“You can’t control your dreams, Lynn.”
“It’s just so frustrating … I just wish—” She stammered. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter,” he said. “You can’t change the past, Lynn. It’s who we are.”
“Then I’d rather not dream,” she said, and despite her sullenness, poked him. “Now get back up there, slacker.”
~
Her brave attempt at changing the subject seemed to brighten the mood, at least for a spell, and they kept on with their task. Still, she was clearly preoccupied with more than her unsettling nightmare, and only when they broke for lunch on the veranda did she come forward.
Ryan had been suspended.
“He’d been drinking,” she said, and you could almost taste her disappointment. “I thought that after last week … things might have changed.”
She went on. “He used the f-word in class. Can you believe it? I don’t know what that boy is thinking anymore. I mean, I know boys swear. I’m not stupid. But in class?”
“In my day, we wouldn’t have said boo. They would have strung us up.”
“I know,” she said. “We had the fear of God in us. When the principal called me yesterday, he was almost fit to be tied. He said the school can’t tolerate that kind of behavior, they won’t tolerate it … that drink was a sin. The gateway to damnation.”
“The man said that?”
“Pritchum Tate’s a part-time minister,” she said. “I had him three years myself. Lonnnng before he got the principal’s job. He really believes all that fire and brimstone stuff.”
“That bad?”
“You wouldn’t believe it. He used to scare us into doing our homework.” She slipped into her best Pritchum Tate drawl, raising her hands wide, as if addressing the flock. “The Road to Perdition is paved with F’s.”
“You’re joking.”
She crossed her heart. “Hope to die.”
“Did it work?”
“Not for me,” she admitted, half laughing. “I dropped out two months after I met Ray. Lee came along”—Lynn counted on her fingers—“I’d say eight months after that. ‘Road to Perdition,’ right?”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I guess not,” she said. “But a lot of folks do. Towns talk, you know? People here … they’re set in their ways about things like alcohol … sex. Didn’t you know? Everything you do sends you straight down there.” She pointed Straight Down There with a slight grin, but it faded quickly. “When I look back at me and Ray, I think maybe they’re right.”
“We all make choices, Lynn. It’s how we learn to live with them—the good and the bad—that matters.”
“But Ryan’s making all the wrong ones.”
“And he’ll keep making them. That’s part of growing up. He has to find his way.”
She nodded.
“So how long?” Kain asked. “The suspension.”
“Two days. He still has Finals, so they couldn’t make it any longer. But if anything like this happens again, he’s gone. Expelled.” She gave him a look. “You’re wondering why I didn’t ground him.”
He raised a brow.
“He’d just sneak out when I’m at work,” she lamented. “I did take his allowance away. For a month. It’s only a few dollars, but at least he won’t be buying booze with it.” She shook her head sullenly. “Is it too much to ask for a normal life?”
He was not the one to ask of course, but he was about to reassure her when Buddy (gray-brown stripes) and Champ (furry gray puffball) strolled across the yard. Neither cat regarded them, and suddenly the striped one bolted after a squirrel down in the gully. Champ stopped to watch as if he were Buddy’s mentor, as if mentally jotting down the errors in Buddy’s approach. The squirrel skittered up the oak, while Buddy, clearly outplayed, lay sprawled halfway up the trunk with his claws stuck in the bark. Champ took this in stride, perhaps laughing inside (if indeed cats did that), but when the puffball turned to the drifter his bulk seemed to double. The cat hissed rudely and scampered off.
“Well,” Lynn said, half jokingly, “at least they’re normal.”
Of course they were. Beyond the boundary of the bubble at the time, they’d been spared the evils of the Turn. Kain wished he could say the same. His headache had cleared but two days ago; the week had been hell, every muscle in his body screaming. It was only this morning when he had felt alive enough to live.
“Can I ask you something, Kain? Something personal?”
He was chewing his ham sandwich. She tapped her bottom lip, and he dabbed some mustard away from his. He nodded to her. He knew.
Lynn grew flushed. “I guess you’ve caught me staring a few times. I didn’t mean to.”
She was staring now.
“Oh God, look at me,” she said, and forced herself to look away. “I’m my mother.”
“It’s okay, Lynn. They’re just birthmarks.”
She turned to him, clearly uneasy. “I wouldn’t have asked—”
“I know,” he said. “Because of what Ryan said, right?”
“Why was he so upset, Kain?”
“I wish I knew,” he said. “But he can’t be happy I’m staying here.”
“But he’s not pitching anymore, I don’t think—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“No. I guess not.”
“The truth is, he just doesn’t trust me.”
“That’s not true.”
“I don’t blame him, Lynn. I’m used to that. I can’t remember the last time people were this good to me. Isn’t that a statement? Says a lot, doesn’t it.”
“People shouldn’t be so quick to judge.”
“You weren’t … and I can’t thank you enough for that. But trust is earned.”
She spared a nod. But he could sense something beyond her agreement. It came as he expected.
“Can I ask you something else?”
“Sure.”
“What did he mean … you ‘did’ something.”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you … are you in some kind of trouble?”
“It’s what a lot of people think. Drifter on the run.”
“I’m sorry. I should mind my own business.”
“No,” he said. “But I was wondering why you hadn’t asked by now. I was starting to think I was boring.”
She smiled at that. “They’re amazing, you know.” She pointed with her eyes to his temples.
“My mom always thought so,” he said. “Hers are identical.”
Ice cubes to Eskimos.
“Mom told me as much,” Lynn admitted. “I wasn’t prying, just so you know. When I stopped in the other day, she just came out with it.” She shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry.”
“At least my story’s straight,” he joked, and she laughed. Laughter was good.
“You know,” she said, “you don’t strike me as a Miami man.”
“Oh?”
“No.” She measured him up. “Rugged, little rough around the edges—”
“Hey …”
“I’d say Midwest cowboy. Maybe Texas.”
“Texas,” he said. “Can’t say I’ve ever been there. But thanks for the compliment … I think.”
“It was,” she said. “Your parents … still in Miami?”
“Living the good life. Retired.”
“What did your father sell?”
“You name it,” he said. “Bibles, books, candles … clocks and watches, mostly.”
“Do you ever see them?”
“Haven’t for a long time, no.”
“Do you ever call? Write?”
“Afraid not. Bad son, I guess.”
“Any more at home like you? Any sisters?”
“Just me.”
She glanced again at his scars. “I think it’s adorable that you both have them. I wish you had a picture. You don’t, do you?”
“Sorry.”
“You are a bad son.”
&nbs
p; “But I’m adorable.”
She smiled. “I hope I’m not prying too much.”
“Not at all.”
Lynn finished her sandwich and he did the same. Lee-Anne came to the door and asked if they were on for driving today. The girl left with a priceless grin, her face undeniably bright.
“As long as you’re done before two-thirty,” Lynn said after her. “Rosa needs me an hour early.”
“We better get a move on,” Kain said as he rose from the swing. “That old barn won’t paint itself, slacker.”
Lynn added his plate to hers and set them on the table. He had already started down the steps when she called him.
He hesitated. Then he turned to her, one foot on the middle step. He had almost made it.
“Come up here a second. I almost forgot this.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not really sure.” She waved him up.
Lynn stood near the door. “There,” she said, directing him with a nod. “Right there.” She pointed this time.
Kain peered through narrowing slits; he made the effort real, but feared he was overdoing it. He shook his head.
“Right here,” she said, kneeling. She put her hand just above the deck boards and pointed more directly. “Here. And here. See?”
He knelt opposite to her, blocking the area with his shadow on purpose.
“No—that’s no good, you’re blocking it out.”
“Blocking what out?”
“Move over … no … not that way … here, let me.”
She guided him.
“I still don’t—wait a second,” he said. He hoped he was a better actor than he sounded. “What is that?”
“Do you see them?”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
“Stand up.”
“Huh?”
“Stand up.” She stood up and he joined her. Lynn moved behind him, then turned him round so he faced the yard.
“Move back a bit,” she said. “A little more. Too much. That’s it.” She drew a hushed breath. “I don’t believe it.”
He looked down, purposely lingering in his gaze. He stepped to the side, pasting on a look of disbelief.
They lined up perfectly, of course. Footprints that weren’t really footprints, rather ghostly shapes, drawn of the intense heat of the Turn. The tells had faded to near invisibility—they truly were ghostly, as if some specter had stepped there not a moment ago and left a residue of its soul—and in perhaps a day or two, they would have vanished. He had known that they would, but he had also known that luck would not be with him.
“It was a few days ago,” she said. “I was running late, and I was in such a hurry I dropped my keys. When I went to pick them up, I saw these. I meant to tell you, but I haven’t seen you until now. I’m glad I remembered. They’ve faded quite a bit.”
“Huh.”
“To tell you the truth, until now I thought they were Ryan’s. I called Dad and asked him if he was out here this week, but he said no. I even tried matching an old pair of Ray’s boots. Not even close.”
“Traveling salesman?”
“Maybe it was your father,” she joked. “Checking up on his bad son.”
He forced a grin. He knelt again and ran a hand over the area. He picked at it with a finger, trying to scrape the strange stuff off.
“I tried that too,” she said. “I don’t know what it is. It’s like it’s right in the paint.”
He rose. Stepped in them again. A perfect match.
“Another mystery,” she said. “You sure you’re not from Mars?”
“Pretty sure … so what do you think?”
“What do you think?”
Kain stepped out of the past and moved closer to the steps. He felt better, free of those unearthly echoes. He didn’t like standing there. It was crazy, but it had felt as if he were strapped in that cold steel chair again, Brikker hovering about him. He looked out along the drive. The barn seemed miles away suddenly. Freedom a million.
“Could’ve been that weird dust on my boots,” he said. “Maybe it did something to the paint.”
“But there’s no footprints anywhere else. It’s like you left your boots there for years and the paint changed color. It’s so strange.”
“It is.”
She seemed genuinely unsatisfied in the moment, and he was certain this would be his undoing.
“Well,” she said after some reflection, “I just wanted to show you before they disappeared. It’s no big deal. I’m going to paint right over them anyway.”
~ 21
They had lost all track of time as they pressed on with the painting, and by the time they had finished the east side of the barn it was just past two. Lynn had been in a mild panic getting ready for her shift (apologizing profusely to her daughter for inadvertently canceling the driving lesson), and as she had rushed out the front door, hands nimbly putting her hair up, Kain had offered to drive her to work and to pick her up afterward. She had agreed, and when he had dropped her off at the diner she had turned to him with a smile. “Get that helmet,” she had said, and he had driven off, wondering just how awful Lee-Anne’s driving could possibly be.
It had been pretty awful.
Sweltering in long sleeves and slacks in the oppressive heat, the girl had been waiting on the swing, fanning herself with a magazine, and when she had slipped in behind the wheel, the vim of youth splayed across her face, he had just gotten his seatbelt buckled when she had backed up into a flowering clay planter near the veranda. Champ had nearly been run down in the process, while Buddy had barely escaped, his tail clipped by a wheel. In her panic, she had tried to go forward, only to pancake a second pot. Mercifully, the engine had stalled, sparing any other creatures sculpted or animal, and Kain, mulling over that helmet idea, had snatched the key from the ignition.
Now, with the girl sitting there helplessly, all puppy dog eyes (it was like seeing Lynn in a photograph in an old school yearbook), he gave her a playful wink.
“I’ve got a better idea,” he said.
~
He drove them into Spencer. They passed the Roadside along the way and stopped in the outskirts by the river. The area was dead, and all that lay between them and the baseball diamond was a perfectly flat, perfectly wide, perfectly empty parking lot, and should any stray cats strut into their path, well, that was their problem. They could spare a life or two.
Under his patient tutelage, the girl had learned quickly. Sure, she had taken out a waste receptacle on a bad turn, had stalled the engine several times, ground the gears good and proper, but after an hour or so, she had seemed to get the hang of it. She still had trouble controlling her turns (she was getting there, although he had to admit, she was in all likelihood the worst driver he had ever come across in his travels, and he’d come across some pretty bad ones), but there had been no need for the helmet. Still, he was not prepared for the girl’s obvious distance; despite her expression of thanks (she seemed genuinely pleased with her newfound skill), she had seemed quite anxious around him. She had been silent during the trip out, hadn’t said much at all during the lesson, and now, sitting here in the cab with her, parked near the diamond, he had run out of small talk.
His attention turned to a dusty candy-apple Thunderbird and a black Fairlane as they rolled into the lot. Rich Saunders, the first baseman for the Tigers, emerged from the driver’s seat of the T-bird, followed by Ryan’s replacement, Dougie Warner, and the catcher, Rudy Burridge. The Fairlane produced the second- and third-basemen, the brothers Cleavely, Pete and Gregg, and within ten minutes eight other vehicles had pulled in for the practice. Several more kids were dropped off, and the rest showed up on bicycles. The field grew littered with starters and second-stringers, some of them stretching, some talking it up, some tossing baseballs back and forth. Sid Plummer arrived in his Dodge and in his flood pants, the plump coach all business from the get-go, and already he was yelling at Steve Morgan, the right fielder who was stumbling over his feet to
put his cleats on, to show up on time. Kain expected Ben Caldwell—sans Ryan, of course—to come barreling in, but it didn’t look promising.
“Pull around those vehicles, Lee.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Just go around them. Pretend they aren’t there.”
The girl looked at him as if he was off his rocker. She seemed to squirm in her seat, waiting for him to let her off the hook. Kain folded his arms in comic defiance, and when he didn’t cave, she did, muttering, This is nuts, as she started ahead. They crossed the lot sluggishly, making a steady beeline toward the diamond, Lee gripping the wheel so tightly that Kain had to tell her to relax. She didn’t. She sped up a little, but only at his request. On the field, Rich Saunders took a bruising ball to the shoulder on a solid throw from second (the teenager had taken a sudden marked interest in his precious Thunderbird as the green pickup invaded its space), and Pete Cleavely yelled at him to wake the hell up. Dougie Warner, lacing a shoe on the sidelines, shouted, Nice catch, Saunders, and the lanky first baseman told Wiener to shove it. Coach Plummer blasted all of them.
Lee made a sharp right in front of the slick T-bird. She nearly clipped its chrome bumper, missing it by a layer of paint. Kain gave her an anxious smile, said she was doing fine, Lee, just fine, and kept a keen eye on each car and truck as they passed one upon the other. Rich Saunders was halfway to home for a better look, his eyes popping like some panicky cartoon character, trying to see how many dineros this little experiment was going to cost him. The pickup kept on, wavering in its path. Lee seemed to be holding her breath, Kain, too, for the entire circuit, and only when she turned right again did she let out a small, girlish shriek as she hit the brakes.
Despite their slow speed, they jerked to a halt. The engine stalled, and almost immediately Lee-Anne dropped her face in her hands and dipped down behind the wheel. Kain feared she’d been injured in some way, but a second glance set him at ease. She stirred, slipping lower and lower in the cab until she could slip no further, and only when he prodded her did she risk a peek between two thin fingers. She poked her head up a bit, the strange sound she made next something between a gasp and a yelp, and at that, practically yanked herself down again.
Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller Page 16