“We were young, Murry and I, and had never really thought that we wanted kids of our own. Murry’s father had bought the land and this motel—which was nothing but the bones at the time, having been shut down and abandoned long before—and had aspirations of fixing it up and running it with his son. But then Murry’s pop died and we inherited it. Murry wanted to keep his father’s dream alive, and I was fine with that. I had no real aspirations of my own, no real skills, and business owner sounded just fine to me. We didn’t have time for Quinten, not really. We both had our jobs, and the motel took up most of our spare money and time, but as soon as I saw his little face in the hospital when Marsha delivered him, I fell in love. I think Murry did, too. Right that very day. But he never would admit that to me.”
Meriam smiled at the thought. Lance could see her drifting away, off to revisit those memories. She continued. “So, we became Marsha’s full-time babysitters. Not only because we had more flexibility with our time, and there was two of us, but because, well … my sister wasn’t very motherly, if I’m being honest. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe she loved her son, but she had a hard time expressing that love. She didn’t know what to do with him when they were alone together, was constantly fretting about every little thing and how she was worthless and did it all wrong and that Quinten deserved somebody better than her. It got scary a couple times, the way she talked, like maybe she thought it would be better if either she or Quinten weren’t around anymore. So, Murry and I took Quinten more and more, and things worked out okay for a while. Until the accident.”
Marsha had been working her usual line job at the rubber factory and, while taking her scheduled fifteen-minute break, had rounded the corner of a storage aisle at the exact same time a forklift was coming around the same corner in the opposite direction. The forklift driver, failing to follow proper safety protocol, whether a habit or a simple one-time slipup, had failed to sound the forklift’s horn in advance to alert foot traffic of its arrival.
Marsha spent a week in the hospital with neck and back injuries and left with an enormous check from the factory’s parent company. A large payoff, to keep her from taking further legal action. To somebody in Marsha’s position, it was a goldmine.
“But, she gave us the money,” Meriam said. “Said to use it for the motel, and that she didn’t need it.” Meriam sighed. “We knew she was trying to repay us for essentially raising her son over the last few years, which was sweet, but also showed maybe how much she simply didn’t understand parenthood. Anyway, we took the money, making sure she kept enough to be able to buy her townhouse she’d been renting and pay her bills and not have to work for a while. We were able to get the motel up and running, just the way Murry and his pop had always wanted. Quinten was starting elementary school and doing well. Things seemed okay.”
But Marsha had become addicted to the pain pills she’d been prescribed after her injury.
“She had a history with drugs,” Meriam said. “Marijuana, particularly. And she’d been smoking since we were barely teens, but those pills gripped her hard, and when the doctors refused to prescribe them anymore, she went to other sources, which led to other drugs, which led to my sister becoming a junkie who didn’t know her own son’s name some days.
“Quinten lived with us here until he got old enough to understand the situation fully, and big enough to take care of himself. Then he moved back home with Marsha. Because you see, he loved her. Just like she loved him. Even if both of them only did so out of instinct. Mother and son. Son and mother. It’s just natural, I guess. Plus, Quinten’s heart was bigger than his brain sometimes.” Meriam looked at Lance hard then. “Which,” she said, “I guess you already know, if you’ve really seen the things you’ve claimed to.”
Lance nodded. “When did you know Quinten was special? When did you first realize he had different abilities?”
“Right away,” Meriam said. “It was obvious right away to Murry and me. Would have been to anybody who spent that much time with him. When he was too young to understand how to hide what he could do, you know? Before he had to be discreet about it all.”
Lance had to wonder how things would have been different for Quinten if his mother had been the one to raise him, if she would have noticed, and what that might have meant. How that might have changed things. It seemed important, vital, maybe, that Meriam and Murry had taken Quinten in, and Lance had to wonder how much of an influence the Universe had played in that. Did the forklift driver often forget to sound the horn?
At this point, Lance knew he had more questions about what he’d seen from the motel’s past, but his eagerness to learn more about Quinten, to get what he’d come for in the first place, was overwhelming.
“Where is he now?” Lance asked. “I really need to talk to him.”
Meriam was quiet then. She stared at Lance for a long time, and something like uncertainty crossed her face for the first time since they’d started talking.
“You saw what happened in room six?” she asked.
Lance nodded. “I did.” He kept his own role in what had happened in room six out of it for now, not wanting to have to take the time to explain. Didn’t see how it would do much good.
“Then you should know where Quinten is,” Meriam said. “He’s dead.”
27
A part of Lance had already known the boy was dead.
It was a small, nagging itch at the back of his skull, but he’d done his best to ignore it, to silence its pestering. He’d fought off its advances into his consciousness so hard that he’d convinced himself otherwise. The boy had to be alive. They had to speak with each other. If not, what was any of this even about?
But there was something else. Burying down frustration, Lance asked, “If he’s dead, why did you say what you did when I arrived tonight? Why did you think I might be him?”
Meriam closed her eyes and shook her head, a look that said she couldn’t believe what she was about to say. “After everything else he could do, all the things that made him so special, I guess part of me—the part of me that wants so badly to be able to see him again—wouldn’t have found it too crazy to think he could somehow have found a way to beat death.”
Lance said nothing.
“And there was something about you,” Meriam said. “I felt it, before you’d even come through the office door. It was like an anxiousness had started to grow in my belly. Alerting me, preparing me for your arrival. But it was a good feeling. It bordered on excitement.” She paused. “I hadn’t felt that since Quinten was here.”
Lance searched for something to say. Wanted to ask more about this feeling, this sense that Meriam possessed that had alerted her to his arrival. Did others feel this way when he passed by, or were only those who were connected to people like he and Quinten tuned into the correct frequency?
“You really didn’t know?” Meriam asked, breaking the silence that had grown long between them.
Lance looked at her, shook his head. “I …” I thought I’d saved him, was what he was going to say. “I’m sorry.”
Meriam offered a small smile and nodded. “It was the noise that woke us, something like an explosion,” she said. “Murry and I had both jumped out of bed, middle of the night. We thought it must have been the storm. A tree branch blown down, or a fallen power line. When we went out to investigate, we saw room six’s windows shattered and the door wide open and tire tracks in the snow. And…”—she took a breath to control her emotions—“that’s when we found him. Taped to that chair. The room a mess. Like a bomb had gone off.”
Me, Lance thought. I did that.
“That image of him, his eyes open and his head hanging limp, his beautiful face twisted in pain … that’s the image that haunts me at night. It’s why I can’t sleep. When we found him that night, it was the first time we’d seen him in months. Ever since he and Murry had their argument the night they…”
She paused and looked at Lance.
“It’s okay,” he s
aid. “The night they got rid of the cop’s body. I told you, I already know. That’s not what I care about. I’m not here to get you in any sort of trouble. After all, how long has it been?”
“Over twenty years,” Meriam said. “But I still see him clear as if it were yesterday.”
Over twenty years … I was barely born.
Meriam wiped her eyes and kept going. Like Lance had felt before, it was as though, now that she’d started, she was ready to let it all out, a great expulsion of secrets that had been choking her for over two decades.
“The county coroner said it was heart failure, but they’d also found signs of a stroke. A hemorrhaging in the brain. They couldn’t give us a cause, but it was assumed he’d been under great distress during whatever had happened in that room. We never found out what, of course. There were no marks of physical harm on his body, aside from the tape that had been applied. Police were no help. Said it looked like a robbery, even though nothing had been stolen. Vandals, maybe, and Quinten had tried to stop them and they’d decided to have some fun with him. I knew it was all bullshit, but what could we do? Other than … other than feel guilty.”
Lance shook his head. “There’s nothing you could have done. You might have ended up dead, too. You and Murry both. Trust me.”
Meriam closed her eyes, squeezing out a fresh wave of tears. “Trust me,” she said. “That’s what Quinten always used to say to me. Every time I got worried or anxious about something he was up to, every time I acted like I knew what was best for him, he would always give me that look, that sly smile of his, and say, ‘Trust me.’”
She shook her head. “I should have. Who am I, honestly? Why would somebody like me, so unremarkable, so average, think I knew what was best for somebody like him? Somebody who possessed knowledge and understanding that made my head dizzy with incomprehension. What did I know about anything? Nothing, that’s what. And I killed him.”
“It’s not your fault,” Lance offered. I couldn’t save him either.
“But it is!” Meriam hissed, her eyes coming alive with pain. “I didn’t trust him.” Then she lowered her head and closed her eyes again and shook her head, as if to clear it. When she looked back to Lance, he saw guilt in her eyes. “It’s my fault that nice young couple died. The Backstroms. It’s my fault Murry shot them.”
Lance remembered the conversation he’d overheard, looking through the door into Meriam and Murry’s living space—an argument from the past. “You were worried about something,” he said. “Something the Backstroms did made you uneasy. You were scared for Quinten. Why?”
Meriam laughed, a sarcastic, dismissive sound. “You’re going to think I’m terrible when you hear it.”
Lance shook his head. “I told you, I’m not here to judge. I just want to know what happened. I’ve seen most of this story, but I need you to fill in the gaps.”
Meriam sighed. “It’s simple and stupid. No other way to put it. It was just past sundown, the day that the Backstroms had met with Quinten, and I walked over to their room to see if they needed anything before Murry and I turned in for the night. I got to their door and was about to knock when I heard them talking inside. The man was getting very loud—not angry, but excited. He seemed very happy, and he kept telling his wife over and over, ‘The boy’s a God-honest medium. Has to be!’ And he started talking about how Quinten could have his own television show or big events out in Vegas. The man kept saying he didn’t understand why Quinten lived here when he could be rich, have anything he wanted.”
And you panicked, Lance thought, understanding now. You thought they would expose him, when exposure was the last thing he wanted.
“I got scared, you see?” Meriam said. “I didn’t know where exactly the Backstroms were from, or what they did for a living. Didn’t know what sort of connections they might have. I even disconnected the phone line for their room because I was worried that I was only one phone call away from having Quinten’s life turned completely upside down.
“When Murry got home from fishing with his buds, I was in a complete panic. And I was angry. I wasn’t going to sleep unless I knew Murry and I did everything we could to keep the Backstroms from destroying our lives—because that’s what it would have been, if they’d ruined Quinten. It would have ruined us all.”
Lance said nothing. Only nodded.
“So I came up with the idea to scare them. But that’s all, you see? I didn’t want anybody to get hurt. I wasn’t a murderer. But I would do anything to keep Quinten’s secrets safe. To keep our secrets safe. Murry was against the whole thing, of course, but I knew he’d go along with it. He would do anything for me, just like I’d do anything for Quinten.”
Lance remembered the way that the dead man’s body had been splayed out, half on the bed and half off, like he’d fallen forward off the front and onto the floor. “But you weren’t expecting them to fight back,” Lance said. “That’s what happened, right? The man tried to defend them and Murry shot him.”
“Accidentally shot him! He swore he had the safety on, but … apparently not. He reacted, that’s all. Same as anyone would. Mr. Backstrom lunged for him and Murry got spooked and shot him.”
“And the woman?” Lance asked. “Why her?”
Meriam looked away then, something in her demeanor hardening. She was quiet for a few seconds, as if searching for the right way to explain. But Lance already knew the explanation. It was the only thing that fit. He said, “You couldn’t have any witnesses. Murry had already killed the man. How could he possibly leave the woman alive without ending up in jail? Is that it?”
Meriam looked back to him again, her eyes defiant, ready to defend her husband’s actions. “What would you have done?”
Lance shook his head. “I don’t know, ma’am. Honestly.”
“Sure you do,” Meriam said. Lance could see the anger rising in her. As if, now that she’d admitted what had happened, she was second-guessing her decision. Lance was all at once aware at how, after all these years, the woman before him still had not fully processed the events from her past. “This is the part where you’re going to tell me there were other ways we could have resolved things, or that we should have told Quinten, or … or …” She slammed her fists onto the table, spilling coffee from over the brim of her and Lance’s mugs. “How could you possibly understand what we were dealing with?”
Lance gave her a minute, letting some of the adrenaline fade from her veins. Then, softly, he said, “My mother killed herself to keep me alive.”
Meriam’s face blanked. She sat back in her chair as if she’d been shoved.
“The same people who killed Quinten, the ones who had him in room six, they came after me, too. They would have caught me then, if my mother hadn’t done what she did. She ended her life, and I ran. This was only a few months ago, so I’m still hyperaware of what people are willing to do to protect the ones they love.”
The refrigerator hummed and the coffeemaker gave off a gurgle from the counter. Lance stood from the table, grabbed a paper towel from the roll by the sink and came back to wipe up the spilled coffee. Tossed the wet towels in the trash and then sat back down.
Meriam had calmed down. She looked at Lance now with sympathy, and also something else. Something that might have said, We’re really on the same side, aren’t we?
“I know what you want to ask,” Lance said. “So go ahead.”
“Who are they? Who are the people that killed Quinten?” Meriam’s voice carried a thirst for vengeance.
Lance shook his head. “Nobody you’re ever going to have to worry about again. I don’t know many specifics myself, but as far as I can tell, they’re hunters. They hunt people like me and Quinten, people with our gifts. These two hunters, they have gifts of their own, too. But different. In its simplest form, it’s a battle of Good and Evil. Quinten and I are the Good.”
Meriam nodded her head, as if this all made perfect sense. But then it looked like she was considering something, contemplatin
g a new piece of evidence. “Who sent them? What do they want with you all?”
Lance shook his head. “I’ve told you all I know.”
Which wasn’t exactly true. For instance, Lance knew that the reason the Reverend and the Surfer went after Quinten seemed to be different than the reason they’d come after him in Hillston. The Reverend had made it clear to Lance in their conversations that they’d wanted Lance to join them, to use his powers for their side. That together they would become extremely powerful.
At least that was the sales pitch. The ruse.
But with Quinten, they’d been digging. They’d abused his mind, searching. They’d wanted information only. Something the boy had locked away in his thoughts. What that thing was, Lance didn’t know.
“You know,” Meriam said, “sometimes I got the feeling Quinten knew something like that was going to happen. Maybe I’m only trying to convince myself in retrospect, but I swear … sometimes, the way he talked—it was like he knew his time was limited. Do you think that could be true?”
Lance remembered the look he’d seen on Quinten’s face as he’d told his aunt to trust him that day in the motel’s office. “I think it’s possible, yes,” Lance said. “Your nephew had many gifts. I wouldn’t doubt he could have sensed something bad might have been on its way.”
Meriam shook her head. “And he never said a word to us about it.” She smiled. “Either too brave or too stubborn, or both.”
Lance said nothing.
“After all these years,” Meriam said, “I may not understand it all, but at least I won’t die completely in the dark as to what happened that day. So, for that I want to say thank you. I’m sorry if I became rude. It’s just … well, I didn’t want you to—”
“It’s fine,” Lance said. “You’re perfectly fine. Your nephew seemed like a fine boy, and I’m very sad I won’t get to meet him.”
The Lance Brody Series: Books 3 and 4 Page 38