by Mark Fassett
Hell. She realized that Red had only been buried that morning. It felt like a week ago.
Suddenly, the silence became unbearable.
She brought the last bite of her steak to her mouth, and almost slid it past her lips, but she stopped. She set it down on the plate, instead. She couldn’t eat it.
“Do you remember your mother?” she asked.
Reggie looked up from his nearly empty plate, his eyes focused on hers with a directness so fierce that she realized she might have stepped onto a landmine.
“I… I don’t remember her,” he said. “Dad said she left when I was two.”
Before he would have a memory he could hold on to. She thought back to the picture of her mother and her that Reggie had said he’d show her, a picture she still hadn’t seen, a picture that Red had kept.
“How old was I in that picture you forgot to show me?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Five, maybe six.”
“How did he get it?”
“He never told me.”
“They had to be talking,” Nice said. “Or maybe just sending letters. I mean, how would he end up with that picture if they weren’t?”
Reggie leaned back and pushed his plate off to the side.
“She could have sent it to him,” he said. “What’s it matter?”
What did it matter? Nice couldn’t think straight. She needed a friend, and she felt Reggie could be one. If only Aidan hadn’t said what she’d said about him.
“Look,” Nice said, “can I trust you?”
He sat up, his eyes again seeming to look through her.
“What?”
“Can I trust you?
“Why…”
“I mean,” she said, cutting in before he could finish his question, “I’m alone, now. I’d hoped, with my mom gone, I could get closer to Red, let him know I was his daughter, but then… well, then I met you.”
Fuck it, she was going all the way. She had to know.
“We look so much like each other,” she said. “It’s impossible not to think that not only is our father the same, but that we share the same mother.”
“But that would mean…”
“We’re so close in age. What’s your birthday?”
“April 3rd.”
Nice pushed her plate to the side and leaned over the table.
“Mine, too. We’re not just brother and sister.”
Reggie leaned in, too, so that their faces were no more than a foot apart.
“Twins,” he said.
“He didn’t have that picture because she sent it to him.”
Nice could see in Reggie’s face that he saw what she was getting at. His eyes were wide, and in the dim light, his pupils were dilated about as far as they could be.
“I haven’t seen it, but I think he took that picture,” she said.
It only made sense, and as she said it, there was a tickle, a memory. A memory of a man who held a camera, a man taking their picture down on the waterfront, on a pier. She’d seen seals for the first time, that day.
Seals and…
“He couldn’t have taken that picture,” Reggie said. “I would have been there. I would have remembered you.”
“Would you have? You were young. We both were. I remember being with a boy while I was watching the seals.”
The memory felt strange, though, as if it almost never happened. But she still had it.
“Seals?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I remember a day when Mom and I were at the aquarium, and there was this man there and his boy, and he took a picture of us on the pier. I think it was at the Aquarium.”
Reggie drew in a quick breath.
“The photo was taken at the Aquarium,” he said. “But I don’t remember being there. Maybe it was some other man and his boy.”
“Maybe,” she said.
Still, the more she thought about it, the more she felt like it wasn’t just some random man and his son.
If she could just get back into her memories…
Then she thought of Aidan, and wondered just what her Gift allowed her to do. Could she maybe pull up old memories that were buried?
Seeing the photo might help.
“Think about it, Nice.” There was pain in his voice that Nice heard for the first time since the conversation started, the same pain that she’d heard when she told him about Red’s death. “If Dad was keeping us apart, he had a reason for it, and I really don’t think he’d risk us all being together. Dad just didn’t do things like that.
“I mean, he took risks with himself when fighting crime, but he never took risks with me, or with anyone else. He tried to save everyone, no matter what the cost to himself.”
And that was exactly what Nice had learned about Red while working with him. He wasn’t concerned about his own safety or the burdens he put upon himself.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Reggie concluded.
It didn’t. Nice knew that.
“None of it makes sense,” she said. “How Red died from a bullet when we all know he can’t be hit by one, why he kept us apart, why I think I remember you being there at the Aquarium with me and mom, why I remember you being in the picture that man, Red took. Why…”
“I’m not in the picture,” Reggie said.
But Nice ignored him.
“Why Aidan says I should be careful of you, because you’re hiding things.
“Can I trust you?”
Her headache had gained strength. She wouldn’t be able to finish the night. She was going to have to go home and rest with her eyes closed.
But she needed his answer. Still, even if he gave it, how would she know?
She looked up and saw that his eyes had gone cold and hard.
“Aidan. She was in the restroom with you.”
Nice nodded.
“She…”
“She told you I couldn’t be trusted.”
“She said you were blocking her.”
“I was,” he said.
“Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Tell me.”
His eyes were still hard, still dark, still cold. Anger.
“We had a relationship. It didn’t work out.”
Nice wanted to put her head down on the table, shut her eyes, and try to sleep. It might help the pain that was building behind her eyes. But this was too important to give in to what her body wanted from her.
“Why didn’t you warn me?” she asked.
“Warn you about what? I didn’t think my love life would be an issue.”
“Why were you blocking her?”
“I always block her these days. I don’t want her to know what I’m thinking.”
A small wave of relief flowed through her. It wasn’t enough to stem the quickly increasing pain of her headache, but at least she didn’t have to worry that he had other motives. She could completely understand wanting to hide your thoughts from an ex that could read them.
She let her eyes close just a little. It felt like someone was jabbing nails into the backs of her eyes.
“Hey, are you all right?” Reggie asked.
She nodded.
“Just a headache,” she said.
“Do you get them often?”
“Not too often,” she said.
“What’s that mean?”
“Just when I get really stressed.”
“Well, maybe we should get you home after we pay for dinner. We can come back another time.”
“But…”
“No,” he said, getting up from his side of the table.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, retrieved some bills from it, and threw them on the table.
Then he came to her side of the table and reached for her left arm.
His hand closed on her wrist, and she let him pull her out of her seat. He grabbed her purse, and then directed her to the front door.
Aidan was standing behind her litt
le reservation desk as they walked past.
“Don’t hurt her, Reggie,” she said
“Why would I do that?” he asked. “She’s my sister.”
Nice could barely focus on what was going on around her, though. In between bolts of fire lancing through her head, she couldn’t help thinking she wanted to see that picture. Reggie was so clearly there in her memory, but he said there was no one in the picture but her and her mom.
Sure, it could have been a different picture, but she didn’t remember anyone taking any other picture. She only remembered standing there with her mom and Reggie.
Reggie got her to the car, somehow. She couldn’t remember.
She fell into the back.
She felt around. She didn’t have her purse.
“My purse,” she managed to say.
“I’ve got it,” Reggie said. “Just rest. I’ll get you home.”
She closed her eyes.
She really wanted to see that picture.
Chapter 13
NICE BLINKED.
“I found a picture of you and your mom,” Reggie said, “and I asked who you were, and he told me.”
Nice had a memory of a headache. Where was she? She glanced around the room. She remembered the room. She’d been here earlier. She was sitting on the couch in Reggie’s basement.
What did Reggie say?
Oh.
The picture.
Was this a dream?
“Do you still have the picture?” Nice asked.
“You know, I think I might. If you take your hand off that gun in your pocket, we can go upstairs and look. We could even get you a drink.”
A drink.
What was happening?
She noticed her hand for the first time. It was in her pocket, and the gun was there. It felt all too real.
She withdrew her hand.
Had she done that before? Yes. She had. But she’d also asked him how he knew.
“I’d like to see it,” she said. If this was a dream, which it had to be, she wondered what the picture would look like. Would Reggie be in it?
“Let’s go get a drink and look for that photo,” he said.
Nice pushed herself up from the couch.
“Dad is going to be so surprised,” Reggie said.
Nice opened her mouth to say something, to tell him what happened to Red, but then shut it. She wanted to see the picture. It was just a dream, anyway. Reggie already knew, because she’d already told him.
Reggie made his way up the stairs, and she followed him. It was eerie, though. Too vivid for a dream, but it had to be a dream. She’d always had crazy dreams when sleeping with a headache.
She followed him into the living room, and on the far wall, a bookshelf flanked the fireplace. It was filled with knickknacks and electronics. It even had a few books.
Reggie went to it and pulled a shoebox off the bottom shelf.
“Have a seat,” he said, and gestured to the well-worn faux leather couch that was up against the outer wall.
She stepped around the glass topped coffee table that took up the center of the room and sat down.
He sat down next to her and removed the lid from the shoebox.
It was filled with pictures.
“These are the ones I haven’t scanned yet,” he said.
“Did Red take all these?”
“Dad? Yeah, he took most of them, I think. I don’t know who most of these people are, which is why I haven’t scanned them.”
He started flipping through them, and indeed, most seemed to be at least fifteen years old. None were recent.
She watched, waiting to see what her mom looked like, to see the photo.
She wondered if it would match her memory, with Reggie standing next to her.
But even that would be strange.
She kept waiting for the dream to start diverging into the weird, to lose its coherence. That’s what dreams did. They didn’t make sense. Eventually they fell apart.
But Reggie kept flipping, one photo after another, until she saw a man she recognized, only he was younger than how she knew him. Younger than she’d ever seen him.
“Stop,” she said as Reggie flipped past the picture. “Who was that?”
“What?”
“That last picture, who was in it?”
Reggie flipped it back.
“Looks like the Mayor,” he said, “though this had to have been taken twenty years ago. He looks young.”
It was the Mayor. He had his arms around a couple of women who couldn’t have been any older than she was now. Nice didn’t recognize either of them. The background was blurred, too, and dark. She couldn’t get any read on where the picture was taken.
“I had no idea Red knew the Mayor way back then.”
“Me neither,” Reggie said.
“Can I have that?” she asked. She didn’t know why.
Reggie shrugged, pulled the picture out and gave it to her.
“What are you going to do with it?”
She laughed, just a little, for the first time since the funeral that morning. “I think the Mayor will crap his pants when I show up with this photo.”
“I’d pay to see that,” Reggie said. “I’ve always thought him kind of overbearing.”
“He’s nice enough. But since Mom died, he’s been far too protective of me.”
“You’re Mom’s…” His eyes grew sorrowful and his face lost some of its tension. “I’m so sorry,” he said, shaking his head slightly as he said it. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s been a couple years. Breast cancer.”
It was then that she realized he hadn’t known that her mom had died all through their time at The Curio. She had just assumed he’d known. He’d known so much else.
“Dad never told me,” he said.
“How would he have known? Mom told me to never talk to him about who I was. I assumed he didn’t know.”
Which was strange.
If Red had taken the picture, then he would have known she was his daughter. And Reggie knew.
If they knew she was Red’s daughter, why shouldn’t she talk to them? Why pretend Red didn’t know?
Of course, if he had been keeping tabs on her, he would have known that her Mom had died.
None of it made sense.
“I don’t know how he would have known she had cancer. She might have told him,” Reggie said.
If her mom had told Red, he’d obviously kept Reggie in the dark about her death.
“Let’s see the picture,” she said.
“Oh, right,” he said, then started digging through the photos again.
And only a dozen photos or so beyond where he’d stopped, he found a photo and pulled it out.
“Here,” he said, handing it to her.
She almost didn’t want to look.
But she looked, anyway.
And the photo was just as Reggie had described it.
Her and her Mom, standing on the pier, the wall of the Aquarium just off to the left.
Her Mom had her arm over Nice’s shoulder, and she looked younger, much younger than when she died.
She remembered being there, the salt water tang on her tongue, her Mom on her left, and…
She felt some pain at her temples. The headache was finally starting to enter her dream.
Still, she remembered a boy with her when she was there, a boy that had to be Reggie. He’d stood on the other side of her mom, and her mom had her other arm around him, too.
But the photo put the lie to that, didn’t it?
But it couldn’t be the real photo. It didn’t match her memories, and besides, she was in a dream. Right now, she was in the back of Reggie’s car, sleeping off a headache.
“Are you all right?” Reggie asked.
She looked up from the photo, and saw that he was looking at her intently.
“What?”
“Are you all right? You’ve been quiet since I handed you t
hat photo.”
“It’s just hard, you know. She was…”
“I think I understand,” he said.
“No. I mean, the photo doesn’t match my memory. I remember the Aquarium, and I remember the seals, but I could swear there was a boy there with us, too. I could swear you were there with me.”
“How could I be? I don’t remember ever going there.”
“I know,” she said. The headache was growing stronger. She put her hands too her temples, pushing, trying to squeeze it out and make it go away. “It’s silly, right? Of course, everything is kind of silly when you’re in the middle of a dream.”
“A dream? Are you sure you’re all right? You look like you’re fighting a headache.”
Reggie really sounded concerned.
“I am,” she said, “but it’s okay. It’s just the dream.”
He got up.
“I’ll go get you some pain pills. Maybe they’ll help.”
She nodded.
The pain was getting stronger. She didn’t know why she hadn’t woken up yet.
She looked down at the photo again. Through the pain, she heard Reggie leave the room.
The picture just didn’t make sense.
If she was in a dream, shouldn’t she see it the way she remembered it, and not the way Reggie described it?
God, she wanted to talk to Red. She wanted to ask him why she remembered something else.
But Red was dead.
He’d died days ago, and there was no going back to talk to him.
She leaned back into the leather, and it seemed to swallow her up. She closed her eyes.
It helped the pain just a little.
If only she could talk to Red.
Chapter 14
NICE BLINKED.
She sat at her desk in the Mayor’s office, her word processor had the first paragraph of a press release she was typing. Something about Red and his latest exploit. He’d captured some low-life thug who’d been quietly terrorizing a block of retailers in the south end. Hardly anything really exciting, except to those retailers.
She looked up from her computer and she was in her office. The door was shut. Her work with Red was too sensitive to be sitting out in the open with the others. The walls were walls, but the door had a full-length glass panel embedded in it. She could see out into the corridor, and there wasn’t anyone there.