The Alien Accord

by Betsey Kulakowski

  “Why didn’t you just go talk to her?” David sat down across from him. “She’s your sister.”

  Michael shrugged, wincing at the effort. “I just got a bad vibe off of her. She acts like she’s mad at me. She’s always acted like she was mad at me.”

  “Maybe if you didn’t give her such a hard time ...”

  “Pfff!” The sound came from between Michael’s teeth. “I’m just kidding around, she knows that.”

  David stood, eyeing his twin brother. “Are you sure about that?”

  Michael looked up at him, watching as David left him with something to think about. After a long moment, he reached for the pain pills in his suitcase and took two. He knew one wouldn’t be enough to ease the ache in his back and body; nothing could ease the ache in his heart. He hoped two would be strong enough to still his racing thoughts.

  As he bedded down for the night and flipped off the lamp by the sofa, he lay staring at the ceiling, illuminated by the yard lamp outside that cast a blue-white glow through the window. He thought about his sister and that look on her face as she eyed him from across the yard.

  They hadn’t been close since they were kids. He always tried to lighten the mood between them with some friendly banter, but she never took things the way he intended. He’d sent her a card for her college graduation — working at Goddard he hadn’t been able to come home for the celebration. Two weeks later it came back, marked Return to Sender with no other message. The $100 gift card was still inside. The birthday card he sent her that year came back the same way. He tried again the following year and wasn’t surprised when the envelope returned.

  He tried calling. He tried emailing. He even drove up to CalTech to see her, but the bursar’s office wouldn’t give him any information about how to find her. He even went to the Dean of the Department with no better luck. He sat outside the library on a Friday night, knowing his studious sister was more likely to go there than to a party.

  He didn’t get an invitation to her wedding. Their mother didn’t get one either, but she went anyway, getting all the details from George. No one had even bothered to call him and tell him she was getting married. He’d heard about it on the entertainment news. It stung that he knew more about her from her stupid television show.

  * * *

  “You have done nothing to earn your sister’s loyalty. You know that right?” The voice came to him as he was drifting off to sleep. He startled, bolting upright in bed; except he wasn’t in bed. He found himself standing barefoot at a clearing in the river bottom outside George’s house. He’d spent most of his childhood running up and down this path through the river, beneath the spreading sycamores, weeping willows, and pin oaks.

  He knew the voice, but that wasn’t what left him feeling so disconcerted. This was not the first time he’d been taken from his bed in the night. “What did I do to piss her off?” He turned, finding an old man sitting on a fallen sycamore that lay across the stream. He sat cross-legged with his long white hair loose around his shoulders.

  “You must ask her,” he said. “It is not wise to allow old wounds to fester. While the pain started years ago, she has lived with it so long that she has accepted it; it has become a part of her.”

  “That’s pretty bold, coming from you,” Michael said sourly. “You left our mother ... you left us. You’re one to talk about mending old wounds.”

  His father considered him for a long while. “Your words are fair, but we each have our own wounds to mend. I have made my mistakes. In my time, I will have to make amends for them. But I recognized that I had done more damage by walking into someone’s life, and making them happy.”

  Michael moved, noticing the moonlight as a cloud passed. It made the old man’s hair almost glow. “Wait ... am I ... dreaming?” He realized. “Are you the one who’s been doing this to me? What’s going on?”

  “When you are dreaming with a broken heart,” the old man said. “The psyche will create a dialogue to allow your mind to process what the heart cannot.”

  “So I am dreaming?” Michael asked. “Have been dreaming all these past few months.”

  “The car wreck was real,” the man smirked. “But things are not as they seem. You have come to a place you needed to be. The journey has not been easy, but you have a task before you. You must make peace with your sister. You will need her to walk at your side. You know this. That is why you have come home.”

  “Yeah, well, she won’t even talk to me,” Michael snarled, looking away. His brow knitted as he tried to contemplate his father’s words and their meaning. He knew this was not actually his father. This was a dream-version of the man who had left him when he was just a boy.

  “All the more reason for you to listen,” John Grayson said. “Time heals many wounds, but not all. Others require tending, and careful words.”

  “You’re talking in riddles, Dad.”

  His father stood, sliding down the trunk of the tree. Michael realized his feet were bare too. He turned, as if to go, but he stopped and looked back at his son. “Do your best not to create new wounds on old scars,” he said. “You need her ... as much as she needs you.”

  * * *

  Lauren was sitting at the kitchen table late the following morning, eating a bowl of Cheerios, sipping her coffee, and reading the newspaper. When the front door opened, her head lifted. She froze when her brother walked into the kitchen. Her spoon slipped from her fingers and clattered in the bowl, sloshing milk all over the Cherokee Phoenix.

  “Surprise.” Michael snarked, strolling into the kitchen, looking smug. He’d probably come to pick a fight, and she was ready for it. She had been surprised he hadn’t done it the night before.

  “What are you doing here?” she snarled, picking up her spoon, saving a few beached Cheerios from the table. She returned her attention to the newspaper that was now soaked. The letters printed in the Cherokee syllabary were still legible.

  “You didn’t even come over and say hi to me last night.” Michael looked at her stone-faced, taking a coffee cup from the pantry, filling it.

  “Not like there was a force field between us, you know,” she said. “You could just have easily come to me.” But he hadn’t.

  Michael sat down across from her and watched her as she ate, not saying a word. Lauren was content to ignore him. Finally, he picked up his cup and took a sip. “Congratulations on your Emmy,” he said. “Too bad you didn’t find Bigfoot.”

  “Uh huh.” Lauren wanted to throat-punch him, then pin him to the floor and give him a piece of her mind. It looked like someone had already tried.

  “I met your husband last night.” He continued. “Nice enough fellow, I suppose.”

  Lauren glared at him from beneath the curtain of her freshly washed hair.

  “What do you want, Michael?” Lauren pushed her bowl away and leaned back in her chair. Her hands went to fists as they remained on the table.

  “Wow,” Michael said. “I didn’t expect a hostile reception.” A titter of laughter came from his chest. “I haven’t seen you in what? Fifteen years? I thought maybe we could have a civil conversation like adults.”

  “We couldn’t do it when we were kids,” Lauren stated flatly. “What’s changed in the last fifteen years?” He moved as if to speak. “I’ll tell you.” She cut him off. “Nothing. You’ve never had a kind thing to say to me my whole entire life.”

  “Hold on now.” He put up his hands defensively. He started to feed on her anger, but the memory of last night’s dreams made him hesitate. He softened. “Why so angry, Lauren? You know I like to tease you a little. That’s what big brother’s do.”

  “Teasing? You call it teasing? Nothing I did was ever good enough for you and I doubt it ever will be. I’m too old and too tired to give a flying rip about trying to one-up you or to worry about what you can or can’t do better than me. So if you’ve come to gloat or brag, you can shove it where the sun doesn’t shine, for all I care.” She rose from her chair, taking her bowl
to the sink. Storming out of the kitchen with her coffee cup, she went to find someplace else to drink it. She left her brother in the wake of her anger.

  Rowan passed her in the hall, and she pushed passed him without a word. Coffee sloshed from her cup, but she seemed oblivious. He turned as if to follow her, but she held up a finger of caution and disappeared out the back door.

  * * *

  Rowan stood with his mouth open wondering what had just happened. When he walked into the kitchen, he knew.

  “She’s still mad at me,” Michael said to him.

  “Man, I don’t know what you did to piss her off, but ... you should have sent flowers or chocolate or at least a freaking Hallmark card.” Rowan stood befuddled.

  Michael chortled. “Every card I sent her came back,” he said. “She’s been mad at me since she was six.” He’d had a couple of hours, unable to sleep after waking from his odd dreams, to analyze their relationship and figure out where he’d gone wrong with her. Michael rested his head on his fist and leaned on the table, gazing into his coffee.

  “What did you do to her?” Rowan poured coffee into his own cup and sat down across from him.

  “I shot her in the ass with an arrow.” Michael pursed his lips. Rowan noticed a bruise on the side of his face he hadn’t seen the night before. “She’s never forgiven me.”

  Rowan’s brow reached for his hairline. “What the literal hell?” Rowan was affronted on her behalf.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” Michael rejoined. “But you’ll never convince her of that.”

  “All right.” Rowan’s mind was going a thousand miles an hour. “This is a story I have to hear. Spill it.”

  Michael looked perplexed. “She never told you? I mean, didn’t it at least leave a scar?”

  “No” Rowan frowned. “And if it did, I never noticed.”

  “How long did you say you’ve been together?”

  “A long time.”

  Michael eyed him cautiously. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but you have to swear ...”

  “Cross my heart.” Rowan’s finger traced the cross over his chest, urging him. “Spill it.”

  “She’ll kill us both.” Lauren’s brother shrugged.

  “You first,” Rowan assured.

  “Probably true,” Michael said after a moment’s reflection. “Fine.” Her brother stood and went to the coffee pot, refilling his cup. He came back over and sat down. “We were all down at the river bottom late one summer evening. We’d been teaching one of George’s hounds how to track raccoons. Lauren’s job was to drag a coonskin along the ground, over tree stumps and up tree trunks.” He sat back in his chair and gazed into his cup. “It was getting close to dusk and we were about to head back when the dogs caught the scent of a raccoon and went tearing through the woods after it. We all followed suit, but Lauren was so little, she had a hard time keeping up and she got lost. Well, it gets dark extremely fast in the river bottoms and we couldn’t find her. If she was crying, the dogs bawling must have drowned it out. Hounds do that when they’ve treed a raccoon, you understand?”

  “I saw Where the Red Fern Grows,” Rowan said, as if that were sufficient.

  “Well, I’d been telling her about this one raccoon I was going to catch. I don’t think she realized I meant to kill it. I told her I was going to cut off its tail and make me a Daniel Boone hat out of it. But that dang monster had been getting into our corn crib and was eating up all our feed. She begged me not to. She tried to convince me it wasn’t just any raccoon, that it was a powerful wizard.”

  “A wizard?”

  “Not just any wizard, but a shape shifter. We have a lot of legends about wizards.” Michael took a deep breath. “When the dogs found the raccoon and ran it up in a tree it was already dark, but I thought I had a good shot at it, so I drew my bow back and launched my arrow. I heard Lauren yelling from the darkness not to shoot, but ... it was too late. But what fell out of the tree wasn’t a raccoon, it was Lauren with that ratty old coonskin. She had an arrow through her right butt cheek. She landed so hard she hit her head and it knocked her out cold.”

  “Oh my God.” Rowan’s face wrinkled in horror.

  “I thought I’d killed her. But George gathered her up and carried her to our Aunt Mary’s house. She’s a healer, you know.”

  “I didn’t,” Rowan said.

  “Uncle and George both chewed me out for shooting her, but I swear to God, the only thing I saw in that tree was that old raccoon. It was a big one!”

  Rowan realized Lauren was leaning on the doorway at the entry of the kitchen, her arms folded over her chest and a scowl creased into her face. “Fortunately, Lauren remained unconscious through all of it.”

  “You shot me.” Lauren snarled from the doorway. Her face reddened and her eyes tinged a shade lighter.

  “I didn’t mean to!” Michael defended. “It was an accident.”

  “It took all the rest of the summer before I could sit down right,” she grimaced.

  “I said I was sorry.” Michael turned in his chair, pleading. “I wasn’t trying to shoot you.”

  “You shouldn’t be trying to shoot anyone, or anything,” Lauren said. “That raccoon didn’t do anything to you.”

  “I can’t believe you’re still mad about all that.” He hung his head, shaking it.

  “You. Shot. Me.” Lauren punctuated each word. She came over and sat down next to Rowan, her eyes throwing daggers in Michael’s direction. “What happened to your face, anyway?” It was the first time she’d acknowledged the cuts and bruises.

  “Car wreck,” he said. “I got t-boned by a dump truck.” He lowered his eyes and gazed at the table in front of him.

  “You cut your hair,” she said, softening.

  “I don’t want to talk about my hair,” Michael said. A dark cloud came over him, and Lauren wanted to feel sorry for him. She knew what it meant. It was customary for them to only cut their hair when someone died ... someone close.

  “Fine.” Lauren’s tone softened, but she wasn’t ready to let him off the hook. “But I have plenty more reasons to be mad at you, and you know it.”

  Henry cried from the other room where he’d been sleeping, and Rowan rose to go check on him. Lauren ignored him. He could have flown to the moon and she wouldn’t have missed him. Her attention was entirely on her brother.

  Michael looked hurt. “I’m your brother. Like it or not, we’re family.”

  “Just because we’re related doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Lauren snarled under her breath. “It’s all the more reason for me to be angry at you.” She crossed her arms and sat back in the chair, scowling. “None of my other brothers put superglue in my hair or hid my kitten in the microwave.” Michael blanched at the memory. “You were the one who told Adam Bonebrake that I liked him, when I most certainly did not. You were the one who told Sister Mary-Joseph that I had been practicing magic. I got a whooping for that, you know. You told our mother I spilled the box of nails on the steps to the back patio. She stepped on them barefooted when she came out to yell at me for making so much noise ... because you were chasing me with a snake. She ended up with three nails through her foot ... and ... it got infected. The doctor in Tulsa wanted to cut her foot off, but she refused. Did you know that? And you were more than happy for me to take the blame ...”

  Her brother cut her off. “You did spill the nails ...” Michael started, but stopped, his jaw dropping. An expression of abject horror washed over his features as sudden realization flooded through him. “You didn’t leave the nails on the stairs.” His face went ghost white. Lauren thought she noticed a shimmer in the corner of his eyes. “I did it ... I meant to come back and pick them up but then I found the snake ...it was just a little garden snake, you know? It wouldn’t have hurt you.” Michael jumped to his feet and turned his back on her. He staggered over to the wall, leaning heavily on it, hanging his head. She could see the sinew of his body quicken beneath his shirt as the magnitude of his mistake hit hi
m. “Lauren, I swear ... I never meant to ... I mean ...”

  “You convinced yourself you hadn’t done it,” Lauren said flatly. “You never could handle being in trouble.”

  “I’m so glad you understand.” He half-turned.

  “I understand that you are so accustomed to being the golden child, that you can’t even admit your own mistakes or take responsibility for your actions. Yeah, I get that,” Lauren said.

  His injured brow furrowed, and he looked genuinely ruined. “All I can say is ... I’m sorry ... and ask for forgiveness.”

  “It’s fifteen years too late, Michael.” She stared into her cup, her dark lashes hiding the fury in her eyes.

  “I made a mistake.” Michael sat down across from her, reaching for her hand.

  Lauren recoiled, drawing it back. “A mistake that cost me any hope of having a relationship with my mother. She’s held that over my head my entire life, Michael. She’s never forgiven me. Why should I forgive you?”

  Lauren rose abruptly and walked out, running into Rowan and Henry in the hallway. “Come on,” she snipped. “I need some air.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To town.” She took Henry and turned toward the door. “Get your keys and the diaper bag.”

  Chapter 6

  Rowan found Lauren pacing outside the house. He could see she was still fuming. He approached cautiously as Henry fussed. She put him up on her shoulder. The baby wrapped his arms around her neck and nuzzled against her. She looked up and met Rowan’s eye. “I told you this wasn’t a good idea,” Lauren said blankly. “Any of it.”

  “What?”

  “This whole family tree thing.” Lauren closed her eyes, leaning her head against Henry’s as he patted her back. “Too many old hurts ... wounds that will never heal.”

  Rowan put his hand on her arm. “I can see you’re struggling, but I watched you with your family yesterday. I talked to your cousins and a couple of your brothers. This is a family who loves you very much. They speak highly of you and I can tell they’re proud. But being related is no guarantee of being able to get along. Neither your mother nor your brother defines who you are, Lauren. We don’t even have to mention them.”