The Mediator #4: Darkest Hour

by Jenny Carroll

  I snuck in as successfully as I'd snuck out. No one woke up, except the dog, and once he saw it was me, he went right back to sleep. No one had noticed that I'd been gone.

  No one ever does.

  Spike was the only one besides me who'd noticed Jesse was gone, and his joy at seeing him again was an embarrassment to felines everywhere. I could hear the stupid cat purring all the way across the room....

  Although I didn't listen for long. That's because what happened was, I walked in, pulled down the bedclothes, slipped off my slides, and climbed into bed. I didn't even wash my face. I climbed into bed, looked one last time at Jesse as if to reassure myself he was really back, and then I went to sleep.

  And I stayed asleep until Sunday.

  My mother became convinced I was coming down with mono. At least until she saw the bruise on my forehead. Then she decided I was suffering from an aneurysm. Much as I tried to convince her that neither of these things was true – that I was just really, really tired – she didn't believe me, and would, I'm convinced, have dragged me to the hospital Sunday morning for an MRI – hey, I had been asleep for almost two days – except that she and Andy had to drive up to Doc's camp to bring him home.

  The thing is, I guess dying – even for just half an hour – can be very exhausting.

  I woke ravenous with hunger. After my mom and Andy left – having extracted from me a promise that I would not leave the house all day, but would instead wait meekly for them to return, so that they could reassess my state of health at that time – I downed two bagels and a bowl of Special K before Sleepy and Dopey even showed up at the table, looking all tussle-headed and unkempt. I, on the other hand, had already showered and dressed, and was ready to face the day … or at least unemployment, since I wasn't certain the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort was going to extend my contract with them, due to my having missed two days of work in a row.

  Sleepy, however, reassured me on that account.

  "Naw, it's cool," he said as he shoveled Cheerios into his mouth. "I talked to Caitlin. I told her you were going through, you know, a thing. On account of the dead dude in the backyard. She was okay with it."

  "Really?" I wasn't actually listening to Sleepy. Instead, I was watching Dopey eat, always an awe-inspiring sight. He stuffed one entire half of a bagel into his mouth and seemed to swallow it whole. I wished I had a camera so I could record the event for posterity. Or at least prove to the next girl who declared my stepbrother a babe how wrong she was. I watched as, without lifting his gaze from the newspaper spread out before him, Dopey stuffed the other half of the bagel into his mouth and, again without chewing, ingested it, the way snakes devour rats.

  It was the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen. Well, apart from the beetles in the orange juice container.

  "Oh." Sleepy leaned back in his chair and plucked something from the counter behind him. "And Caitlin said to give this to you. It's from the Slaters. They checked out yesterday."

  I caught the envelope he tossed. It was lumpy. There was something hard in it. Susan, it said, on the outside.

  "They weren't supposed to check out until today," I said, ripping the envelope apart.

  "Well." Sleepy shrugged. "They left early. What can I tell you?"

  I read the first letter enclosed in the envelope. It was from Mrs. Slater. It said,

  Dear Susan,

  What can I say? You did such wonders for our Jack. He is like a different boy. Things have always been much harder for Jack than for Paul. Jack just isn’t as bright as Paul, I suppose. In any case, we were very sorry not to be able to say good-bye, but we did have to leave earlier than expected. Please accept this small token of our appreciation, and know that Rick and I are eternally in your debt.

  Nancy Slater

  Folded into this note was a check for two hundred dollars. I'm not kidding. That wasn't my pay for the week, either. That was my tip.

  I laid the check and the letter down beside my cereal bowl and took the next note out of the envelope. It was from Jack.

  Dear Suze,

  You saved my life. I know you don’t believe it, but you did. If you hadn’t done what you did for me, I would still be afraid. I don’t think I will ever be afraid again. Thank you, and I hope your head feels better. Write to me if you ever get a chance.

  Love, Jack

  P.S. Please don't ask me anymore about Paul. I'm sorry about what he did. I'm sure he didn't mean it. He is not so bad. J

  Oh, right, I thought, cynically. Not so bad? The guy was a creep! He could walk freely within the land of the dead, and yet when his own brother was being terrified out of his wits by the fact that he could see dead people, the guy didn't lift a finger to explain. Not so bad. The guy was very bad. I sincerely hoped I never saw him again.

  There was a second postscript to Jack's letter.

  P.P.S. I thought you might want to have this. I don't know what else to do with it. J

  I tilted the envelope, and to my great surprise, out popped the miniature of Jesse I'd seen on Clive Clemmings's desk, back at the historical society. I looked down at it, stunned.

  I would have to give it back. That was my first thought. I had to give it back. I mean, wouldn't I? You can't just keep things like that. That would be like stealing.

  Except that somehow, I didn't think Clive would mind. Especially after Dopey looked up from the paper and went, "Yo, we're in here."

  Sleepy glanced up from the automobile section he'd been scanning, as usual, for a '67 black Camaro with less than fifty thousand miles.

  "Get out," he said, in a bored voice.

  "No, seriously," Dopey said. "Look."

  He turned the paper around, and there was a picture of our house. Alongside it was a photo of Clive Clemmings and a reproduction of Maria's portrait.

  I snatched the paper away from Dopey.

  "Hey," he yelled. "I was reading that!"

  "Let somebody who can pronounce all the big words have a try," I said.

  And then I read Cee Cee's article out loud for both of them.

  She'd written, basically, the same story I'd told her, starting with the discovery of Jesse's body – only she called him Hector, not Jesse, de Silva – and then going into Clive's grandfather's theory about his murder. She hit all the right points, hammering it home about Maria's two-faced treachery and Diego's overall ickiness. And without coming out and saying so in as many words, she managed to indicate that none of the couple's offspring ever amounted to much of anything.

  Rock on, Cee Cee.

  She credited all of her information to the late Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., who she claimed had been piecing together the mystery at the time of his death a few days earlier. I had a feeling that Clive, wherever he was, was going to be pleased. Not only did he come off looking like a hero for having solved a hundred-and-fifty-year-old murder mystery, but they'd also managed to find a photo of him in which he still had most of his hair.

  "Hey," Dopey said when I was finished reading. "How come they never mentioned me? I'm the one who found the skeleton."

  "Oh, yeah," Sleepy said in disgust. "Your role was really crucial. After all, if it wasn't for you, the guy's skull might still have been intact."

  Dopey launched himself at his older brother. As the two of them rolled around on the floor, making a thunderous noise their father would never have put up with if he'd been home, I set the paper aside and returned to my envelope from the Slaters. There was still one more slip of paper inside it.

  Suze, the strong, slanting handwriting on it read. Apparently, it was not to be . . . for now.

  Paul. I couldn't believe it. The note was from Paul.

  I know you have questions. I also know you have courage. What I wonder is whether you have the courage to ask the question that is the hardest for someone of our … persuasion.

  In the meantime, remember: If you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. But if you teach him to fish, he'll eat all the fish you might have caught for yourself.<
br />
  Just a little something to keep in mind, Suze.

  Paul

  Gosh, I thought. What a charmer. No wonder we never clicked.

  The hardest question of all? What was that? And what persuasion were we, precisely? What did this guy know that I didn't? Plenty, apparently.

  One thing I did know, though. Whatever else Paul was – and I was not at all convinced he was a mediator – he was a jerk. I mean Paul had pretty much left Jack out to dry not once, but twice, first by never once bothering to say Hey, don’t worry, kid, for folks like you and me, it’s normal to see dead people all over the place, and the second time by leaving him alone in that church while those two psychos were tearing up the place.

  Not to mention what, I was convinced, he'd done to Jesse, someone he had not even known.

  And for that, I'd never forgive him.

  And I certainly wasn't about to trust him. Or his opinions on fishing.

  Disgusted as I was with him, however, I didn't throw his note away. It would, I decided, have to be shown to Father Dom, who, a phone call had reassured me, was doing well – just a little sore, was all.

  While Sleepy and Dopey rolled around – Dopey yelling, "Get offa me, homo" – I picked up my bounty and went back upstairs. Heck, it was my day off. I wasn't going to spend it indoors, despite my mother's orders. I decided to give Cee Cee a call and see what she was up to. Maybe the two of us could hit the beach. I deserved, I thought, a little R and R.

  When I got to my room, I saw that Jesse was already up. He doesn't usually pay morning visits. On the other hand, I don't normally sleep for thirty-six hours straight, so I guess neither of us were really sticking to the schedule.

  In any case, I hadn't expected to see him there, and so I jumped about a foot and a half and quickly hid the hand carrying his miniature behind my back.

  I mean, come on. I don't want him to think I like him or anything.

  "You're awake," he said from the window seat where he'd been sitting with Spike and a copy of Abby Hoffman's Steal This Book that I happen to know he'd stolen from my mother's bookshelf downstairs.

  "Um," I said, sidling over to my bed. Maybe, if I was quick enough, I could thrust his picture under my pillow before he noticed. "Yes, I am."

  "How do you feel?" he asked me.

  "Me?" I asked, like there was somebody else in the room he could possibly have been asking.

  Jesse laid the book down and looked at me with another one of those expressions on his face. You know, the kind I can never read.

  "Yes, you," he said. "How do you feel?"

  "Fine," I said. I made it to the bed. I sat down on it, and quick as a mongoose – I've never seen one in action, but I've heard they're pretty fast – I thrust the check, the letters, and the miniature under my pillow. Then I relaxed.

  "I feel great," I said.

  "Good," he said. "We need to talk."

  Suddenly I didn't feel so relaxed anymore. In fact, I sprang to my feet. I don't know why, but my heart started beating very fast.

  Talk? What does he want to talk about? My mind was going a hundred miles a second. I suppose we should talk about what happened. I mean, it was very scary and all of that, and I nearly died, and like Paul said, I do have a lot of questions –

  But what if that was what Jesse wanted to talk about? The part where I nearly died, I mean?

  I didn't want to talk about that. Because the fact is, that whole part, that part where I nearly died, well, I nearly died trying to save him. Seriously. I was hoping he hadn't noticed, but I could tell by the look on his face that he totally had. Noticed, I mean.

  And now he wanted to talk about it. But how could I talk about it? Without letting it slip? The L word, I mean.

  "You know what," I said, very fast. "I don't want to talk. Is that okay? I really, really don't want to talk. I am all talked out."

  Jesse lifted Spike off his lap and put him on the floor. Then he stood up.

  What was he doing? I wondered. What was he doing?

  I took a deep breath, and kept talking about not talking.

  "I'm just – Look," I said, as he took a step toward me. "I'm just going to give Cee Cee a call and maybe we'll go to the beach or something, because I really … I just need a day off."

  Another step toward me. Now he was right in front of me.

  "Especially," I said significantly, looking up at him, "from talking. That's what I especially need a day off from. Talking."

  "Fine," he said. He reached up and cupped my face in both his hands. "We don't have to talk."

  And that's when he kissed me.

  On the lips.