by Dan Dillard
*****
When I got to the in-laws’ house, Vicky met me at the door. Sean was tucked into her hip and was busy playing with a gold pendant that hung from her necklace. She allowed that to continue until he tugged on it and then she put a stop to his nonsense.
“You’ll break that, Sean. Stop,” she said.
“How are you?” I asked.
“I’m fine. How are you? How’s Danny—is he gone already?”
“Yeah. Dropped him off at his hotel. We had lunch…” I checked my watch. “Or maybe it was dinner.”
She smiled at me and hugged me with the baby between us. It felt great. Better than great. My worries for Danny subsided for the moment. I was glad of one thing. I was glad Vicky wasn’t with us that night when we saw the ghost. She patted my back letting me know the hug had stayed its welcome and we wandered into the living room. Her father was there and he stood up with an older man’s hitch and a groan to greet me.
“How are you holding up, Todd?” Mr. Rutledge asked.
“Fine, dad. Doing fine.”
I’d called him dad since our first anniversary. My father, I’d called John since before I graduated high school. Vicky’s father was fifteen years older than Mrs. Rutledge, who I called mom, and who was entering from the kitchen, drying her hands on a dishtowel. She immediately rubbed Vicky’s still-flat belly, then took Sean and started working that grandma magic.
“Hello, Todd,” she said in a cheery voice that belied the somber look on her face.
“Mom,” I said.
I was more interested in the way Sean was giggling than in her. I wanted to hold him, but I didn’t dare interrupt their moment. Vicky slid under my arm and hugged me again, tighter than she could with our son between us.
“Maybe we can go have a few minutes alone while mom and dad watch him?” she said.
“Not too much alone time,” mom said.
“It’s not like I can get pregnant, mom,” Vicky joked.
“Oh you. Go and do, well, I know what it is young married folks do,” mom said.
Mr. Rutledge peeked over his bifocals with a sideways glance and smirked.
Vicky took my hand and pulled me out of the living room and up the stairs to her old bedroom. When we walked in, she shut the door and kissed me. Then she giggled as if we were doing something wrong. I knew how she felt. We’d slept in that room more than a dozen times since we got married, but it still felt a little naughty, like we were getting away with something.
“How should we spend our time, Mr. McNeill?” she asked.
“I’m at your service, Mrs. McNeill,” I said.
She pulled off my tie, unbuttoned the top button of my shirt and planted a warm kiss on my collar bone. It lit fireworks inside me at a time when I couldn’t have felt less sexy. Blood rushed to all the right places as she undid the second and third buttons on my shirt. I rolled my shoulders back and let my jacket slip to the floor, then I put my hands on the small of her back. She slipped her shirt up over her head and unsnapped her bra.
“I thought you could use a little cheering up,” she said.
With my shirt finally off, I pulled her into a bear hug and lifted her off the ground. Our lips met and all the bad things in the world disappeared. There was nothing but us, and for the next twenty minutes we made love, quietly and efficiently on the same bed she’d slept on back in high school. When it was over, and I could think again, the world seemed a little brighter, and even if I was cursed, it was all worth it because Victoria Rutledge McNeill loved me.
“You okay?” she said.
I’d been staring at the ceiling for quite some time when she spoke, and it dawned on me that I was wearing a goofy grin. Not the kind you practice in the mirror, but one that just grew there out of true emotion.
“Fine,” I said. “I mean, I’m sad, but I’m fine.”
“We’ll all miss Matt. My heart is just broken for his parents. No one expects to bury a child, much less two children.”
“Yeah. It makes the whole prospect of having kids a little scary doesn’t it?” I asked.
“I don’t know, they’re pretty great, too. I’m sure when the pain starts to fade and they look at all the memories, they’ll decide it was still worth it.”
I cradled her in my arm and then rolled myself on top of her. Her warm body felt like a perfect sunny day.
“I love you,” I said.
She smiled and kissed me. “I love you.”
And as if someone turned a faucet handle, tears streamed down my cheeks and I shuddered with overwhelming sadness. Vicky pulled my face to her chest and stroked my hair. I gladly tucked my face into the soft swell of her breasts.
“Oh, you poor baby,” she said. “I know it’s a lot to deal with…and you’ve already lost so many. Your sister…your mother.”
It’s not that at all.
I struggled to stifle the sobs and eventually got them under control.
“It isn’t that,” I said. “Not really.”
“What is it then, Todd?”
I argued internally.
You can’t tell her. But she’s your wife. But you promised not to talk about it. Not with anyone. You just talked about it with Matt…and now he’s dead. Don’t involve her and she’s safe. Silly thoughts. It was all silly, wasn’t it? That she might somehow come under the spell—the curse of Nataliya and that game we played so many years ago. The curse that killed my friends and my sister. Or worse…it might continue beyond us and into our children, especially the unborn child.
“Todd, you can tell me. You can tell me anything,” she said.
I’m not sure this anything counts.
Her eyes were warm and concerned and loving and as she held my face in her hands and looked at me, I knew there would be no judgment, no arguing, only listening and comfort because I had lost my brother. I told her the whole story. I told her about the game, about the failed attempt in the Chambers’ basement and about going to the Russian House and doing it again. About the ghost, about the candles, about the words. How Robin had said now over and over. Sean’s was blade. Matt’s was orange, it licks—fire.
“What is yours?”
“It eats,” I choked out. “I don’t know what that means and I hate thinking about it.”
Her eyes grew a little wider, a little darker—fear inside them. She didn’t ask about Danny’s words and I didn’t offer them up.
I told her about Sean’s demand that we promised not to talk about it. About the drawings and about how I’d gone to the Library and met Mr. Sewell. I told her about how Sean blamed himself for Robin’s death and how he might have committed suicide because of guilt, or because he was right and we were all cursed. I told her about how I had seen Robin on the road that day when Sean died and about how her head was open and her brains were glistening in the sunlight and how she waved. I told her about the day Matt left and how I saw Robin and Sean through the stained glass window. I told her about the cigarettes and the Harley-Davidson lighter we always seemed to have handy and how I’d bought another one that afternoon for some reason…
Because we had to have one available at all times. It was our talisman. At least I felt it was mine.
She nodded and looked happy when it was appropriate, sad when that was appropriate, but she never interrupted me. When I was all finished, she smiled.
“I thought you smelled like cigarettes.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that.”
“Todd, do you really believe any of that? I mean I understand after all you’ve been through how you could believe that, but…do you really?”
“I don’t know. It’s easier to have something to blame though, isn’t it?”
“Does Danny believe it?”
“I don’t know. We don’t talk about it,” I said.
“Did Matt?”
“I think maybe he did. He was worried about it that day…The day he left our house, when you left us with Sean. He mentioned it then, that he thought it might be a cur
se.”
She just watched me and soaked it all in.
“Why are you just now telling me all of this?” she said.
“I didn’t want to.”
“Because I’m your wife?” she asked.
“Yes…but that’s also part of why I’ve waited so long. I didn’t want to involve you in any way. You or Sean…or the children,” I said and patted her tummy.
She shook her head, not quite comprehending.
“In case,” I said, and then she understood what I meant.
She nodded and I could tell she was thinking about everything I had unloaded on her, but she didn’t say anything else that evening. We lay there for a few more minutes, holding each other and breathing in synch. Then we got ourselves cleaned up and went downstairs in what amounted to our pajamas. I wore jogging pants and a t-shirt and she had on a tank-top and some old sweats with paint stains on them from when we finished Sean’s nursery.
Her dad was asleep in his favorite recliner and Sean was asleep on his grandfather’s chest. Mom was reading a magazine and sipping something hot from a mug, probably tea. It was a scene Norman Rockwell would’ve painted if he’d thought of it. Mom looked up over her magazine.
“You two relaxed now?” she said, grinning.
That grin and the soft lighting made her look much younger and I could see where Vicky got her beauty from.
“Very,” Vicky answered.
“No details. Deal?” mom said.
“Cross my heart,” I said.
She smiled and folded the magazine, lying it on the end table.
“I’ve got some lasagna left over from dinner, Todd. I can heat up a plate for you if you like.”
“That sounds great, but I know how to work a microwave. You sit,” I said.
She lowered her head and peered at me over her reading glasses.
“Nonsense. You two are guests. Besides, I could use a nibble myself.”
It was an argument I would never win.
“All right, then,” I said.
The three of us sat in the kitchen while my son napped on his napping grandfather, and I thought about John McNeill. He’d moved out of Walker’s Woods and into a retirement community a few hours away. I felt, for the first time in a long time, that I had the mental and emotional strength to go and see him. Vicky might have read my mind because she cupped her hand over mine and squeezed.
“That’s a gorgeous little boy you two made,” mom said. “I’m proud of you two. I can’t wait for the encore. I think it’s going to be a girl.”
“Oh? Why’s that?” Vicky said.
Her mother smiled and placed two plates of lasagna in front of us, still steaming from the microwave. It smelled heavenly. On her second trip she brought her own plate and a large bowl of salad from the refrigerator.
“Because it’s just what you need.”
