“You’re lucky O’Neill isn’t here, or he’d fucking kill you,” Steve said.
Leigh laughed. “Oh, I’m shaking.”
There was some angry grumbling from inside the car. Leigh reached through the window and switched off the engine. He stuffed the keys into his pocket.
“Hey!” Steve said.
“I think you need a little lesson before you go. Get out of the car.”
Three of them piled out and stood around, hunched like apes with their hands stuffed in their pockets. Only the talking rooster was missing, probably because he was too scrawny to make the football team.
“One by one, you’re going to get down on your hands and knees, and you’re going to crawl across that pavement, and you’re going to apologize and beg for her forgiveness.” Leigh pulled his phone out of his pocket and held it up. “And I’m going to film it.”
“No way, dude.” Canton shook his head.
“Yes, way. Otherwise I’m going to call Coach and tell him what you’ve been doing. I mean, everything you’ve been doing. And I might just toss these keys in the sewer grate, as well.” Leigh pulled them from his pocket and dangled them over the grate.
“That’s my only set!” Steve said miserably.
“That’s too bad. Bet they’ll cost a fortune to replace.”
“Don’t film it,” Slothboy said.
“The video is insurance that you’ll leave her alone. As long as you do, I’ll keep it to myself. One wrong move, and you know where it’s going.”
They grumbled and muttered some more, testosterone on downers.
“Get going.” Leigh held up his phone.
Slothboy went first, crawling with his belly hanging almost to the ground. “I’m really sorry.”
Leigh smirked. “Kiss her feet.”
He hesitated a moment, and then planted a quick kiss on the canvas of her shoe. It tickled.
Steve went next, and then it was Canton’s turn.
Eve stood still, feeling the burn of power deep inside her, relishing the flickers of heat that travelled down to her toes and up to her scalp. When Canton’s lips touched the laces of her shoe, she laughed from the thrill of it. She looked at Leigh and saw the same flames dancing in his eyes.
When Canton moved away, Leigh turned off the camera and tossed the car keys at Steve. They dropped at his feet.
“You really need to practise your drills,” Leigh said.
Silently, the boys climbed back into the car. The engine rumbled to life, and they pulled away.
“Well, that was fun,” Leigh said, and Eve promptly burst into tears.
“Hey.” He grabbed her arms. His hands were so big they wrapped all the way around them. “It’s all right. They won’t bother you again.”
“I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t come.” The truth of this brought on another torrent of tears.
He pulled her against him so that her head rested against his sternum. He held her there, stroking her hair and murmuring reassurances, until her tears abated. She could feel the solid thump of his heart against her wet cheek. Finally, she pulled back.
“Thank you.” She snuffled and wiped an arm across her eyes.
“They won’t bother you ever again. You’re safe, okay?” Digging in his pocket, he came up with a crumpled tissue. “Go on. It’s clean.”
She took it, but the tissue did nothing to dam up the tears that continued to fall. It was as though, once unleashed, there was a tidal flood that had nowhere else to go. She sobbed and hiccupped, wiping futilely at the tears and snot that ran down her face and dripped onto the front of her sweatshirt.
If Donna saw her like this, she’d have a lot of explaining to do. And she’d probably have to come straight home from school for the rest of her life. “I can’t go inside like this.”
He looked her over, and nodded agreement. “Come on.”
He took her hand and tugged her back the way they’d come. She matched him step for step, assuming he was taking her back to his house so she could get cleaned up. Where their hands joined, a fire burned. She wondered if he noticed, wondered if it confused him as much as it did her.
“Where are we going?” she asked when he ducked onto the trail leading to the Crook.
He didn’t answer, and she didn’t ask again. Wherever he led her, she would follow. She owed him her trust.
He sat her down on a log near the pond’s edge and knelt before her, washing away her tears with handfuls of bitingly cold water.
“There. That’s better.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“I’ll always be here for you. You know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“For whatever you need.”
“I know.” She began to shake from the cold, or maybe it was shock.
“And will you be there for me, too?”
“Of course,” she said immediately, thinking it was nice of him to make her feel like she had something of value to offer him. He was popular, athletic, and super cute. She was his dorky sister’s even dorkier friend. He had it all, and she had no currency.
He gave her the smile that twisted her insides into knots. Pulling her to her feet, he led her toward the river. She matched him, step for step. When he asked her to, she took off her backpack and lay down in the matted reeds and prickling grass.
Bending over her, he said, “You have the eyes of a cat hunting in the moonlight.”
His hands found the zipper of her sweatshirt.
“Leigh,” she said.
“You said you’d be there for me.”
The moon was low and red in the sky, a harvest moon, and it made the first of the night’s stars look like they were bleeding.
She squirmed with discomfort, tried to move away.
“Do you love me?” There were tears in his eyes.
“Yes.”
“Then trust me.”
Through the fog of his breath she watched the moon rise, watched it get smaller and turn from red to silver. One by one stars pierced the sky, bearing witness to her silence.
THIRTY-THREE
BUTTON CAME FLYING at her as Eve unlocked the door and let herself into the kitchen.
“What happened? Is there any news?” Button asked.
Eve held a shaking finger to her lips in caution. She could hear the TV in the living room; it sounded like Gabriel was watching Doc McStuffins. She couldn’t face her son, not until she had some grip on her own roiling emotions. Not until she managed to stuff the memories oozing to the surface back into the darkness below.
She slid down the wall and slipped sideways, until her cheek touched cold linoleum.
“Oy gevalt,” Button said. “Did they find him? Is he …?”
Eve shook her head, but when she opened her mouth to try to speak, nothing came out.
Easing down to sit on the floor by her granddaughter’s head, Button asked, “Eve, what happened? Are they looking for him?”
“Uh-huh, but I don’t think they’re going to find him.”
“Why not?”
“Mommy?” Gabriel bounced into the room. “Is Daddy home yet?”
“Not yet, buddy. Why don’t you go back to Doc so I can talk to Button, okay?”
“Are you crying, Mommy? Are you hurt?” He wrapped his arms around her and patted her on the back.
She swallowed back her tears. “Thanks, Gabe.”
“Don’t worry, Mommy,” Gabriel said reassuringly. “Soon you go to that garden I drawed you. Okay?”
“What garden?” Button asked.
“The one that’s silver,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s fun there. There are lots of toys to play with.” He paused, looking at her thoughtfully. “And mommy-stuff to do, too. Don’t worry.”
They watched him bounce away, and then Eve said, “It’s all falling apart.”
“What is?” Button asked, stroking Eve’s hair. If she noticed how cold Eve was, she didn’t say.
“Everything. I’m reme
mbering things. Things I’d rather not. And I can feel the woman growing like a cancer inside me. I can hear her calling to me. And this time I don’t think the ECTs will help.”
Gabriel’s spoon was a submarine, and it searched for the remains of the Titanic in the bottom of the cereal bowl.
“I’m pretty sure submarines ease gently beneath the water, Gabe.” Eve tried to keep her anger at bay as she mopped up the table once again.
“But this is a ’mergency.” More cereal splattered on the table.
“Stop! You’re making a mess!”
He looked up, amber-coloured eyes round and injured.
“Are you mad at me, Mommy?”
“It’s wasteful,” she said, mopping up with such violence she knocked the bowl and sloshed half the contents onto the table. “Oh, hell!”
Gabriel burst into tears, his mouth opening to display the half-eaten contents of his breakfast.
“What is going on?” Button asked, hustling into the room. Gabriel wailed louder, reaching for his great-grandma.
Fear and fury unleashed, she said, “He’s making a mess!”
Still wailing, Gabriel slid under the table, out of view and out of the line of fire.
“He’s four! Vos iz mit dir, what’s wrong with you?” Button gave her a hard, appraising look. “You should see some of the messes you made at that age. Gabriel, come out. It’s okay, sweetheart.”
After a moment, he eased out from beneath the table like a turtle testing the weather outside his shell. His obvious vulnerability made Eve shake, first with anger and then with shame.
“Oh for heaven’s sake!” She threw the cloth on the table in defeat.
“Gabe,” Button said. “The front of your shirt is wet with milk. Why don’t you go get changed.”
He didn’t need any more incentive to leave the room than that.
She expected her grandmother to lay into her, but instead she gave her a sad look. “Day five.”
Tears burned her throat and eyes. “Yes.”
“Maybe we’ll get word today.”
“Maybe.” Not only did she doubt it — she wasn’t even sure she wanted to get word. So much had changed in less than a week.
Gabriel came flying back into the room, wearing a Spider-Man T-shirt. The incident with the cereal was clearly forgotten. “Can we go to the park? I want to run on the track like Daddy does.”
“You do?” Button said.
“Yeah! I’m gonna train for a marapon!”
“A marathon,” Eve said.
“Yeah! I need my runners!”
“They’re in the hall closet,” Button said, and Gabriel streaked off to find them.
“I suppose we’re going to the park. Care to join us?”
“I’ll meet you there in a bit.”
“Of course.” Button turned away, but not quickly enough to stop Eve from seeing the tears in her eyes.
“Just give me half an hour.”
“You’re not going to your studio, are you?”
“I’m just going to clean up the kitchen. Maybe have another cup of tea.”
“All right.” Button seemed relieved.
She listened to them leave while she mopped cereal and milk off the table. “Besides,” she said to herself, to the empty house, to whoever was listening, “I think my painting days might be over.”
She put the kettle on for tea, then put the rest of the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher and swept the floor. Drinking her tea by the kitchen sink, she looked out the window at the cherry blossom tree in the side yard. It was beginning to bloom. She hadn’t realized it was spring. Grief sat like a lump in her chest. When she turned away from the window, it felt like goodbye.
She dumped the dregs of her tea in the sink, put on the dishwasher, and stuffed her feet into an old pair of running shoes. Despite the sunshine, she slipped on her winter coat.
She was halfway to the park when it occurred to her that she was walking in the wrong direction. She hurried back the way she’d come, passing the entrance to the Crook, where her childhood lay buried. She wondered if kids still played in there, or if they were now too tied to their electronics to venture into nature.
She had no desire to go into those shadowy depths, or to get anywhere near that field of quicksilver.
Trudging resolutely away, she hiked up her slipping pants. She was surprised to feel the jut of hipbones beneath the denim fabric; she was getting too thin.
Ahead, she saw the park. Gabriel swung across the monkey bars, his legs dangling, the shadow boy beneath him stretching across the grey sand for the next rung, and then the next. She stopped, holding her breath until he was safely across. He jumped down, landing firmly on the wooden plank at the other end, and Button cheered for him from her bench in the sun.
Leaving the sidewalk, she moved in their direction. She crossed the grass and stepped into the giant sand pit, making her way toward the playground equipment. She moved around toy dump trucks and diggers, around a little girl building a sandcastle, around a pile of shovels and rakes.
Halfway across, the sun disappeared behind a cloud, and everything turned grey and one-dimensional. Fog rolled in like ocean waves, cutting her off from the world around her. She heard the scrape and hiss of the wind kissing quicksilver.
“Eve.”
“No.”
The fog rolled and reformed, and she caught a glimpse of playground and sunshine. Gabriel pushed a red Hot Wheels racing car up the slide, making engine noises. Button sat on the bench, her hair aglow and her face turned to her phone. They might as well have been on another planet. The fog closed in again, swallowing them whole.
The little girl who’d been building a sandcastle moved closer, a plastic shovel dangling from her hand. She had long blond curls and wide-set eyes. She couldn’t have been much older than Gabriel.
“Are you okay?”
“The fog.”
“Yeah, it’s spooky,” the girl said.
“You can see it?”
“Well, duh.”
“Oh, I thought it was just me.”
“I’m making a moat.” The girl squatted and dug the tip of her shovel into the sand. In a conversational tone, she said, “One of the swings tried to strangle me. Spun me around and around and around until the chain was so tight against my neck I couldn’t breathe. But it didn’t really hurt.”
“What?”
“My mommy says I just imagined it. She says I imagine lots of stuff since I bonked my head.” She pulled her hair back from her face to reveal a crescent-shaped scar along her temple. It was puckered and painful-looking, and Eve winced in sympathy.
“But I don’t go near the swings anymore,” the girl said, letting her hair drop back into place. “They’re weird.”
“I know what you mean. I bonked my head once, too. Do you need help? Are your parents around?”
“They’re just over there.” The girl pointed her shovel in the direction of the sports field, where they could hear people playing touch football. “Want to help me build a castle?”
“Well, I came here to play with my son.”
“Then why aren’t you?” the girl asked.
Because she was afraid if she stepped into the fog she wouldn’t come out on the other side. “I don’t know.”
The girl studied her appraisingly. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”
“Get used to what?”
“Seeing stuff others can’t. It’s pretty cool, actually. We get to pick.”
“Pick what?”
“What we can see,” the girl said with a shrug. “Which is great if you’re smart. But lots of people can’t figure it out. They choose wrong, and then they’re always trying to figure out why everything’s so weird.”
“You don’t really talk like a kid.”
“I’ve been choosing wrong for a long time.” Her giggle, at least, was very childlike.
As though in reaction to the girl’s tinkling laugh, the fog cleared. Steam rose from the
ground and disappeared into an azure sky, and the sun beat warm against her shoulders and the top of her head.
“See? It’s easy. Just tell the fog to go away, and it will. You get to choose.” The girl nodded at Gabriel and Button, who were walking toward the swing set. “Go on. But watch out for the one on the end. That’s the weird one.”
Eve took a step in their direction and then paused to look back. The girl was very young. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Totally,” she said. “Look, there’s my mom and dad. I have to go!”
The football game had ended, and people moved to the sidewalk and parking lot in small groups. The girl ran to a grey-haired couple and fell into step behind them as they left the park. When she reached the sidewalk she did a pirouette, her curls catching the sunlight as she twirled. She giggled and waved, and Eve waved in return.
Gabriel climbed onto the second swing in the row, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Not that she really believed a swing had tried to strangle anyone, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
“Hi, Mommy! Push me! Button never pushes me high enough.”
“Where did you come from?” Button asked, blinking in surprise.
“I snuck up on you when you had your nose buried in your phone.”
“Ver volt dos gegleybt. I’m like a millennial, aren’t I?”
“We’ll stop at Starbucks later for a soy latte,” Eve said.
“I want one too!” Gabriel said. “Is it chocolate?”
“Not even close, buddy.” She gave him a giant push that sent him soaring toward the treetops and squealing with delight.
“That’s too high!” Button fretted.
“Higher!” Gabriel shouted.
She watched the swing’s chains carefully, in case they wrapped around her son’s neck. He sang the ABCs song at the top of his lungs, over and over, pumping his little legs vigorously back and forth.
Eve stepped out of the way to watch him, her throat thick with yearning. Though whether it was yearning to wrap him in her arms or to feel the wind on her face, she didn’t know.
THIRTY-FOUR
Sara’s Twelfth Birthday
“WHERE WERE YOU? I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” Sara’s cheeks were red with indignation. She was so mad she actually stomped her foot.
The Day She Died Page 20
