Beauty and Dread

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  Martin’s smile trembled at the corners. “Very good, sir. Will you be making an announcement to the troops in the morning?”

  Isaiah nodded, yawned, and lay back down on his pallet. Lily scampered over to cover him with a blanket.

  “Yes. I want to get an early start tomorrow. Get everyone up before dawn and ready to march by seven. Any lollygaggers will be shot.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  Moments later he heard gentle snores. For once, he was glad to have been given guard duty. He would get no sleep that night, but he would have a few hours before sunrise to work on his escape plan.

  When he glanced at Lily, she was staring at him with those black, unblinking eyes again. He hoped that mind-reading wasn’t included among her near-preternatural talents.

  Chapter 24

  “So invite her over for tea,” Steven said to Julia.

  She knew he hated seeing her like this. His normally calm, stoic big sister had been a bundle of raw emotion ever since he had mentioned her resemblance to Dani. The boyfriend confirmed that Dani had been adopted as a baby. Her age fit with the date Julia had given up her baby. There were no longer labs performing genealogy services, no online 24-marker DNA tests to buy, and her lab equipment had been blown up outside of Hays the day she arrived.

  There would never be a way to empirically prove Dani was her daughter, but she felt on a level she could only think of as ‘maternal instinct,’ that she was. Julia had analyzed their prior conversations, studied her during any excuse to be in her presence, watched her movements. Everything she did reminded her of a less-filtered, younger version of herself. Except for the savage streak. That must have come from the young man with whom she had been briefly infatuated all those years ago, but who had become tired of taking a backseat to her true loves: science, academia, and career. She never even told him she was pregnant; their relationship had run its course by then anyway.

  The conundrum was what to do now. Every time she envisioned the scene where she revealed her suspicion to Dani, it always played out like an episode of Dr. Phil. Was there anything to be gained from Dani knowing? Would the young woman be better off if she didn’t? Would she hate her biological mother for giving her up? That was the worst part of all the imagined scenarios: enduring her newfound daughter’s scorn and loathing.

  “I just don’t know. When I think about talking to her, I get butterflies in my stomach. Maybe it’s not the right thing to do.”

  “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Steven replied, distracted by the scrawled words on the legal pad next to him.

  “You’re no help.”

  “Sorry. I’m writing my speech for the town hall meeting tomorrow afternoon. About the election.”

  Steady rain pattered on the roof and against the window panes. So far, winter had been mild and wet, but they still had a long way to go before spring planting. If it weren’t for the Dani angst, Julia would have been curled up on Steven’s couch with a book. Sundays had been designated as a secular ‘day of rest,’ a motion Steven had presented to the citizens as a preemptive strike. She knew he was worried about Reverend Calvin and his rapidly-growing following. Not everybody in Liberty attended Sunday services, but many non-religious and agnostic types did so for the sheer entertainment. These days, a good performance of any type was appreciated and embraced as a way of breaking up the work week. Everyone had jobs, many of which entailed physical labor and long hours. Without movies and television to provide a reprieve from the demands of daily survival, people found whatever else would do the trick. The popularity of Pablo and Maddie’s poetry-reading and story-telling gatherings had outgrown their modest living room, so the courtroom where the town hall meetings were held became the new venue. The bi-weekly event had expanded to include musical numbers, sing-a-longs, and recently, a poignant interpretation by Pablo of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, done in contemporary language rather than Shakespearean. It had brought the house down.

  “You’re a shoe-in, so why worry about it?” Julia askied.

  “Never underestimate the gullibility of people in the thrall of religion.”

  “You think he’s going to make a run at you?”

  “Of course. I think it’s been his plan all along. With Natalie at his side spewing feel-good scripture every chance she gets, they’re quite the power couple these days.”

  Julia nodded, her turn to be distracted. She needed to make a decision about Dani soon. This limbo state was driving her crazy.

  “So back on my problem. Do you really think I should talk to her? It could back-fire on me.”

  Steven set his pen down and gave his sister his full attention. “It very well could, but if you don’t, you’ll continue to wallow in misery and self-doubt forever. Just do it and get it over with. Let the chips fall where they may. That’s my advice.”

  She chewed a fingernail. “I think I will. Speaking of uncomfortable revelations, when do you plan on broaching the subject of my research findings?”

  He plucked the readers from his nose and rubbed his eyes. “I haven’t forgotten. I just question the wisdom of it. What’s to be gained from people knowing their neighbor could be a sociopath? It’s more likely that neighbor isn’t, so why plant the seed in people’s minds? Unlike your situation with Dani, I just don’t see any positive benefit of it getting out.”

  “I see. So you’ve made the autonomous decision to keep it between us? Do you think that’s ethical?”

  Steven gave her a thoughtful look. “I think it’s pragmatic. So that’s what I’m going to do and so are you. Now that Thoozy is gone, there’s nobody else who knows. Maybe when things are a bit more stable, we can share the knowledge. Let’s just get through the winter, then revisit this in the spring. Agreed?”

  “I don’t like it, but I’ll agree. For now. But I’m telling you, Steven, this is too monumental to keep to ourselves. People have a right to know.”

  “Why? Why do they have a right to know?”

  She gave him a thoughtful look in return, then said, “Because very little good comes from a few people at the top deciding what the masses should and shouldn’t know when it concerns their welfare. I’ll give you until May, but no longer.”

  “Fair enough.”

  ###

  Logan eavesdropped from the top of the stairs, as he often did when Julia and Steven were having one of those conversations where they used a lot of big words. He thought he understood most of what they were saying though. He still didn’t like the brother, but he knew that Julia did, which is one of the reasons he hadn’t killed him. He knew it would make her very sad, and he hated seeing her sad. Ever since that night with Thoozy on the dark road, he felt...different sort of. Changed maybe. He was a little mad at the old man for telling him that story right before he died. The story that was more than a story. He thought the word was parable, but he wasn’t sure. It was a word he had never heard before. Anyway, ever since that night, Logan thought about that story. Thought about the choice of jumping into that cold river which was very far down, or walking over to where the deer were playing in the pretty meadow. Thoozy had said he would lose all his new friends and people wouldn’t like him any longer if he kept doing bad things. That doing more bad things was like jumping into the river. But Logan didn’t get that part. It would probably hurt and it didn’t look like it would be fun, but bad things were fun, and he hadn’t done anything bad since the night he’d stuck the knife into the old man.

  He was starting to miss doing them.

  Julia thought Dani was her daughter. He had heard her and Steven talking about it a couple of times now. Before, he had intended to kill her, but now he sort of liked her. She had been nice to him ever since he saved her life. But he was very jealous of all the attention Julia had been giving her lately. And of course there was the problem of the colors. Logan knew the second he saw that Dani’s colors were identical to Julia’s, that there was something between them. Even before Steven suspected it.

  Logan
really enjoyed how important he had become to the other members of the security crew. And because they all liked him, everybody else in town were nice to him too. Back in the old days, nobody but his mom and Mr. Cheney had ever really been nice to him. He might lose that if he killed Dani or someone else, so maybe that’s what Thoozy had been saying. But what the old man didn’t mention was a third option, which was somewhere between the cold river and the pretty meadow.

  Maybe he could keep killing but just make sure not to get caught.

  Chapter 25

  “You’re fucking kidding me, right?” Dani’s clenched jaw barely allowed the words to escape. She had been sitting on the sofa next to Julia, listening to her lengthy backstory, while Sam watched wide-eyed from his favorite chair. She had wondered how long it was going to take her to get to the damn point. What the hell did she care about the woman’s teenage years, the grueling college classes, all those advanced degrees? Why was she telling her all this?

  She soon had the answer. Julia talked about getting pregnant at an inconvenient time in her life. A time that was the same year Dani was born.

  “Of course, we’ll never have proof, unless I can get my hands on a DNA sequencer.” The older woman gave her a shaky smile.

  Dani’s head was swimming. Too many emotions were hitting her at once, but the prominent one was outrage: she had been abandoned because she was an inconvenience. A tiny voice inside her head said, Can you blame her though? Julia had been a goddamn rock star in the science world. She had been top of her class; wooed by corporations, universities, and governments before she had even finished the thesis for her master’s degree. That was when the ‘80s era EPT test had shown a dark circle instead of a blob at the bottom of the glass vial.

  “At least you didn’t get an abortion. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Dani said, leaning back on the couch and closing her eyes.

  “That’s right. I could have, but I didn’t. I think that’s the best solution for some people in some circumstances, but it wasn’t for me. I chose a career over raising the child I gave birth to, and that was all the guilt I could handle at the time.” Silent tears streamed down Julia’s face, but her voice was steady.

  Dani opened her eyes and studied the woman for a long moment. “I’ve wondered about you my whole life. Imagined what you might be like, what you were doing at some random moment, wondered if I’d gotten my brains from you or the guy who donated the sperm. Did you look like me? Did you talk like me? Did you snort when you laughed, like I do? Were your pinky toes an inch shorter than all your other toes, like mine are? Did you hate cabbage but adore Brussel sprouts? When you were a little girl, did you fall in love with Narnia and crawl to the back of your closet, hoping to find a magical entrance?” An impatient hand brushed away a single tear. “I wondered what my life would have been like if I had been raised by someone like me, rather than the generous, indulgent, loving, average people who were my parents. The only parents I ever knew.”

  “Don’t feel that accepting me, on any level, is a betrayal of them. It’s not. I remember how wonderful they sounded on paper. They included a heartfelt essay with the adoption application. That’s why I selected theirs over all the others, even though I never knew their names, nor where they lived. You and I can have a relationship, whatever kind you’re comfortable with, and I think that would make them happy.”

  Dani stared at the tear-streaked face of the person who was likely her biological mother, noticing for the first time how similar the features were to her own. It was a moment she had thought about often in the past, especially that first year after her parents had given her the ‘you’re adopted’ speech. She had been six-years-old at the time; young for most children to be told such an earth-shattering revelation, but not so for her. She had begun to question why her hair was dark and her eyes were blue, when both her parents had light hair and brown eyes. They had already had her tested and knew she was gifted. Knew she would understand far better than most children her age, that while they were her parents – would always be her parents – in one significant way, they were not.

  She had understood, but it hadn’t kept her from wondering about the people who made her. She had filled that void with figments; their incarnations influenced by whatever book she was reading at the time. There were fantastical stories of a swarthy seafaring father and the lovely pirate queen who captured his heart. A wicked sorceress who changed her evil ways after falling in love with a handsome, kindly woodsman. Her favorite was the shape-shifting alien who mated with a human female, but then had to return to his planet, which would explain why she was so different from all the other children. These inventions continued throughout her youth until the day she turned sixteen and decided to put away such childish fantasies.

  And now one of those fantasies was here in the flesh, asking to be let into her life.

  “You need to leave. Now.” Dani stood, walked to the bedroom, and slammed the door behind her.

  ###

  A small moan escaped Julia. Sam was at her side the next moment. He reached for her hands, then held them in his warm, calloused ones.

  “You need to give her some time. Dani is the best. I love her more than anything in the world, but she can be a little stubborn. Especially if there’s some hurt mixed in with her anger. I think there’s a lot of hurt mixed in right now, but it’ll get better the longer she has time to think about it all.”

  She nodded, sliding a hand away from Sam’s so she could wipe her dripping nose with a tissue.

  “You know her. What do you think my chances are? Eventually, I mean.”

  He smiled. Suddenly Julia understood why all the females in town were so smitten with him. It wasn’t just his movie star face or muscular body. He exuded compassion and empathy with every gesture. His frequent grin was beautiful, genuine, and inclusive. When Sam smiled at you, you felt its warmth almost as a physical embrace.

  “I think someday, if you play your checkers right, you will get to be her friend. I don’t think you’ll ever get to be her mother. She already had one of those. She won’t want to lose another one.”

  Chapter 26

  Cate returned Steven’s intense gaze with her usual smirk.

  “Yes, from what I can tell, his credentials are legit. He seems to know about pharmaceuticals.”

  “Is he a benefit to the hospital?”

  She shrugged her brawny shoulders. Steven had corralled her and ushered her to a quiet corner of the courthouse.

  “He would be if we had access to more drugs, but the medicine cabinet is pretty bare now. Someone with knowledge of natural and homeopathic remedies is far more useful these days. Like me.”

  The smug grin was disconcerting, but he couldn’t be bothered with the oddity that was Liberty’s resident doctor. Not at the moment. The election was about to take place and all the mayoral candidates would be allowed fifteen minutes to convince the residents of Liberty why they were the best person for the job. The voting process would be a straight popular vote...whoever got the most votes got to be mayor for one year. The town had decided if they voted in a bad apple, they didn’t want him or her in a position of power for too long.

  As the incumbent, Steven had the advantage, but it was also a disadvantage. Everything that had gone wrong these past months could be attributed to him, draped around his neck like a smelly albatross; even messes he hadn’t created. The other candidates could promise the moon, with no prior ‘governing’ history that could bite them in their asses. He would not resort to cheap personal attacks even if it cost him the election, but he would use any legitimate information he uncovered. He had hoped to discover that Calvin’s alleged pharmacological degree was bogus, that his credentials had been fabricated to gain admission to their town. Then Steven would present his findings in such a way as to diminish the man’s reputation.

  “Has he been putting in his hours?”

  The grin expanded. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were tryi
ng to get some dirt on your biggest rival. Isn’t that sort of thing beneath you?”

  He frowned at the criticism. “Yeah, not very honorable, is it?”

  A spindly cackle bubbled up from the depths of the woman’s ample bosom. “No, it’s not. But I understand. He’s probably doing the same thing. Catch you later, Steven. Good luck. You have my vote, by the way. That preacher gives me the willies.”

  Steven watched her amble down the corridor, remembering his conversation with Natalie about Cate’s eccentric behavior: the strange hand-hovering business with the patients. He had barely given it a thought though. And when Natalie had mentioned as a follow-up concern that the woman was probably a lesbian (whispered like a dirty word), he had become angry. Who gave a rat’s ass about the woman’s sexual preference?

  She was odd, though. There was no denying it. No matter who won the election, he resolved to find out more about the person who held the power of healing their sick and wounded in the palms of her hands.

  ###

  “Let’s quiet down, people. Marilyn, please draw a name from the fishbowl.”

  There were five squares of notebook paper, folded in an identical manner, visible through the clear glass of the bowl. The order of speeches would be random, so any benefit to going first or last would be left to chance.

  “Billy Ray.”

  It was absurd to think of the large man from Arkansas, with his terrible grammar and plodding thought process, taking on the role of Liberty’s mayor. He walked to the center of the room, stopping at the small table which held a pitcher of water and six glasses.

  He cleared his throat, then said in his deep voice, “I know I ain’t an educated man. Not like these other fellers and lady.” An enormous hand indicated Steven, Calvin, the dental hygienist Isabel, and the Kennedy brothers who were running as a team on a joint ticket. The candidates were all seated together in an area reserved for them. “But I’m an honest man. A good man. A strong man, for sure.” He flexed a gigantic flannel-covered bicep for emphasis and winked at the crowd. Everyone who was physically able and not on guard duty was in attendance, and their laughter was genuine. But there was no way in hell Billy Ray could run the town. Most people knew that, if not the man himself.