The Midnight Ground
Page 34
“Grandpa says we’ll get to move back in soon,” said Abby.
“That’s good. Are you excited?”
“I guess. It’s hard to know what to think. I can—” she struggled for a second, “feel the house. I know it wants to protect me.”
“Homes are like that,” I said. “How are you doing with the other part?”
She looked down and away, her lower lip caught between her teeth. “Okay, I guess. It’s hard sometimes, to keep it all out. Sometimes, it’s hard not to peek. I think I want to know what people really think. Then, I wonder if I really want to know.”
I nodded. “It’s a tough line to tread. In my experience, though, it’s easier not to know.”
“It is?”
“Just because someone happens to think something, that doesn’t mean it’s what they believe in their hearts. We all think things and regret them, or change our minds later. We have impulses we don’t act on, because they’re wrong or rude. What matters is how people choose to act.”
“Like choosing not to look?”
“For example.”
“Are you ever going to come back here?”
There it was, the big question. I wanted to tell her the comforting lie, but it would have been wrong to do that on so many levels. I shrugged and tried to come up with something that at least resembled the truth.
“Honestly, I don’t know. Probably not, at least, not unless you’re in some kind of trouble.”
“Why not?”
I checked a frustrated sigh. “I don’t stay anywhere long. I’m not a nice person, all things considered. I’ve made enemies. If I stayed or came back very often, it’d make you a target. I won’t put you in that kind of danger. You have enough challenges already, without adding my troubles.”
Abby looked up at me, her brow furrowed in a way that made her seem decades older. Marked, I thought. She’s been marked.
“That’s not true,” said Abby, with a quiet certainty that unnerved me. “The part about enemies and putting me in danger is, but not the other part. I don’t remember everything about what happened at the school, especially at the end, but I remember one part. I saw you,” she frowned. “No, I saw into you, I guess. You were ready to die to give me a chance to live.”
I looked away at that. It was true enough, but made me sound nobler than I was. “It’s more complicated than that.”
She giggled. “No it isn’t. Maybe you think it is, but it isn’t. You did what you did because you cared.”
She hugged me again. I hugged her back. She looked up at me, her eyes huge, and the scary grownup knowledge gone. She was just a kid right then.
“Will you at least come back at Christmas? It’s just me and grandpa…” She trailed off when she saw the look on my face. “If you don’t want to, it’s cool. I get it.”
Grown women have nothing on teenage girls for twisting the knife. What made it worse was that Abby was doing it in the least malicious and wholly unintentional way possible. She was trying to give me an out, without showing how much it would wound her if I didn’t come through. I wondered how in the hell fathers exerted any kind of discipline on their daughters. No wonder moms got stuck with those duties. I’m not too proud to admit that I folded like a bad hand at a poker table.
“I think I can see my way to being here at Christmas. If your grandfather says it’s okay.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
She turned and bolted toward the house at just short of the speed of sound. I heard her yelling, “Grandpa!”
I blinked after the teenage blur and snorted. I couldn’t remember the last time something excited me that much. She came back out the front door, all but dragging Paul behind her. He saw me standing there and smiled. With the threat to Abby gone and the house being rebuilt, a mountain of fear and tension had lifted off the man. He still looked like a man in his sixties, but the kind of man who would stay vigorous and attentive to his granddaughter well into his eighties.
“Adrian,” said Paul, extending his hand to me. “Good to see you, son.”
I took his hand. “Good to see you.”
Abby looked back and forth between us. She bounced on her toes and then noticed she was bouncing. I saw her make a conscious effort to stop. As soon as she stopped concentrating on it, though, she was bouncing again.
“Didn’t hear you pull in, what with all the noise inside,” said Paul.
“Not a problem. The repairs going well?”
“Oh yes, even if the contractor keeps telling me it would be easier and cheaper to just tear the old girl down and start fresh.”
I nodded. “So long as the work gets done, right?”
“Exactly,” said Paul.
He was pretending not to notice Abby’s impatience, but the sparkle in his eyes gave it away. He played it out like a pro, though.
“You going to be able to replace the antiques?” I asked.
“I expect I could, if it came right down to it. Might be time to try some new things. Been a while since I had the—” I saw him mentally cross off the word time, “interest to devote to decorating.”
Abby’s patience ran dry and she overflowed like a geyser, words tumbling out in a barely coherent amalgamation. “Grandpa, canMr.HartworthcomeforChristmas?”
I checked a smile before it could form. Paul, an old hand at parenting, gave the girl an appraising look. He appeared to ponder the question and dragged it out. It was almost mean.
“I don’t know, Abby,” he said. “Mr. Hartworth strikes me as a busy man. Doesn’t seem right to pull him away from his life that way.”
“He said he’d come, if you said it was okay!”
“Oh, well then, that’s an entirely different story,” he said, and gave me a wink Abby couldn’t see. “I’m sure we can find another spot at the table come Christmas.”
“Thank you, Grandpa!”
She threw her arms around the old man and the air actually whooshed out of him. He gave the girl an awkward, airless hug.
“Of course, you’re welcome here at Christmas or any other time you’d care to stop by,” he said to me.
I nodded. “Much appreciated. Christmas it is.”
With nothing but time on my hands in the hospital, I’d dipped into the money the Twins had paid me to have the car I drove into town fixed. I’d also gotten every repair the Neon needed taken care of. Before I left, I gave Paul an envelope with the title and keys to the Neon. I told him I thought it’d make a good sixteenth birthday present for Abby.
I’d noticed somewhere on the way to Seattle that I was looking forward to going back to see them. I was planning gifts and mapping a strategy to ensure I wasn’t occupied when the yuletide season rolled around. It comforted me to know I had somewhere to be at year’s end. It gave me a reason to keep going.
I surreptitiously checked on my sister and her family. I decided they were doing well for themselves. Their house was in Laurelhurst, one of Seattle’s more expensive neighborhoods, and they’d upgraded their minivan to a Lexus hybrid SUV. They all looked healthy and happy, in the distracted way that active, overscheduled families always did to me. Maybe I was projecting, but I didn’t think that was the case.
I followed the tug of a very old tracking spell north through the city, mostly sticking to Interstate 5. It drew me to the much less ritzy neighborhood of Lynnwood. The man I’d bound the tracking spell to had moved several times over the years, trying to avoid me and the reminder of past sins. I wasn’t about to let that happen. I parked across the street from his house, a two-story affair with a front porch. It was modest, but tended. I watched a brunette woman with a liberal smattering of gray hair harangue a pair of teenage boys into a car. They drove away. I got out of my car, Lil in one arm, and eyed the house. In the past, I’d always stood across the street and let him see me. There was no talking, just the reminder that I could always find him. I felt different, though, as I looked at the house. I was angrier in some indefinite way. I cro
ssed the street and checked the name on the mailbox. Then I climbed the steps and leaned next to the door. Lil jumped down and took up residence on the porch railing. About ten minutes later, Jack Reed came out the door.
His hair was completely gray and he leaned on a cane. He’d needed it for fifteen years. He was thinner than I remembered from a few years back. I wondered if he was working out or if he’d been sick. He wasn’t looking around, just going about his daily routine. He locked the front door and turned toward the steps. He noticed Lil and gave her a bemused smile.
“Hey there, kitty,” said Reed, taking a slow step and reaching out a hand toward her.
Lil directed one of her opaque kitty-cat expressions at him, but I could feel the utter malice radiating off her. Reed froze in place. I took the opportunity and cleared my throat. Reed whirled toward me. His bad leg didn’t support the move well and he tipped to one side. He saw me and went ashen, raising a hand as if to ward off a blow. He tried to step back with a wordless noise of fear and went down in a heap. Reed started crawling backwards and slipped onto the steps. He kept moving down the steps, almost crab-walking, in an attempt to put some space between us. I took deliberate steps toward him, closing the distance until I towered over him. I frowned down at him. He whimpered and his bladder let go. We hadn’t been this physically close since I crippled him.
“It’s been a while, Jack. We should talk.”
—The End—
Adrian Hartworth will return, in
FAVORS GIVEN
Coming Summer 2019
Also by Eric Dontigney
The Samuel Branch Series
Falls
Turns
Rises
Contingency Jones: The Complete Season One
Eric Dontigney is the author of the Samuel Branch urban fantasy series, numerous short stories, and the short story collection, Contingency Jones: The Complete Season One. Raised in Western New York, he currently resides near Dayton, Ohio. You can find him haunting obscure sections of libraries, in Chinese restaurants, or occasionally online at ericdontigney.com.