Stay

by Nicola Griffith

  “Even when I go swimming?”

  “Not in the water, no. But everywhere else. Put it in the pouch.”

  She slid it in, appeared to be delighted with the fit.

  “And there’s a present that goes with it.” I gave her one of the small boxes.

  She opened it and lifted out a thick metal bangle. She weighed it expertly on her palm and frowned at its heft. “Is it silver?”

  “No. Look on the inside.”

  “There’s some numbers.”

  “They are secret numbers, just for you and me. Not even for Aba.” I would just have to hope. “That’s my cell phone number.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and flipped it open, turned it on, and showed her. “I carry it everywhere.” Or I would from now on. It beeped: three missed calls and one voice message. All from Dornan. Her wary look was back. Dornan could wait. “I want you to keep that bangle on your wrist, and the phone at your belt or in your pocket, and I want you to call me anytime you need me.”

  “So you won’t get lonely,” she said.

  “Yes. Yes, that’s right.” I recovered myself. “You can call me in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning, anytime, I won’t get—I’d like it.”

  She was watching Button with his toy.

  “Luz?”

  “Is that why you want to be my tía, so you won’t be lonely?”

  “Tía?”

  “Aba says you’re going to be my auntie.”

  “I—Ah, well—”

  “Are you Button’s tía, too?” She still wasn’t looking at me. “I’ve never had an auntie before.”

  And then I understood: she was afraid. For her, gaining a relative had always led to terrible change.

  “I have an aunt,” I said. “Her name is Hjordis. She talks to me on the phone and sometimes buys me presents. That’s what aunts do.”

  “She didn’t take you away, even when she was lonely?”

  “Never.” I took her chin in my hand, turned her head so she was looking at me. “Luz, I’m going home today but you’ll stay here. A few things will be different—you’ll go to school, a nice school where you’ll make friends—but every day you’ll come home to Aba and Mr. Carpenter and Button. No one is ever going to take you away. I might talk to you on the phone sometimes, when … when I wish there was someone to kiss me better, and you can call me. If you don’t know what a word means, or if you get lost, or you think something Aba or Mr. Carpenter wants you to do is wrong, call that number. I’ll always answer and I’ll always listen. That’s what aunts do. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, eyes enormous.

  “Now I want you to take out the phone and learn how to use it.”

  She put the bangle on the carpet and took the phone out of its pouch. It was as big as her nine-year-old hand.

  “Open it up. That little button there, the round one, turns it on, you have to press that first. Then you dial the number.” She nodded. “Do it now. Dial my number.”

  She read the number from the bangle, dialed it. “It’s not ringing.”

  “When you dial the number, you have to press Send, the green one.” My phone shrilled. I flipped it open, put it to my ear. Luz lifted hers.

  She blushed, hesitated. “Aud,” she said.

  “Anytime,” I said into the phone, then closed it up. “You end the call by pressing that button, the red one.”

  She pushed the button solemnly, put the phone back in its soft leather pouch, and picked up the bangle again. The fear seemed to be gone. “There’s two numbers.”

  “The other one is my lawyer. If ever I don’t answer, if my phone breaks or something”—if I’m lying dead in a park with my throat cut—“you can call her and leave a message. She’s very nice. Keep the bangle safe, wear that all the time, even in the pool if you want. It’s white gold.”

  Her expression didn’t change but she slid the bangle onto her left wrist and admired it for a while.

  I pushed the phone box over to her. “There’s an instruction book in there. It’s a bit hard to figure out, but eventually you’ll be able to program those numbers into the phone for speed dial.”

  She mouthed speed dial to herself and looked determined. I filed that response away for future use. While she experimented with the pouch, sliding it back and forth until she found the most comfortable position, I opened the other small box.

  “And this one’s for you, Button.”

  “Button.” Luz tapped him on the hand until he looked up from his mostly dismantled fire engine. “Another present.”

  I fastened the stainless steel ID bracelet around his right wrist. He looked at it, took it off, put it back on again, then went back to his engine.

  “That has his name and address and phone number on it,” I said, and Luz nodded. She had her eyes on the last box, the silver one. “And this is a special present. I hope you like it.”

  It was heavy for a nine-year-old, but she didn’t ask for help so I didn’t offer it. After a bit of a struggle—she refused to tear the paper—she had it unwrapped. She folded the paper with great care: putting off disappointment as long as possible. Eventually she contemplated the hinged wooden box.

  “There’s a latch at the side,” I said.

  She looked at me, looked at the box. I nodded. She lifted the lid. It opened like a book. Nested on green velvet were seven volumes bound in brown leather, each stamped in gold on the spine with the name C. S. Lewis and the title.

  “For when you have to take the others back to the library,” I said. She was hardly breathing. “Take one out.”

  “Which one?”

  “Your favorite.”

  “But I haven’t read them all.”

  “Then my favorite, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

  She lifted it reverently. Traced the lettering on the cover, turned it over. Opened it. Rubbed the maroon silk bookmark between her fingers, touched the gold-edged pages.

  “There are illustrations,” I said.

  She turned a few pages, studied the first picture. Turned another page and, two minutes later, another. She was reading.

  I opened my phone quietly, dialed, and listened to Dornan’s message. “Aud? What’s happening? You said you’d call. Turn your bloody phone on! Call me.” He sounded angry and anxious, but not as though anything bad had happened. I closed the phone.

  Luz read on, head bent. Her scalp gleamed at the part, very white, very vulnerable. So young. So much she didn’t know.

  “Luz.” She looked up. The open inquiry in her toffee-colored eyes stopped me cold.

  I cleared my throat. “When you’ve read them all, I want you to call me, tell me what you think. Which one’s your favorite. Will you do that?”

  She nodded. Her eyes flicked back to the page for a moment. I leaned down so she had to focus on me.

  “Do you promise?”

  “I promise.”

  They all stood in front of the house to wave me goodbye. Jud stood as though in church. Button moved restlessly, head turning this way and that. Adeline had one arm tight around his shoulders but her eyes rested on Luz. Mine, her gaze said, My girl. Lucky woman: to believe she’d lost her girl and to then get her back. She had never even said thank you.

  Driving across the Mississippi, I was nearly blinded by the sun glinting off the buildings in downtown Memphis. Once on the other side, I hit drive-time traffic, so I found a strip mall with big parking lots, parked the rig, and went into a bar. It was small and long, just a dark oily bar down one side and a jukebox, currently silent, at the back, opposite the toilets. I took a seat on a stool with ripped red vinyl and asked the thin, balding bartender what they had in the way of imported beer on draft, which turned out to be Bass ale, chilled until flat and practically frozen when it should have been room temperature and aromatic.

  At some point Luz would wonder who I was and why I paid for everything. I’d seen how stubborn she was; one day I might have to give her some answers.

  I sippe
d my beer.

  My mother had never given me any answers. Then again, I hadn’t asked her any questions, once I understood that the answers wouldn’t come from the place I wanted them to. Asking questions made you vulnerable. But I wasn’t Luz’s mother. I was a banker with the honorary title of aunt.

  A woman with dyed black hair slid onto the stool next to me. “Fucking kids,” she said. “Fuckers took all my money, said they wanted some food for a change. Food my ass. Drugs. Only in seventh and eighth grade and already probably smoking and snorting and sticking it in their arm. Yo, Jim Beam here, Barney! Fuckers.” She turned to me. “You got kids?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What kind of answer is that? Do you got kids or don’t you?”

  “Beats me.” My phone rang. “That’s probably her now.” But it was Dornan.

  “Aud, where are you?”

  “In a nasty little bar in Memphis drinking nasty beer.”

  “Do you have Tammy with you?”

  “No.”

  “Only I’m here, in the clearing—”

  “You were supposed to stay in Atlanta.”

  “She didn’t call. You didn’t call. So I came out here, and the trailer’s gone, and there’s no sign of Tammy.”

  “I see.”

  “You see? What do you mean, you see? Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Christ. So she’s done another disappearing act?”

  “She was fine when I saw her a few days ago.”

  “If that bloody Karp—”

  “She was fine. And Geordie Karp isn’t in any position to do anything anymore. She might only be gone for a few hours.”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “What are you doing in Memphis?” I didn’t respond. “I’ll see you up at the cabin day after tomorrow then?”

  “Yes.” He hung up.

  “Yours sounds bad,” the woman with the Jim Beam said. “Fuckers. Here’s to kids.” We clinked glasses, I drained my beer, and left.

  • • •

  I was forty miles outside of Memphis when my phone rang again. I answered it cautiously.

  “Hello?”

  “Aud? Eddie.” The muscles in my belly went rigid. “The story has taken an amusing turn. In just the last week, apparently, our twin avenging angels have been spotted in two other states outside—”

  This is what happened when you walked away from your armor. All it took was one phone call.

  “—sylvania. It seems—”

  “Where?”

  “Two incidents in West Virginia and one in Pennsylvania. Is this not a very good line? Should I call you back?”

  “No. I’m sorry. Go on.”

  “It seems that the credulous readers have taken our entirely imaginary twin angels to heart. Apparently they have stricken a wife beater with terminal cancer and terrified the life half out of three seventh-grade bullies in the schoolyard at Chester Junior High, both up near Clarksburg. And in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, they appeared in the middle of the road and made a truck run off the pavement, killing the driver and one passenger. Another passenger survived. The two victims, according to the surviving witness—who, incidentally, on seeing the terrible twins glowing with wrath, has changed his evil ways forever—ran a dogfighting ring that local authorities have been trying to shut—”

  West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Not Arkansas. Not Tennessee.

  “—Post has substituted color paintings of the angel twins for last issue’s quick pencil sketches. Offhand I’d say that they intend to play this one for a while.”

  “No police comment?”

  “Oh, this story has moved way beyond the realm of such mundane concerns. Knowing of your interest, however, I did take the liberty of contacting the NYPD and asking for a quote on their progress with the Karp assault.”

  “And?”

  “ ‘No progress at this time.’ They made some noise about being happy to talk to any member of the public who wants to come forward with evidence, from any state, but they didn’t offer me an 800 number.”

  “They’ve stopped looking, then.”

  “I would agree. Unless, of course, a miracle happens.” He giggled at his own wit. “Oh, and Karp? They found some family. Cousins, I believe. The Post describes them as ‘estranged.’ They say, and I quote, ‘If his insurance won’t pay, turn him off. He’s not our problem.’ ”

  I drove through the night.

  An angel and aunt. Banker and devil’s advocate. Aud rhymes with crowd. My name is Legion.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Powdery snow dusted the road up the mountain but it was thin and would probably melt off by midafternoon. I would have been able to get the trailer up, after all. Tracks of two different vehicles striped the snow, one set very fresh.

  Dornan’s Isuzu stood in the clearing, and thin gray smoke drifted from the cabin chimney. When I climbed down from the cab, my breath steamed, even though it was after midday, and the carrier bags I held in each hand crackled in the cold. The trees stood gaunt and bare against a gray sky streaked with blue. Winter had been late in coming this year, very late, but it had finally arrived.

  My boots crunched on the frozen turf, and when I reached the cabin I paused to tap my heels on the stoop to knock away snow, making a mental note to buy a real doormat, before I opened the door.

  Dornan sat on his heels by the hearth, poking at the logs in the stove. He spoke without looking up. “It’s different, trying to make a fire inside something.”

  “You seem to be doing well enough.” I put down my bags, pulled off my jacket, and hung it on the banister. His lay over the couch in front of the fireplace.

  He looked up. “Your face. And you’re limping.”

  “Superficial. It’ll heal. I’ll make some tea.” He nodded, more to himself than me.

  I carried the bags to the kitchen, filled a kettle, and brought it out to put on the stove. It would be a while. Back in the kitchen, I busied myself with pot and mugs, milk, sugar for Dornan, and the shortbread biscuits I’d bought in Asheville. I brought everything on a tray which I put on the hearth, and then I sat on the couch and Dornan stayed on the floor, and we watched the flames in silence, waiting for the kettle, and the tea, before he said what he had come to say.

  The flames grew and rubbed like cats against the cold iron, which ticked and creaked as it expanded. After a few minutes, I heard the first rumble of water warming. I ate a piece of shortbread. It dissolved, rich and buttery, on my tongue.

  At the first quavering whistle, I lifted the kettle from the stove using the front of my sweater as an oven mitt, and poured the water and curling steam into the pot. Heavier steam curled back out and I sniffed it. Aromatic.

  “You always do that.”

  “I know.”

  I stirred deliberately, put the lid on the pot, and waited. After three minutes, I poured. Perfect color, like dark oak. I handed a mug to Dornan. He stood, added sugar, and sat again, cross-legged, facing me. His face was tired, but very still. When the worst has happened, there is a certain peace for a while.

  “She came back, and now she’s gone again. She told me some of it.” He tasted his tea, added more sugar, stirred, sipped again, and added, “I’m glad you hurt him.”

  I nodded but my heart squeezed. Annie had said almost the same thing while Julia lay fighting for her life: I’m glad you killed them.

  Dornan stared at his tea. “Now we’ve both lost them.”

  There didn’t seem much more to say.

  After a while, I made more tea and Dornan added more wood to the stove. The cabin grew warm. The sun managed to break through the cloud and stream through the front windows. I watched the flickering flames and thought of nothing in particular. Eventually Dornan stirred.

  “The forecast is for snow tonight, and I have to be in Atlanta by midmorning. I should start back now.”

  “Dornan—”

  “No. I’l
l be all right. The sun won’t be down for another two hours and I’ll be safely onto the interstate by then.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.”

  “I know.” He smiled sadly. “But I don’t want to hear anything else. She’s gone. She said she’s sorry, that she always liked me, but that she should never have agreed to marry me in the first place.” He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled something out. He opened his hand: Tammy’s engagement ring.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault. I know, that’s not what you meant, either.” He stood, reached for his jacket. “I just stayed to tell you. And to thank you. For everything. For finding her and bringing her back, in more ways than one.”

  He pulled on his jacket, a cheerful magenta-and-black waterproof, probably picked for him by Tammy, and moved towards the door. I put down my mug and followed him. When he put his hand on the latch, he smiled again. “We hung a good door, didn’t we?”

  “We did.” He didn’t move. “I can show you my workshop, if you like, when I get back to Atlanta.”

  “You’re coming back then?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. Very soon. A day or two.”

  “Good. Being out here alone is not good for a person. Grief, I find, is …” He shook his head. “Listen to me, talking as though I know it all.” He laughed shakily. “I thought it would be easier this time.” He looked so small and wounded in his bright jacket that I opened my arms and pulled him in. He wrapped his hands over my hips, leaned his forehead on my breastbone, and wept. He smelled of woodsmoke and tea.

  Eventually he stopped. He tried to wipe his face on his jacket sleeve. I brought him a box of tissues. “As you said, every modern convenience, even in the middle of nowhere.”

  A smile tried to break through his grief, but unlike the sun, it failed. He mopped and snorted for a minute or two, but turned down my offer of more tea. “I really have to get back, to stay busy. At least for a while. No,” he said as he opened the door, “don’t come out with me. Stay where it’s warm. I’ll be seeing you in a day or two.” He stepped onto the stoop, then turned and took my hand. Either his was very warm, or mine cold. “Friends help. Don’t forget that.” He patted my hand, then walked with that quick step of his over to his Isuzu, opened the door, slid in, turned on the engine and lights, and pulled away.