by S D Hegyes
“Can I help you?” Sorsha asked finally, making Ella frown, her mouth puckering.
“How odd. . .”
“What?”
Ella’s eyes darted across her face. “It’s like you don’t even know what I’m doing.” The words were said more to herself than to Sorsha.
“That’s because I don’t?”
All of a sudden, Ella grinned. “You’re interesting. I think I understand what Larz sees in you.”
“I’m glad? I think?”
The woman laughed and tucked her arm into Sorsha’s. “Come. Take me to this cafe. I’m more intrigued than ever.”
A few minutes later, they stood before what looked like a small house. It was a squat building with a short set of brick steps with rusted metal railings leading up to a door. An old sign hung overhead, but it was so faded, there was no way to read it any longer.
“Are you sure this is a restaurant?” Ella asked dubiously.
“I’m sure. Welcome to Ozzy’s.” Sorsha grinned and led the way inside, gripping the door and spinning the handle. Just inside was a hallway and a small podium. A poster board attached to the front of the podium listed the daily house specials.
Ozzy’s looked like a house because once upon a time, it had been. Then Ozzy converted it into a family-run operation. The only items that could be ordered were those listed on the poster when one walked in. Ozzy was a simple man who didn’t believe in giving people a lot of options. People either ate his food or found another restaurant.
Sorsha explained that to Ella. “The menu changes every other day or so, depending on Ozzy’s mood.” She shrugged.
“How did you even find this place?” Ella asked as they found a seat at one of the four small tables located in what had once been a living room if Sorsha had to guess.
“I stumbled upon it by accident actually. I’d just moved in and since I don’t have a car, I was walking down to the gas station. Ozzy—” She gestured to the man walking their way. “—was coming up from the sidewalk and asked if I wanted something to eat. He invited me in. I thought he was just being nice at first, which I thought was odd, and then I saw the sign on the door.” She shrugged. “It’s a good little restaurant, even if it’s a bit unorthodox.”
Ella laughed. “Sounds like it.”
“Good afternoon, Sorsha. You seem to be bringing new people here all the time lately.” The man was short and squat with thinning gray hair and a kindly smile on his face.
Sorsha laughed. “Hey Ozzy. This is Ella, Larz’s cousin. I showed Larz the place. It’s only fair I show her as well.”
He nodded. “Thank you. We thrive on feeding people. What can I get you ladies today?” They placed their orders and Ozzy smiled before he retreated to the kitchen.
Ella smiled at Sorsha after Ozzy left. “It’s nice to meet you, but I’ll be honest, I don’t know a thing about you other than your name.”
“Oh?” Sorsha wondered if Ella knew her whole name. If she didn’t, how would she react if Sorsha told her? She didn’t want to test the theory.
“Larz doesn’t talk to us much since he moved out. We knew he was moving in with a woman called Sorsha, but that was all he told us. Noah’s pissed about it, but it honestly doesn’t take much to piss him off. Abraham thinks you’re in a relationship together.”
Sorsha rolled her eyes. “Him too?” At Ella’s confused expression, she explained the bet between her co-workers.
Ella laughed. “Oh, that’s priceless. I’ll have to tell Abraham. He’ll get a kick out of that and probably add money to the pot.”
Sorsha’s head hung as she groaned. “Me and my big mouth. Just when I thought I’d finally escaped insanity.” She grinned though.
Their food arrived, and they didn’t speak much while they ate. It gave Sorsha a chance to study the woman across from her. Ella looked like she was only in her mid-twenties, but when Sorsha met her eyes, she could see something older and wiser in her gaze, which made her second guess the woman’s age.
“So, you’re checking up on Larz?” she asked once she finished her sandwich and dusted crumbs from her hands.
“Can you blame me?” Ella sat her sandwich down, shaking her head and pushing it away. “Guess I wasn’t as hungry as I thought.”
Sorsha chuckled. “Ozzy’s can trick you that way. Don’t worry. You won’t insult him. He expects it.” She tilted her head and returned to their earlier conversation. “I think it’s rather sweet.”
Ella flinched. “I hate it. I worry about him. He’s not been—” Her words trailed off and her gaze drifted far away. “He’s not been himself for a long time, even before—Well, let’s just say it’s been a long time since we all left our—” She stopped as she considered her words. “—father’s home. It’s difficult to explain really. When we left home, Larz was happier than he’d been, but still not really happy. You know?”
She thought she did.
“Then, out of the blue, when we were staying at a hotel in Montana for a bit, he met someone. He never said who it was or anything other than we didn’t need to worry about him.” She shrugged, but her eyes studied Sorsha, as if waiting for her to confess something.
Too bad she couldn’t. She remembered seeing them get out of the car, but that was all her memory allowed her to see. If she’d known Larz back then, she still couldn’t access those memories.
“Anyway,” Ella continued, distracting Sorsha from her thoughts. “Although he hasn’t talked to us much since he moved in with you, I have noticed he seems happier than he’s been in months. Perhaps years. Whatever is going on between you two, whether you’re friends, roommates, lovers, whatever. I approve.” She smiled.
“Thanks, I guess. We’re just roommates although I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like him.”
“What’s not to like?” Ella chuckled.
“Tell me about yourself. Larz doesn’t talk about his cousins at all, so I know absolutely nothing about you.” Maybe Ella would drop more hints about Sorsha’s past with Larz too.
“That sounds like Larz. I don’t believe it’s anything personal. We’ve just learned to be. . . cautious.” She seemed lost in thought for a moment, and Sorsha checked her phone. She still had a bit of time before her lunch break was over, and if she ran a couple minutes over, she couldn’t help not caring about the consequences.
“Yes, cautious. We had a hard life before we came to the States, and we just try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. We don’t have any desire to return home.”
“That bad, huh?” Larz had mentioned leaving an abusive home a couple of times, but she didn’t pretend to have a clue how bad it had been. If they were Kazal’s children, she could only imagine living with a demon-possessed madman.
Ella shivered. “You don’t know the half of it.”
Sorsha barely heard the words, but they were enough to make her face pale and her skin turn to ice. Just how bad was Kazal?
Ella smiled at her. “No more of that. You work at a blood bank. How exciting.”
“I just crunch numbers basically. I do transcription. Convert written data into typed data.” Sorsha drank her tea.
“I’m an exotic dancer.”
Sorsha sputtered and coughed. “What?”
“It pays well, and I’ll admit it’s nice to be fawned over every once in a while.”
Sorsha’s jaw nearly dropped to the ground. An exotic dancer? What in the world? She wished Ella was joking, but she had a feeling the woman was completely serious. From the sound of it, she even enjoyed her work.
“No desire to get out of the business?”
“Not anytime soon.” Ella shook her head. “It’s not all that bad. There’s a few dickheads every once in a while, but that happens with any job honestly.”
Brad crossed Sorsha’s mind, and she smiled. Brad hadn’t talked to her once since the holiday party unless he had a work-related question, and even then, he often had someone else ask instead. It was a nice change. “Tell me about it,” she to
ld Ella with a grin.
“The difference is, I’m allowed to defend myself against dickheads since there’s a strict ‘no touching’ policy.” Ella grinned. “Can’t say that with many other jobs.”
Sorsha certainly couldn’t. If Brad ever changed his mind and started hitting on her again, she had no doubt she’d punch him in the face, and she’d find herself jobless within minutes.
She frowned and looked at her phone again, checking the time. “I have to get back to work,” she told Ella. An idea occurred to her as she stood. “Are you and your other cousins doing anything New Year’s Eve?”
“No. Why?”
“I’m hosting a party. I doubt Larz has mentioned it. I’d love to invite you all over. If that’s alright with you, of course.” She gathered her jacket and purse, digging inside until she found her wallet, and tossed some bills on the table for their meals as well as tip.
“I’d love to come,” Ella told her, eyes sparkling. She clapped her hands together. “Oh! I can’t wait.” She leaned close and pulled Sorsha in for a hug. “Thanks for the invite. I’ll let Abraham and Noah know as well. What time should we be there?”
Sorsha gave her the details, and Ella nodded her understanding. Excitement washed through Sorsha. She couldn’t wait to meet the rest of Larz’s cousins. Larz’s warning about other children of Kazal drifted through her mind, but she dismissed it as soon as it appeared. She and Ella exchanged phone numbers.
“Text me if you need anything for the party. I have no problem helping out,” Ella told her.
“I’m just happy you’ll be able to make it.”
“Me too. Merry Christmas, Sorsha.”
“Merry Christmas.”
15
If Larz noticed the two six-packs in the fridge before he went to work on Christmas Eve, he said nothing to Sorsha, which she was thankful for. She watched as he walked through the house, tucking his work shirt in and grabbing his jacket from the back of a chair.
“I’ll never get over the difference.”
“What difference?” he asked as he slipped the jacket on.
She tucked her bare feet up under her on the couch and grinned. “The difference between professional and casual Larz.”
He grinned at her. “Yeah?”
She finished her first beer. “It’s like night and day.”
Larz laughed. “I imagine so,” he told her. He grabbed his lunch box and walked toward the door. “I’ll be back in the morning. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
She snorted. “There isn’t much on that list, is there?”
He winked. “Not really.” He gestured toward her beer. “Save me one.”
“Will do.”
“Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas, Larz.”
Sorsha waited until he’d closed the door behind him and was long gone before she crawled off the couch and headed toward her room.
She had a lot of work to do before New Year’s, and it was easier to get it done on Christmas Eve. She could already feel her misery threatening to pull her down in a dark pool of depression.
Especially when she glanced at the red envelope on the coffee table. The card had shown up the day before. As it did every year. Her mother had it down to a science.
No, she told herself. Not yet. You have to decorate first.
She wasn’t much for decorating, but it was one of the few ways to satisfy Irene. If Irene came in on New Year’s Eve and didn’t see a Christmas tree up, she’d automatically whisk Sorsha off to her place and give her the third degree about wallowing in misery alone on Christmas.
It occurred to her Larz hadn’t mentioned decorating either, and she wondered about that for a brief moment before shrugging. It didn’t matter. Maybe he didn’t decorate because he didn’t celebrate Christmas.
Thinking about celebrating Christmas made a memory run through her head, and she swore, going to the fridge for another beer. She popped the top and downed half of it before she lowered it and sat the bottle on the counter.
“None of that now,” she told herself. “You have stuff to do.”
It never took her long to put the tree up. It was just a matter of doing it. She squared her shoulders and set to work. She needed to get it done before she broke down. The longer she could go without thinking about the Christmas cards and home, the easier it was. She wondered how long it would be before she started crying. Last year, she’d only managed to get a couple ornaments on the tree before the waterworks occurred.
“Think of Gloria,” she told herself. “You’re going to have to talk to her soon about her death, even if it hurts her. You need more details about what happened.”
In the time it took for her to say that, she pulled the two tubs from her room. One had the tree in it, the pieces folded neatly in a cloth bag she’d gotten years prior. The other had tree decorations.
She talked to herself as she put the artificial greenery together and started hanging ornaments from its limbs. A string of red beads that had once been several Mardi Gras necklaces Sorsha re-purposed, a few red and gold bulb ornaments, and a couple icicle ornaments. They all went on the tree as Sorsha discussed the peculiarities of Gloria’s case.
Then Sorsha found the angel at the bottom of the tub, and a sob tore at her throat. She bit her lip as she sank down on her knees beside the tub. Slowly, she reached in and took the angel up in a gentle grasp, as if it were more fragile than the ornaments hanging from the tree.
The angel was small, too small for the tree, with a porcelain face painted with long lashes and round red circles on her cheeks. Sorsha ran a finger over the stiff curly golden hair atop its head, avoiding the gold halo made of pipe cleaner—or tinsel on wire, she didn’t know.
The angel’s dress was simple and the fabric as stiff as the hair, white and gold with a netting underneath that helped it flare out. Underneath it all was a woven cone of wicker-material meant to hold it atop a tree. A pair of wings sprouted from the angel’s back, white dove feathers attached to a wire frame.
As Sorsha cradled the angel in her hands, she felt the tears slide down her cheeks. She snarled and wiped at her face with one elbow, but to no avail. The tears had started and they wouldn’t stop.
Her heart wrenched in her chest as she gazed over the angel. It had been the last gift from her mother the last time she’d visited her parents. Five years prior, after leaving the hospital.
She shook her head. She didn’t want to think about it. She refused.
But the memory swirled up and flooded her mind, despite her protests. Of all the memories she still had, why was that one the strongest? Why couldn’t she forget it?
Sorsha shook her head. It didn’t make any sense.
Neither had that day though. Sorsha had just gotten out of the hospital and taken a bus all the way from North Carolina to Montana. From there, she’d called her old friend, Charlotte, who lived and worked at a motel near her parents’ home. Charlotte had offered her a ride home for Christmas.
The reunion with Charlotte had been pleasant. Sorsha knew Charlotte didn’t have any immediate family in the area, but she hadn’t been able to leave town and visit them for the holidays either. When Sorsha asked for a ride, Charlotte had been more than happy to oblige if she’d visit for a couple hours.
The visit lasted a couple days, for when Sorsha showed up on her family’s doorstep on Christmas Day, things had not gone well at all.
The memory flooded Sorsha’s mind. She remembered every word, every action. They cut her to the bone and forced her to relive the memory in her head.
“Who’s at the door?” Sorsha heard her father ask from the living room. “Tell them to go away. It’s Christmas. We’ll see them at church later.”
Her mother leaned against the doorway, angling forward as if to hide Sorsha from her father and whispered in a low voice, “What are you doing here?”
“I came home for Christmas,” Sorsha said, confusion plain in her voice and on her face. Weren’t they
happy to see her? Weren’t they excited she’d been able to come?
“You shouldn’t be here.” Her mother continued to whisper. “You know your father hasn’t wanted anything to do with you since—” She glanced over her shoulder and Sorsha saw her father, sitting in his wheelchair with his back to them. “—since. . . Well, you know. Preston’s death.”
Sorsha remembered hearing about it, but she didn’t see what that had to do with her. “I don’t understand.”
“You know. He still blames you for it.”
“But I didn’t do it, Mom.”
“Tell that to him.” Her mother jerked her thumb in her husband’s direction. “Then you joined the army. We both knew he’d disown you if you did that.”
“But. . .” Sorsha couldn’t believe her ears. She wouldn’t be allowed to see her family, even on Christmas?
“Miranda? Who’s at the door? I thought I told you to get rid of them.”
Sorsha couldn’t stand to hear the aggression in her father’s voice. The years hadn’t been kind to him. She could see that without seeing his face. His shoulders were hunched forward, and his hair thinned until there was a round bald spot atop his head. He looked thinner too, but that could have been the angle she viewed him at.
The house smelled as it always had when Sorsha spent Christmas with her family, but there was an underlying smell of decay and rot as well that had her wrinkling her nose even as she stepped past her mother and said, “You should be nicer to Mom, Father. She’s one of the few people who still cares about you.”
Sorsha had never seen him spin his wheelchair around so fast. The sneer on his face made her stomach tighten in knots.
“What are you doing here? You aren’t welcome. Get out.”
“It’s good to see you too, Father.” Sorsha narrowed her eyes at him. “Still the same grouch you were before I left, aren’t you? Meaner, even. Now you terrorize Mom as well?”
“Get out.”
She didn’t. She put her hands on her hips and stared at him. He was thinner than she remembered. He looked as if he were wearing a children’s shirt. He seemed nothing more than skin and bones. His face was gaunt, haunted by an unknown and unseen ghost.
