Shades of Simon Gray (22 page)

The call came just before dawn on Friday. Devin heard the phone but rolled over to face the basement wall. Her mother would answer it. There was a phone by her parents’
bed. Still, Devin found herself listening for her mother’s footsteps overhead. In her heart she knew this call was about her grandmother.

The basement door squeaked open. The light came on and Devin heard someone coming down the steps. A moment later her mother’s shadow stretched across the room. She gave Devin a gentle shake and signaled her to follow.

They stood in the middle of the kitchen, Devin in a T-shirt and bikini briefs, her mother in a summer nightgown with tiny yellow roses. They kept their voices low so as not to wake the others.

“That was the hospital,” her mother said. She reached over to brush Devin’s tangled hair away from her face. “I need you to watch the kids. You can call Mrs. Needham after seven and ask if she’d mind coming over to stay with your granddad so the rest of you can go to school. And ask her if she’d mind taking care of the kids when they get home this afternoon.” Mrs. Needham, a retired beautician who lived across the street with her eldest son, Vincent, sometimes baby-sat for the McCaffertys in emergencies. Devin had a sinking feeling that this was going to be one of those emergencies.

She began to shiver. She felt cold all over, although it was suffocatingly warm in the small house. How could her mother even think of sending her to school when Gram was so sick? “What did they say? Is she going to be okay?”

“She’s in a coma. Dr. Chu said Gram had a number of small seizures last night shortly before it happened.”

“Dad …,” Devin said, her voice trailing off like a
stifled sob. Darrell McCafferty was on the road, hauling a truckload of hair spray, cartons and cartons of it, to a distribution center in Newark. Devin squinted at the clock on the stove. Right about now her father was probably sleeping at a rest stop somewhere on I-80 outside of Chicago.

“I know,” her mother said.

She knew her mother was thinking the same thing. Her father’s mother might be dying, and he was on the road somewhere. At the moment he had no idea of what was going on back in Bellehaven. “I want to go with you,” she told her mother.

“Devin, I need you to be here right now. There’s no one else to watch the kids and Granddad. I don’t want to call Mrs. Needham this early.” She could hear the unspoken “I’m sorry” in her mother’s voice.

“What if she’s dying, Mom?” Tears trembled on Devin’s eyelashes. “I want to be there with her.”

Mrs. McCafferty circled her arms around her daughter. “Honey, your gram’s one tough lady. She’s not going to give up without a fight.” She leaned back and smiled. “And neither are we.”

Devin showed up at the hospital less than a half hour after Mrs. Needham arrived. If her mother was angry about her cutting school, she never said a word. She only nodded, then left Devin alone with her grandmother for her ten-minute visit while she went down to the cafeteria for coffee.

Standing beside her grandmother’s bed, watching the
lines blip across the monitor, Devin thought of Simon, a few doors down. Her grandmother was still able to breathe on her own and so, unlike Simon, didn’t have a respirator. But the curtain was drawn over the window and another curtain covered the glass wall, shutting out the glare of the fluorescent lights in the main room of the ICU, just as they did in Simon’s room. One of the nurses had explained to her that the purpose of keeping the room dim was so the light wouldn’t damage her grandmother’s eyes if she suddenly came out of the coma after a long period.

When Devin’s ten minutes were up, she left her grandmother’s room and, since no one was watching her, slipped into Simon’s. He was still pale, but the swelling in his lips had gone down. The fading bruises had a faint yellowish cast.

She took his limp hand in hers. She wondered if people in comas were in an actual place, a kind of limbo in a different dimension. Maybe it was childish, but she liked to think her grandmother and Simon were together, and that maybe they would help each other find their way back.

Anyone walking down Main Street in Bellehaven late that afternoon would have thought they had stumbled upon a ghost town. Not a single person ventured onto the streets. All was still, except for a few scraps of discarded paper and dead leaves, caught in a playful breeze, shuffling back
and forth over sidewalks sticky with bird droppings from the crows. A few of the shops along Main Street sported Closed signs on their doors, although with several news crews and the team from NIH in town, most of the merchants were willing to keep their stores open, West Nile virus or no West Nile virus.

This was how Main Street appeared when Devin, on her way back to town from the bus stop, decided to pass right by the turnoff that led to her street and keep on going. She was acutely aware of the sound of her footsteps as she walked past the shops, past Chrissie’s Deli, Garden Creations, Flynn’s Liquors, and the Auto Spa, and past the scattered antiques and craft shops with names like The Country Goose, where her mother worked part-time. She crossed at the only intersection in town that had a traffic light, although no cars were in sight, and kept on going until the shops became a few small houses, their front porches only inches from the sidewalk. Ahead was the bridge that connected New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

When she was almost to the guardhouse by the bridge, she changed course and headed down a dirt road. A heavy metal chain stretched across the entrance to the road. A sign warned No Trespassing. But Devin knew this was the quickest way to get down to the river, and that was where she was headed.

Her mother had decided to stay on at the hospital until visiting hours were over, even though she could only visit her mother-in-law for ten minutes each hour. Devin knew she should go straight home and help Mrs. Needham cook dinner for the kids, knew she was being horribly
selfish. But so much weighed on her right now, and she had a splitting headache. The pressure pounded on the inside of her skull. The thought of being trapped in a house full of screaming kids was worse than some medieval torture. She needed to be alone.

For the next hour she sat on a large flat rock by the river’s edge, eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the birds. Every so often she opened her eyes and shaded them with her hand to watch goldfinches dart overhead at top speed, somehow navigating their way through a complex tangle of tree branches while still in flight. Even the most skilled pilot could never achieve such a feat.

Watching the birds helped to calm her. They also made her think of Simon—the time the two of them had returned from the mall where Simon had helped her pick out a CD for Kyle’s birthday. It had been early evening and they’d parked her mother’s car by the boat ramp so they could walk along the river. Something she and Kyle never did. A simple walk would have been far too passive an activity for Kyle, who preferred more challenging undertakings, productive endeavors that would score points with college admissions directors. Anything else was a waste of time.

She and Simon had come to this place, this same rock, just in time to watch the sun begin its descent behind the trees. Less than fifty feet away stood an old black birch, its uppermost branches bare and dying. The rest of the tree still had its leaves. As the two of them watched, a flock of goldfinches landed on the bare branches. The birds spread their wings to catch the sunlight. Their bodies flickered
bright yellow, like enormous fireflies, as they lifted a few feet off the branches, then settled back down. When the sun touched the top of the tree, right before it sank into the woods, the tree looked as if it were ablaze with a crown of gold.

Sitting side by side, neither of them spoke or took their eyes from the tree, but Devin felt as if all the shimmering light from the tree had somehow transferred itself to her body.

Now, as she stared up at the evening sky, she wasn’t in the least surprised to see that it was black with crows. They settled on the branches, leaving no room for the more timid birds. She wished the goldfinches would light up the birch tree again. But that wasn’t going to happen. Some things weren’t meant to happen twice. At least not in the same way.

But what about people? They sometimes got second chances, didn’t they? She had no idea why she was thinking this, except that it seemed important that Simon and her grandmother have a second chance. And maybe she wanted one for herself, too, although she scarcely dared to hope.

How did you manage that—a second chance? Did you bargain with the gods, with the supernatural forces? Make deals with the Furies? With
… them
? Because Devin suddenly realized she was willing to do just that—strike a bargain. She wanted to set things right again. She wanted Simon and her grandmother to have a second chance.

She was so lost in thought, she did not notice it had
begun to snow black feathers until she glanced down and saw that a small puddle of them had formed in her lap. She sighed and glared up at the crows.

She got to her feet, brushed the feathers from her clothes, and picked them out of her hair. Then, before she left, she made a deal. She shouted up to the crows that they could darn well make themselves useful and take a message back to “them,” tell “them” she would trade her future at Cornell, or any of the schools where she had been accepted under false pretenses, for the lives of Simon and her grandmother. The crows fell silent. Devin had the eerie feeling they were actually listening. One of them lifted off a branch and flew toward the sunset.

Devin’s laugh began as a timid giggle, then swelled to a deep gut-bursting belly laugh. She felt lighter than she’d ever imagined possible, so light she had to look down to make sure she was still wearing shoes. She brushed a few feathers from her shoulders, then headed back up the slope toward town.

When she came through the back door a short time later, Devin found Mrs. Needham spooning out canned ravioli for Devin’s six siblings. Mrs. Needham was wearing Mr. McCafferty’s barbecue apron. Her gray hair was perfectly coifed and her fingernails manicured to within an inch of their lives. After forty-five years as a beautician you didn’t exactly go to seed overnight.

Mrs. Needham looked up as Devin came through the door. She let the empty pan drop in the sink with a clatter and frowned at Devin as if to say, You’re too late.

Devin felt guilty about leaving Mrs. Needham holding the bag. “I’ll take care of the dishes when everyone’s done,” she said as she headed down the hall to her room.

The first thing she did was to sit down at her desk and begin to compose letters of regret to Cornell, Middlebury, and Lafayette. Monday she would take the bus to the community college and pick up an application. And in between she would go right on praying there was still time to undo what she had done.

Roger Garvey poured himself a cup of coffee and sat on the corner of Debra Santino’s desk, grinning. The lieutenant couldn’t for the life of her figure out what he was so happy about. They still didn’t have any solid leads on the breach of security at Bellehaven High. Not one of Simon’s friends had revealed a single incriminating piece of evidence during her interrogation on Tuesday, although it hadn’t escaped her attention that Devin McCafferty had grown increasingly agitated and defensive before the interview was over. It could be she was hiding something. Debra planned to follow up on that, perhaps come at the girl with a different line of questioning.