Fragility Unearthed

by Rebecca Royce

  I raised my eyebrows and didn’t comment. She didn’t need help getting where she was going. Not from me, anyway.

  She continued. “To make matters even more certain, the local Cosby police called me yesterday. They’ve been getting constant phone calls from the girl’s mother. She says that her daughter died there—of that we’re certain—but that a woman wearing her daughter’s body has been living as an imposter of her for twenty-five years.”

  Bam. The universe shifted on its axis. I cleared my throat to cover the blow she’d delivered me. My mother was calling them? She’d barely seemed coherent to me lately. Short answers. One word sentences. Did my father know?

  “And you think I’m that imposter.” I didn’t phrase it as a question; it wasn’t one.

  She sat back in her chair. “Yes.” She paused, and I added nothing. “I felt a little sick about this all day. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. The closer I got to here, the less I wanted to be here. I almost turned around, but Detective Torrance was with me and I kept going.”

  I looked at the door. He still hadn’t come inside. Odd things did tend to happen around me when I was in full possession of my powers. Hell, even when I wasn’t. Part of me wanted to open my mouth and tell this woman everything. The whole kit and caboodle of what had happened in my life. Maybe she’d arrest me for something. Maybe it would even be a relief.

  I shook my head. This was ridiculous. “Twenty-seven years ago, I disappeared from Cosby. I can’t tell you much about it. I don’t remember exactly where I went or how I got there.” Partially true. Kendall Madison, liar extraordinaire was back on duty. “I lived in the back of my parents’ van. They thought they were ghost hunters, of sorts.” True. This earned me raised eyebrows and a shifting in her chair. Claudia hadn’t known that. Good, I’d use it. “I don’t know why I decided to leave. I can’t really remember that time all that well. I’m sure there are psychological reasons for it.” Or mystical ones. “I left. And then I came back when I was twelve. I found my parents in their van in St. Louis, and I came home. They chose not to report me found. I can’t speak for them. I devoted my life to getting normal, and now here I am, living with my best friend because I’m divorced and broke. How normal is that? Oh and my ex just had a stroke. My parents are here too. Want to speak to them?” I rose. “Come on.”

  “They’re here?”

  “Yes. They live with us too. A big, giant happy family.” My parents were back outside, living in their van. It had been their choice when we’d come to Victoria’s. My father thought my mother might benefit from being in the place where they’d lived for so long. All the changes in environment were making her agitated. Bad enough, apparently, to phone the police.

  We opened the door, and Detective Torrance still stood on the stoop. Detective Sun huffed very loudly and glared at him. I was glad I wasn’t on the other end of that look. He continued to speak. “I know, honey. But … yes, dear.”

  Oh, so it was that kind of conversation. I’d be amused if I wasn’t afraid I was about to be arrested. He turned to look at me, and when I saw his eyes, they were Michael’s. I stopped moving. Michael had taken over Detective Torrance.

  That must mean he considered the man to be more of a threat than Detective Sun. I walked toward the van and knocked on the side of it. Michael was here. I didn’t know if that somehow made this whole thing worse. The Others told me they couldn’t always be around. What would happen when he left the Detective’s mind? Would he come back? Could he be controlled? Did Michael think this was a really, really bad situation and that was why he’d come now?

  My father opened the side of the van. Henry had hooked a satellite to the living space for them, which meant they didn’t have to leave their comfort to watch television. I think they spent a lot of time watching cooking shows.

  “Hey, sweetheart. What’s going on?”

  I tried to smile and failed. “These people are police detectives. They’re from Dallas. Mom called them. Told them someone had been impersonating her daughter.” I raised my hand to indicate it was me. “They’ve found some bones that match the hair they had on file for me. And now we have a big mess.”

  My father whipped his head around so far I was sure he would give himself a neck ache. “Honey, you called the police?”

  She slammed both of her hands down on the side of the couch they sat on in the back of the van. “She’s not our daughter. Our daughter died. People don’t come back from death. We send them on. That’s what we do. I felt it when she died. I felt it.”

  Tears spilled from my mom’s eyes in waves. There had never been a time in my life that I’d seen my mother cry and I hadn’t cried along with her. When I was a child, she was all the sunlight in my world. If she fell apart, the world did. Later on, before I’d left them for the life I wanted, her tears had stung my heart. A person as kind as my mom should never be so upset.

  My own tears started, and I wiped them away. “Dad, could you …”

  He placed his hand on his wife’s arm. For forty years they had been married, and there had never been a time he hadn’t been on her side. He saw no world in which my mother wasn’t the smartest, kindest, most talented, and most beautiful woman in any room.

  I knew what I asked of him. I wasn’t even sure that, despite his absolute love of me—a love I understood better the day Grayson had been born and his brother and sister after—what he would do in this moment. I wasn’t technically her daughter. I felt like her. I could remember all of her memories. The skin I wore, the lungs I breathed from, the brain in my skull, they weren’t the same ones I’d had before I’d died. The Others regrew me. She wasn’t wrong.

  “My wife isn’t well. She has a form of dementia. This is our daughter. She came back when she was twelve. We never told anyone. Our lifestyle was less than conventional. But she’s our daughter.”

  Detective Sun shook her head. “Not according to the lab results we ran on the bones we found. Perhaps if your daughter was able to tell us more about her missing years. Or provided DNA to confirm who she is.”

  “Oh, I can …”

  “Hold on, Kendall.” Henry appeared out of the darkness. “I think before we go any further with this, we need to talk to Jenny.” The attorney Henry had sent to me once already. “I don’t think she can just take your DNA without a warrant, and she’s come from Dallas. There might be procedural issues here.”

  I stared at Henry. He was an artist, not an attorney.

  I smiled at the detective. “Maybe we should pause here.”

  Torrance finally hung up the phone, still sporting Michael’s eyes. “It’s going to turn out to be a lab problem. She is who she says she is.”

  “Is that so?” Claudia Sun’s voice lowered when she spoke this time. “Something is going on here. I can feel it.”

  “Be that as it may,” Henry put his arm around me. “If you want this woman’s DNA, come back with a warrant. Unless you’re arresting her.”

  Claudia shook her head. “Not today.”

  That didn’t fill me with a great deal of comfort. They would be back. The questions were when and how much more screwed would I be on that day than I was now. Every time the sun set, something else went terribly wrong.

  “Just out of curiosity, before I leave, the little boy you were reported missing with, did he run away with you?”

  I took a deep breath. “Detective, I can tell you in all honestly, I have no idea what happened to him. I’m sorry. I wish I did.”

  We stood next to each other, Henry and I, while my mother wailed in the van and my father tried to comfort her. The car the detectives had come in drove slowly down the driveway and away from Henry’s home.

  “I’m calling Jenny.”

  I nodded. “I was going to give her the DNA.”

  “Can you be sure it’ll be the same? Do you want to be arrested for fraud? Are any of us one hundred percent sure we will be exactly the same? What did the Others do to remake us? How does the phoenix work? Wha
t would she find?”

  I touched my stomach. I didn’t know what world I was bringing my newest love into. “Maybe we should find out. That might be a useful piece of information. I’ll get tested privately, and we’ll compare.”

  “Where are you going to get a sample from before?”

  That was a good question. “The detective has one.”

  “Great. You can just ask her for it. I’m sure she’ll be happy to share.” He snorted. “Come into the house. Victoria’s going to want to hear about all of this. And I think your parents could use some alone time.”

  I stared at them for a moment before my dad slowly shut the door. Would my mom remember this in the morning? Would she ever understand what had happened and why it had to? I didn’t know. Things were changing.

  As if on cue, the wind picked up, blowing against my face. I shivered. Nothing ever came easily. And now we had the police looking into us. In our situation, the police were exactly who I didn’t want involved.

  Inside the house, Ross sat on a living room couch with Erin on his lap. They stared at the television news. I turned to look. Everyone would have to be informed about what had happened. Still, the screen caught my attention.

  The headline at the bottom of the screen read, “Fire.” I quickly tried to catch up. Apparently, there had been a massive outbreak of house fires all over the city. A quick glance out the window told me what I knew from just being outside—there was no electrical storm. Why was everything going up in flames tonight?

  My cell phone rang, and I looked at the number. It was the hospital where Levi was being treated. I answered quickly. “Hello? Is this Kendall Yates?”

  I had so many last names. “This is she.”

  “This is Nina Valdik, the head nurse on Levi’s floor. He’s very distressed and getting more so by the minute. He’s calling your name over and over. I thought maybe if you …”

  I interrupted her. “I’ll be right there.”

  In the background I could hear him. Kendall, Boom. Boom, Kendall. I stared at the television screen at the fires.

  I gasped as his meaning dawned on me. Yes, things were going boom. Fire exploded a house. I rubbed my eyes. I finally understood.

  Chapter Nine

  The DNA problem had to wait. The hospital woke me the next morning with the news that Levi needed to come home. He hadn’t had a stroke. There was no evidence of brain damage anywhere. He’d had a heart attack—they were certain of that—but since then, his vitals had returned to that of a very healthy thirty-six year old man. They had no explanation for why he couldn’t form sentences. I was given the information of several good specialists, both here in Austin and in Houston if I was willing to travel further.

  Levi’s sad eyes met mine from across his hospital room. We didn’t need the doctors to tell us what had happened. We both knew quite well.

  The nurse went to fill out his discharge papers, and we were finally alone.

  Levi let out a long breath. “Sorry, Kendall.”

  “This is not your fault. Not even a little bit. And I understand what you tried to tell me. Things went boom last night. The Shadows are coming up. In the fire. Right?”

  He let out a sound which might have been a groan and nodded furiously. “Boom.”

  I took his hand. “Let’s go home and see our kids. They know what to expect. Well, the older two totally get it. I think Molly will catch on. They’re just relieved you’re coming back and that you’re you.”

  “Kendall.” He placed his hand on my belly. “Baby.”

  “Yes. Can you see the light, or did you see it when you were with Top Hat?”

  He opened and closed his mouth several times. I could see the frustration increasing in his gaze. I’d asked too complicated a question. What and how he could respond would be more complicated. I needed to think about this more clearly.

  We got to the car. Levi had full use of his hands and legs, his fingers were working fine, too. I didn’t have to help him get around, just communicate.

  He fiddled with my radio. That hadn’t changed either. I’d no sooner pulled out of the parking lot of the hospital than my rock station wasn’t good enough. No, he wanted the classical station.

  I rolled my eyes at him. “God forbid we listen to a little Rolling Stones? They might corrupt us or something. We could end up tapping our feet.”

  He smiled at me. Things might be okay.

  Levi grabbed his chest. “Boom, Kendall, boom.”

  “What?”

  Behind us, the hospital exploded.

  The world turned red in my rear view mirror.

  ***

  Logan and Peter circled each other in the kitchen. Logan held his own head, muttering. The hospital explosion had been a big hit on the psychics. Dexter chewed on a candy bar. His head hurt, but he was okay, better than the adults with the same powers.

  My heart ached for the dead. I couldn’t begin to process the devastation.

  In the midst of the horror, Levi concerned me greatly. He had felt the explosion before it even happened. He knew it was going to happen. How connected to the shadows was he?

  I rubbed my stomach. “I could use your daddy right now, little one.”

  Grayson came down the stairs. He’d been upstairs watching YouTube. He liked to watch other people play video games. I hadn’t called him down. With all the trauma, he’d been upstairs and happy. I held onto that.

  Levi stood when Grayson came down, and the two of them stared at each other for a moment. A frog clogged my throat, but I forced words through my mouth. “Gray, remember how we talked about dad …”

  “Daddy.” Grayson sucked in a breath and then ran into his father’s waiting arms. They didn’t need words. At least not then. They had each other.

  “Grayson.” Levi managed to get the word out to address his son. Logan stopped moving to watch the scene, too.

  He came up behind me. “You have a hot ex-husband.”

  I snorted. “He glows, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes. Why did you let him go?” He whispered his question.

  “He let me go. And when he wanted me back, it was too late. I was in love with Malcolm. He’s a hottie as well.”

  Logan snorted. “You’ve got your timeline wrong. You were in love with Malcolm. You forgot things. Fell in love with the father of your children—great genes to give them, by the way—and then back to Malcolm. Lucky girl in the love life department?”

  I walked past him into the dining room, his words making me want to get some room. Logan followed me. “Hey, I didn’t mean to make you upset.”

  “I destroy everything I touch, including the men I love. Levi would never be in this mess without me. And I cannot even begin to imagine what has happened to Malcolm.”

  The doorbell rang, and a few moments later, Henry came into the kitchen followed by Jenny. I hadn’t seen his friend the lawyer since our first visit. She’d advised me to use Top Hat in Levi’s body to track Malcolm. Since, at the time, I’d thought it was only a matter of time until I had to kill Levi, I’d gone along. If I’d known he could have been saved, I wouldn’t have left him in there. I deserved every bad thing that happened to me karma-wise. I really did.

  “Hi.” Jenny smiled. She was in a hot pink suit this time. The woman certainly did like to stand out. “I understand you’re in a shit storm. But I want to talk DNA.”

  Levi followed them into the room. He stood in the doorway, silently watching us. “Oh, sure. One more problem in a field of millions of them. I’ll talk DNA. And let me introduce you to my ex-husband, Levi Yates. He’s freed of the Shadow. Levi, this is Jennifer West. She’s my attorney. She’s also well-versed in all things paranormal.”

  He waved a hand at her and didn’t move. People were probably going to think he was rude, but I didn’t really give a shit about what anyone thought anymore.

  She pinked at his attention and didn’t move toward him. “Hello.”

  I looked between them. Was it possible that Levi co
uld have that much of an effect on a woman from doing nothing more than waving at her? I shook my head. I couldn’t deal with that right now. That was too normal an issue. I only handled the strange and unusual these days.

  To fill Levi in, I summarized. “The police have my bones. My original ones.” Malcolm’s too, but since he was missing in action, that really didn’t matter at the moment. “To make matters worse, my mother has phoned the police. They’re investigating me for fraud. Or maybe they’re not. I haven’t officially been charged. It would help if I could prove who I was, but we’re a little concerned that my DNA may not be quite right.”

  He raised his eyebrows. This was just the sort of conversation Levi would have been great at were he able to communicate.

  “First of all”—Jenny turned her attention to me—“you aren’t giving them your DNA unless you are forced to do so with a warrant. They aren’t going to get one with this stuff. This is going to look like a lab error. But, that being said, who’s to say the rest of you aren’t going to suffer from reborn problems? It might be nice to know if we could count on your DNA matching. Is there anyone you can ask?”

  Henry snorted. “The beings who did this to us are not regularly around for conferences. They communicate with Kendall sometimes and generally avoid the rest of us. She gets to be our mouthpiece.”

  “When did I get appointed that job?” I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure if you wanted to chat with him, Henry, you could.”

  Block entered the room around Levi. I hadn’t seen him in days. He’d gone to see Patricia Bloom and had missed most of the current drama. He patted Levi on the back and looked at the rest of us. “Anyone want to fill me in?”