Claire slides over to the next page. Julie grabs her chair and pulls it right beside her. Their knees touch.
“This would explain what happened to Javier and Abigail, though,” Claire says, still reading the newspaper. “Maybe they were supposed to meet and then the hurricane hit.”
“Maybe.” Julie feels a flush of disappointment. She was hoping for something more dramatic than a storm, like a midnight duel between Garner and Javier.
Claire is transfixed, though, leaning close to the screen, reading, Julie can only assume, every word of the paper’s front page. Julie skims instead. Everything is about the hurricane—the landscape was ripped to shreds, but nearly all of the town’s houses were still standing afterward, which strikes her as just kind of…odd. A farmer on the outskirts of town was upset that his cotton crops had been flooded, but most people seemed grateful that the town had survived. Even the reporter snuck in some editorializing: Praise be to God that we emerged through the storm unharmed. Truly a miracle happened here.
There are drawings of the damage, fallen trees and a flooded beach. Someone wrote an article about the experience of hearing the storm roll in from the confines of his dining room, that slow dawning dread.
And then the name Javier jumps out at Julie.
“Wait.” Julie puts her hand on Claire’s arm. “I just saw—oh my God, I did! Look, there!”
She points at a column headed Goings-on. Halfway down the column is a paragraph about a Mr. Javier Alvarez and a Mrs. G. Garner. Julie stars to read it out loud:
“Friends of Mrs. G. Garner will be delighted to know she is recovering nicely from her ordeal during last week’s storm. When we spoke to her, she credited Mr. Javier Alvarez”—Julie nudges Claire, grinning—“a Mexican national, with saving her from what would certainly have been a gruesome death. Instead, it was her kidnapper—” Julie’s eyes go wide. “Kidnapper!” she cries.
“Look!” Claire jabs at the screen. “Look who it was.” She picks up reading, her words breathless. “—Mr. Henry Emmert, who met his end in a watery grave, drowned in the very same cabin in which he had shackled Mrs. Garner in the hours before the arrival of the storm.”
Claire twists to look at Julie, her eyes wide. For a moment, the only sound is the humming of the light from the machines.
“That’s him, wasn’t it?” she said. “The guy who was staring at her in the letters?”
“Yes!” Julie shakes her head. “I guess Abigail was right not to trust that loser.” She laughs. “Also, they put that under ‘Goings-on’? Look, the next item is about Methodist ladies knitting socks for the hurricane survivors.”
“Yeah. Who knows.” Claire squints at the screen. “But this still doesn’t make sense to me. Why wasn’t Charlotte there? The newspaper doesn’t say anything about her.”
“I don’t know. Maybe Abigail decided not to take her?”
“Maybe.” Claire frowns. “But even if she did, why didn’t Javier save Abigail from Emmert and then run away with her? If they couldn’t get out then because of the storm, why not do it later?”
Julie reads through the article again, trying to piece together the clues. “Maybe she changed her mind?” she says. “I mean, she didn’t have her kid with her.”
“She was willing to do it before!”
Claire’s right—something doesn’t quite add up. And Julie thinks it’s because of Mr. Emmert.
“The story says Emmert kidnapped her,” Julie says slowly. “In the letters, though, they had hired him to help them rendezvous. I mean, that’s what I got out of it.” She looks over at Claire, and Claire nods in agreement. “So I think Emmert backstabbed them. He said he was going to help and then he just kidnapped Abigail instead—to ransom her, I guess. Probably he did it before she was supposed to leave, so he didn’t take Charlotte. I don’t know. But that might be why they couldn’t leave together, like they planned.”
Claire considers this, her gaze unwavering as she stares at the glowing screen. “Maybe,” she says. “I mean, this story makes Javier look like the hero, so I don’t think anyone knew about the affair. And Emmert’s dead, so he can’t tell on them.” She pauses, tilting her head. “Maybe they just decided not to push their luck. That’s kind of sad, really.”
“Yeah.” Julie thinks about the picture of her great-great-grandparents hanging in the lobby of the Alvarez Motel. It was taken when they were in their forties, and both Javier and Constancia look dark and serious. In that picture, he doesn’t look like a man who would run off with a married woman. And maybe that’s why. Because he tried, and it was almost a total disaster.
Almost.
Julie looks over at Claire. “Maybe I’ll save your life sometime.”
“Maybe I’ll save yours,” Claire says. “Return the balance.”
Julie laughs.
Claire turns back to the screen. “I don’t know,” she says. “I still feel like something’s missing. I just don’t know what, though.”
“I’m not sure how we could find out. I don’t think my parents even know this story.”
Claire hits the print button on the side. “There,” she says. “Now we have a copy, just in case.”
“What? Where?”
“Up at the front. They’ll hold it for us until we’re done.”
“Oh, cool, I didn’t know you could do that.” Julie smiles. “You’re good at this.”
Claire’s cheeks pinken. “Only thing I’m good at.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Julie feels breathless; the story about her great-great-grandfather risking his life to save the woman he loved has her wanting to take her own risks. “I mean, you’re pretty good at making my summer interesting.”
Claire smiles a little. Then she says, “Let’s see if there’s anything else,” and moves to the next section of the newspaper. It has more information about the storm, but nothing terribly interesting, and nothing more about Abigail Garner’s rescue from a kidnapper. The next day’s paper continues on with information about the hurricane too. A family was uncovered, scared but unharmed, from a collapsed boat, bringing the estimated deaths down to twenty. The mayor was interviewed, saying that the repairs needed for the town were nowhere near as extensive as feared.
The next day is more of the same, as is the fourth. Hurricane Repairs Continue.
“No more gaps,” Julie says. “Did you notice that?”
“They probably had to stop printing because of the storm.”
“Yeah.” Julie feels strangely unconvinced, though. Like the gap in reporting means more than is obvious.
And that’s when she sees it. A flash of a word. Creature.
“Stop stop stop!” Julie says.
“I have!”
The huddle close together. It’s a little item, another paragraph under Goings-on.
Miss Hattie Luce was visited this morning (Tuesday) by an unusual creature, similar in shape to an alligator but covered in fine silver fur. It bit several of her father’s prized hogs before Mr. M. Horn attacked the creature with his pistol, shooting it dead. We are uncertain of the creature’s origins, but we advise all residents of Indianola to watch their livestock and children as the matter is investigated further.
“This has to be referring to the monsters,” Claire says. “But they’re acting like they’ve never seen them before!”
“Oh my God. I guess they arrived around the turn of the century.” Julie says, thinking for a moment. “But it’s never been clear where they came from…or how they got here. I wonder if they have something to do with the hurricane?”
“Maybe.” Claire looks over at the screen, at the little warning in the bottom corner. “It would make sense, don’t you think? There’s a really big, weird hurricane, and then right after it, we see mention of the monsters?”
A little shock of frisson ripples down Julie’s spine. “I’m sure they’re related.”
Claire hits the print button and spins forward through the film.
“What ar
e you looking for?” Julie leans forward.
“Anything else about the monsters.” Claire’s eyes are shining. “This is so interesting, to see them talked about in the paper like this.” She looks at Julie. “Does the paper mention them now?”
“Are you kidding?” Julie laughs. “And leave a record? Hell, no!”
“That’s what I thought.” Claire pauses, gaze skimming across the screen. “Oh, my God, Julie! Look at this.”
Julie leans forward. Claire points at a column near the top of the page. NOTICE, reads the deceptively simple headline. But then:
Mr. Javier Alvarez has bravely led the charge in organizing arrangements with our town’s unwanted residents. He, along with the Rev. George Bray, invites all interested parties to bear witness at the signing ceremony this Monday, July 27, at the First Baptist Church on Avenue C. The treaties developed by Mr. Alvarez and Rev. Bray will serve as protection against the strange and troublesome creatures.
Julie falls back against her chair. “Holy crap!” she says. “So it’s true.” She shakes her head, thinking about all the times she teased her father for insisting that it had been her great-whatever-grandfather who first set up the treaties with the monsters.
“You knew about this?” Claire glances at Julie.
“I’d heard stories,” Julie says. “But I don’t know, I wasn’t sure I totally believed them. I mean, my parents also said the house had always been in our family, and that turned out to not be true.”
“I feel like we’re stumbling onto something,” Claire says, and Julie nods. She just doesn’t know what yet.
CHAPTER
Eleven
CLAIRE
Claire can’t sleep. It’s nearly five in the morning and her thoughts are spinning with everything she’s learned in the last few days: the letters, the thwarted kidnapping, the first appearance of the monsters. Plus Grammy’s reaction when she finally came home yesterday, after running out on her chores. She was grounded for a week.
So that’s another worry, the knowledge that she has to spend the rest of the week trapped in a house with Grammy and her lies about her medication.
Claire rolls over on her side, staring at the wall. The picture of Julie’s house is still gone—she wonders where Grammy put it. Grammy has to know about all this history. Maybe it’s the real reason for her opposition to Julie.
Maybe Grammy can even fill in the blanks.
Claire doesn’t sleep, she just lets the mystery of Abigail and Javier and the monsters roll around in her brain as she listens to the humming of the fan. Sometimes she thinks about Julie too, the way they sat so close together to see the microfilm screen, and that moment the other night when Julie told Claire she was pretty, how there was the slightest tremor in her voice—
The memories give Claire a shuddery feeling that isn’t entirely unpleasant. It kind of reminds her of how she feels—used to feel?—about Josh. The longer she lies there, the more her thoughts seem to elongate away from her until they become their own independent entities. She sees herself taking Julie’s hand. She sees Julie brushing her hair away, and then kissing her, once on the cheek, once on the forehead, once on the mouth.
Claire flops over again. She feels embarrassed, as if Julie might read her thoughts across town. Julie’s her friend, and she’s not supposed to think about friends that way. Especially not if they’re girls.
When the sun starts to peek through the blinds, Claire is still awake.
She watches the room brighten. At 7:30, she finally gets up for lack of anything better to do. When she looks at herself in her vanity mirror, she sees that her eyes are ringed in dark circles.
Claire dresses, pulling on a long, light dress that ties in the back, and trudges into the kitchen. Grammy is already awake, eating the cereal Claire prepared the night before.
“Did you take your pill?” Claire asks automatically. The question jars her, and she looks away from Grammy, toward the refrigerator.
“I did, thank you.” The pillbox isn’t sitting on the windowsill. Claire glances over her shoulder, sees it on the table beside Grammy’s cereal.
“I take it you’re ready for a day of cleaning,” Grammy says.
Julie pulls a grapefruit out of the refrigerator in response.
“Oh, don’t pull this attitude with me. Your mother did the same thing and it was never becoming on her either. And look where it got her, having to work for a living.”
“I told you I was sorry,” Claire murmurs. She sits down at the kitchen table, as far from Grammy as possible. As she slices her grapefruit into halves, she can feel Grammy staring at her. The air sparks.
“It just doesn’t seem like you,” Grammy said. “Running away like that. I told you that Alvarez girl is a bad influence.”
Claire looks up. The sunlight pours in through the windows and lights up Grammy’s white hair so that it look like a halo. The light reveals all the shadows in Grammy’s face too, and the sharp lines of her cheekbones and collarbones jutting out of her skin. It’s not that she looks old but that she looks sickly, and for the millionth time Claire wonders why she isn’t taking real medication.
“Her name’s Julie,” Claire says.
Grammy turns back to the newspaper. “I know what her name is.” She lifts up one corner and reads. Claire stares at the headline on the back—something about baseball.
“She’s not a bad influence.”
“Then why did you run out on your chores?”
“I was tired. I needed a break.” Claire digs her spoon into her grapefruit, but she doesn’t have much appetite. “I think the real reason you don’t like her is because the Alvarez family bought their house from ours a long time ago.”
Claire can’t believe she just said that. It’s like her words have separated out from her the way her thoughts did earlier.
The refrigerator’s hum seems too loud.
Grammy turns a page of the newspaper. Takes a bite of her cereal.
“Now where would you get an idea like that?”
She doesn’t look at Claire, but her voice is cold and sharp-edged. It’s not the same sort of sharpness it had when Claire came home yesterday afternoon, sheepish for running away. This seems—dangerous.
“I read about it somewhere.”
Grammy looks up. Her eyes glitter. She doesn’t seem like herself.
“You’re right,” she said. “They did buy our house out from under us. From under your great-great-grandmother Abigail Sudek.”
The name rings in Claire’s ears. “Don’t you mean Abigail Garner?” she says. “Because I read about her too.”
“What sort of things have you been reading, Claire?” The question is like a gunshot going off.
“I read that she and Javier Alvarez were in love, even though she had to marry someone else. Then Javier bought the—”
Grammy flings the newspaper toward Claire. It erupts in midair, pages scattering like birds. Claire freezes. The pages drift slowly to the table, to the floor; one covers Claire’s grapefruit. On the other side of the pages sits Grammy, her expression furious and filled with something Claire has never seen face-to-face before. She thinks it’s hatred.
“Don’t you dare talk about Javier Alvarez,” she hisses. “That man brought shame upon Abigail. Brought shame upon the entire family. He seduced her, put ideas in her head—she almost abandoned her family because of him, did you know that? She had a child!”
Claire doesn’t answer. She was going to take her too.
“And then Javier drew up those dreadful treaties, which forced your great-great-grandfather to give up a portion of his oilfields to accommodate the monsters. Meanwhile, Alvarez is rewarded by the city governance, given a big fat check for those treaties. Ten years later, my grandfather’s fortune had dried up without the oil. They had to sell Abigail’s house—yes, it was hers, built by her father when he moved here from Poland. Everything is Javier’s fault.”
“What?” Claire snaps. “It’s not Javier’s fau
lt that Garner had to give up some of his oilfields! If anything, it’s the monsters’!”
“Exactly!” Grammy’s voice is shrill and Claire shrinks away. “There are forces in this world you can’t even begin to understand, and Javier exploited them!”
Grammy leans back in her chair. She’s even more drawn and worn-out-looking than she was a few moments ago. She smooths one hand over her hair.
“I’m sorry,” she says, not looking at Claire. “I didn’t mean to lose my temper like that. But it’s a sore spot in our family, you must understand.”
Such a sore spot, Claire thinks, that this is the first she’s hearing of it.
“It’s the reason the women in our family give their children the name Sudek—and the reason we prefer to keep it ourselves.” Grammy smiles bitterly. “Except for your mother, of course. But your aunt, she kept the tradition, at least.” Grammy sighs and drops her head back, her gaze wandering up to the ceiling. Claire doesn’t dare move. “Abigail reverted back to her maiden name, Sudek, when Gregory Garner died. She said the name was all she had. There were no sons, you see. And Abigail’s daughter, my mother, Charlotte, saw that if you give away your name, you give away everything else too. So she kept it, and it’s all we have left now.”
Grammy looks at Claire then, and she seems almost grandmotherly again. “You understand, don’t you? The Alvarez family was our ruin.”
Claire doesn’t know how to respond. She looks at the newspaper pages scattered across the kitchen table. “I should clean these up,” she says, and she pushes her chair away and stands.
Grammy doesn’t say anything, only turns her gaze toward the window. Claire gathers the papers on the table, uncovering the white pillbox. Seeing it gives her a sick feeling in her stomach. It’s all just aspirin. Grammy looks like she’s dying, and all she’s taking for it is aspirin.
“Oh dear God,” Grammy says. “I didn’t need this so early in the morning.”
Claire thinks that she’s talking about their conversation—but then she looks up, out the window, through the slats in the blinds, into the backyard.
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