Touch

by Michelle Sagara

  And it made her question the life she’d lived up to now. It made every mundane street and every mundane corner sharper and harsher. Necromancers and their Queen had existed for longer than Emma had been alive, and until she herself had begun to see the dead, she’d never heard a word about them. Necromancers in the various games Michael and his friends played didn’t have a Queen, and the dead were usually confined to the role of brain-eating, shuffling zombies.

  The sun was low, but it wouldn’t be dark for a couple of hours, and the lawns were, for the most part, buried under a pristine blanket of snow. Someone across the street was walking a black Labrador that didn’t seem to be as deaf as Emma’s rottweiler. Once, Petal had been that young.

  She exhaled a cloud, shoving her hands deeper into her pockets. Maybe all of life was a little like this: You saw the parts of it you knew, and if no one pointed you in a different direction, that was the entire truth of your world. The different direction she’d been turned to face hadn’t actually changed the world; it had just changed Emma’s perception.

  Her father had never been keen on ignorance; he felt that lack of knowledge was something to be alleviated, as if it were the common cold. She paused at the foot of Michael’s driveway. “Don’t forget to ask your mother about visiting Amy tomorrow,” she told him, as she gave him a little nudge in the direction of his house.

  * * *

  “He wants to go home,” Allison said, when Michael’s front door had opened and closed behind him.

  “Mark?”

  Allison nodded.

  “Yes. I don’t want to take him,” she added, although it was obvious. “And I waffled. I told him I couldn’t do it tonight because I had important guests, more or less.”

  Allison winced on Emma’s behalf, and Emma felt guilty. “I know my mother. I do. If Jon were a jerk, she wouldn’t like him. But no, I’m not really looking forward to making nice at dinner. I don’t know if I’m expected to impress him; I certainly haven’t managed that so far.”

  “I think,” Allison said quietly, “it’s probably more important to your mom that Jon impress you.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. I don’t want my mom’s new boyfriend sucking up to me. I don’t know him. I don’t have much to say to him.” She held out a hand before Allison could speak. “I’ll find something. I’ve always managed the small talk. I’m not even angry about him anymore. If things go wrong, a new boyfriend doesn’t even register on the possible disaster scales.

  “But I swear, if I walk into the house and there are any PDAs, I’m going to be ill.”

  * * *

  The front hall was full of deaf rottweiler when Emma opened the door. Petal was happy to see her, although she suspected at the moment she looked like a walking food dish. Honestly, people who didn’t know better would assume the Hall household regularly starved their poor, pathetic dog.

  She wasn’t immune to puppy-induced guilt and headed to the kitchen to remedy it. Unlike other forms of guilt in this house, food-related guilt was easily dealt with. When Petal had eaten enough—a rare occurrence—he left the kitchen and returned with a scratched, retractable leash in his mouth.

  Emma shook her head. “Not tonight,” she said quietly. This produced predictable whining. “I need to clean the kitchen and the dining room; we have guests coming for dinner.”

  She wasn’t exactly lying; the kitchen and the dining room were in need of cleaning. But she needed the space of a few hours in which to think and make decisions—and if she took Petal out of the house, she was almost certain Nathan would appear.

  Nathan.

  She wasn’t ready to talk to him again. Her mind was full of Merrick Longland, her mother, and the parents and siblings of her friends. It felt almost like betrayal, but she knew that Nathan—if he could hear her thoughts—would understand. The dead had time. Nathan had time.

  And Emma had barely enough time to putter around the kitchen and the dining room in a silence broken only by dog whining. She didn’t talk to herself as she worked because she had Petal, and Petal knew she was worried about something. He had stayed by her side during the long first month after Nathan’s death, often with the leash in his mouth and his head in her lap.

  He shuffled around her feet as she worked, and she let the work soothe her. It was normal. Meeting her mother’s boyfriend, not so much. When the dining room was up to Hall guest standards—occupants having much lower ones—she headed up to her room to fix her hair and try to dress like a respectable daughter.

  Her father did not show up, and given she was changing, that was a blessing.

  * * *

  When her mother arrived, Emma was in the television room, channel surfing in the hope that something would catch her attention. She set the remote aside when she heard her mother’s car hit the driveway and caught Petal’s collar before he charged up the stairs.

  “Guests, remember?” she said, without much hope. She opened the door to see her mother fumbling with keys, a bag of groceries precariously cradled in her left arm. Jon was standing to one side, two bags of groceries in similar positions. Emma offered him her politest Hall smile, took the bag from her mother’s arm, and headed toward the kitchen.

  Jon followed, which wouldn’t have been her first choice. But he didn’t make himself at home in Emma’s kitchen.

  “Where did you want me to put these?”

  “On the breakfast table,” Emma told him, pointing. “I’ll put them away.” She hesitated, then added, “Can you reach the plates on the third shelf here?”

  “With or without a chair?”

  She smiled; it was less forced. She waited for him to say something stupid or awkward, because her mother had not yet entered the kitchen. He didn’t. Instead, he got the plates and set them on the counter just in front of Emma. Emma tried to guess what exactly her mother intended to cook from the contents of the bags and came up with four possibilities. “I don’t suppose she mentioned what was for dinner?”

  “No. She bought desert, though.” He looked at his feet and then up; he smiled. “She was nervous.”

  “It’s a defining Hall trait,” Emma replied. “That and guilt.” She took a deep breath, held out her right hand, and added, “I’m Emma.”

  He took her hand as if he had never been introduced and said, “I’m Jon. Is your mother trying to give us time alone?”

  Since it was the same thought Emma had, but with less annoyance and more genuine curiosity, Emma said, “Probably not. I know she’s an ace at work, but she spends all her organization points in the office.”

  “Leaving the organization of the house to you?”

  “More or less. If it helps, my locker at school is a class-A disaster.”

  “It helps a little. Look, I’m not great with small talk.”

  “Not great?”

  “I suck at it.”

  Emma laughed.

  Jon didn’t. “I mean it. I’m seriously bad at making small talk. If I ask about someone’s husband, they’re in the middle of a divorce. If I ask about their family, their parents have cancer. If I compliment their clothing, they’re wearing something their mother bought and they hate it.” He held out both of his empty hands, palms up. “So mostly, I don’t try.”

  “My mother’s not bad at it.”

  “She’s almost as bad at it as I am,” he replied. He glanced toward the hall, which still contained Mercy, her coat, and, apparently, the family dog. “I’m not here to be your best friend. I’m not here to be your friend—that’s presumptuous and probably unwanted.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I care about your mother.”

  “Was this your idea or hers?”

  “Pass.”

  “What?”

  “I pass. I’ll take question number two.”

  “Fine. Have you ever been married before?�
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  “How many passes do I get?”

  She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “As many as you need. This isn’t an interrogation.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Well, no, not really.”

  His smile deepened. The lines around the corners of his mouth were etched there; it made Emma realize that Jon smiled a lot. He wasn’t a handsome man. He wasn’t anywhere near as good-looking as her father had been. But she liked his smile. There were no edges in it.

  “Teenage girls always make me nervous.”

  “You don’t look particularly nervous.”

  “No. I’m better at hiding it. When I was a teenager, I kept my mouth shut. It mostly stopped the stupid from pouring out.”

  “Mostly?”

  “I fidgeted more.” He slid his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the edge of the counter. “I also suck under stress.”

  “You’re under stress? Try meeting your mother’s first boyfriend.” She reddened. “I mean, first since . . .”

  “You’re always going to be your mother’s daughter. If I screw up, I’m not guaranteed to hold the same position.”

  “You’d make a terrible daughter.”

  “If she’s used to your caliber, probably. And I’m not willing to try—she’s already got the only daughter she wants. So . . . what are our chances of eating dinner before ten?”

  Emma pretended to consider the question. “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “If you want her in the kitchen right now, we could start shouting at each other.”

  He laughed. “I’ll take dinner at ten, thanks.”

  * * *

  To Emma’s surprise, she wasn’t in need of rescue. Jon looked just as surprised, because as it turned out, neither was he. When her mother entered the kitchen, she had the wary smile of a worried Hall attached to her face. It was brittle, and it was mildly annoying.

  “I’m not bleeding,” Jon told her.

  Her mother had the grace to redden.

  “He’s not cowering in the corner either,” Emma pointed out, with a little less humor than Jon.

  Her mother winced. She didn’t apologize, which would have been awkward, not that it wasn’t already awkward. But Jon grinned. “She’s your daughter. She’s not going to wilt in the corner like a drama queen.”

  “Which proves,” her mother said, in a more acerbic tone, “that you don’t know the Halls well enough.” To Emma she added, “I’ve given him plenty of opportunity to back out.”

  “And he’s not bright enough to take any of them?”

  “Apparently not.” Her mother’s smile was worn around the edges, but it was natural. “Jon, don’t take this personally, but I need my kitchen.”

  “And your daughter?”

  “Every chef needs a sous chef.”

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  THE KITCHEN WITH HER MOTHER IN IT was more awkward than the kitchen without her, an irony not lost on either of the Halls. “You don’t have to love him,” her mother began.

  Emma, struggling with the theoretical sharp edge of a knife that clearly hadn’t been sharpened in a decade, grimaced. “Good to know.”

  “You just have to understand that I might.”

  “Might? It’s not decided?”

  “I’m a little too old to fall head over heels in love,” her mother replied. “It’s been so long since I even considered being involved with anyone else at all.” She set her knife down to one side of the cutting board and turned. “I didn’t plan this. I wasn’t even aware that he was interested in me.”

  Of all the conversations Emma could be having with her mother, this was the obvious one—but obvious or not, it was completely unexpected. Emma, who could cut and listen at the same time, nudged her mother away from the counter, but not before looking at her.

  Objectively, her mother wasn’t old. She wasn’t young but then again, she had a teenage daughter. She dressed—and looked—like a middle-aged mother, to Emma. “You know,” she said, half to Mercy and half to herself, “when I was four years old, I thought you were the most beautiful person alive.”

  “Were?” her mother asked. “Have I changed so much?”

  Had she? “Well, after that I met Amy.”

  Her mother laughed. Hearing it, Emma wondered how long it had been since she’d heard that laugh. Her mother had laughed a lot more when her father had been alive. Emma finished slicing chicken and looked at her mother again. Her mother stood by the back screen door, her hands behind her. She thought about what her dad had said—the parts that didn’t make her angry. Parents didn’t talk to their kids; they wanted to give them a safe haven.

  And safety was a myth.

  “I know what I felt when I first got to know your father,” her mother said quietly, looking out into the yard, her face reflected in the glass. She straightened her shoulders and headed back to the counter and their neglected dinner preparations. “I know this isn’t the same. I’m not sure what I feel, but I don’t want to overthink it.”

  “Mom—that’s not the salt.”

  “What?” Mercy Hall looked at the glass jar in her hand. “Right. Sugar would be more interesting.”

  “Interesting food probably isn’t the best choice for a first meal.”

  “I don’t think Jon would mind too much. He’s the better cook.” That said, she put the sugar down and picked up the salt. “But Jon makes me laugh. He makes me laugh even when there’s nothing remotely funny. Sometimes when I’m with him, I don’t have to think.” She turned to her daughter, who was silent.

  “I know you miss your father. I miss him, too. I thought I’d spend the rest of my life in mourning. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t had you.”

  “You’d’ve had an easier life.”

  “Easy and happy aren’t the same—they only look the same when things are both hard and unhappy. I always thought your father was the better parent. He was more patient and more consistent. But I tried. I tried to live up to him.”

  “Tell her she did.”

  Emma closed her eyes as a familiar chill descended on the kitchen. She couldn’t tell if her mother felt it or not; her mother was focused on dinner. And on the strange flow of words that Emma had never heard before. She turned to her father; her father was watching his wife making dinner for another man. His expression made Emma want to cry, but she was a Hall; she didn’t.

  She also didn’t pass the words on.

  “Tell her,” her father continued when Emma failed to speak, “that she did better. I love her. I always have. And she’s been lonely for long enough. She’s not lying, Em. This is the first time she’s ever been willing to risk opening up. To you,” he said, in case this wasn’t clear. “And to the possibility of life with someone else.”

  “I was too busy with you to be lonely,” her mother said. She couldn’t hear her husband’s words, of course, but some instinct stopped their words from overlapping. “That’s the truth. I knew we had to be a family, even if we were without a husband and a father. We still needed to keep a roof over our heads. Your grandmother offered to let us move in with her.”

  Emma grimaced but politely said nothing.

  “But I had to know that we could make it on our own. And we have.” She turned to the stove, wiping up invisible dirt from around the stovetop elements. “I don’t know what happened the night we took you to the hospital.”

  Emma froze.

  “I don’t know if I was so frenzied with worry that I—” She shook her head. “No. That’s not it. You saw—what I saw. Michael saw him. Allison did. I don’t know if they remember. I don’t know if they talk about it.”

  Emma started to speak, but her mother held up one imploring hand. “I need to say this, and if
I don’t get it all out now, I never will. Can you—can you let me do that? I’m asking for a lot, I know.”

  “Mom—” Emma swallowed. “You’re not asking for much. You’re just asking for me to listen.” Who listened to her mother? She had a few friends she saw maybe twice a year—old university friends who now lived across the continent in different cities. Emma had Allison. Who did her mother have?

  Not Emma, not really. Parents didn’t talk to their children about anything important. No, that wasn’t true. They listened and talked about things that were important to their children. But they didn’t talk about their own lives. And it had never really occurred to Emma to ask. Why not?

  “I saw Brendan. I saw him. I heard him.” Her eyes were red, but—Hall. She didn’t shed tears. They changed the timbre of her voice anyway. “He hadn’t aged a day. He didn’t look—he didn’t look dead. But he looked the way he looked when you were a child and Petal was a puppy. And his expression—” She swallowed. “He looked so worried. For me. He looked—”

  “You are not a disappointment to Dad,” Emma said, with more force than she’d intended. She crossed the small space that divided them, forgetting for a moment that they had roles they were meant to inhabit. She slid her arms around her mother’s shoulders and felt a shock as she realized how small her mother actually was.

  “I’d just taken you to the hospital. I was terrified. If Dad were here—”

  “Dad was alive when I broke my arm.”

  “A broken arm can’t kill you.”

  “I’m sure Michael could come up with exceptions.”

  Mercy laughed. It was shaky. “When I came home that night, I felt so lonely. I haven’t felt that way for so long. I felt as if the eight years and the work and the keeping things going—it was empty.”

  “Mercy,” her father whispered. He was standing so close to them, all Emma had to do was reach out and touch him, and he’d be here too. But she didn’t.