Waking the Dead

by Jane Davitt

  “I know what that’s like.” Josh sat back down and toyed with his last piece of bacon, then ate it. At Nick’s look, he added, “Oh, not me. My mom’s great. I mean, look at how she let me come all the way across the ocean to see you. And I only got a couple of lectures about how to be responsible and careful while I was here.”

  “She knows I won’t let anything happen to you.” Nick and Stacy had talked more than a few times on the phone in preparation for Josh’s visit, and he’d assured her that he wouldn’t make the mistake of acting like Josh’s friend and not his much older half brother.

  Josh nodded. “I won’t let anything happen to me. It’s not like I haven’t heard what kinds of things happened to people when they did stupid stuff.”

  “They happen here, too,” Nick said. “One of Caitrin’s friends died just last year; her boyfriend got drunk, and I guess she wasn’t all that sober, either, not enough to stop him from driving or refuse to get in the car. They drove off the road and into a wall. He broke his arm; she broke her neck.”

  As object lessons went, it had been a convincing one ‑‑ for a few weeks, at least. Then the teenagers had gone back to drinking and trusting to the quiet roads and their own ability to hold their ale to keep them safe. Nick thought that it lingered more for him than it had for Caitrin, what with his own memory of the accident that had killed Matthew, but appearances could be deceiving.

  “God, that sucks.” Josh screwed his face up. “Did you ‑‑ did you see her? Afterwards, I mean?”

  “No.” The kettle clicked itself off, and Nick poured water over Caitrin’s tea, hoping she’d be back before it had steeped for so long it was undrinkable. “I thought I might. It wouldn’t have been much of a surprise, considering, but I haven’t seen a sign of her.”

  “Did you go to, you know, where she died?”

  “There aren’t a lot of places on the island I don’t go, except some of the rockier beach areas. It’s not so big that you can avoid certain spots, really.” Nick sat down, wondering what Caitrin and John were talking about ‑‑ not that it was likely it wasn’t just more of the same. The girl was desperate to leave the island for a larger city, somewhere she imagined there’d be glitz and glamour of the sorts that she’d never experience on Traighshee, and her mother was determined to see Caitrin get a degree and a good job, preferably close by.

  “I didn’t see much of it yesterday,” Josh said, “but it looks smaller than I remembered it.” He picked up his plate and the salt and pepper shakers and began to clear the table. Either he was anxious not to be a burden, or his mother had trained him well. “Or maybe I’m bigger.”

  Nick snorted with amusement. “You are. I know you’ve sent me photographs, but seeing you in the flesh is something else again. I’m not used to you being taller than me.”

  “I’ve stopped growing now,” Josh assured him. “I haven’t gotten any taller in the last six months or so.” He stacked the plates neatly by the sink and began to run the hot water. “So why aren’t Caitrin and her mother getting along? It can’t be just the school stuff.”

  He tested the water temperature and then put the plug in. Nick reached over, picked up the bottle of dishwashing liquid, and squirted some in. They both watched as the sink filled with soapy water.

  “She’s like a lot of the teenagers on the island,” Nick said. “She can’t see a future here, and I can’t say she’s entirely wrong. The trouble is she doesn’t have any idea what she’d do if she left, and that’s partly why her mother’s so against her going.”

  “I guess it’d sound pretty hypocritical of me to say she shouldn’t go running off into the world,” Josh said.

  Nick started bringing the rest of the plates and utensils to the sink. “Not really,” he said. “It’s different. You’re going with your mother’s approval, for one.”

  “And I’m going back. Before college, anyway.” Josh washed a dish thoughtfully. “I don’t have a lot of girlfriends. Friends that are girls, I mean.”

  “Yeah, I remember you telling me all about that girl you were dating last fall,” Nick said, daring to tease. “Emily, right?”

  “Mm-hmm. She was nice, she just wasn’t a long-term partner.”

  “You’re kind of young to be worrying about that.”

  Josh shook his head. “Not really. I’ve known for a long time I wanted someone permanent. Something like you and John have. I don’t see the point of wasting time on people who aren’t the right fit.”

  “You don’t always know if someone is, right away,” Nick pointed out.

  “You did with John.” It wasn’t a question ‑‑ Josh said it like he knew, deep down.

  “I did. But that’s the exception, not the rule.”

  “It’s that way for me, too,” Josh said softly. “The knowing, I mean. Because that’s one time I always do look inside and read people.” He stood a dripping plate in the drainer, a small clump of bubbles sliding down it slowly, rainbowed by the sunlight. “I just never find what I’m looking for.”

  Nick couldn’t blame Josh, but he had a feeling John wouldn’t approve of that particular application of Josh’s gift, especially not if Josh used it on his niece. “I won’t tell you that you will, because nothing’s sure, but I will say that you’ve got a better chance than most people.”

  Except most people, blinded by love, were willing to overlook flaws, or turn a blind eye, and something told him Josh wouldn’t do that.

  “Or maybe a worse chance.” Josh sounded morose. “Other people don’t have to know if the person they’re with is thinking one thing while saying another, you know? Sometimes I don’t think that’s a benefit. It’d be easier if I could just pretend everything was fine, but I never can.” He glanced, suddenly and with a stricken expression, toward the living room. “God, I never talk about this.”

  “It’s okay.” Nick touched Josh’s shoulder reassuringly. “Believe me, they’re busy with their own conversation right now.”

  “I should still be more careful.”

  “There should be places where you don’t have to be careful.”

  “Well, there aren’t. Not even at home. My dad ‑‑” Josh shook his head. “We don’t talk about it. Ever. He doesn’t think I can do it. That’s what he says, anyway. And it’s probably better that way, because the idea scares the hell out of him.” He reached for a fork and began scrubbing it hard with the washcloth. “I scare him.”

  “You don’t scare me,” Nick said. “And John’s dealt with worse. Around us, you can say anything you want to.”

  “Do people here know about you?” Josh asked. “They must, I guess, after the books?”

  Nick had had four books published, and he’d become a bit of a celebrity, in Scotland, at least, if not the States. “They know. Most of them knew within six months of me being here. As crazy as it sounds, there’ve been more dirty looks over the fact that John and I are together than the fact that I see things sometimes.”

  The look Josh gave him was a doubtful one. “Seriously? That does sound crazy. It’s like stepping back in time.”

  “I know!” Nick laughed a little bit ‑‑ he hadn’t believed it for a second when John had suggested it would be that way, but it’d turned out to be true. “But I’m not kidding ‑‑ you don’t scare me, okay? If you can’t trust me, who can you trust?”

  “You’ve got a point there.” Josh sighed. “It’s kind of hard. Sometimes I wish I could turn it off completely.”

  “Yeah. Been there. And I’ve tried, a couple of times, but it didn’t work. Figuring out how to control it helped more. You’ll do that, too, as you get older.”

  “It’s already a lot better than it used to be. I’m just impatient,” Josh said. “I don’t want to wait.”

  “The curse of the young,” Nick said, echoing something John’s mother said fairly often.

  “If you say so.” Josh grinned, his mood changing on a dime, and flipped some bubbles at Nick, catching him squarely on the nose. “Oops?”
>
  “Troublemaker,” Nick said, unable to hold back an answering grin.

  He wondered if John was getting on as well with Caitrin. The fact that he couldn’t hear raised voices wasn’t all that reassuring; John would listen patiently to Caitrin rant, but as soon as she began to yell, he simply walked away.

  Chapter Five

  “You’re not going to get me to agree that moving to London without a job is a good idea,” John said. “I’d like fine to see you at university, though,” he added. “You’ve got more brains than anyone in your family and it seems a pity not to use them.”

  Caitrin flicked back her glossy black hair and gave a heavy sigh. John blinked at the twin streaks of green and purple running through it on one side; the black she came by naturally, but the streaks were new, and he had a feeling they’d sparked the latest argument with her mother.

  He didn’t mind them; it reminded him of the sheen on a raven’s wing, though he didn’t plan to share that with her, and unlike the Celtic symbol tattooed on her ankle, he supposed it would grow out or even wash out over time.

  “Go to university? Waste three or four more years in school?”

  “It wouldn’t be a waste.”

  “It wouldn’t be what I want to do!”

  “Well, if you ever get around to telling me what it is you do want to do, I’d love to hear it,” John told her, keeping his voice even with an effort. It was too early in the morning for this, for all that she was his favorite niece. He took a sip of his coffee and discovered glumly that it’d gone cold while he’d been listening to her. He could hear Nick and Josh laughing together in the kitchen and he wished he was in there with them.

  “Anything but stay here,” Caitrin said passionately. “I’d rather serve customers at a pub than be here listening to Mam whinge at me all day and night. Everything I do or say makes her angry, and I’m sick of it!”

  “She just wants what’s best for you.” John thought a recording of his voice, repeating the same things over and over again would have done as much good.

  “She doesn’t know what’s best for me.” Caitrin sighed.

  Nick, God love him, cleared his throat from the doorway, interrupting them. “Sorry to barge in,” he said, “but your tea’s going to be useless if you don’t take it now, Cait.”

  “Oh ‑‑ I forgot all about it.” Caitrin got up and wandered back into the kitchen; John followed, pausing to pat Nick’s hip gratefully.

  “How did it go?” Nick asked under his breath.

  John just had time to shrug before they were within earshot of Caitrin again, who, anger vented, was now eying Josh with more attention than before.

  “This place must seem like the end of the world to you,” she said.

  Josh blinked. “Not really.” He sounded uncertain. “It sure takes a while to get here, but I wouldn’t say it was ‑‑”

  “Tourists always think it’s so quaint,” she said dismissively. “They’re mad.”

  “Josh isn’t a tourist,” John said, a warning note in his voice. He wasn’t having Caitrin be rude to the lad when he was still sleep-dazed and hampered by being on his best behavior. “He’s family. Now stop badgering him and think of something he can do when he’s not out fishing with me.”

  “Which will give him, what, an hour free?” She was smiling now, though, tilting her head back, her blue eyes gleaming. “If you’re interested,” she told Josh, “there’s a beach party tonight.”

  “You make it sound like California,” John said. “It’s a bonfire down on the sand, and if Dan Edwards throws a dead seagull on it again, don’t come crying to me about the stink.”

  “It’s not anywhere near as stupid as my daft uncle’d have you believe,” Caitrin confided to Josh. “It’s a good time; you should come along. We’ll have a few drinks and a few laughs. No seagulls, I swear it.”

  “Okay.” Josh didn’t seem to take much convincing. “It sounds like fun.”

  * * * * *

  The jet lag thing was a lot worse than Josh remembered it being. Of course, the last time he’d experienced it, he’d been about ten, so maybe it was just that it hit him harder now that he wasn’t a little kid. Anyway, just before lunch he’d gone upstairs to get his shoes so John could take him for a quick boat ride, and three hours later, he’d woken up lying sideways on the bed with a blanket draped carefully over him.

  He went downstairs yawning and found Nick working at his desk and John sitting on the couch tying flies. “God, sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “Don’t you?” John looked amused. “I think they call it ‘sleeping.’ “

  Josh sat down heavily on the other end of the couch and yawned again. “I didn’t even know I was that tired. I just sat down for a second, and the next thing I knew I was waking up.”

  “Don’t worry,” Nick said. “You’ll get a good night’s sleep tonight and be pretty much back to normal tomorrow.”

  “Good. I’d hate to spend the whole vacation imitating someone with narcolepsy.” Josh found himself watching Nick whenever he could get away with it; there was something slightly like looking in a mirror about it. They had the same eyes, and now that he wasn’t a kid anymore he was pretty sure they had the same nose, too.

  “We’d hate that, too,” John said. “Can’t fish in your sleep, though sometimes I’ve tried when we’ve been out for forty-eight hours with no breaks.”

  “You do that?” Josh asked, incredulous but not disbelieving.

  “Used to.” John shrugged with one shoulder, most of his attention on the fly, a bright dazzle of orange and black. “When I was your age. Not now.”

  “Getting old,” Nick said. He and John exchanged a look that left Josh feeling not excluded, not exactly, just… an observer. “Or maybe not,” Nick finished, a knowing smile flickering into life and fading again too quickly for Josh to be sure he’d seen it.

  He carried on watching Nick as he turned back to his computer, concentrating on his brother and still hazy with sleep, enough that he wasn’t being as careful as he should have been. Because, really, slipping past the barriers everyone had, fence posts widely spaced with no wire between them for most people, was so easy, so simple, just like walking through a doorway into ‑‑

  … never get old. John ‑‑ my John ‑‑ God, last night ‑‑ I can still taste you ‑‑

  Josh jerked, his face flushed with shock. He’d done this before and fallen into some really lurid fantasies; people really did have sex on their minds a lot, but Nick was his brother, for God’s sake, and the images that had gone along with the thoughts, mixed in with them in a way he’d have trouble describing because he experienced them as a gestalt, had been really vivid.

  No, they weren’t old. Not in his eyes and not in theirs, and John was looking at him with mild reproof, but Josh couldn’t feel anything like fear or a hasty slamming of doors. And he could be blocked if someone tried real hard or was naturally closed off.

  “Why don’t you help me with these? Make some of your own, I mean.” John said, deliberately returning his attention to the feathers and wire he held. “It’s never quite the same catching a fish using another man’s flies.”

  Distraction was a good thing at a time like this, Josh had found, so he nodded and shifted closer, looking at what John was doing. “Okay,” he said. “Show me.”

  The rest of the afternoon was spent in fly-tying lessons and a walk down to John’s old house, which Josh was assured he’d seen on his last visit even though he couldn’t remember it at all. The tourists who were renting it had gone to Mull for the day, but John still wouldn’t go inside, saying that it wasn’t polite. Josh, who’d grown up knowing vacations as times spent mostly in hotels, where the cleaning staff would come and go seemingly as they pleased, didn’t quite get that, but he didn’t argue. That was another thing about being able to hear what people were thinking; he could tell when there was a chance the other person would waver.

  They were just finishing u
p a dinner that had taken longer to cook than they’d expected ‑‑ Nick explained that the oven was temperamental at times, and the chicken ended up being in there forty minutes longer than anticipated ‑‑ when there was a knock at the door and Caitrin came in with a strong breeze at her back.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I thought you’d be long done by now.”

  “We would have been,” Nick told her. “If you didn’t always refuse, I’d accuse you of showing up hoping for a free meal.” He grinned. Josh guessed so she’d know Nick was kidding.

  Caitrin had a thick sweater wrapped around her even though it had been warm earlier. “As much as I might say against my mam when we’re arguing, she can cook a proper meal. She’d have my hide if she found out I’d said otherwise.”

  “That she would,” John said. “And I wouldn’t dare get in her way.”

  Josh swallowed a last mouthful and got up, then hesitated. “I should help clean up first.”

  If he was honest, he was expecting what followed, with his brother and John both waving his offer aside and telling him to be on his way, but it didn’t mean he hadn’t been sincere. He didn’t want to be a bother, and he was a little shocked at how, well, how primitive Rossneath was. He’d never thought of his parents as wealthy, but they had a pool; a large, four-bedroom house; a cleaning service; and a man who looked after the yard once a week. His brother seemed to be living with nothing but the most basic appliances. The TV was smaller than the one in his father’s car, for God’s sake.

  He got a jacket ‑‑ the island, even in full sunlight, was still a lot cooler than Atlanta in the summer ‑‑ and followed Caitrin outside.

  “Should I be bringing something?” he asked as they cut across the field, headed for the plume of smoke rising in the distance, pale against the still-light sky.

  Caitrin chuckled. “Only yourself. There’s plenty of people bringing beer and ‑‑” She steered them toward an outcrop of rock and retrieved a plastic bag that clinked. “I’m not going empty-handed.”