Officer Novak then admitted he had to ask a few questions in an official capacity.
“You mean, there’s some suspicion of us?” Campbell said.
“No. No one believes that. But when a kid is chronically ill, we always have to ask the parents and give a report to the state social services. I told my chief that I was a friend but that I would do the honors anyhow. We have to look at every angle and then turn that angle over and look at it upside down.”
The only suspicion, it turned out, arose from the numerous times that the parents had hauled Mallory and Merry into the hospital for this test or that, having to do with their “fainting spells”—all of which came to nothing. Once more, the girls squirmed, hating “the gift” that was now placing their innocent parents in a fix. Campbell explained that the cause of the fainting spells was exclusionary: She and Dr. Staats, the pediatrician, had determined that stress or low blood sugar (if the twins hadn’t eaten) caused them.
“Then that’s that,” Frank said. “I’ll type up a little report, and we’ll go from there.” He sighed. “But to tell you the truth, I don’t think we’re going to learn very much more than they did down there. If she was doing this years ago, she’s only better at it now.”
Finally, all the police could do was establish that Owen’s illness took place at the same time that Mrs. Avery entered Ridgeline High and the Brynns’ lives. Everything that could condemn her could also clear her name, it seemed.
Sasha did have an aunt in Deptford.
But that aunt lived in a nursing home, a victim of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Like Mrs. Highland, Beatrice Avery had weakened in recent months as well.
“Wonder if that’s a coincidence,” Mallory said bitterly. No one knew, said Frank, if, when Sasha visited with a man who might or might not be her ex-husband, they brought more than flowers. The public record showed, however, that Sasha and her sister Serena were heirs to Beatrice Avery. Her savings and her small house—especially given the value of the land it was on—amounted to more than $300,000.
“More than enough to give anyone a really fresh start,” said Tim.
“Why do people get this syndrome?” Merry asked. “And why can’t you pronounce it?”
Frank had to consult the file and explained the disease was named after some ancient German baron who told all these fantastical stories about himself to get approval. People were so hungry for attention that they swallowed nails or stuck pins in their heads or injected things in their veins to cause an infection throughout their whole bodies. They had unnecessary surgeries—and liked feeling special.
“You said proxy,” Mallory said.
“Well, that’s when they make other people sick so that they can get attention and praise,” said Frank. “A proxy is like a stand-in for somebody else.” Sometimes the people were actually medically trained, like Sasha. Some of them were so brutal that they did things such as hold a pillow over a child’s face until the child passed out so they could call 911. “Nobody gets more attention in the hospital than the sick kid’s parents.”
“Talk about get a life,” Tim said.
Campbell said, “Imagine feeling so hollow you had to invent yourself over and over again.”
The girls tried to feel some of their mother’s heroic compassion.
They failed.
SAFETY
It wasn’t as easy as the Brynns had hoped to go back to the only thing they wanted—their ordinary life.
Weird facts about Sasha flowed in from Merry’s friends, who were glued to the TV and the Internet. It was the second time Sasha enrolled in a high school. The first time she led an Oklahoma cheerleading squad to a state championship.
“Why didn’t they get her then?” Merry asked.
“She didn’t do it for money or anything,” Neely said. “And I guess the school was happy to have the trophy. It says ... wait. Sasha said she was married so young she never got to live a happy young girl’s life. Don’t you feel sorry for her?”
Merry said, “Please.”
All the attention shifted on the day Sasha was to get out of the hospital. For the first time, the twins could go to school without someone trying to take their picture or ask them a question. Campbell’s professors were more than understanding, and other nurses took her shifts. Rick volunteered to work the store alone until the uproar died down. But when the twins came home from school just over a week after the day Sasha was unmasked, Uncle Kevin and Frank Novak were at the house, with a story to share with the family.
Sasha was wheeled out of the hospital by Bonnie, who looked ashamed to touch the wheelchair handles. Sasha was smiling for the camera through her bruises, waiting for her sweetie to bring the truck, Tim later said, so she could “go off somewhere and do it all over again.”
No one heard what a small, neatly dressed woman in a gray cardigan said to Sasha just before she was about to give an interview to CBS. No one, that is, except Bonnie Jellico, who recognized Gwenny Brynn, the twins’ grandmother.
“I think Sasha, that you must have good in you,” said Grandma Gwenny. “There were moments I saw good in you. Perhaps you can redeem your life. I hope that is the path that chooses you.” Gently, she laid her hand on Gwenny’s arm. “I will know. Be assured of that. And if you lay evil on another head, you will never sleep. You will see things you cannot imagine. You will see the sun go down in fear. I promise you.” She stood up and smiled brightly. “Hello, Bonnie. How is the little one? Enjoy your day!”
Gwenny Brynn strode away in her cheerful way.
Sasha decided to forego the interview. Taillights were the last anyone saw of Sasha Avery.
BEYOND THIS NIGHT
Graduation was that morning.
Merry dressed carefully in a jersey with tights and a long, loose, and light sweater. Mallory dressed slowly in clothes she did not realize were muted, feeling more than a bit weepy. Both girls were on the way to see their senior friends get their diploma.
That long summer lay ahead, but Drew would never drive the twins to school again in the Green Beast.
This would be the last time.
The twins waited for their grandmother, whom they regarded with more than the usual respect since Bonnie’s dramatic rendition of what they now referred to as “the curse of Gwenny.” It was difficult, still, to laugh, difficult to celebrate, difficult not to imagine the blameless, broken life of Sasha’s little girl, Monique. It was hard not to picture Owen, still and silent. There were thoughts from which the girls still had to rush away.
That bright morning, Mallory tried to think of what she would say to Drew.
And with no way of knowing if she would have a chance to say it, Meredith tried to think of what she would say to Ben.
Campbell went back to work for her first full-time day shift since the macabre circus had come to town. Grandma Gwenny was caring for Owen full-time during the days now, and Carla at night, while she studied for her RN. Even Campbell, stubborn as she was, had evident proof that Owen had a strong and stable family and that she would be wise to entrust him to their love. And while Carla might not be Mrs. Personality, she was as loyal as they came.
As soon as Grandma arrived, Meredith pulled on her black boots and took one last look in the mirror. Her face appeared dreamy—hair shining, lips rounded, almost as though Merry were a retouched photo of herself. Although she knew it was a little over-the-top, she had tied one side of her hair back with a red ribbon. She didn’t have long black hair, but Ben would know what she meant when she saw him after the ceremony. If she did. If what she both feared and hoped came true.
Mallory called now, “Let’s go. Neely’s limo is outside.”
“It’s not a limo!” Merry said. Neely now had her driver’s license, and along with her sixteenth birthday had come a bright red VW Jetta. (“Used,” Neely told everyone. The car was one year old.) “It’s just her car!”
“To me it’s a limo. Closest I’ll ever see to one,” said Mallory.
This was n
ot, in fact, true. When she became an adult, Mallory would have the occasion to ride in a limo often, as an author, researcher, and speaker, who would prove that communication by thought existed among high primates, such as chimpanzees and gorillas. Her books would be famous, and it would be she, not Merry, who would give birth to the next generation of Brynn twin girls. But since this was a piece of the future that was about her, she couldn’t see it.
Meredith, the out-there, show-off twin, would be a homebody, living the life she had always wanted—as a teacher and cheer coach at Ridgeline and the mother of many children. She would eventually marry a young doctor named Drew Vaughn. There would be no hard feelings: She and Drew and her twin sister would remain best friends all their lives. Drew and Merry would live in the house where Merry grew up, the fifth generation of her family to do so.
Graduation day was a time for beginnings and endings, but had anyone asked the twins if they wanted to know what lay ahead, they would have said, with emphasis, “No way!”
That early afternoon, they sat on folding chairs on the football field, near Mr. and Mrs. Highland. After Drew passed across the stage, flashing his trademark goofy grin, one of the last of the graduates in line, the principal asked for a moment of silence.
“Today we wish to award a diploma to one of our own, a boy loved and missed at Ridgeline High, a fine student who would have grown up to be a fine man, who already was a fine man and did the finest thing anyone can do. He gave his life for his friend,” said Mrs. Dandridge. “Recently, he has ... come home. We’d like his parents to accept his diploma on his behalf.”
The Highlands rose and walked slowly to the stage. As they did, Ben appeared in a misty incarnation Merry had never seen—she thought, He’s already going—wearing a black cap and gown just like the others. As the principal read, “Benjamin Charles Highland,” and put the diploma into Helene Highland’s hands, Ben leaned in to brush his mother’s cheek with his own, and she raised her hand to touch. Then, suddenly, he was not there.
Merry had a brief sensation of what it would be like never to see Ben again. It was a piercing pain, but she would survive it.
EVER AFTER
Later, after the ceremony and before the parties, Drew obligingly drove the twins to Mountain Rest Cemetery. The moon was not yet up but was hovering in ghostly form, and the dusk was crisscrossed with bats and night birds.
As the twins walked down the pebbled path to Ben’s grave, Mallory remembered her vision of the cemetery, of Ben asking Merry to come to him, to take his hand. Which could have meant only one thing.
She would trust. And wait.
What Mallory didn’t know was that she had nothing to worry about: Merry was no longer tempted, even in the tiniest way, to leave her life. She wanted to see Owen and Adam grow up, and not through the veil of time. She wanted to see what passions of the non-romantic kind life held for her, what she might do or be. Her love for Ben was genuine, and, if he were here with her, Merry thought she might want to be with him exclusively. Still, she couldn’t promise forever. Forever could really be forever. Without her mother and father, and especially Mallory, Meredith did not think forever was possible for her to negotiate.
As Merry left Mallory, taking the last steps alone, Mallory whispered, “Giggy,” twin language for “I love you.”
Merry sat down on a fallen log and waited for Ben to arrive. Suddenly she heard a breath and realized he was next to her, standing, leaning against a tree—almost exactly as she had first seen him leaning against the wall at the shopping center under the old light pole. She jumped up and ran to him, holding up her face for Ben to kiss. He framed her face between his hands and, with his rainwater eyes, looked at every feature that made her Meredith.
“I’m going to have to remember you for a long time,” Ben said. Meredith couldn’t bear it anymore. She pulled his head to hers, feeling the electrical ecstasy of the sensation of the perfect fit, the expression of a love that fate had ordained and then denied. Standing there with Ben, Merry’s resolve weakened. Her mind was a wild thing, crowded with Ben’s smile, Ben’s eyes, the spicy smell that, for seventy years, would remind her of Ben—pine and cinnamon. She fell into a dream. In it, they lay in tall grass, under a benign sun, her only worry being she would get freckles. Red-winged blackbirds swung on the longest stalks and, all around her, where the Haven Hills houses now stood, there were fields and the occasional sturdy upright saltbox farmhouse.
Beneath the surface of her fantasy, Merry knew that this was the scenery that they would have lived in together, and that it was gone, gone since her parents were children.
It was when he gently pulled away that she seemed to become conscious again, to fall back into her body. Merry wanted to return to the world of her dream, soaring in the heat and freedom of an extinguished summer.
Ben said, “Merry. We have to talk.”
“Not now.”
“Right now. Now is the only time we have.”
“I know,” Merry admitted.
“Merry. You were the one who told me. You were the one who showed me the path I had to walk and helped me tell my mom.”
“I didn’t mean it,” Merry cried, getting to her feet. “I would take it back. I want you this way if I can’t have you any other way. Ben! It isn’t enough time. There’s so much more left to say. Please don’t leave me.”
“Baby, I don’t want to leave you. If there was any other way ...”
“There is. You know there is.”
Ben looked down at her. “Meredith, you would be the girl in my life, and you would be the woman in my life, but you’re going to grow up and do something amazing. You’re going to fall in love and get married and have children. You’ll be so happy someday.”
“Ben, I don’t want all that without you,” Merry said. “I don’t. I don’t.”
“But you will. I know you will,” Merry’s cheeks burned and her eyes brimmed. Her longing was tempered by shame for the knowledge that Ben was right. She didn’t want to make it harder for him, and it was time for both of them to let go. Holding her head back to keep the tears from spilling, Meredith looked up into a strong last ray of sun that pierced the dark fringes of the pines. The moon rocked on its back. With a huge effort, she swallowed and composed herself. Ben said, “And this thing you have, that you do. That’s important. It saved my mom’s life. You were meant to do that.”
“Are you afraid?” she asked.
“No, Merry. I haven’t been afraid since I first could talk to my mom and dad. If I’m afraid, it’s of missing you. But who knows? Who knows how long it will seem to me until the time comes and you’re ... there?”
Who did know what happened? Beyond? Would the fifteen-year-old Merry rise up someday from an eighty-eight-year-old body that had lived so long and well it had worn itself out? Would she run into Ben’s arms, while the other woman she had been all her life held out her hand to the man she had loved for forty years or fifty years? What happened to widows? If they married again after their husbands died, whose wife would they be? What about Ben? Would he be a teenage boy offering his arm to his mother, one day? Or would he be six or eight, the boy in the apple tree, and jump into arms strong enough to lift and hold him? How hard she would hold him. Would the thought of that sustain Mrs. Highland?
Few people had proof of that kind of eternity.
Meredith could not imagine that the afterlife was a place where jealousy or first claim or mistakes had a hand in anything.
Ben said, “I know there’s something that I have to do. I feel that. I don’t know what. Maybe souls come back, not this way, another way. Maybe as a baby. I don’t think angels watch over people. I think angels are different from regular spirits.” He smiled sadly. “But I know I’ll always know about you, Meredith. I’ll always know. Maybe I’m just whistling in the ... dark. But that’s what I think.”
They stood up and, side by side, faced the grave. Just where the sun behind the tall peak of the memorial cast a long shadow over
the grave with the black oval above it, they stopped. Merry saw something she had not noticed before, a small iron flag and cross behind the small and browning Valentine tree with its cheerful small hearts and rocking horses. Mrs. Highland still thought of Ben as her little boy.
“If I come here, will I have a stronger feeling? Of you?” Merry asked.
“I don’t know,” Ben said. “I hope there will be a way that I can touch your cheek or be there to brush your hair away from your face on ... your wedding day,” Ben’s face crumpled. “Meredith, I love you.”
“Ben,” Merry said. “I wrote down something. From my father’s poetry book.” She read,
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death. ”
Merry closed Ben’s hand around the folded paper. He folded it yet again and put it into his pocket. Merry said, “I don’t know how to say goodbye. I want my life to seem like a moment so I can be with you again.”
“They say it does pass like a moment if you live to be old. That’s what I wanted. To write and grow old, to leave something behind. Do that for me. Don’t wish your life away, Merry. Be happy every minute that you can. And don’t say goodbye. Say, ‘See you later, Ben.’ Say, ‘I’ll remember you, Ben.’ No one really dies who’s remembered.” Merry rushed toward Ben’s arms and made the motion of a kiss. “Don’t make it harder. There’s something for you on my porch. Don’t forget it. Promise.”
Watch for Me by Moonlight Page 21