by Summer Stone
“These muffins are delicious. What do you call that?”
“Um, apple cinnamon?”
“Mm. Your mama sure does know her way around a kitchen.”
“You were going to tell me about Myra Clay’s family,” I said.
He took out a second muffin. “Was I? I don’t know what kind of information you’re looking for. You know Old Abe died years ago. They just had the one son, Zeke. He lives east somewhere – Mississippi? Missouri? Something with an ‘M.’”
“How come he doesn’t ever visit?”
He laughed. “I imagine it’s the same reason no one around here visits with her much. She’s a tough cookie.”
“What about Zeke? Did he have a family?”
“He was married to a little lady from Sonora. I can’t pull up her name, but she was a doll. They had a son, must have been about your age or your brother Gabe’s.”
“So you don’t know anything about why they left?” I asked.
He looked at me all intently again, like he couldn’t figure out what I was up to. “There was a fire out at their place shortly before Zeke took off. The mother and son were killed in it. Zeke was simply devastated. He up and moved and that was that. I imagine he didn’t want to live near anything that reminded him of the family he’d lost.”
“Wait.” I swallowed, tried to steady my breathing. “You’re saying the mom and son both died in the fire?”
He looked up to the ceiling, trying to remember. “Far as I can remember, when the firemen reached the house, there was nothing left to save. Lucky for Zeke, he was out that night, or maybe unlucky, depending upon how you look at it.”
“So … you’re saying the son died?”
He looked at me funny. “Yes, he died. Good Lord, I thought I’d spelled that out pretty clear. Him and Deborah both – Deborah, that was her name!”
Just then, the circa-1970 transistor radio on the metal desk came on by itself blaring oldies. The Hollow was up to its tricks.
“That’s my cue!” he said. “Melody’s going to have my butt in a sling if I don’t get this hunk-a-junk working. And that right there is a good sign the time is now.” He pointed to the radio, then slid back under the car.
“Thank you,” I said, and slipped out to the street.
“I’ve had it in here nearly a week and she’s riding my…” His voice trailed off as my feet put distance between us.
My heart was racing like crazy. I ran straight to the bakery. I’d forgotten all about the wicked witch and the muffin murder until I saw Mom’s back hunched over a tray of shortbread, a massive sickle-shaped knife in her hand.
“Mom?” I said, hesitant to go through the bakery door.
My breath caught as she turned, as if I expected her face to be green or something. I searched her expression for a sign that she was remembering the same dream as me, but she smiled like a ray of sunshine had just spilled into the store. “Hi, honey.”
I went in, started cutting up the shortbread for her with the sickle.
“Everything okay?” she asked. I could feel her eyes scouring me for signs of mental illness.
“I was talking to George,” I said.
“McGraw?” she asked, as she filled an icing bag and started decorating sugar cookies.
I nodded.
“Why?”
I shrugged. “You said I should talk to people more.”
She laughed. “I meant kids your own age. But that’s fine. It’s a start.”
“He was talking about the fire at Zeke Clay’s place.”
She stopped icing the cookies. “Why would he talk to you about that?”
“I was thinking about offering to help Myra Clay. I noticed she has trouble carrying her groceries, and I thought maybe I could help her out a few days a week, make a little bit of money.”
She used her fingernail to fix a tiny curlicue of frosting that didn’t quite fit the flower pattern. “That’s a lovely thought. But Myra’s a pretty private person. I don’t know that she’d want someone around. Plus she’d probably never admit to needing anyone. You know I’d pay you to help me in here.”
We’d been through that discussion too many times before and I didn’t want to get her started again. “You know I’m no good at baking,” I said.
“There’s always time to learn.” Maybe she noticed my squirming. She let the topic drop. “So what does that have to do with the fire?”
“I was just wondering why her son doesn’t come around with his family to visit.” I gulped a breath. “She has a grandson, doesn’t she?”
“She did,” Mom said, creating a detailed sunflower on the next cookie. “He and his mom both died in the fire.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
She crinkled her brow and looked at me. “I don’t know. How do you know anything? People tell you, I guess.”
“Was it in the paper or on the news?” I asked. “Was there an investigation? Did they find remains?”
She took a deep breath, holding the icing bag straight out in front of her. “Are you okay?”
The image of her with a knife in place of the icing bag filled my mind. Stabbing the overinflated muffin.
“I’m fine,” I said.
Astrid came in humming. Her bright purple top billowed out behind her as she walked. But she stopped abruptly when she saw me. “Holy Lotus Blossoms! What is going on with your aura?”
Mom and I looked at each other.
“You should really go outside and ground yourself in the earth, hon. I’m sorry, I can’t be around all that commotion right now. I’ll come back later,” Astrid said and then walked out.
Mom and I laughed. She didn’t even freak when she noticed she’d messed up the flower she was working on.
I knew she wouldn’t want me to bring up MK’s latest vision, but since it was about me, it was hard to keep pretending like it hadn’t happened. “So… no explosions yet,” I said with a slight laugh, hoping she’d take the bait.
She stopped what she was doing, looked up at me. “That’s not something to joke about,” she whispered.
“Do you think MK’ll be okay?” I asked. “She seemed so … I don’t know… different.”
Mom focused on decorating the cookies. I expected her to say — Of course she’ll be fine — like usual. Instead, she said, “I don’t know. Gran’s called me five or six times since our visit. She says MK is agitated, that the meds aren’t sedating her. She’s worried.”
I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.” I touched her arm.
She nodded, but wouldn’t look at me.
“Is there anything we can do?” I asked.
She shook her head, her lips tight, as if she was forcing them to stay closed.
I sat in the town square beneath the big redwood. Technically I was stalking Myra Clay, waiting for her to stroll down the street so I could approach her and see if she’d hire me. The fog had finally burnt off. Today’s sun felt gentle, warming. A couple of bees buzzed around the dandelions in the grass. Why would Myra have told everyone Zach died? And why hadn’t Zeke taken him along to wherever he’d gone? It was weird.
I was about to give up and head home when Myra finally came out her front door, locked the dead bolt and headed toward the church. Taking a deep breath, I shoved my earbuds in my pocket, crossed the street, and came up beside her.
“What do you want?” she grumbled.
I lost my nerve, stuttered.
“Well? Speak up already.”
“I was wondering, if maybe, you might want….”
“I haven’t got all day, young lady. The Good Lord gave you a tongue, now use it!”
“I wondered if you’d hire me — to help with your groceries and maybe around the house. I could clean or cook or organize or do whatever jobs you might have.” My chest felt tight, but I’d gotten it out.
She seemed sort of frozen for a minute. Hope soared — she was considering it!
“I had no idea there was so much nerve hidde
n under all that falsely shy exterior. How dare you imply that I’m incapable of tending to my own affairs! If you wanted to get paid to carry my grocery bags, you could have said so when you brought them in. I offered you payment. It was your choice to refuse.”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant…”
“You meant I’m old and pitiable and you thought you’d stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong. I have a church service to attend, with upstanding members of the community who understand what it means to respect one’s elders.”
My body was shaking. Her meanness seeped into my bones. But there was something about the look in her eyes. She wasn’t just being mean for its own sake. There was fear there. I wasn’t sure if it was fear of growing old and feeling helpless or fear of me snooping into her secrets. But Myra Clay was afraid.
Chapter Ten
That night, as soon as I was sure Mom was asleep, I snuck down to The Hollow. I knew Zach wasn’t there yet. But I hoped he’d show eventually. I tried to ignore the mound of earth where I’d buried the chipmunk. My sweatshirt had been folded neatly and left by the giant sequoia. Rocks covered the dirt pile.
For some reason, the grave reminded me of the stupid sunken muffin from the dream. When I saw Zach making his way down the trail in the moonlight, a strange sort of relief flooded me.
“You’re here,” he said. “I didn’t know if you’d come back.”
I shrugged, not sure what to say.
He pointed to the grave. “It wasn’t your fault.”
I didn’t argue, knowing we would never agree on that point.
“You don’t believe me?” he asked.
“I guess I don’t know what to believe. Maybe I don’t know how to do it anymore.”
“You’re probably out of practice. You hadn’t tried it for a long time. But you used to do it, right?” He sat across from me, his hands around his knees.
“I was little then, too young for Mom to feel okay about scaring me with all the horrible things that could happen if I gave in to it. The animals found me when I was playing in the woods with my brothers. It was easy then. I didn’t have to think about it.”
“What was it like?” he asked.
I closed my eyes to bring back the memories. “I’d let The Hollow in. It would well up inside me. I’d open myself to the pain the animal was experiencing. It wouldn’t last long, because the rush of The Hollow would pour in and take over and heal whatever was broken. It didn’t seem magical or anything. It was just part of everyday life. I didn’t have to think about how to do it. I just did it.” I half-remembered a feeling of knowing when to pull away, knowing when the animal had had enough. Could that have been what went wrong with the chipmunk? Had I forgotten how or when to pull back?
“It didn’t make you crazy,” Zach said.
“They never go crazy when they’re little. It’s later. Mom said the sooner I stopped, the more chance I had of the crazy staying away. It was so hard in the beginning — to refuse the animals. I’d sneak sometimes. But then she started showing me all those diseases and warning me about being locked up in a world of crazy. And then punishing me. So I forced myself to let it go.”
“That’s sad,” he said and moved a little closer.
“There’s something I wanted to tell you,” I said, and I moved a little closer, too. His tug pulled at me. I used The Hollow to strengthen my shield.
“What is it?” His eyes scanned my face. The skin on the undamaged part of his face looked smooth and clear. I wondered what it would feel like to touch it.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what I’d heard, didn’t want to hurt him.
“You don’t want to meet me anymore,” he said, looking away.
“No, it’s nothing like that.” It gave me a perverse thrill that he was worried that I wouldn’t want to meet him.
“What then?”
I took a deep breath. “I asked around about your family a little bit. The story they seem to know in town is that, well, that both you and your mom died in the fire.” I imagined it would feel awful to hear that his own grandmother had led everyone to believe he was dead rather than acknowledge him.
“Yeah, I know,” he said, like it was nothing.
“You know?”
He nodded. “It was safer that way.”
“Safer for who?” I touched his knee, felt a zing of pain, like a shock. My hand felt magnetized to his body — The Hollow wanting me to heal. I pulled my hand away. “Is she afraid people will give you a hard time because of how you look?”
He let out a dismissive breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “That’s never been a concern. It’s for their safety. For yours.” He pushed back from me a little.
“What do you mean about being the son of the devil?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t run.
He looked up at the moon. It highlighted his scars in an eerie way. “The night of the fire, before it happened, my dad called me devil’s spawn. Grandmother told me later it was because I belonged to the devil that I started the fire, that if I ever went back into the world, I would hurt people without even meaning to. So if she told everyone I’d died, it would make it easier for me to stay hidden.”
“What the hell? Tell me you don’t believe that.” How could she have convinced him this made sense?
He looked confused.
“Devil’s spawn? What does that even mean? And how could you possibly hurt anyone without meaning to?” I wanted to run up there and punch her. My blood boiled.
“She said the devil would work through me to make bad things happen — like the fire.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. What do you remember about how the fire started?”
“I only remember the smoke and the flames, my dad running into the fire to pull me out.”
“Where was your mom?”
“She burned.” He looked away.
“Didn’t he try to save her, too?”
“It was too late for her.”
“Why?”
“She was…” His eyes turned intense. “I never remembered this before…”
“What?”
“She was lying on the living room floor in her blue nightgown, not moving. Only… only it was before the fire.”
My stomach did a little flip. “Wait, what? She was dead before the fire?”
He squinted his eyes shut, trying to remember. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. I just — I see her lying there, still.”
“And then what?”
“I was scared. I hid in my closet like she said. She’d told me to hide in my closet. She’d told him I was at Grandmother’s. I can’t remember.” He was breathing hard.
I hugged him, and his tug latched on to me, drawing my energy out of my body as if it were sucking the marrow out of my bones. I pulled away, scooted back to my tree, wooziness spreading throughout my body.
“What was that?” he asked, looking shaken. “Did I hurt you?”
I shook my head.
“Sera? You shouldn’t touch me.”
“It’s The Hollow,” I said. “It wants to heal you.”
“I believe you can heal. I know you can. But… not this,” he said, pointing to his face. “This isn’t fixable.”
He’s afraid, I thought, afraid he’ll end up like the chipmunk. I couldn’t blame him. I was afraid of that, too.
I knew Myra had been lying to him. I just didn’t understand why. But it made me wonder — what if Mom had been lying all these years, too? What if all her threats about diseases and insanity were some perverse desire to keep me the way she wanted me — normal and perfect. She’d struggled for so long for the town’s acceptance. Maybe this was all just one more piece of that. Myra lying I could believe — she was an evil old witch. But Mom wasn’t like that.
The green wicked witch image popped back into my head, making my breath catch.
“I see your real face,” I said to Zach.
He looked confused.
“S
uperimposed over the scars, I see the face you would have had, your whole face.”
His mouth opened like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.
“It’s … you’re beautiful,” I whispered, looking down at my hands.
He shook his head. Tried again to speak. There was heat between us — like an echo of the fire. My shield was weak.
“I should go,” I said. Something more than just his tug pulled at me as he sat there, not knowing what to say. I smiled at him. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
He nodded and lifted a hand to wave.
I walked slowly back through the trees and boulders and up the hill to my house. My head felt too full of mixed up thoughts. I wondered if this was a preview of what Gran felt — as if there was just too much to think about, and it was hard to find any one strand that held together.
Chapter Eleven
Way too early the next morning Luke shook me awake. “Get up, lazy.”
I opened one eye. “What are you doing here?”
“Kidnapping you,” he said. “Come on, we’re going to the river.”
“I can’t,” I mumbled, turning over. “I have big plans today.”
“Big plans? Okay, let’s hear it.”
“I’m stalking Old Myra Clay to convince her to let me work for her.”
He knocked on my head. “Hello! It’s Saturday! I have no clue as to why you would want to work for that old hag, but regardless, it’s the weekend and you deserve to have a little fun. So get your ass out of bed and let’s go.”
“Since when do you come by to take me to the river on a Saturday morning anyway? Mom put you up to it?”
“No!”
“Liar.”
“Nuh-uh,” he teased.
“Yuh-huh,” I played along.
He grabbed the extra pillow on my bed and whacked me with it. “So who cares anyway?” he said. “Point is your favorite brother is here wanting to spend time with you. Why complain?”
