Touch

by Michelle Sagara

  She couldn’t accuse the woman of killing her own son—not when her other son stood between them. Because then he’d know. It couldn’t break Mark’s mother any more than she was already broken; it could injure Phillip in a way that simple cold couldn’t.

  Why had she even come here?

  Because she’d promised.

  Emma stepped into the hall, and Mark followed because he was attached. He didn’t seem to be aware of her—not the way Phillip was. Someone closed the door; she thought it must be Eric. Her dog stayed more or less near her legs; he was generally well behaved in other people’s houses. Something about Emma stopped him from sniffing around strange legs and hands, looking for food.

  Phillip glanced at the stairs, and Emma remembered that Mark had had two siblings, both of whom were, in his opinion, normal. Whatever that meant. “Mom.”

  When his mother failed to answer, Phillip briefly closed his eyes.

  Mark’s hand tightened in Emma’s. “Why is she crying?” he asked his brother.

  “She’s been crying on and off since the funeral.” He spoke in a quiet, matter-of-fact way, as if his mother weren’t present. “She went out to look for you—” He inhaled, held his breath, and smoothed the worry off his face, which made him look older. “Do you want to see your room?”

  Mark shrugged. “Not really. Did you change it?”

  “No. It’s the same mess it always was.” He paused and then added, “I beat your high score, though.”

  Mark yanked his hand free of Emma’s and ran up the stairs. He ran through his brother, whose eyes were widening.

  Emma tried to massage feeling back into her hand.

  “Where did he go?”

  “If I had to guess, he went to his room to look at the high score list. What game?”

  “Tetris. It’s ancient, but he liked it.”

  “You didn’t beat his high score.”

  Phillip shook his head. “It’s not possible. He’s a monster Tetris player. It’s like he’s hooked directly into the machine. I tried, though. I can’t see him, now.”

  “No.”

  “Will my sister—”

  “No. Unless he comes back downstairs and takes my hand, she won’t see him either.”

  Phillip swallowed. He slid an arm beneath his mother’s arms and guided her toward the living room doors. “Can you—”

  Emma crossed the hall and opened one of the two glass doors that led to the living room, and Phillip walked his mother in.

  * * *

  Michael was staring at his feet, or at the floor beneath them, when Emma turned. Eric passed them both, and offered Phillip the help that Emma, hands numb, couldn’t. She couldn’t hear what Eric said to the boy; she could hear the broken syllables of Phillip’s response, but not clearly enough to make sense of them.

  “I don’t understand,” Michael said.

  “I don’t understand, either.”

  “She left him to die,” he continued, as if Emma hadn’t spoken. “She must have wanted to leave him.” Before Emma could answer—and it would have taken a while, because she had no words—he said, “Why is she crying?”

  Emma was surprised to find her throat tightening. Without thought, she reached out for the other dead person in the hall. Michael didn’t even blink when her father coalesced at her side.

  “I’m not Mark’s mother,” her father said, although to Michael this was self-evident, “but if I had to guess, I would say she made a mistake.”

  “But Mark died.”

  “Yes. Some mistakes can’t be undone. I don’t know why she took him to the ravine. I don’t know why she left him there and told him to wait. I don’t know if she meant to abandon him to the cold.”

  “But she did.”

  Brendan Hall nodded. “Yes. Maybe she thought it would make her happy. Maybe she was having the very worst day of her life and she couldn’t deal with any more stress. Maybe she meant it to be an hour or two. I don’t know, Michael.”

  “But she’s crying. And she—”

  “She was happy to see him.”

  Michael swallowed but didn’t deny it. “I thought she would be afraid. I thought she would scream or hide or try to lie—”

  “You thought she would be like the guilty criminals on TV.”

  He nodded, blinking rapidly. “Why did she ask him to come in? She knows he’s dead. She knows. I don’t understand.”

  “No. People—even people we know well—are sometimes impossible to understand or predict. I don’t think Mark’s mother has accepted Mark’s death.”

  “But she caused it!”

  “Yes. And sometimes the mistakes we make ourselves are the hardest for us to face and accept. I know Emma felt Mark’s mother got away with murder.”

  “She did,” Michael replied, voice low.

  “Did she?” He nodded toward the living room. “We should go in. Mark’s coming back.”

  “What was he doing?” Emma asked.

  “Playing a game.”

  “A game?”

  “I think he’s making certain that Phillip will never be able to beat his high score,” her father replied, with just the touch of a rueful smile. “He’s only eight, Em.”

  * * *

  “My sister’s not sleeping,” Mark said, as he drifted through the floor. He’d automatically taken the stairs on the way up.

  “What is she doing?” Emma asked, glancing up those stairs; if his sister joined them, she couldn’t do it the way Mark just had.

  “She was watching me play Tetris.”

  “She can’t see you.” But Emma’s stomach felt like it dropped two feet. His sister couldn’t see Mark, no. But she could see the computer.

  “I think she’s coming downstairs,” Mark added, in a much smaller voice.

  And she was. She was walking, wide-eyed, her arms level with the banister. She stopped at the top of the stairs and looked down to see two strange teenagers—and a rottweiler—in her hall.

  “What’s her name?” Emma asked.

  “Susan. She doesn’t like to be called Sue,” he added. “I don’t know why people do it.”

  “Your brother is not going to be happy.”

  Mark looked down. “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t tell him it wasn’t his fault. “It doesn’t matter. After tonight, she won’t be able to see you again, and she might want to say something.”

  “What?”

  “Good-bye.”

  “Oh.” He hesitated for a moment as Emma looked up the stairs at the girl who stood by the banister.

  “Hello, Susan. Your mother and Phillip are in the living room. My name’s Emma and I’m a—a—” She hesitated as Mark held out his hand. Without a pause, she took it and watched as the girl’s eyes widened.

  “Mark?”

  Mark said, “Hi, Susan.” He looked very guilty.

  “You were playing Tetris!”

  “Phillip said he’d beat my high score.”

  Susan snorted. “Phillip is such a liar.” She looked older than Mark, although she wasn’t much taller. She also didn’t appear to be surprised. “Has Mom seen you?”

  Mark nodded.

  “She’s been a mess since you died.” Susan then added, “Why is that girl holding your hand?”

  “It doesn’t hurt.”

  “That’s not what I asked.” She walked with much more confidence down the stairs. “Who are you?”

  “Emma.”

  “I heard that part. Why do you have that dog?”

  Emma blinked. “He needed to go for a walk. He doesn’t bite people, and he doesn’t usually destroy furniture.” Petal headed obligingly toward Susan. “She doesn’t have any food, Petal.”

  “Petal?”
r />   “His name.”

  “That’s a stupid name for a big dog.” Stupidly named or not, Susan hesitantly patted his head. “But who are you?”

  “Emma’s a Necromancer,” Mark replied. “Was Mom really mad at me?”

  “At you? God, no. But she’s been mad or sad about everything. Tell her you’re okay,” Susan added. It was delivered as if it were a royal command and Susan were the Queen.

  “I’m dead.”

  “I know that.” Susan reached out to take Mark’s other hand. The fact that Mark didn’t like to be touched—at least when alive—was something she’d forgotten. Or, given her personality, something she’d ignored.

  Mark didn’t seem to be surprised or upset, but Susan wasn’t thrilled when her hand passed through his. “Why are you holding her hand?”

  “Because you can’t see me if I don’t.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s okay then.” She gave Emma another look and then headed toward the closed doors of the living room. “Are you coming, or what?”

  * * *

  Mark’s mother’s name was Leslie. She was sitting in the corner of a long, leather couch, a drink in her shaking hands. Emma eyed its contents with some suspicion. Susan eyed its contents with loathing, which confirmed Emma’s suspicion; the girl did not, however, march over to her mother and take the drink away.

  “Susan, why are you awake?” It was Phillip who asked.

  “Mark woke me up,” she replied, casually tossing her younger brother to the figurative wolves.

  He knew it, too, but accepted it. “. . . I was playing Tetris,” he mumbled.

  “Yes, because someone told him he’d beaten the high score,” Susan added, punting fault back into Phillip’s corner.

  Both Emma and Michael were only children. Sibling interactions had always been a bit mystifying, if sometimes viewed with envy.

  “Have you tried to touch him?” Susan asked her brother. “Look.” She shoved her hand through Mark’s chest, and then waved her arm around. Mark was looking down at her hand, his eyes slightly rounded.

  “That’s pretty cool,” he told his sister.

  “Yeah. Cool and creepy.”

  “Susan likes horror,” Mark told the room.

  Phillip, far from looking horrified, now looked embarrassed. Emma wasn’t certain on whose behalf, but suspected it was theirs: Emma’s, Eric’s, and Michael’s. “She’s always like this,” he said.

  Emma thought she understood why as she turned to face Mark’s mother. Her eyes were still red, her lips swollen; she had crumpled tissues in her left hand.

  “So,” Susan said, and Emma realized suddenly that Susan was like a miniature version of Amy, “Why did you come home? You didn’t need to put up a new high score; Phillip’s too much of a klutz to beat the old one.” She snickered and added, “He’s been trying, though.”

  She had asked the question that Phillip and Leslie couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. But they listened for the answer just as apprehensively as if they had.

  “I wanted to come home,” Mark told her. He turned toward his mother, who sat frozen, like a cornered mouse trying to avoid a large, hungry snake in a small glass aquarium. “I wanted to ask Mom why she left me in the ravine.”

  * * *

  Emma had come here for Mark. For Mark. She reminded herself, because she needed the reminder. Phillip’s face shuttered. His mother’s couldn’t crumple any further. Susan, however, lost some of her childish directness, but she didn’t look surprised by Mark’s statement. She turned to look at Phillip; her glance seemed to take in everything in the room that didn’t include her mother.

  Phillip was silent. He opened his mouth and closed it. Emma thought he wanted to deny the truth in Mark’s words and realized that on some level, he’d known. He’d known. But he knew his brother, probably better than Emma knew Michael; he knew that empty words of comfort or denial would change nothing.

  She saw the same thing in Susan’s face and realized a second thing: Mark was, unintentionally, asking them to make a choice between himself and their mother. Mark was dead. Their mother was alive.

  And her father was right: Mark loved his mother, even if she had killed him. Susan and Phillip loved her as well. She had done something monstrous—but to them, she wasn’t a monster. Monster or no, they failed to look at her. They looked at Mark and then looked away.

  Mark didn’t notice. He looked at his mother and then tugged Emma’s hand. She followed where he led in silence, although she could no longer feel that hand; it was numb. He stopped a yard away from where his mother sat, drink in her hand like a useless shield. The liquid shook.

  “Mom, why did you leave me in the ravine? Did you forget about me?”

  “I didn’t—I didn’t leave you in the ravine.”

  Emma couldn’t even feel outrage at the lie.

  “You did.” The words themselves were all of the accusation his voice contained; he was stating fact and stating it inexorably, the way Michael sometimes did. “You left me in the ravine. You told me to wait for you. You told me not to move.”

  “Mark, baby—” She swallowed. Drank.

  Never drink when you’re angry, Sprout. Never drink alone. She glanced at her father, remembering his words, and remembering as well the sharp, acrid taste of his drink. She couldn’t recall how old she’d been at the time, and his words hadn’t made a lot of sense then; they made sense—as so many of his words did—now.

  This, Emma thought, watching, was what she had wanted. She had wanted Mark’s mother to face her crime. She had wanted his mother to know that people knew. But she felt no sense of triumph, and looking at Mark, she realized he didn’t either. He was standing in place awkwardly, stiff with anxiety; he looked—at the moment—like a very young Michael.

  He blamed himself.

  Michael had often blamed himself. God, she hated this. “Leslie.”

  Mark’s mother looked up at her, as if she were drowning and Emma herself was a life buoy that had been tossed just out of reach. Emma swallowed. She had come here for Mark. Not for Leslie. Not for Phillip or Susan. But Mark didn’t need Emma’s anger. He didn’t, she understood, need his mother’s pain, either. What he needed—and what Michael needed almost by osmosis—was to understand.

  Not to forgive. Not to judge. Simply to understand.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  SHE LET GO OF HER ANGER, or at least untangled it. The wreck of the woman curled defensively on the couch in front of her helped. It had always been hard to stay angry at Petal when he lay, belly to floor, his eyes wide, his voice pitched in a pathetic whine.

  She’s not your dog, Emma.

  No.

  “Leslie,” she said again, in a gentler tone. “Mark isn’t here to judge you. It’s not what he does. What he needs—right now—is to understand why things happened as they did.” She exhaled. “He needs to know that it wasn’t his fault. He needs to know that it wasn’t punishment for something he’d done.” And it couldn’t be, Emma’s voice implied. “You can’t bring your son back to life.”

  “No one can do that,” Mark told Emma.

  “Believe that I know that,” Emma replied, never taking her eyes off his mother. “You can’t bring him back. You can’t undo what’s done—it’s done. It’s over. It’s in the past. What you can do is give him a measure of peace. You can answer his question. It’s the only answer he cares about, now.

  “You took him to the ravine. It was freezing outside. You asked him to stay there. He tried to do what you asked of him, even if he didn’t understand why. He needs to understand why you asked it.” She glanced, then, at the living children.

  They were watching their mother. Phillip looked tired or weary; Susan was a wall. They knew what their mother had done. Mark seemed oblivious to anything in the room that wasn’t his mot
her. Even Emma, her entire arm now numb, was like a shadow.

  “Mom?”

  “I went back for you,” his mother said, her voice breaking. “I went back. You were—” She looked at her empty glass, and handed it blindly to her older son. “I called the police. I told them you’d gone out and you hadn’t come home. I didn’t mean to leave you there to—” She looked at her two living children.

  “But why did you tell me to wait there?”

  She closed her eyes. Opened them. They were bloodshot, ringed, and almost without hope. Emma thought she would lie. A lie—if it was believable—might be a kindness. But Leslie had passed beyond the point where a lie had any meaning to her. She couldn’t protect herself, and Emma realized, watching her, that she had given up trying.

  “I was never a good enough mother for you,” she told her son. “I don’t mean that you thought I wasn’t good enough—I wasn’t. I was only barely good enough to handle Phillip and Susan. You needed someone patient. You needed someone consistent. I—I tried.”

  Phillip took a step toward his mother; Susan caught his arm. They exchanged a silent glare, but their mother didn’t notice. She was staring at her dead son as if—as if she could engrave the sight of him into her vision so that she never lost it again.

  “But it was hard for me. I’m not logical. I’m not mathematical. I’ve always reacted emotionally. Before you went to school, it was easier. If I didn’t understand you, I understood how to work with you. I knew our routine.

  “But school changed that. The other kids changed it. The other mothers.” She shook her head. “They’d look at you, and then they’d look at me, like it was my fault you weren’t—”

  Emma said, “Please do not use the word normal.”

  Mark glanced at her for the first time since he’d entered this room.

  “What word would you like me to use instead?” Leslie replied, with more heat and less pathos.

  “Try ‘like their children.’”

  Leslie closed her eyes. “Mark was never like most of the other children.”