from the beginning.”
Liesel shook her head, drawing in a small breath, then another. One at a time, trying not to be too angry. “It’s just that…surely you could’ve cleaned things one at a time. Without making so much of a mess.”
Sunny frowned. “I thought I was helping. I know I can’t cook, Liesel. I mean, I never had to before. But I can clean. I’m good at cleaning.”
“It’s not that.” Liesel looked around, noticing the cupboards Sunny had already been through. The mismatched plastic containers left over from Chinese takeout and packaged deli meat had been stacked neatly, lids replaced so that each container had one. Liesel was used to having to catch a tumble of plastic storage ware every time she opened the cupboard, but now there was actually extra space.
“I put all the ones that didn’t match on the table so you could recycle them,” Sunny said when she saw Liesel looking.
“Sunny…” Liesel sighed. “Thank you. I’m just surprised, that’s all.”
Now that she could really take a look around, she could see that all the places Sunny’d cleaned were clear of smoke, dust and clutter. In better shape than they’d been before the fire. Even the fridge had been wiped down and the magnets rearranged in neat rows.
“Do you have more groceries to bring in?”
Liesel looked at Sunny. “Oh. Yeah. Can you help me?”
“Sure.” Sunny smiled, no sign she’d taken any of Liesel’s bad mood to heart.
“Where are the kids?”
“Bliss is sleeping. Happy and Peace are supposed to be napping, too, though Happy is probably reading,” Sunny answered as she followed Liesel out through the garage and toward the car.
“Reading?” Liesel stopped at the trunk, then forced herself to grab another few bags to cover her surprise. “He’s so young.”
“It’s important to be able to read so we can understand the letters.” Sunny grabbed a few bags in each hand and hung back, waiting for Liesel to go first.
“What letters?”
Sunny followed Liesel back toward the kitchen. “The Superior letters. They’re what Papa wrote so that all his children could know his words even when he was unable to say them. Or so if we’re away from the family, we can have them.”
Liesel concentrated carefully on putting out everything she’d bought at the store. Haphazard, she realized now, setting a can of black beans next to a jar of artichoke hearts. She’d pushed her cart quickly up and down the aisles, unable to remember what she had at home or what she needed, just anxious to get back before something went wrong. She thought about the pamphlet she’d taken once from that wide-eyed, scrawny boy one long-ago summer.
“I thought you didn’t leave the family.” Liesel pulled a loaf of French bread in a paper sleeve from one bag and put it on the counter.
Sunny shrugged. “Oh…I didn’t. Papa wanted his true sons to have their own homes someday, because of course it’s important for children to eventually leave their parents, when it’s time.”
“But so many of you all lived together, didn’t you?”
Sunny must’ve thoroughly acquainted herself with the location of everything in the kitchen, because she moved effortlessly from the counter to put away what she unpacked from the bags. Well, most things. Liesel noticed that the girl studied the labels of every package b
efore putting it in the fridge or pantry, and some things she set aside on the counter as though uncertain about where they went.
“Yes.” Sunny was silent for half a breath. “About a hundred.”
And all of them except Sunny and her kids had died. Liesel’s throat tightened with sympathy. It hadn’t even been a month.
“But that’s because nobody was ready to leave him. A good father will make sure his children can live the lives he created for them on their own before he’ll let them move off by themselves. Papa didn’t want any of us to go out on our own among the—” Sunny stopped herself, then said, quietly, “the blemished.”
Liesel needed some coffee for this conversation. She pulled down the container and filled the coffeemaker with grinds and water, then took a mug from the dishwasher that had finally ceased its cycle. It was still hot, almost too hot, but the steam bathed her momentarily when she opened the door and the porcelain warmed her hands. She leaned against the counter to watch Sunny gather the plastic bags in one hand.
“Why do you call us that?” Liesel asked quietly, trying to find a way to sound curious but respectful and feeling as though she’d failed miserably at both.
Sunny looked at her, then shrugged hesitantly. When Liesel didn’t show any reaction, Sunny looked relieved. She gestured at Liesel, the plastic bags in her hand crinkling. Then at herself.
“Anyone not in the family, anyone who hasn’t accepted Papa’s teachings or who doesn’t live by them, is blemished.”
“Does that mean you’re…flawless?”
Behind Liesel, the coffeepot sputtered and belched the rich, delicious aroma of the caffeinated beverage. She’d put a vanilla-caramel flavored coffee in because Christopher wasn’t here to complain that flavored coffee wasn’t “the real thing.” She breathed in the smell, and her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten lunch and it was now almost three.
At Liesel’s question, Sunny looked surprised. “No! Oh, no. Not flawless, not at all. We’re all flawed. Our vessels make us flawed. That means our bodies. We’re only perfect when we’ve passed through the gates and left our physical bodies behind.”
For a few seconds both women stared at each other across the kitchen. Liesel clutched her empty mug. Sunny held the empty bags.
“I know you think they were crazy,” Sunny said. “You can’t understand why they did it.”
Liesel sighed. “Oh, hon.”
Sunny’s chin lifted. “The police thought I was crazy when I told them why they did it. The people on the television—”
“I told you not to waste your time with that garbage, didn’t I?” Liesel shook her head. “The news just wants to make a big story out of what should’ve been a private pain. That’s what they do.”
Sunny’s frown deepened. “Papa always said it’s not the fault of the blemished if they can’t comprehend. It’s our job to teach them. Not to hate them, even though they might hate us.”
“We don’t hate you, Sunny. Not at all.” Liesel couldn’t quite bring herself to say that she loved Sunshine—she barely knew the girl. “I might be a little confused about what you believe, and I have to confess I don’t understand why your family would…do what they did. But that doesn’t mean I hate you. Or them.”
Sunny nodded without looking at her. She smoothed the bags in her hands. “They’ve all left their vessels, that’s it. They went through the gates and…well, they left us. That’s all.”
Liesel didn’t know what to say to that, so she busied herself with the coffeepot. “Would you like some coffee?”
Sunny crossed the kitchen to stand beside her. “Caffeine’s a drug.”
Liesel hesitated, the glass carafe chit-chattering on the edge of the coffee mug before the steaming liquid poured out. She filled the mug three-quarters of the way, leaving plenty of room for sweetener and fat-free milk. “Yes, I guess it is.”
She looked at Sunny. “You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to.”
Sunny’s brow furrowed. “Patience told me once that Papa drank coffee. So did John Second and Josiah.”
“Who’s Patience?”
“She was my sister. She’s dead now,” Sunny said flatly. “She worked in the kitchen. She’d have known how to cook. She wouldn’t have set your oven on fire and burned your chicken.”
“Oh, hon.” Liesel put her mug down and took Sunny’s shoulders in both her hands. “Listen, I’m not angry about that. You made a mistake, that’s all. Everything’s going to take some time to get used to. And…I’m sorry about your sister.”
“She wasn’t my blood sister. I mean, we didn’t have the same mother.” Sunny paused. “Or the same father, I guess.”
“I’m still sorry,” Liesel said.
Sunny’s chin tipped up again, and she smiled. It didn’t look entirely real, that smile, but at least she was trying. “Sure. I’ll have some coffee. That’s what people on the outside do, right? They share coffee.”
On the outside. The term settled just a little wrong in Liesel’s ears. She supposed she could understand it, but it didn’t make her feel at ease. “Some people do. Not everyone. My sister, for example, never drinks coffee. She likes herbal tea. Heck, she doesn’t even drink caffeinated soda. I can’t live without it. Here.”
Liesel pulled another clean mug from the dishwasher and handed it to Sunny. She filled it the same as she’d done for her own, leaving room, then went to the fridge to pull out the jug of skim milk.
The fridge was almost empty.
All the jars of pickles, olives, the marinated peppers Christopher loved to put on his sandwiches were all still there, though in different places. The jellies and grilling sauces, ketchups and steak marinades, even the mayonnaise and salad dressings…all gone. Liesel turned with the jug of milk in her hand.
“Sunny?”
“I cleaned it,” Sunny said. “You had a lot of toxins in there.”
Liesel reminded herself to breathe when it felt a little bit like her ears were starting to buzz. “What toxins? What does that mean?”
For one strange moment she imagined cans bulging with E. coli, salmonella, botulism. Once, as a teenager, Liesel had eaten some bad canned fruit from her grandmother’s pantry and had needed to go to the hospital for a few days when she couldn’t stop vomiting. Fortunately, she couldn’t remember much of the experience beyond knowing it had scared her. But though Liesel shopped often at the bargain store, she never bought dented or bulging cans, and she religiously checked expiration dates.
“Corn syrup,” Sunny said.
Liesel paused. “Corn syrup?”
Sunny nodded.
Liesel took another breath, reminding herself that no matter what she thought she might understand about her husband’s daughter, no matter how much she wanted to be kind and generous and to do the right thing…she really had no idea and no clue about the young woman in front of her. “Corn syrup isn’t a toxin.”
Sunny didn’t smile. If she’d given Liesel any other look instead of the steady, solemn gaze she was now giving her, Liesel would have jumped to the assumption the girl was playing some sort of joke on her. Not a funny one, more like a trick. Instead, Sunny picked up one of the cans she’d unpacked from the grocery bags and set aside on the counter. She turned it to squint at the label, bringing it very close to her eyes, then holding it farther. She turned it toward Liesel.
“Corn syrup. It’s in a lot of things, most everything, and it’s a toxin.” Sunny said this with the absolute authority of someone who knows without a doubt that she’s right. “It makes people sick. It can cause all sorts of problems. It makes you fat, rots your teeth, it can give you cancer.”
Liesel had in fact heard something about corn syrup being bad for you, probably in one of those chain emails her mother insisted on sending her. But a to
xin? She sighed. “Oh, Sunny.”
“It’s all right,” Sunny said. “I took care of it for you.”
Sunny walked to the drawer that pulled out to reveal the garbage can, full of a disgusting, gloppy mess of what looked like everything from tomato paste to canned soup. She turned with a proud smile. “And I recycled all the cans, too. I noticed you didn’t have a recycling bin, but I found one in the garage. It had some things in it, but I put them aside. I’d have put them away but I didn’t know where you wanted them.”
She moved toward the French doors to lift a familiar red-and-green bin Liesel had used to store the Christmas decorations Christopher’s grandmother had given them.
“Where did you put the stuff that was in the bin?” Liesel hadn’t seen anything that looked out of place in the garage, but then she hadn’t been looking.
“On the bench with all the tools.”
Liesel went first to the garage to find the dozens of hand-spun glass ornaments, many of them antiques, settled among Christopher’s hammers, wrenches and screwdrivers. They all seemed to be still wrapped securely in their nests of cotton batting and Bubble Wrap, but still—the workbench was not the place for expensive heirlooms. Jaw set, she went back to the kitchen to find Sunny holding a can of Liesel’s soda over the sink. Cola poured out, fizzing and bubbling. Brown gold being flushed down the drain.
“No!”
Sunny looked surprised and stopped. Then, like a garage door sliding down, her expression shuttered. “What?”
“No, Sunny. Don’t you dump that stuff.” Liesel yanked the can from Sunny’s fingers, but it was already empty. So was the cardboard fridge pack on the counter, the sink full of cans. “You dumped my…oh, God. Oh, my God. Why did you do this?”
“It’s poison,” Sunny said. “Full of chemicals—”
“I know that!” Liesel cried. “I don’t care!”
Sunny blinked and bit her bottom lip for a second. Her brow creased. “It’s so bad for you.”