“It makes her feel better. That’s all. I’m the one who should be asking questions. Why were you here about their son?” Sasha said. “You’re acting like a brat. This is my job, Meredith. I have to protect Mrs. Highland.”
“History,” said Merry. “History class. I’m leaving now. Can I say goodbye?”
“He’s doing his crossword and she’s asleep. Just go. It’s almost seven o’clock. I can’t believe you did this because you were studying it! That’s so unkind, Merry. Well, you didn’t mean it, I guess.” She messed up Merry’s hair. “I work too hard and I get too involved. I’m sorry, Mer. I feel like I’m old already because I have all the same responsibilities I’d have if I were grown up.”
“I know, Sasha. It was probably stupid to come here. I’m going to just slip out.”
As she rushed to catch the last red bus, Merry turned to look back at the house. She thought for a moment she saw Ben, sitting on his steps. But it was only a trick of the fading light.
In that moment, she thought, I’ll never see him again.
THE PERFECT GIRL
Sasha showed up early, just as the twins were leaving. Campbell followed them out the door. The extensive tests had revealed nothing, and Sasha was buttoning Owen into his red dinosaur jacket for a walk to the schoolyard in his stroller. He loved to try to pick Adam out from among the other boys at recess.
Sasha was headed down the street as the twins got into Drew’s car. He waved madly at them. Sasha waved too.
“Look how great he looks,” Drew said. “Little kids really are like miracle healers.”
That afternoon, the twins each got a text from their mother.
Owen was back in the hospital.
Mallory called her mother, who’d left class early, risking failing an advanced course.
“I don’t care about school,” Campbell said. “We have to get to the bottom of this. We’ve had New York doctors and small-town doctors and they’re all saying the same thing. They’re saying, ‘Who knows what it is?’ I’m tired of that.”
“Do you want us to come?”
“Act like any other day, Mallory. If you don’t have practice after school, I’d appreciate you coming. I could use a little moral support. Sasha’s here,” Campbell said. “But Dad has to work because Rick’s on vacation. And frankly, Sasha is not my daughter.”
Mallory, in fact, did have practice. But her coach entirely understood.
“Family first,” he said when Mallory told him about Owen’s most recent hospitalization. “You guys have had a time of it the last couple months, huh, Mal?”
“Can only get better,” Mallory told him, trotting off to catch up with Drew.
In the pediatric intensive care unit, which felt by now like their living room, Sasha was talking to Campbell and Dr. Staats as if she too were a professional.
“What do you think?” Sasha said. “Are you going to do an endoscopy?”
With a slight double take at Sasha, Dr. Staats said, “Actually, that is what I was thinking. Now, I think we’re dealing with more than an allergy or a virus. I can’t tell. A parasite? Maybe a bowel obstruction of some sort. You’re saying he became listless and all he had was his bottle?”
“That’s all he’d take this morning,” Campbell said. “I tried a spoonful of pears and he wasn’t interested.”
“Then I came, and Campbell and the girls left,” Sasha said. “So we took our walk and he fell asleep in the stroller. When we got home, he started to wake up, so I just rocked him. All of a sudden the whole thing started all over again. I stopped giving him the bottle of course, but he didn’t stop throwing up. And finally he was woozy. I called 911.”
The doctor asked everyone but Campbell to leave the room so that she could get a better look at Owen, limp and pale and tiny on the bed. As they slowly left, the girls heard Dr. Staats say, “He’s thinner, Campbell. Is he eating normally other than these incidents? He’s lost a pound since his last checkup.”
“He is every time I see him. But I work either all day or all night depending on when I have classes. When I’m home, I’ve never had an issue. Carla and Sasha both say he eats well. But you know Carla Quinn. Just the facts, ma’am. My mother-in-law has never had a single problem. Actually, he’s gotten sick when Sasha was there and when Carla was there and when Luna, who’s a high school girl who helps out on the weekends, when all three of them have been there. Sasha has really been the most helpful. She even went in late to her other job last night so Tim and I could have an early dinner out. When we got home, he was asleep, which is strange for him because he tends to like to stay up until seven or eight, but he’s been tired lately.”
“The sitter is ... your intern? Sasha? Well, she seems steady.”
“They all are. And the routine is never different.”
Outside, Mallory whispered, “Oh Sasha! I can see why my mom is frustrated. Rick’s away fishing! What a great time for him to be gone.” Rick Domini was their father’s partner at Domino Sporting Goods. “Dad can’t leave unless he closes the store, and he hates to when people are buying their sporting goods for summer.”
“It will be okay. Maybe they’ll find out what’s going on, finally,” Sasha said. “Then we can all rest easier. I’m starting to feel like I work at the ER myself. I can’t believe this goes on and on!”
Campbell came out into the waiting room. Her eye makeup was smudged, and she looked older than Mally had ever seen her. Although Campbell was a champ at putting on the cheerfulness, she didn’t even try this time. Her voice was monotone as she said, “They’re going to admit Owen so they can test for parasites. Babies can pick up the funniest things, and maybe it’s a matter of getting rid of some kind of intestinal bug. If nothing shows up in his diaper, they’ll have to do an MRI tomorrow. I’ll have Grandma stay with you tonight.”
“We’re fine, Mom,” Mally said. “Really fine. You don’t have to have Grandma come. It’s no different than the other time.”
“You don’t need me this afternoon?” Sasha asked.
“Of course I do need you, Sasha. Between my baby being in here and my regular patients, I need you more than ever,” Campbell said. “But not today. My girls are my rocks, aren’t you Mallory? Adam is scared out of his tree. I know it’s something simple but we just haven’t found it. Mally, take him to the movies or something. Reassure him. Do something fun with him.”
“Absolutely,” Mallory said. On a whim, she opened her phone and texted Luna.
“I’ll bet you’re having vibes all over the place,” she said when Luna called her.
Luna seemed to fumble with the telephone. “Who is this?” she asked.
“Mallory. And I have a question to ask you, Luna. My parents still think this is some kind of natural illness Owen’s having.”
“Is Owen sick again?” Luna asked.
“I thought you could tell,” Mallory said.
“I was asleep,” Luna said. She explained she’d been out late, that there was an “event” she’d had to attend. In the grove, Mallory thought. Could it be possible? Could Luna, who came off as a harmless goof, really be involved in something wicked that involved a little child? “Luna, if you can truly see things, why don’t you see what’s really happening to Owen? I’m starting to have my doubts. I think someone’s trying to hurt Owen or our family. You said you could see things. Do you see that?”
“I didn’t hear the ambulance call this time,” said Luna. “My mom has the radio in her salon. But Mallory, I do think there’s somebody out to get your family. I even know who.”
“Who? And why were you burning a baby’s hair in the bonfire?”
“Spy,” Luna hissed and disconnected the line.
On her way out the door, Mallory ran into her twin. Although technically she was still grounded, everything that resembled a normal routine at home would collapse now, both girls knew. Campbell had told Merry to go ahead to practice, and so Merry’s hair was plastered back into a sweaty, hasty ponytail. For Merry, Owe
n’s illness was like a symphony against which her own little problems sounded like a piccolo playing the wrong tune.
“Did you see him?” she asked Mallory urgently.
“It’s the same thing, ’Ster. The same thing and nobody knows why. The poor baby’s going to have to stay at the hospital overnight again. Dad’s not here yet, so we’ll have to grab a bus,” Mally said.
“I want to go up,” Meredith said.
Gently, Mallory tried to explain her sense that, much as their mother loved them, the three older kids were an obstruction in her line of vision right now. Campbell was fed up and ready to do battle, and the best thing they could do was be at the home front.
“I think we should just go home. There’ll be a bus in half an hour or less,” Mally said. Reluctantly, Merry agreed and they sat down on the wide red brick wall that surrounded the hospital’s rock garden, where a riot of daffodils bloomed.
“I’ll take you,” a rough voice spoke up behind them. It was Carla. “I just got off a double shift. Going home to hit the hay. But I don’t mind dropping you off.”
“You sure?” Merry asked.
“My daughter’s all excited you’re going to show her how to cheer,” Carla said.
“I’m ... going to ...?” Merry began and Mallory elbowed her in the ribs. “Well, of course. That’s great. She can come to practice on Monday. Thanks for giving us a lift.”
“I don’t mind,” Big Carla said. “Word was the baby was sick again. You think he’s going to make it? Your little brother?”
“Of course,” Mallory said.
“I’ve seen kids go quick. Meningitis and that. I guess he’ll be fine.” Carla piloted her big car out of the parking lot. Meredith couldn’t stop herself from looking for Ben everywhere. There were moments when she thought she glimpsed his unmistakable walk or the dull sheen of his old jacket. She was ashamed for wondering about something like Ben when even Carla thought that Owen was weakening, that he might die. She put her head against the back seat headrest, confused and perturbed and immediately ...
There was Sasha.
She was tending to a little child. Merry could see the child’s bare feet wiggling and the fat boxy shape of infant feet. Like a series of moving snapshots without sounds, she saw Sasha mix and give the child, a little blond girl perhaps a year older than Owen, a tiny cup of juice. The child lay back, exhausted, and then as Sasha watched, her little arms and legs went rigid and began to jerk.... Sasha running into a hospital, her hair a wreck, her mascara streaked, the little girl in her arms, surrounded by doctors and nurses in blue scrubs ... Sasha throwing herself across a white coffin, in which the little girl lay silent, in jonquil yellow silk, her chubby arms around a teddy bear.
As Sasha bent her head, the little girl’s eyes snapped open. She sat up in her casket.
She stared at Sasha as though Sasha were a snake.
“Her!” Merry cried.
“What?” Mallory said, twisting around in the front seat. They had just pulled into their own driveway.
“Whoo! I must be more tired than I thought! I fell asleep. I’m sorry if I scared you, Mrs. Quinn.”
“Are you okay?” Mallory asked, with meaning laid down, like layers of paint, between her words.
“I’m fine. I have a lot of studying tonight. I have a quiz in abnormal psychology.”
“You don’t....”
“Yes I do,” Merry insisted. “They just told us. It’s very interesting stuff.”
“What?”
“It’s about how you don’t really know people you think you know. Did Sasha go home, ’Ster?”
“She stayed with Mom,” said Mallory.
“That’s great,” Merry said and tumbled out of Carla’s car, running for the door.
LOVED TO DEATH
As soon as they were inside, Meredith whirled on her sister.
“Forget about Ben for a moment. Forget everything else that’s happened in the past few months except with Owen. There’s something about Sasha.”
As Merry knew she would, Mally asked, “What about Sasha?”
“Something she’s doing that’s connected with Owen being sick. I know it. I saw her in a dream, just now, making another little girl sick, and that child died! She didn’t look different. It couldn’t have been so long ago.”
It was Mallory’s turn to argue with her twin’s point of view. Perhaps Sasha, who, of everyone around Owen, was the most like them and the kindest, not to mention the coolest, had been trying to help the little girl. Sasha treated Owen like a little sibling of her own.
“I talked to her once in pre-calc,” Mallory said. Though Mallory was only a sophomore and Sasha a senior, they had the class together because, Sasha said, she was a math idiot and Mallory a math whiz. “I asked her if she had any other brothers and sisters besides her older sister.”
“What did she say?” Merry said.
“She didn’t really answer me, but she told me about this little girl she loved like a sister.”
Sasha had taken care of this little girl back in Texas, a preschooler, born with a heart defect, who’d been on seven kinds of medicine since the day she was born. The little girl’s single mom was entirely worn out; the money was gone and so was the husband. As it turned out, the child lived only to the age of four, and Sasha didn’t know how she made it that far.
“She was so broken up about that child that it was one of the reasons she left Texas and moved up here,” Mallory said. “And she told me that was part of why she felt so strongly about Owen and so worried for him.”
“I saw that little girl just now. I saw her in my vision, Mallory. I dreamed right now in the car. I saw her.”
“How?”
“I saw her in her coffin.” Mallory got up and nervously looked out the window, murmuring about how she hoped Adam’s coach would give him a ride home. “Are you listening to me?” Merry said. “I knew she died. I saw her with Sasha.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Sasha was close to that family. In fact, she said the little girl died in her arms, and she just held her a long time because she couldn’t bear to wake her mama. She said the poor woman was just completely exhausted and that having a sick kid was like nothing else in the world.”
“This was all last year? When Sasha was just a high school junior?” Merry concluded. “Why do people get sick around Sasha so much?”
“Tell me again,” Mallory said. “My head is spinning. First it’s this guy and then Sasha. Are you sure you didn’t see her with an old woman? I saw that was going to happen.”
“That would have been Mrs. Highland. Mrs. Highland isn’t any better either,” Merry said. “What did you dream?”
“I dreamed she was giving medicine to an old woman. It looked like the old woman died. Maybe she just fell asleep. Sasha was wearing an old-fashioned nurse uniform. When Drew and I well, we basically spied on the Highlands, for your sake, we figured out that the old woman was Mrs. Highland. Ben’s mother. And then Drew and I saw Sasha in an old-fashioned nurse’s uniform. You could be totally right.” Mallory took a long sip of apple juice from the refrigerator. Her face was flushed. “I’d have been sure if anyone did that, it would be Carla because her own little boy died ... but who does that? What kind of person makes a kid sick? Or an old lady?”
“Since when did Carla have a little boy?” Merry asked. “I only know the little redheaded cheer wannabe.”
Mallory told Merry about the night of the game, when she and Drew had picked Big Carla up and seen the room decorated for the little brother who would have been three by now. Merry thought it over and murmured, “I’ve seen stuff like that on TV. The parent makes the kid sick to get attention. Or they pretend they’re sick. There’s a name for it. They throw themselves down stairs so they can go to the emergency room.” She paused. “And Carla’s so dark and dreary. But it was definitely, definitely Sasha with the little girl. Don’t let it scare you Mally, but ... the little girl was dead. And then she wasn’t. She looked a
t me. I know she wanted me to know something.”
Mally did something she never did. She began to chew on her fingernail. “But those people on TV are parents! Not high school kids,” Mallory said. “Older, needy people.”
“Let’s see what the MRI shows. Maybe nobody’s making Owen sick,” Merry said. “Maybe, please, I’m hallucinating!”
But she knew she hadn’t been. And she definitely knew that her sister hadn’t been, either.
BEHIND THE MASK
On Wednesday, Owen was sedated because it was impossible to tell a baby his age to lie still going through something that looked like a great green and silver tunnel.
The MRI images showed his little plumbing fixtures were all right and properly in place with nothing blocking them. The Brynns brought Owen home, but they were exhausted, asleep before the kids were asleep.
Finally, as Merry did everything except chew on her nails from nervousness, first Adam and finally Mallory—this time without suspicion—fell asleep.
When Meredith thought of what Campbell would do if she sneaked out of the house again, she felt physically nauseated. But there she was, pulling on layers, tights under a pair of thermal pants, a turtleneck and wrist warmers under her parka. Slowly, she eased her bike down off its rack and out the side door of the garage.
The way to Pumpkin Hollow Road was familiar to her by then. With any luck, she’d be back in an hour. It was eleven o’clock at night. Thankfully, it was not two a.m. She had no idea if Ben would be home, but she knew she had to say something if he were.
By the time she reached the corner of Redfern and Pumpkin Hollow, Merry had unwound her scarf and unzipped her coat. A damp halo of curls had collected on her forehead and cheeks. And she was ravenous. What could she eat that was silent, once she got back home? Even the refrigerator whirred and made a vacuum-like sound when it opened. It was better to go easy on carbs at night, anyhow. She’d drink tons of water and wait. She’d lost three pounds in the past month as it was, just from not having her usual and considerable appetite, and didn’t like the hollows appearing under her cheekbones.
Watch for Me by Moonlight Page 17