by Lish McBride
“I’ve only seen him once,” she said, “a little after my first daughter was born.” She smiled briefly. “My husband doesn’t talk about his family much. I probably wouldn’t have even known if he hadn’t shown up.” She absently rearranged the cookies. “Haven’t seen him since.”
The conversation was making her uncomfortable. Or maybe she had a thing about rearranging cookies. “Something about him bothered you?”
“No.” She said it quickly.
I put my hand on hers. “You can tell me,” I said. “It’s okay.” I meant to reassure her. Instead I felt a small part of myself give her a little nudge. I don’t know how else to explain it. I didn’t mean to do it. Didn’t even know that I could. Her eyes softened slightly, and her body posture eased.
“Nick didn’t bother me. He seemed sweet. Sad, but sweet. He just wanted to hold Lilly. But then Kevin came back. Said he forgot his keys. Kevin saw Nick and just…freaked.”
I squeezed her hand in encouragement. “Then what happened?”
“They got into it. Kevin yelled something about Nick not touching her. Not”—she frowned, struggling for the word—“ruining her. Nick said she might need help.”
“Help?”
“A guide. She might be dangerous, he said.”
“And that upset you.”
“She was so little. How could she be dangerous?” She shook her head. “Kevin swung at him and Nick left. Haven’t seen him since.” Light came in from the window, making her blond hair glow. “I asked Kevin what he meant, but he told me to ignore it. Said Nick was…had issues.”
“I see.” She had wanted to say crazy but was too polite. That would be an easy answer for Kevin. Don’t listen to my brother, he’s crazy. It would explain the distance between them and his attitude. Very neat and tidy. “You weren’t worried? About your daughter?”
“I was at first.” She glanced at the cookies, silently offering me another. I took it. So sue me, they were good. She smiled as I bit into it, happy that I was enjoying something she made. That one look did it. I genuinely liked Elaine. Which made me feel terrible about questioning her, but she was all I had.
“But Kevin told me not to worry. Said my great genes would win.” She looked sheepish as she said it. “Corny, I know, but it made me feel better.”
I smiled in agreement, but the inside of me felt sick. Kevin hadn’t left this family. Elaine was normal. Plain ol’ vanilla human. On some level, he must have known Mom was different and he blamed her. And he thought this time, without my mom to screw up the mix, he would dodge the hereditary bullet. As I watched Elaine light up while talking about her family, I realized I was rooting for her. Kevin could suck it.
“Kevin doesn’t like to talk about the past,” she said. “I probably wouldn’t have even known he was married before if I hadn’t stumbled across the divorce paperwork.”
“And that didn’t bother you?”
“We all have our secrets,” she said. She seemed to snap back into herself. She smiled again, this time pulling out all the watts. “Like you came for any of this. I swear, staying home with the kids is great, but sometimes you get so starved for adult conversation you’ll talk telemarketers to death.” She picked up a cookie, breaking it into pieces but not actually eating any of it. “Is Nick your father?”
The question startled me, and it must have showed. “You look like him here.” She ran a finger along her jaw. “And around the eyes.” She took my silence as a yes and kept going. “That’s why I let you in. You look like them, and I thought it might be nice to actually meet some of Kevin’s family.” She crumbled another chunk of cookie. “When I asked my husband about his first marriage, he said they didn’t fit.” She pulled out a single chocolate chip and stared at it. “Irreconcilable differences,” she said. “A nice phrase with so many meanings. From the way he acted, it sounded like, well—” She blushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean any offense.”
“None taken.” Things began to click in my head. Little puzzle pieces slipping neatly into place. I’d had conversations like this before, where halfway through you realize that you’re each talking about different things. As we continued talking, an unsavory idea formed: Kevin had led her to believe that Nick was my father. Elaine thought I was the irreconcilable difference. After all, there are few things more irreconcilable than your wife having your brother’s baby. And since my mom never sought child support, that must have just strengthened the lie. It would probably never occur to Elaine that my mom wouldn’t want to take Kevin’s money. Somewhere deep down, Kevin Hatfield had known that I was marked, so he pawned me off on his brother. For a life of sought-after normalcy, it was a small price, I guess. Not one most of us would pay, but whatever.
I would just as happily tell everyone that Nick was my dad, but I didn’t like how the lie made my mom look. Mom takes oaths very seriously, and that’s all marriage really is, a promise. Elaine probably wouldn’t have believed me, though. Why would she? I was a stranger. I chewed on the last bit of cookie mechanically, not really tasting it.
“May I use your bathroom?”
The information I’d gotten was useful and all, but not the real reason I’d come here. I shut the bathroom door carefully and began quickly—and quietly—to search for anything that might have some hair of Kevin’s on it. It appeared to be a guest bathroom, though, and showed little signs of actual usage. I flushed the toilet and ran some water before I left, disappointed. Now what? I didn’t think I could do the nudge thing again, not on purpose, and I couldn’t actually ask for a lock of Kevin’s hair. And without it, my mom wouldn’t have any way of tracking Nick. My hair was too far down the genetic line to be useful.
I thanked Elaine for the cookies and made parting small talk as I started to make my exit.
“I’m sorry that I couldn’t be of more help,” she said. “I can’t believe he just abandoned you. It’s unforgivable. He seemed so nice when I met him.”
“I’m sure he had his reasons,” I said. Sometimes it’s easier to just let people think what they want to. I shook her hand and let her escort me to the door. “Thank you for talking with me.”
Elaine straightened a family photo in the entryway. “You’re welcome. It was nice.” She smiled a little. “I’ve never really gotten to talk to anyone related to my husband before. I guess I didn’t realize how much I’d wanted to until you showed up.”
As we walked toward the foyer, the weight on my shoulders lifted and I relaxed, knowing that I’d soon be back on the ferry and that I wouldn’t have to come back here again.
If only I’d left thirty seconds earlier.
A small girl, probably around five years old, padded down a set of stairs and into the entryway. Her brown hair was braided, as sober as her expression.
“Quiet time isn’t over yet,” Elaine said.
“I know,” the little girl said. “Sara wet her bed.”
“Oh.” Elaine turned to me. “Excuse me.” She ran up the stairs, leaving me with the kid.
The girl was small, with dainty features like Elaine. Unlike her mother, she gave off a natural strength and authority. The look on her face right now reminded me a lot of Haley, when Haley was in a rare completely serious mood.
She stuck out her tiny hand. “I’m Lilly,” she said.
“Sam.” I took her hand to shake it and stopped. Her palm felt cold in my hand, icy, just like Douglas’s had felt. Probably just like mine felt to her. Lilly’s eyes popped wide like saucers.
“You’re like me,” she said.
I could’ve lied, told her I didn’t know what she was talking about, but it seemed both distasteful and useless. Kevin Hatfield was creating his own little version of hell by having children and surrounding himself with the exact kind of people he despised. And though part of me howled with laughter, the rest of me was kicking it and telling it to shut up. Poor Lilly was as screwed by heredity as I was. Would Kevin continue to ignore it? Or would he get her the training she needed?
“Yes,” I said, “I am like you.”
She frowned at me, an adult expression of concern that seemed at home on her face. “Something’s wrong with your inside, did you know that?”
“Yeah.”
“You should get that fixed,” she said.
“I’m working on it.”
“That’s good,” she said. “Would you like to meet them?” She continued to hold my hand in a cold death grip, completely unconcerned about the whole thing.
“Meet who?”
Lilly pulled me into another room, some sort of play area covered in pastels.
Yanking me over to a small easel, Lilly began to flip pages and tell me about her friends. She introduced me to them like they were important, like she didn’t get to talk about them much. I took a good look at Lilly’s friends. Something seemed off. When Haley was little, she’d drawn our pets, our family, and her friends, which were usually kids we knew or stuffed animals. Lilly’s friends all looked like adults.
I tapped the paper on one in particular. “Lilly, who is this?”
“I don’t know his name,” she said. “I can’t understand him. He talks different.”
She flipped the page and showed me another picture. “He’s nice, though. He talks to me with his hands. I think he used to live here, but his house was like this.” She pointed to a sketch on her paper. Lilly had drawn a pretty decent rendition of a long house.
I didn’t know what kind of curriculum kindergartners got, but I was pretty sure most of them didn’t know what a long house was. Lilly must have known what it looked like because her friend was a long-dead Native American, which would explain why she couldn’t understand him.
“Lilly, can your mom see your friends?”
“No,” she said, “and she doesn’t like to talk about them. It makes her uncomfortable. She calls them imaginary.” Lilly looked me in the eye, her expression pleading. “The Shadow People aren’t imaginary, are they?”
I could tell her they were. Maybe then she’d live a normal life. A normal life where she constantly questioned herself and thought she was crazy. A life where she not only had to hide from everyone around her but also from her own mind, her own senses. Then I thought about what Nick had said to Kevin, about how Lilly needed a guide, how it might be dangerous. Teaching her to hide from what she was wouldn’t keep her out of danger. I was proof of that.
“No, they aren’t imaginary.”
She grinned. Something told me Lilly didn’t do that very oft en.
“Lilly, this may sound weird, but do you think you could get something for me?” She nodded. “I need some of your daddy’s hair, like from one of his hairbrushes or something. Do you think you could do that?”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you that right now.”
“Will it hurt Daddy?”
“No,” I said, “it won’t.”
She pouted, thinking. “Promise?”
“I promise,” I said, making a little X over my heart. “But we need to keep this between us, okay?”
Elaine came back down with another little girl a few minutes later. She thanked me for staying and entertaining Lilly. I told her Lilly was a great kid, the expected response, but that didn’t make it not true.
Elaine introduced me to Sara, who was only three. Her hair was a pale blond, pulled up in pigtails, one of which was pressed into her mother’s chest as Sara rested her head there. Although shy, Sara’s expression was more open than Lilly’s. I wondered how long it would stay that way. I didn’t shake Sara’s hand. I didn’t need to. From the way Lilly hovered over her baby sister, I knew I’d get the same response, and I didn’t want to scare Sara by touching her. Instead, I said good-bye and thanked Elaine for her time. Before I left, though, I wrote down my number on a scrap of paper and handed it to her.
“Just in case,” I said, looking at Lilly as I handed the paper to Elaine.
Elaine was too polite to ask “in case of what?” to my face, but I could tell she was thinking it. She looked worried, and I wondered if on some level she knew her daughter needed help that she couldn’t give. Even if she never needed it, or if her mother threw that scrap of paper away, I hoped it would help for Lilly to know that I was there. That someone believed her, and would listen to her, even if he hadn’t been dead for a hundred years. It was all I could do.
I patted the small travel hairbrush in my pocket and headed for my car.
17
Strangers in the Night
“That,” Ramon said, “might be about the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.” He shoved a spoonful of Chunky Monkey ice cream into his mouth, chewing as he talked. He offered the next bite to Brooke, who was positioned on the edge of the kitchen table so Frank could brush out her hair.
“Which part of the story amuses you?” I asked. “The bastard-child-of-my-uncle part, or the two-new-half-sisters part?”
“Usually, I’d say both,” he said, “but I don’t like anything that besmirches Tia’s honor.”
“Big word,” I said.
“I know,” he said, digging his spoon around the bottom of the container. “I’ve been reading. You should try it.”
Frank paused, midbrush. “You don’t think your uncle is really your—”
“No,” we all said in unison.
Frank huffed and went back to brushing. “Okay, just asking. How am I supposed to know if I don’t ask?”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“I mean, your mom didn’t tell you about the whole necromancy thing, and that makes your uncle being your dad seem kind of small. You know, in comparison.” He stopped brushing and contemplated Brooke’s long blond hair. “What do you want me to do with this, Brooke?”
“Can you braid it?” she asked.
“I could try,” Frank said, “but I can’t make any guarantees. So it might be messy.”
“Here,” Ramon said, handing him the ice cream and taking the brush. “French sound good?”
“You can French braid?” Brooke blinked in surprise.
“Chica, I got three little sisters that I used to help get ready for school. Three picky little sisters. I could do this in my sleep.” He stuck the end of the brush in his mouth and started to separate her hair into manageable pieces. “Any real man can French braid a girl’s hair,” he said around the handle.
Brooke closed her eyes in contentment. I hadn’t really thought of it, but this was probably the first prolonged contact she’d had since she’d died. People, even reanimated ones, need to be touched.
Frank finished the last bite of the ice cream and threw the carton away.
“You owe me a thing of Chunky Monkey,” Ramon said.
“But I only had, like, two bites.”
“You know the rules.”
“C’mon.” Frank looked at me in appeal.
“Them’s the breaks, Frank.”
“You guys are assholes,” he said, digging into his pockets and pulling out a wad of dollar bills. He threw them onto the table. “There’s your blood money. Happy?”
“Very,” Ramon said.
Brooke sniggered. “It’s blood monkey money.”
I relaxed into my chair and sang softly, “Blood monkey, that funky monkey.”
Even Frank laughed at that. We all did, maybe more than we normally would have. We needed a little tension breaker. For me, anything that distracted me from the tiny countdown clock in my head was a good thing.
My phone rang, so I quietly excused myself. I didn’t want to interrupt their good time. It was nice to hear Brooke laugh.
Once I’d shut my bedroom door, I answered it.
“Hi,” the woman said. “I’m looking for Sam LaCroix?”
“May I ask who’s speaking?”
“No, but you can tell him I was given his name by Maya LaRouche.”
I guess I wasn’t the only one playing the cautious game. “This is Sam,” I said.
I could hear a little laughter in her voice when she said, “And thi
s is June Walker. My sister, Maya, tells me you’ve been having a bit of trouble up there.”
“You could say that.”
“Want to tell me what’s going on, exactly?” Her voice was soothing, but I felt like I couldn’t give in to it just yet.
“What do you know about Douglas?” I asked.
“I assume you mean Douglas Montgomery.” She paused. “I know enough to have moved away from my sister and my only niece. That me leaving them on their own was better than me being up there.”
I mulled this over for a second. I didn’t know this woman, and I didn’t know her sister much, either, but Maya LaRouche had been the only person so far who’d really helped me. I needed someone in my corner.
“Are you…” I pulled at a loose thread on my blanket. “I mean, do you know anything about necromancy?”
June laughed. Not really the reaction I’d been expecting. She had a nice laugh, big and full, like she wasn’t afraid of anything.
“Honey, down here they’d call me a voodoo queen. I can raise the dead so fast, your head might spin clean off.”
I relaxed. She hadn’t called me crazy and hung up, and for some reason I believed her when she said she was like me.
“You better start at the beginning,” she said, “because if I have to keep asking questions and dragging answers out of you, we’ll be here all night.”
I held the phone in one hand, lying flat on my stomach to take some of the pressure off my injured back. Then I told her everything. It came in a torrent, leaving me empty and shaken at the end. June had to ask me to slow down a couple of times, and she asked me a few questions along the way, but mostly she listened and let me get it all out.
The line went quiet when I was done. I heard a click and an intake of breath, the sound of a cigarette catching flame. “Sounds like you have a bit of a knack for trouble, Sam.”
“Not usually,” I said.
No booming laugh this time, just a dry chuckle. “I believe in this, like in many things, you’re just a late bloomer.”
“So, can you help me?”
“I think you know that’s not an easy answer,” she said. I heard resignation in her voice. She’d given up fighting when she’d moved, and she knew it. That didn’t mean she liked her choice.