by CJ Lyons
I press my palms against my eyes, but the shattered fragments of sights and sounds bombard me, colliding with my fears and doubts. Why was I there? Why didn’t I remember? Why had Dad done it?
What if I’ve inherited what he had? Will I descend into violent madness, turn against the ones I love?
Forcing my eyes open, I scan my studio, deciding which project to use to drive away the pain. There’s a collection of discarded bits and pieces of sheet metal and copper flashing for a multimedia project due next month, but I don’t trust myself working with sharp edges and tools today.
Finished pieces—or nearly finished ones that I need a bit of time to ruminate on—hang from the rafters, floating in the breeze as I climb to my feet and turn on the space heater that stands just inside the door. Batik experiments from middle school are tacked over the windowless rear wall, adding bright color that most days I enjoy getting lost in.
There are seven easels with half-completed canvases—two are for class assignments, the rest are projects just for me. My imagination is always restless, never allowing me to focus on one project at a time, so I often rotate between them. There’s one I’ve been struggling with for months—a swarm of bats spiraling out over the lake at twilight. I can never seem to capture the graceful chaos of their flight just right. They always come out either too rigid and controlled or too haphazard, as if they’re crazed vampire bats from a horror movie, when the reality is more like a carefully choreographed ballet.
Finally, the largest canvas grabs my attention: a portrait of Rory that I want to finish by Christmas. I think—hope—it’s my best work so far. Not that I’m a very good judge, but every time I walk in here and see it, I can’t help but smile. If it gives her half the joy I’ve felt while painting it, then it will fulfill every dream I have for the piece.
I wind my way around Mason jars filled with brushes and cleaning fluids, different ones depending on the kind of brush and the medium. I should organize them on the workbench Joe built for me, but I like how the light sparks from the glazed concrete floor and catches in them—in fact, when I’m in a distracted mood like this, I’ll often sketch or paint them as warm-up exercises.
Except today I’m in no mood to even do that—definitely not in the right mood to work on Rory’s portrait. My space, always cluttered but never feeling crowded, suddenly feels chaotic and out of control. The easels and canvases block my view of the door, I almost trip over the sheet metal along with a pile of fabric I’ve been saving but can’t remember why, and I have to catch a pickle jar of oversized brushes before it topples.
In the end, I grab a pencil just to keep my hand occupied, pull up one of my stools, and simply sit in the middle of my work and let the faint winter sunshine wash over me from the skylights. Then the sun shifts—this late in the year, it won’t be long before it vanishes all together—and I’m left in shadow.
Holding a sketchpad on my lap, I keep my eyes half closed, focusing just beyond the paper so that the image is blurred. Then I slow my breathing and let my hand glide over the paper, without forcing it or looking at what I draw. One of my teachers starts every class this way—free drawing, she calls it, better than meditation for clearing the mind.
Usually she’s right. But not today. Today my hand starts out slow, the pencil soft against the paper, but then memories begin to form. The crisp smell of the ocean combined with the sharp tang of decay from the dunes that surround me. I feel small, so very small. I cower in the grass, hiding from a man calling my name.
All I can think is: What’s happening to Mommy and Daddy? The screams stop after the loud pops crack through the night, but the silence only makes me more terrified.
“Nora!” he shouts over the crash of the waves. “It’s okay. Come out.”
I don’t. I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t recognize his voice—or if it’s because I don’t want to recognize it. Instead, I dig myself deeper into the grass and sand, ignoring the burrs digging into my flesh and the small creatures skittering around me. I carve out room for my face, my hands over my mouth and nose so I can breathe, but I don’t breathe. I lie there, in the dark, and hold my breath, the only sound my heart pounding in time with the waves crashing.
Then footsteps come close and he calls my name again. I bite my lip, trembling like a mouse caught in a trap. “Nora!”
I try to pretend that I’m not there. That I never ran away, that I stayed with Mommy and Daddy. They’d keep me safe—or I could keep them safe, three-year-old me can’t decipher the difference. All she knows is she’s lost and alone and very, very scared.
The man’s gone. I think. I risk opening one eye to scan the dunes above me. And freeze, my entire body gone rigid with fear. He’s there. Standing in the moonlight. A strange orange glow surrounds him. The fire demon of my nightmares come to life.
My phone rings, vibrating from where it sits in the front pocket of my overalls, thrumming into my heart. I startle, my pencil skids off the paper and I drop it. I blink, the spell broken. Unknown caller from a strange area code. “Hello?”
“It’s Alec.”
“How did you get my number?” My words curl around the phone in waves of cruel, scorched orange. Anger. A kind that’s foreign to me.
“Rory.”
I sit silent, stewing in a morass of emotions, my aura a bubbling cauldron.
“I called to apologize. Well, not to apologize—the apology I need to do in person.” His accent draws out his words so they swim together. “Not just to you, I should probably apologize to your whole family. I can come over, answer any questions—”
“Not here,” I interrupt him. “Darrin and Joe would kill you.” Hyperbole of course—at least I hope so. But I remember the way Darrin’s always-stable aura was disturbed, turning a violent shade of purple-black when I told them about Alec and how he’d told me the truth.
“Okay, right, sure.” He’s faltering, but I don’t throw him a lifeline. My anger is cruel that way. Instantly, I feel ashamed. What my father did isn’t Alec’s fault; he’s simply an easy target for my emotions. “But I want to answer your questions. Need to make sure you’re all right. I never—I didn’t—”
“Java Joe’s,” I decide. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Okay. See you there. Thanks, I really—”
I hang up on him. Not from anger, but because I finally see what I drew. A silhouette of a man, his proportions askew, making him look monstrous. He’s backlit by flames and smoke roils around him. All seen from the point of view of someone very small, below him. Like a little girl hiding below a sand dune, cowering in fear.
Is this monster what my father became when he surrendered to his demons?
Could this also be my destiny?
I jump off the stool and head for the door, forget to turn off the space heater and have to go back, then I’m in my car, not even telling anyone where I’m going or why. As I back out of the driveway, steering around Joe’s truck and Darrin’s Lexus, I feel like that little girl. Lost and afraid to look up for fear of what she’ll find.
CHAPTER 22
Ella
Java Joe’s is only a five-minute drive, so I’m expecting to beat Alec there, but I’m wrong. By the time I park and walk through the door, he’s already at the table we shared last time, his back to the wall so he can see everybody. I catch him in the middle of his slurping routine, bitter black coffee twisting his face before he lowers the cup and adds the cream.
In a way I’m returning to the scene of the crime. The place where his lies began. Except he never really lied to me, did he? He just thought I knew more than I did. He had no idea he’d been lighting a fuse.
His hand with the metal cream container trembles a little as he sees me. He sets it down. I don’t need to see his aura to know how uncertain and anxious he is. I slow my pace, let my eyes linger on his, unsure.
As I slide in, the waitress approaches with a pot of hot water, tea, and a steaming grilled sticky bun. She leaves and Alec and I sit in
silence, the delicious scents of the food swirling between us. Once again, he’s ordered nothing but coffee for himself. “Aren’t you hungry?”
He shakes his head. “Not when I’m nervous.”
“I make you nervous?”
His eyes go wide and he hides behind his coffee mug as he sips, his glasses fogging from the steam. For some reason, I feel like I suddenly have the upper hand—very different than the last time we sat here. I want to ask him why I make him nervous. Instead, I decide to be merciful and nibble at my sticky bun, not tasting as I swallow, surprised my topsy-turvy stomach doesn’t rebel.
“I’m sorry,” he finally says. He places his palms flat on the table, fingers splayed wide on either side of the coffee mug. I notice that he’s aligned everything on his side of the table to line up; each piece of silverware, even his hands surrounding the mug, all equidistance apart.
“I know,” I answer. “You thought you had the facts, thought I knew them as well. That part I get. What I don’t understand is, what do you want? My permission to write about my parents in that book your professor is writing? Do you want to show me off to him, an example of your journalistic prowess?” My anger is coloring my words so I stop, take a breath, try to calm down. “Just tell me why you’re even here.”
His hands don’t move from where they’re planted on the table—not unlike the hands of a suspect before a police officer pats them down, I can’t help but think. But the rest of his body recoils at my words, leaning back away from me, pressed against the booth’s cushion.
“I screwed up,” he finally says. “Sometimes I get so wrapped up in getting my questions answered, tying up all the loose ends, that I forget there are real people at the heart of every story. I should have left as soon as I realized that you didn’t remember.”
My sigh has a life of its own, spreading deep aubergine wings as it spirals through the space between us. “No. I’m glad you didn’t. Leave, that is. I need to know the truth.”
His eyes brighten. “That’s all I want as well. It’s why I’m here.”
“Right. That and an eyewitness account for your professor’s new book.”
“That’s not true. I mean, yes, he does want to publish your story, but I won’t write it, not if you don’t want me to.”
“I don’t.”
“Okay.” He breaks his careful arrangement of hands and eating utensils to slide one hand forward until his fingers are almost touching mine. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want the truth—not just your facts and forensics,” I tell him before he can interrupt. “All of it. Because I think you and the police created a picture with the facts you have and decided it was the truth. But it’s not.”
He frowns, obviously not agreeing. I grab a napkin and a pencil from my overalls and quickly sketch a figure.
“What do you see?” I ask him.
“A duck.”
“You sure?”
He peers at the napkin as if it’s the Holy Grail. “No. Wait. A rabbit?” His gaze pops up to meet mine. “It’s both.”
“Exactly. Same lines, different truths.”
A not-uncomfortable silence envelops us. My aura has calmed as my anger recedes, his agitation also fades as he takes a deep breath and releases it, not even noticing that his fork has tilted away from its plumb line. His anxiety must be contagious, because now my fingers itch to straighten the off-kilter utensil.
“We start over,” he suggests. “Trust nobody, assume nothing.” His smile is wistful. “That’s what my dad always says when he’s stuck during an investigation.”
It takes me a moment before I nod in agreement. I don’t like venturing into the unknown like this—not with so much at stake. But on the other hand, with so much at stake, how can I refuse?
“Where do we start?” I ask.
“I have all the police reports.” He seems hesitant, and I remember his reluctance to show them to us earlier.
“From your father?”
He surprises me by chuckling. “No way. My dad hates that I’m looking into the case and that I’ve been obsessed with it since I was little. I filed a Freedom of Information request and gathered everything from the state, coroner, and local officials. Took me almost two years—government bureaucracy—but I used it as my college admission essay. Without naming you,” he hastens to add. “I talked about the process, the quest for the truth, importance of a free and unfettered press. All that BS admission committees love if you’re applying to a journalism program.”
“You’ve been working on my parents’ case for two years? Why?”
His eyes drift away from mine and his expression turns haunted. “I’ve been working this case all my life. You might have been too young to remember what happened that night, but I was too old to forget.”
CHAPTER 23
Alec
I want to take the words back as soon as I say them. There is only one thing Dad and Dr. Winston agree on: feelings are a luxury you can’t afford on the job. But how can I tell the real story, the real truth of what happened and why, without emotions?
My mouth goes dry and my chest tightens. My coffee has grown cold, but I take a sip, just to have something to occupy my hands. Still, she says nothing.
Finally, I find the courage to meet her eyes. She’s watching me, her expression unreadable—maybe if I had her gift of auras, I’d know what she’s thinking. I’m certain she can read me more easily than the neon signs that fill the diner’s walls.
I realize I’m fiddling with the silverware, so I flatten my palms against the table, trying to still them. To my surprise, she covers my hand with hers. A stray memory startles me—a little girl’s hand clutching mine, so very pale against my dark skin.
I glance up from our two hands pressed together against the old-fashioned red laminate tabletop. A strange smile quirks her lips.
“We start over,” she says in a firm voice. “Start fresh. With everything.”
Stunned, I nod. Does she mean it? A fresh start . . . for us?
She pulls her hand back, pushes her plate aside and sits up straight. “So. Two people dead. A suspicious fire. No assumptions. Where do we begin?”
I slide my hand back, lower it below the table, crush it into a fist. She means the case. And only the case. Idiot. When would I learn? No assumptions. She’s so very right about that.
Before I can answer, the door to the diner opens and a group of college students barrels in, loud and boisterous. Ella turns in her seat to look at them, then turns back. “Too many people. Let’s walk—someplace quiet, where we can think.”
She scoots out of the booth and I follow, grabbing my bag and throwing money on the table. All I have is a twenty, twice the price of our food, but despite the fact it’s my meal money for the next week, I don’t stop to wait for change, too afraid she’ll change her mind and keep going without me.
I rush out and catch up with her on the sidewalk. Her face is tilted to the sky as if searching for the sun. Not that there is much. Even though the sky is clear, ever since the clocks turned back it’s felt as if the sun is playing hide and seek, out of alignment with the rest of the world. Definitely more so than back home, where I barely noticed the start or end of daylight savings time. There, even in November, the sun is always bright, reflecting from water and sand.
Or maybe those are simply the memories of home that I cling to. A lifeline to get me through this miserable gray Pennsylvanian winter.
A foursome of students crowd between me and Ella. As soon as they pass, I close the distance between us.
“Where to? Back to the student union?” It’s almost one o’clock, but if no one else is using the meeting room I can extend my reservation.
“The duck pond,” she declares. “I think better outside, away from people.”
I let her lead me back to campus. We head behind the student union and take an empty paved path that winds into the trees between it and the science building. I’ve never been back here before—give
n the lack of trash, graffiti, and other student detritus, I’m guessing most students haven’t found this particular section of campus either. The path turns to gravel then hard-packed dirt as it winds through sumac, oak, and pine trees. The smell of autumn is intoxicating, different than back home where the live oaks stay green and leafy year-round and the main indication of winter coming is the wood smoke drifting from chimneys and the sweet grass’s feathery plumes turning purple, scenting the air with vanilla.
“You know where you’re going?” I ask as the path branches once and then again, finally dwindling to the point where we have to walk one behind the other. She doesn’t hesitate as the trees shiver in the breeze, scattering dead leaves like a benediction.
The trees give way as the path branches one final time, two arms embracing a shimmering body of water. There’s a small dam at one end of the pond, water rippling over its spillway, and a family of ducks circling a group of reeds. It’s an oasis of quiet—the quietest space I’ve found since coming north to this noisy city.
I close my eyes and inhale. The water doesn’t smell like home—too clean, none of the pungent saltiness of the tidal plough mud—but the gentle lap of water against land, the rustle of bird wings and tall grass, and the sigh of the trees behind me all whisper “home.”
“There’s a bench over here,” she says. I take another moment, then open my eyes and follow her.
“I come here to paint sometimes.” She crosses her legs beneath her as she sits down on a splintered park bench. “Or to think.” The ducks note our presence and beat their wings against the water, racing over to Ella. She laughs. “And feed the ducks. Sorry, guys, nothing for you today.”
The birds quack and flap their wings, two larger ones making their way onto land, waddling around her feet, inspecting the ground. Disappointed, they return to their flock.
