“What the . . .” Sammy said as he peered down from the edge of the cellar hole. Evie gave a very un-Evie-like girlish gasp.
The chipped china saucer was empty, the glass of Orange Crush drained. And there, beside it on the saucer, was a penny, polished to a shine.
Lisa was sure her heart would explode. She jumped down into the hole and the others followed.
She picked up the copper coin and saw it was an old one, a wheat penny from 1918 with a tiny hole drilled through the top.
“Give it,” Evie said, reaching for the coin. Lisa handed it over. Evie brought it close to her face, stuck her tongue out, touched the tip of it against the bright penny.
“What on earth are you doing?” Sammy asked.
“Using all of my senses,” Evie explained. Sam rolled his eyes.
Lisa was sorry she’d let them come. It felt all wrong, them being down in the cellar hole with her. The gift was meant for her—she was the one who believed, right?—and if they made fun of it, the fairies might not come again.
“Will you guys quit it?” Lisa asked. She looked up at the trees, wondering if they were being watched. A blue jay gave a scolding cry. A squirrel chattered.
Suddenly the woods seemed full of spies.
“It’s an amazingly wonderful gift,” Lisa said, her voice as loud as she could make it without shouting.
“I wonder what the hole’s for?” Sammy asked, grabbing the penny from Evie, who was holding it up to her ear, listening.
“Mental case,” Sammy said.
“Hey,” Lisa warned, giving him her most evil look. Evie had suffered enough yesterday. She didn’t need any additional ribbing today.
“I meant it in a good way,” Sam said. “All the best people are a little mental, right? Even Einstein.” He gave a timid little back-pedaling shrug.
“Wait a sec,” said Evie, snatching the penny back from Sam. Her fingers looked thick and clumsy as they held the bright coin. Her nails were chewed to the quick, the cuticles raw. “Look at the year: 1918. Isn’t that when the whole town of Reliance disappeared?”
Lisa nodded. “Everyone except for Great-grandpa Eugene.”
Sometimes I see him in each of you.
“That can’t be a coincidence. Wait till we tell your mom!” Evie said. “And maybe my mom will finally believe us if we bring back proof.”
Lisa took the penny back, closing her hand tightly around it. “No. We can’t tell anyone. This is something special, just for us. What happens here stays a secret. Okay?”
Evie stared at her a second, her brow furrowed.
“Evie,” Lisa said in a pleading tone.
At last Evie gave a tentative nod.
Sam was going to be a little harder to convince.
“I mean it, Sammy,” Lisa said. “Say there are fairies. The last thing they’d want is for us to bring the whole damn world down here. Then they’d go away for sure. Let’s just wait and see what happens before we say anything to anyone. Think of it as a scientific experiment. A top-secret one. You can use the scientific method to try to explain it—come up with a hypothesis, collect data, all that.”
He scowled a little, then grumbled, “Okay. But I don’t think it’s fairies.”
“Well, what is it then?” Lisa asked.
“My current hypothesis,” Sam said, smirking, “is that you’ve got a secret admirer.”
Evie stiffened, jutted out her lower jaw in a bulldog-like way.
Lisa laughed. “Well, there’s only one way to find out for sure, right? Tonight, I’m going to come down here on my own. I’ll bring another plate of sweets and sit and watch.”
“But we’ve gotta come with you!” Evie said.
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “How am I supposed to gather data to support my theory unless you let us come with you?”
Lisa shook her head. “We don’t want to scare them off.”
“I don’t like it,” Evie said. “We don’t know who or what we’re dealing with. They could be dangerous.”
“No,” Lisa argued, “if they meant any harm, they wouldn’t have left this.” She held the penny up, watched the way it caught the morning light, a tiny copper sun of its own.
“What ya got there?”
Lisa jumped, shoved the penny into the pockets of her cutoffs like she was hiding evidence. She turned. Gerald and Pinkie were coming up to the edge of the cellar hole. Go away! Lisa screamed inside her head.
Gerald was all in camouflage and Becca had on a pair of pastel pink overalls and a long-sleeved pink turtleneck, which seemed crazy considering how warm it was.
Sammy leaned over and whispered, “Remember my hypothesis? This just backs it up. He wanted to see you find it.”
Lisa took a step away from Sammy. She looked over at Evie whose eyes were blazing. Evie was breathing fast, her chest making funny accordion sounds. Lisa had to send Gerald and Pinkie away quickly before things got out of hand.
“I said what ya got?” Gerald called down, peering at them from over the top of his dark glasses. He was right at the edge of the cellar hole now, hands deep in his pockets, jittery, rocking back and forth and rattling his spare change.
“Nothing,” Lisa said. She blinked her eyes hard, like maybe she could wish them away. But when she opened her eyes, they were still there. Damn. So much for wishing. She’d have to think of some other more mundane way to make them get lost. But she had to do it tactfully. She didn’t want to make them suspicious.
“What are you guys doing out here so early?” Sam asked.
“Nothing. Just out walking. Getting some air. Doing a little bird watching maybe.”
“Bird watching?” Lisa raised her eyebrows skeptically. “What, are you an expert on hermit thrushes and warblers all of a sudden?”
Gerald smiled. “No, but it’s never too late to learn, right?” He whistled in a birdlike way, looking up at the trees.
“Were you out here last night? Did you leave a little something behind?” Sam asked.
Idiot! Did he really think Gerald left the penny? She shot Sam a shut-up-or-else look but doubted it would do any good.
“Why are you all bundled up, Pinkie?” Lisa asked, changing the subject as fast as possible. “Expecting snow?”
“She’s allergic to mosquito bites,” Gerald said. “Can’t seem to stop scratching, so Mom covered her in calamine and long sleeves. Good thing we don’t live where the mosquitoes carry yellow fever or malaria. You’d be a goner for sure,” he said, giving Pinkie a wink. “Show them, Bec. Show them what those nasty buggies did to your arms.”
Pinkie rolled up her left sleeve to show that her arms were painted pink and underneath were oozing red welts.
“Gross,” Evie said.
Sammy nodded. “Mosquitoes are bad this year because we had a such a wet spring.” Pinkie smiled at him stupidly.
Good grief. Did freaky Pinkie have a crush on Sam?
“So what was it?” Gerald said to Lisa.
“Huh?” Lisa said.
“I saw something shiny in your hand.”
Pinkie nodded her head, shaking her pale white hair; made a funny little smacking sound in agreement. There was something unpleasantly grublike about her.
“It was nothing,” Lisa said, reaching into her pocket. “Just my house key.” The doors at their house were never locked. Lisa had never carried a house key. She hoped Gerald wouldn’t ask to see it.
Gerald looked down at her, shook his head, and adjusted his glasses. “Right, Lisa. Riiiiight.” His voice was a whining buzz, not all that dissimilar from the sound a mosquito makes. “The thing is, you’re a real crappy liar. So I’ve gotta ask myself, ‘Why wouldn’t she tell the truth? What could your good friend Lisa be hiding from you?’ So what is it, Lisa? Did Stevie give you a sweetheart ring or something? You and Cousin It going out now?”
Evie moved faster than Lisa would have believed possible, her breath quick and rhythmic, like a train. She grabbed Gerald’s left ankle and yanked. He tottered forward, arms pinwheeling as he tried to right himself, then went down into the hole. The fall itself happened in slow motion; it seemed like he hung in the air for ages, flapping his arms helplessly, trying to fight gravity. He landed with a screaming crash right at Lisa’s feet.
But the worst noise, by far, was the sound Pinkie made: the high-pitched squeal of a pig having its throat slit.
“Bitch!” Gerald bellowed. “I’ll get you for this, you goddamn freak of nature!” He was lying on his side in the dirt, gritting his teeth and panting. Evie was over him, her right hand resting on the sheathed knife hanging from her belt. She unsnapped the leather strap that held the knife’s handle in place.
Lisa gently but firmly pulled Evie out of the way. “Enough,” she warned Evie, then reached to help Gerald up.
“Get the hell away from me!” he spat. He sat up and she saw his eyes were full of tears. He was cradling his left arm as he stood, and it seemed to be bent up at an awkward angle, like he had a second elbow halfway down his forearm.
Lisa’s heart began to beat hard and her mouth tasted like metal. This was not good. Evie was going to be in big trouble.
“Becca, give me a hand here,” Gerald said.
Pinkie reached a pink-sleeved arm down, and Gerald grabbed hold with his right hand and squirmed his way up and out of the hole, teeth gritted and making horrible sounds anytime his left arm moved.
“Name’s Evie, asshole,” Evie said, the knife out of the sheath and in her hand, the blade glimmering.
CHAPTER 13
Phoebe
JUNE 7, PRESENT DAY
Tofu mushroom stroganoff. Was there anything more grotesque or stomach-turning on the face of the earth? Chunks of pale tofu and slimy, overcooked mushrooms in a gray milky sauce, served over egg noodles. It was a meal that clearly belonged in a health-conscious convalescent home, school cafeteria, or prison. But to Phyllis, it was good old-fashioned home cooking, vegetarian style.
Sam’s mother seemed to have cookbooks full of these hardy vegetarian recipes: stews, dumplings, and casseroles laden with tofu, tempeh, and the much-dreaded seitan. Thick, bland soups served with whole-grain biscuits dense enough to be used as doorstops. Stick-to-your-ribs meatless meals that somehow went with the old-fashioned fifties look of the kitchen—the white metal cabinets, cherry wallpaper, faded yellow countertops, and vintage table with a red Formica top and chrome legs. “My mom’s not big on change,” Sam had explained.
“Not hungry, dear?” Phyllis asked.
“I’m afraid not. It’s delicious, though.” Phoebe gave her a warm, thankful, yummy-in-my-tummy smile.
Sam kicked Phoebe under the table.
She stabbed a wide egg noodle dripping with gray goo, forced it into her mouth, and tried to chew without tasting.
“Are you coming down with something, Bee?” Phyllis asked. “You’re awfully pale.”
“Could be,” Phoebe said, setting down her fork, wiping her damp forehead with the back of her hand (was it horribly hot in here?). “There’s something going around at work.”
It was a lie, but it got an understanding nod from Phyllis, who mercifully removed her plate.
Sam rolled his eyes at Phoebe when his mother wasn’t looking.
Phoebe hoped her inability to clean her plate wouldn’t mean Phyllis assumed she was too ill for the Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch and Cherry Garcia she and Sam had brought.
“Let me help you with the dishes,” Phoebe offered, but Phyllis refused. Did the woman think that because Phoebe couldn’t cook she was useless as a dishwasher too?
She loved Phyllis, but Sam’s mom definitely brought out all of Phoebe’s insecurities and paranoia. Sometimes it was exhausting to be around her—trying so hard, smiling so much. She wished she could just have an oh-well-screw-her-if-she-doesn’t-like-me attitude, which she did with most people, but Sam’s mom mattered. Growing up with such a shitty mother had led Phoebe to have all these secret fantasies, where she ran away and was adopted into a normal family with a mother who was a mixture of all those perfect classic TV moms: Mrs. Brady, Mrs. Cunningham from Happy Days, Beaver’s mom. Moms who cooked casseroles. Phyllis was all of that and more.
“I’m just going to put them in the sink,” Phyllis said. “They can wait. Let’s head into the living room, shall we?”
They followed Sam’s mom out of the cheery, stuck-in-time kitchen and into the front room with the furniture that Sam claimed hadn’t been changed since he’d been alive. It had survived the years well. Whatever stains there might have been were now artfully covered by pillows, throws, and doilies. The room smelled of the sweet potpourri Phyllis kept in jars. There was a brick hearth, where they lit a fire each Thanksgiving and Christmas, and a mantel covered in framed family photos: Sam’s mother and aunt as young girls; Sam’s stern-faced great-grandfather who’d built the house. There was the snapshot of young Sam and Lisa that Phoebe had noticed on her first visit to the home years ago. Phyllis had caught her looking and said, “Sam had a sister. We lost her.” And Phoebe had pretended that she had no idea, that she had only a vague memory of hearing the story on the news.
Everything about the room, about the whole house in fact, screamed home to Phoebe. Not that she was much of a judge.
Phoebe had been brought up in a string of dingy rent-controlled apartments by her single mom, whose idea of a homey touch was a bottle of Lysol that she sprayed now and then to cover up the smell of cigarettes, pot, and general filth and decay. A happy homemaker she was not. The only stroganoff she ever made was with Hamburger Helper, and even that required too much cooking. She was more a SpaghettiOs from the can with Yoo-hoo to drink kind of mom.
Phoebe’s friends thought her mom was so cool. Phoebe got to come and go as she pleased, have chocolate cake and Pepsi for breakfast, have her very own cigarette or toke of a joint anytime she wanted. “Your mom is the best!” her friends would squeal when they met up at her place after school to get high. “She’s like one of us.”
“We’re diamonds in the rough, you and me,” her mom used say. But Phoebe thought they were more like fool’s gold.
Phyllis plopped herself down on the couch next to Phoebe and straightened an embroidered runner on the coffee table. Phyllis was a well-kempt woman in her fifties. She had chin-length gray hair and wore loose linen clothing and Birkenstocks with bright, hand-knit socks. She worked for a nonprofit environmental group raising money, lobbying lawmakers. She’d even been arrested twice: for protesting at an antinuclear event and when she and a group chained themselves to a logging truck trying to stop a clear-cutting operation. When Sam was growing up, his mom would go away on trips to demonstrations down in Washington and he’d be left with the next-door neighbor—a sweet old woman named Mrs. August, whose house smelled like gingerbread and mothballs. After Lisa disappeared, the trips increased. Phyllis threw herself into her work, figuring that if she couldn’t save her daughter, she would do her best to save the world from the nukes and chemical plants and people who were, in her words, “raping Mother Earth.”
It broke Phoebe’s heart to think of Sam and his mother rattling around in the house after Lisa disappeared and Sam’s dad died. Phyllis kept Lisa’s room just the way it was.
“It was creepy, really,” Sam told Phoebe. “To go walking in there later when I was in high school and have everything the same. I was growing up and Lisa was stuck in limbo—a ghost girl haunting her old room, with unicorns on the walls and stuffed animals on the bed.”
But Phoebe understood. Phyllis was still waiting for Lisa to come back. And if she did, she wanted things to be just the way Lisa remembered.
“Did you reach Hazel?” Phyllis asked Sam.
“Yeah, I did. Thanks,” Sam said, looking away. B
ut Phoebe knew Phyllis wouldn’t let it go that easy. Sam asks for his aunt’s number after fifteen years of not speaking with her and that’s not supposed to arouse curiosity.
“How is she?” Phyllis asked, wincing a little, as though asking the question had pained her in some way.
Phoebe glanced over at the girlhood photo of Phyllis and Hazel, both with their hair in pigtails, smiling impishly into the camera. There were no photos of Hazel as an adult anywhere in the house. She, like Lisa, was somehow frozen in time here.
“Okay, I guess. Working in a nursing home. I actually called her because I wanted to get in touch with Evie.”
Sam’s mother sat up straight, peered at Sam over the top of her small rectangular glasses, which she kept on a chain around her neck. “Evie?” She said it like the name was an unfamiliar one to her: Evie? Who on earth is Evie?
Sam cleared his throat. “Yeah. I thought maybe it was time to do some catching up.”
Phyllis stared at him. “And did you?”
“Yeah. We did. Phoebe and I had dinner with her. She lives up in Burlington.”
Phoebe remembered the pizza and Mountain Dew. Not exactly the white tablecloth dinner Phyllis was probably imagining.
“Is she married?” Phyllis asked. “Any kids?”
Sam shook his head.
“A shame,” Phyllis said. “I don’t know what it is with you young people. I married your father when I was nineteen.”
Sam nodded. Hung his head. He knew where this was going. It was inevitable that she’d bring it up each time they visited.
“Is it so wrong to want to see your children happy? To want grandchildren? Actual children, I mean—not just a snake, a hedgehog, and a couple of rats.”
Phoebe bit her lip. She’d been with Sam all day and hadn’t had a chance to sneak off to buy a pregnancy test. She’d get one on the way to work tomorrow, do it as soon as she got there. The test would show that she wasn’t pregnant, and the worrying would all be over. Hell, maybe she’d get her period tonight and not even need to waste money on the test.
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