Grim

by Anna Waggener

  “So where’s Mom?” she asked.

  Shawn picked up the phone. “I don’t know. She won’t answer.”

  “Have you called Matt?”

  “She wouldn’t be with him now.”

  “Why not? He was going to rat me out. She probably went over there to cry.”

  “Why are you okay with that?”

  “Hell if I know,” Rebecca said. “Guess I’m just a fuck-up.”

  She took the phone and started punching keys.

  “Are you calling Matt?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said. “He’s my guardian angel, isn’t he?”

  Shawn cracked his neck and knuckles. “You’re a weird drunk.”

  Rebecca giggled. “You should see me stoned.” She wedged the receiver between her chin and left shoulder so that she could check her nails.

  Shawn tipped his head to the side and listened to the muffled ring of a cell phone. “D’you hear that?”

  Rebecca put her finger to her lips again. Her face brightened as the line connected. “Hey, Matt?”

  “Open the door, Rebecca.”

  She got up and went to the front door, phone still at her ear. The Christmas wreath tinkled.

  Rebecca giggled again and turned off the phone. “Good timing,” she said. “Mom get rained on? I’ll grab a towel.”

  Matt took in the beads of water along the creases of Rebecca’s jacket. He didn’t miss the tang of cigarettes and discount beer.

  “Beck.”

  “What? Does she want her bathrobe?”

  “Rebecca,” said Matt. “Where’s Shawn?”

  Shawn’s head popped around the edge of the door. “What’s up? Where’s Mom?”

  Matt’s mouth opened too slow. Even tipsy, Rebecca stiffened.

  “Matt?”

  “Your mother,” he said, so formal on the doorstep, facing these two kids and their blank faces. Kids he cooked breakfast for and gave birthday presents to. Kids he called by nicknames and got out of trouble, not only because of their mother but because of them. Because they were Shawn and Beck. And Meg. Oh, Meg. “Your mom was in an accident,” Matt said. “I’m sorry.”

  Shawn put a hand on Rebecca’s shoulder as she stepped backward.

  “Is she okay?” he asked. “Is she in the hospital?”

  “Shawn …” Matt’s words collapsed in his throat, folding in on top of themselves in that too-small space. He looked at the tiles in the hallway and then back up at two pairs of wide eyes, bottle green like Erika’s. “She didn’t make it.”

  There was a long silence, and then Rebecca’s jaw stiffened. “That’s not funny, Matt.”

  “Beck, please,” he said, in a whisper close to begging. “Please don’t make this harder.”

  Her breathing came fast, with too many exhales, lungs desperate. She covered her mouth, and then her eyes, and then turned around and grabbed Shawn’s shirt with one hand. “It’s not — it can’t. Shawn.”

  He hugged her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d hugged her, but he did now, clothes getting soaked by the rain on her jacket and hair. He stared at Matt like he needed something.

  “What happened?” he asked, finally.

  Matt started to answer when Rebecca jerked away and spun around again. “I want to see her.”

  The statement hung in the air before Matt cleared his throat. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Beck. I’ve already been down. It’s her.”

  “I want to see her,” she repeated. “I want to see my mother.”

  “She’s not —”

  “Matt.” Her voice, spine, shoulders slipped, crumbled. “Just take me.”

  Shawn tightened his grip on her arms. “Becca —”

  “Don’t.” She shoved away from her brother, brushed past Matt, and stumbled down to the parked cruiser.

  Shawn looked at Matt again. His thoughts were rolling in slow motion, but his heart punched hard against his ribs. “I have to stay with Meg,” he said. “I can’t leave her alone.”

  “I know.” Matt hesitated. His left hand jerked, like he wanted to reach out but stopped himself. “We won’t be long,” he said.

  Rebecca came back, with her mascara run to gray from rain and tears and her cheeks chapped red. Shawn let her push past him on her way up the stairs. He heard her door thud shut at the end of the hall.

  “I’ll stay,” said Matt. “You kids shouldn’t be alone tonight.”

  Shawn shut his eyes to quiet their burning. His building pressure headache made the whole world foggy; he could feel his body turning against itself, begging to split open. All he could think of was his mom’s bedroom and how wrong it felt to intrude on this night, as if her things were mourning too. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, “but I think we need the space.”

  Matt gave Shawn a long look before reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder. “Get some sleep,” he said. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

  Shawn waited for the cruiser’s taillights to disappear around the corner before he locked the front door and headed to his own room. He decided to let Megan sleep through to morning. She deserved that much.

  Morning hit the eastern windows with a bite of frost. Shawn woke to the smell of coffee and a clatter of pans on the stovetop.

  Through half-lidded eyes, he saw his mother pause in the hallway by his bedroom door.

  “Matt’s here,” she said. The world snapped into focus and Shawn saw Rebecca in their mother’s cream-colored bathrobe. Her hair was pinned up in a loose knot, her hand clutching the fluffy collar under her chin. Since the age of sixteen she’d been taller than their mother, and now the yellow cuffs of her pajama pants stuck out under the robe’s hem. “He’s making breakfast.”

  Shawn nodded. He wanted to pretend that this was normal. He wanted to believe that this was Sunday morning. That Rebecca’s nose was pink from a cold. That Mom was downstairs, scrambling eggs.

  “Meg will be up soon.”

  The weight sank back into his stomach. “How are we going to tell her?”

  “Matt offered.”

  “No,” said Shawn. “I want to.”

  Rebecca watched him, looking sorry. She nodded.

  “I called Grandma.” She didn’t wait for him to ask. “She hung up on me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “I thought that … but whatever. She’s just like that.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I want the service to be on Friday.”

  “Today’s Tuesday.”

  “Wednesday,” she said.

  “Are two days enough time?”

  “Time for what? The coroner’s done with the death certificate and report. We can go to the funeral home today to pick out flowers and a casket.” Her voice died. She looked away.

  “And the obituary? And food for a reception? Can we even get a priest by Friday?”

  “People will bring food, Shawn.”

  The conversation felt wrong. The ceiling looked back at Shawn, same as ever, but too bright, lines of paint too clear. His throat felt dry. “It’s not enough notice; people won’t come.”

  “They will,” Rebecca said gently. “Think about it and you’ll see that they will.”

  Shawn covered his eyes with the crook of his elbow. “I’ve never done this before,” he said.

  “Neither have I, Shawn. We’ll figure it out.”

  “I just think that it’s too soon.”

  “I don’t want to stretch it out for Meg. We can’t afford anything big anyway.”

  “I know.”

  Rebecca flapped out the robe and cinched it again, tying the belt like their mother always did.

  “Becca.” Shawn rolled over to look at her. “Are you … I mean, are you sure that it was Mom?”

  She stared at him, and then her face got rigid. “I think that after eighteen years I’d remember what my mother looks like. Yes, I’m sure.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Yeah. Okay,” she said, sharp with sar
casm. “Maybe you should go double-check. Make sure this isn’t a practical joke.”

  “Becca —”

  “Fuck you, Shawn,” she said. “Fuck. You.” She spun away. Shawn heard her footsteps fly down the stairs a few seconds later.

  He shut his eyes and sank back into the cold plush of his pillows.

  The man from the gas station faced the crackle of the fire, and his closed eyelids flickered gray and gold. The man from the car crash tapped the ground with a broken tree branch because the motion kept him awake. Scratch, scratch, scratch against hard-packed earth. The man who killed Erika Stripling wet his lips and tasted smoke. It reminded him of cremations.

  Megan, Shawn, and Rebecca. He saw their names in her eyes. Smelled their memory on her skin. It lingered. It lingered longer than she did.

  What did he owe her now? Everything, probably. Or maybe nothing at all. What was the punishment for a guide stealing a charge instead of waiting? There was none, because it didn’t happen.

  He heard the rustle of sleep-stiff limbs and opened his eyes.

  “Feeling better?” he asked.

  Erika blinked against the firelight. “Where am I?”

  He was proud of her for not screaming. “You’re safe,” he said. “I promise.”

  She looked worried. “Why do I believe you?”

  Because humans always believe us, he thought, or we could never help them. He offered her a placating smile. “I’m not sure,” he said.

  “You’re lying.”

  The man cocked his head. “Truth bending,” he admitted. “I’m sorry. I have an idea, but I shouldn’t tell you anything. Is that better?”

  She wore black business clothes, and when she rested her chin on the peaks of her knees, everything but her face slipped away. The gesture made her look younger, more vulnerable. Face small and lovely in the dark. “Where are my kids? Can you tell me that?”

  “At home,” he said. “You can’t see them right now. I’m sorry about that too. But they aren’t hurt.” He paused. “How’s your head?”

  “My head?” Erika ran a hand over her hair. “Fine.” She kept watching him. “It’s a long way home, isn’t it?”

  “For you, maybe,” he said. “For now.”

  Her eyes were green like clover in the firelight. “I feel dizzy.”

  “You aren’t ready yet,” he said. “Go back to sleep until you are.”

  “What?”

  “Go back to sleep.”

  Erika lay down again. She tried to tell herself not to. She tried to tell herself that she should be terrified. That she should be screaming, or kicking embers in his face and running back to the road. It would be better to hitchhike than to sleep here, with this man watching her.

  “Do you believe in soul mates, Erika?”

  He seemed sweet for sounding so awkward. Like he had to know but was afraid to offend her. To scare her.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t.”

  “My father never did, either.”

  “I think that you have to believe in souls first.”

  A smile slunk into his next whisper. “How ironic.” He shifted his weight and prodded the fire. “Sleep well, Erika.”

  Erika shut her eyes and rolled onto her side. Then she heard herself ask for his name. She felt silly. It seemed like such a grade-school question.

  “Jeremiah,” he said.

  The echo of empty air that followed was comforting. For once in her life, Erika Stripling embraced the quiet.

  The king ran his palm along the edge of the wooden table and reached for another pen. His advisors stood in a line on the other side of the room, waiting for a word or motion from him. He ignored them and turned back to his work.

  A request from the Upper Kingdom for Pellegrino Aretusi, with a commission for frescoes in a new public square. Next, they would be wanting Raphael himself. The king scribbled his assent and moved the paper from one pile to the next. If only he’d known, when he was younger, what the crown and Sickle really meant: years and decades and centuries of signing his name and transferring papers from one side of his desk to the other. The king glanced at the next appeal and then straightened. Lifted it up to look more closely at the red wax seal stamped at the bottom.

  “What is this?”

  “Highness?”

  “The queen wants a new handmaid?” He shook his head. “She has twelve already.”

  The youngest of his advisors shrugged. “She wants another.”

  “An unlucky number.”

  “She wants another.”

  The king set aside his pen. “And are there any courtiers waiting?”

  There was an uncomfortable hush.

  “Well?”

  The advisors shuffled against the wall.

  “Highness …”

  “What is it?”

  “She says that her seraph court gossips and bickers and does not heed her to its best. She asks for a rogue.”

  The king picked up the appeal again and squinted at it.

  “A rogue?” he muttered. “Ridiculous. The rogues are busy enough, ferrying souls into the Kingdom. And what will we do when the fashion fades? Cast him back into the woods?”

  “Her, Highness.”

  “What?”

  “Cast her back into the woods. Her ladyship …”

  “Ridiculous!” The king waved his hand, brushing away the thought. “Are we to make one? There have been no female rogues in five hundred years.”

  “Highness …”

  The king lifted his chin. He hated being corrected.

  “An accident,” the advisor murmured. “Last week.”

  “And I wasn’t told? What is the point of advisors if they do not advise?” He snatched up the pen and signed his name to the order. “I married a spendthrift.”

  “Highness.”

  “Take it! Take it and your evasive answers!”

  The retaining room cleared quickly, carrying the queen’s order out in a wave of fur, silk, and heavy gold rings.

  Shawn knocked on Megan’s bedroom door before going in.

  “Morning, Meg.”

  Megan was already sitting up, legs tucked under her comforter. Sleep tousled her hair, the ends of her bob tickling her round jaw. A collection of Hans Christian Andersen stories lay open in her lap.

  “Good morning,” she bubbled, shutting the book and dropping it on the carpet beside her bed. “Tell Mommy I don’t like that shirt she made me wear yesterday. Katie called it ugly.” When her brother said nothing, she gave his face a once-over. “What did Becky do?”

  Shawn swallowed and wet his lips. He took the chair from Megan’s desk and dragged it to her nightstand.

  “You’re eight, Meg,” he said. “So you’re a big girl, right? I can tell you the truth?”

  “Shawn, what’s wrong?”

  “Meg …”

  “Shawn, what happened? I have to get to school —”

  “We’re not going today, Meg.”

  The frantic climb of her voice settled. She closed her mouth and looked at him. She had brown eyes, like their dad did, and his dark hair too. But she already tipped her head to the side like their mom did when expecting answers.

  “Shawn,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  Shawn drummed his fingers against the plastic back of the chair. He felt huge and clumsy on the miniature seat.

  “Mom was hurt last night,” he said.

  Megan’s forehead creased. “No,” she said. “No, she wasn’t.”

  “She was hurt really bad, Meg.”

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  “Becca and I are going to take care of you, okay? I promise that we’ll always take care of you. She loved you a lot, Meg. Mom, I mean. Mom did.”

  Shawn was getting confused. The slow, plainspoken explanation that he’d planned on now muddled itself in a rush to get out. He shut up and stared at his hands.

  “I’m sorry, Meg.”

  He could hear someone come into the room behind him, and knew
that it was Rebecca. He wondered how long she’d hovered in the hallway, letting him do things the way he wanted them done. Or ruin things the way only he could ruin them.

  Rebecca lowered herself onto the edge of the bed and pulled Megan into her lap. “It’s okay to be sad, Meg,” she said. “I’m sad too.”

  Megan tucked her head under her sister’s chin. “But when is she coming home?”

  Rebecca’s voice caught. “Oh, honey.” She laid her cheek on Megan’s stick-straight hair.

  Shawn sat down beside his sisters. “She’s not coming home, Meg,” he said. “She can’t come home anymore.”

  “She’s dead, Meg,” Rebecca whispered. “She’s dead.”

  Megan stared at the patchwork of her quilt. She knew dead. Dead was the cat her piano teacher owned, whose name was Remmy and whose tongue felt like sandpaper. Dead was the squirrel that Becky hit the first time they rode together, that they left wiggling in the middle of the street, each shouting and crying at the other all the way home. Dead was the bluebird that broke its neck when it flew into the garage door. Shawn dug it a grave in the backyard, under the hickory tree. Dead was a lot of things, but it wasn’t Mommy. It couldn’t be Mommy.

  “Is she going under the hickory tree too?” It was the only thing that Megan could think to ask. Shawn understood, and he started to cry.

  Shawn carried Megan down to breakfast, but the pancakes were already cold. Matt put them into the oven to reheat. When he heard Rebecca whisper that she felt guilty for eating, he made her the biggest plate. He said that he wouldn’t leave until everything was gone, because he’d always promised Erika that the children would be safe. They sat around the glass-topped table, morning light pouring in through the big window that overlooked the backyard. Megan glanced from one face to another and back to her plate, but no one spoke. She chewed her lip and kept on eating.

  “I called in to check you all out from school,” Matt said when Megan left for the bathroom. He kept watching the doorway that Meg had disappeared through. “You know how kids are,” he said, almost to himself. “I didn’t want them asking about anything. Talking her down.”