Clearer in the Night (29 page)

Mom reached out and took Sophie’s hand. Sophie let her, and tightened her grip, but her eyes stayed locked on mine, while she gave us the highlights version of those early years. Dad had told her that the Bad Men had Mom and me for sure, and all they could do was run. They moved every few months, using different names; she was loosely homeschooled sometimes, and other times, she was enrolled in public schools for a few months. She recited it like a to-do list, facts and figures instead of emotions. They’d traveled across the country, steadily and slowly, always on the run from the Bad Men.

“It was a couple of years before it occurred to me that something was wrong. We were in Chicago, I think, getting dinner in this pizza parlor, and there was this cute boy behind the counter. Dark hair, great eyes, and he kept giving me these great, flirty smiles. Dad had always been seriously opposed to me making any friends, really—said it would make it easier for them to track us down, and really, who bothers to make friends with the new girl when she’s constantly moving anyway?—but we’d been there for almost four months, and I thought maybe, just maybe, it would work out this time.” Her face darkened, a storm cloud passing over her pretty features. “Dad saw us making eyes at each other, and he dragged me out of there so fast that my Keds left skid marks. And then…well, he let me know what he thought of daughters who were completely ungrateful for everything their parents had done for them.” The tone of her voice left me sure that he’d used his fists to drum home his point.

Mom’s free hand was clenched over her mouth, and her eyes sparkled with the tears she didn’t want to shed. Not in front of her daughters. No, she needed to be strong for us. “Why did you stay with him?”

Sophie shrugged. Her eyes were stony and cold. “I believed him. I believed that you two were dead, or as good as, and that there were people after us. That they would try and steal me away from him if they could. And as crazy as he was—and I think I knew he was crazy by then, or at least was starting to strongly suspect—the evil you know is better than the evil you don’t.”

“If you were sure he was crazy,” I asked, “did you ever think that maybe he lied about us, too?”

“Honestly, no,” she said. “I always figured that was what had driven him off the rails, but it never occurred to me that he would have lied about it.”

“It might not have been a lie,” Mom said. “Not to him. Who knows what actually caused his break with reality, but he faked your deaths well enough to fool the police. That sort of thing requires planning. There was something wrong, and it was wrong for a long time before you two went out for groceries.” She looked over my shoulder while she collected herself. She was blaming herself for everything, thinking that she should have known about it. I didn’t even have to be psychic to pick that one up.

“Where is he now?” I asked. “Is he okay? Did he come back with you?”

“He died,” she said, simple. I watched her, but her mouth and her eyes stayed calm, peaceful. “It happened about two months ago.” Pure serenity on her face. “We were in San Jose. Whatever cash he’d been using to finance us all these years, he was supplementing with shadier and creepier means. We’d moved twice in San Jose, and our apartments kept getting crappier. There were people coming, day and night.” She sighed. “I’m telling it wrong. You have to understand, he wasn’t like this all the time. He’d be perfectly normal, perfectly okay, for days, weeks even. And then something would set him off. Something bizarre. A guy with a green ball-cap, or a waitress whose name had the same first initial as the restaurant where she worked. And then it was all “you can only go up the stairs on every third rung, or they’ll know it’s you,” or “let the phone ring six and a half rings, and then pick up.”

“And we’d do it, I’d do it, because what else could I do? Run away, and sell myself? Try and go somewhere else? Where was I going to go? Call DCF on him, get myself put into foster care, and be some freak’s love toy until I turned 18? At least I knew how to cope with him. And I knew it wasn’t forever. And most of the time, he was my dad, who’d loved me my whole life. And then I turned 18, and how could I leave him? I didn’t have a real education, I didn’t know anything, and I didn’t know how to survive. I kept saying I’d do this, or I’d do that, and then I’d get out. And then I just kept staying. Because maybe this time, he’d be okay. Maybe this time, I’d get my dad back. Because he was all the family I had left anymore, you know?

“So one night, a couple months back, this guy comes to see Dad. Dad’s been wild the past few days, and I’m having trouble remembering all the rules. I figure we’re moving in a few days, and I’m okay with that. But I’m starting to really think, maybe this time, I won’t go with him. Maybe I just won’t be there anymore. But this guy walked into the apartment, and he looked like trouble, from the beginning. He looked like he was strung out, and like he was there to buy drugs, or something, so I went to my room and bolted the door. I could hear them talking, and they—they weren’t talking about selling drugs.”

Her eyes were far away now, watching the story unfold on the sheet in her lap. Her pupils were huge black holes in her eyes. There was a sheen of sweat on her upper lip. Mom was shaking, her hand clenched over her mouth to choke back—what? A scream? Sickness? Something else entirely? “I got out of there. I—he was crazy. He would have done it, if it got him the money he needed to get away from the Bad Men. And I hear someone coming to my door, and I hid in the closet. Like a fucking baby. Like they wouldn’t have looked there. But Dad says something, and the man shouts, and then there’s screaming, all of a sudden, screaming like someone’s killing him, and I hid, because I didn’t know what else to do.”

She wasn’t crying. I didn’t know if I could have told that story without crying. I stood up so fast that I shattered her reverie. “I’m sorry,” I said, my own voice shaking. I leaned forward and kissed my sister on the forehead. “I can’t. I believe you. But I can’t listen to this anymore.”

I kept my shoulders back as I walked to the doorway again. I could feel Mom’s disappointment, her shame pouring down off her and spilling around my feet. But I was moving now, and I wasn’t going to stop.

Everyone at the nursing station was busy, no one was watching some girl trying not to lose it completely where everyone could see. My sister had just been describing my father selling her to some freak in their apartment. What kind of hell had she been living in? What kind of crazy hold had he had on her, for her to stay there? I pushed my feet down the hall, aiming to hit a bathroom or a waiting room or something before I lost it totally. I happened to find an empty room, and ducked in there, shutting the door behind me. Better to be sure. I found my back against the wall, and let it slide down until my butt hit the floor. I put my head on my knees. All those years, I’d thought she was dead. And instead—God. What a way to grow up.

Footsteps in the hallway. The door opened, and then closed. I didn’t look up, just waited for Mom to start explaining to me, in her calm, rational tone, about how I was letting her down, letting my sister down, letting all the women of history down. The deep voice that said “You left before the really interesting part,” shocked me, and I was on my feet faster than I knew I could get there, my fingertips itching with the need to sprout claws. I planted my hands on the center of Eli’s chest and shoved as hard as I could. It rocked him back on his heels, but that was all.

“What the hell, dude?” He watched me, cold and cool as always, no reaction at all. “Don’t you have anything better to do than follow me around?”

“Would it help at all if I said no, I actually don’t?”

I sighed and gave up, all the puff sliding out of my bones. I felt twisted out and drained. I turned and sat down on the neatly made, antiseptic bed. “Probably not.”

He nodded. “You should have stayed for the finale,” he said. “You would have found it very interesting. A man torn asunder by wild beasts, your sister fleeing for her life. The details of how she made her cross-country journey, mostly on foot, would be interestingly sparse. And she would have finished with a big, grateful smile, saying she was just glad to be home. I would not have put it past her to have shed a tear.”

“They’re my family,” I said. “As messed up as they are, they’re mine. Show some heart, would you please? My dad just died.”

“You’ve thought he was dead for a decade. Does it really matter that you got the timeline wrong?”

“He…no one should die like that.” Like I would be destroying people in the next few weeks. Like I would be tearing families apart. “He was my dad. And they’re…she’s all that’s left of my family.”

He smiled, a cold gesture that made my stomach flip over again. I’d met so many different versions of Eli in the past two weeks, and I didn’t like this one at all, this man who used honesty like a weapon while wearing cold like a cloak. “Are you sure that they’re your family? That she is?”

I opened my mouth, and then shut it again. All based on a little eye roll? Could I really say that I was positive? She believed she was, believed it with her whole heart, but did I know more than that?

He nodded, and the chill faded off him like a mist he’d walked through. The easy smile was back to twinkling in his brilliant eyes. “How’s your control?”

“What?” I didn’t mean to sound completely exasperated. Or maybe I did.

“Of the wolf. Are you holding on okay?”

I studied his face, looking for any evidence that he was teasing me. “I thought you said I needed help.” He watched me, his face blank. “At the church? I told you about the turning-into-a-monster thing, and you said that I needed help.”

He blinked, his brow furrowed. His confusion was genuine, I knew that much, although he wasn’t giving off anything else that was clear. “Right. Because you need help. To fight the monster. I mean, you could do it on your own if you wanted to, but your odds would suck, and it wouldn’t be much fun.”

Every time I was around this guy, my cheeks lit up like a Christmas tree. “So you weren’t actually suggesting that I needed psychiatric intervention.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you think I’m crazy?”

Another set of those rapid blinks, and then he laughed. A merry, joyful laugh, and he was suddenly right in front of me, kissing me, and I heard the rush of water on a still winter day, and his hands rested on my hips like butterflies. The focus was so sharp, so strong, and his lips rasped on mine, quivering through me all the way down to my knees, and I opened my mouth to him with a sound that lived somewhere between a groan and a whimper. He plunged forward, and my hands were tangled in his hair, and I wanted to be filled with his cold water, and live my life in this clarity.

When he slowly, delicately, left off kissing me, it felt like everything was ending. His hands were on either side of my face, and he pressed his forehead to mine. “Cait,” he said, with a longing that was betrayed in more ways than one. “Go home. Read the damn book. Okay?” He pressed his lips against my forehead, and then turned and left.

Really? A world-changing kiss followed up with a reading assignment? Freaking teachers. That book had better have naughty bits.

I sat on the bed until my knees were solid again. I thought of poking my head back into the room to tell Mom I was leaving, but—no. Awkward. I didn’t need to go back there just to know that I was unnecessary. I sent Mom a text that read “Shan-mergency, need to run, I’ll see you at home.” And then I shut my phone off. The walk home would help me clear my head.

I was sweaty and miserable by the time I got home. I ran myself through the shower, even though the humidity of the day would probably mean that my hair wouldn’t really dry until tomorrow. But I’d done some ugly crying while I walked, and I wanted to wash that off. And fine, I’d see what book the crazy, sexy, wonderful guy that I couldn’t have had given me. And somehow, it seemed important to be clean before doing it. I didn’t look too deeply into my own rationale there, just reminded myself, over and over again, that I couldn’t have him. He wasn’t mine.

With my body clean, and my hair tucked up into a messy bun, I stretched out on my bed with the book Eli had given me, back when he was just an adorable weirdo checking in on me after saving my life. The cover read
Cryptonomicon
, by Neal Stephenson. It was a paperback, but it was thick and heavy. It was exactly the sort of book that had sold me on my eBook, in fact, but that seemed unkind to point out, especially after his regular and pointed reminders that I hadn’t read the thing yet. I did consider going online and downloading an e-version, but decided against it, in the end. I’d at least crack the spine, so it looked read. Just in case. Even though he wasn’t the kind of guy I could have.