The Dark Divine (5 page)

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Daniel twisted off the cap to something in the engine and pulled up an oily metal stick. “You dating that Bradshaw guy?” He screwed the cap back on.

He was being so matter-of-fact I wondered if I’d dreamed all that commotion. Could I have fallen asleep while waiting for Pete? But that crowbar wasn’t there before. “What just happened?” I asked. “Were you watching me?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“You aren’t answering mine.” I took a step toward him. “Did you see what happened?”
Did you stop what almost happened?

“Maybe.”

I ducked under the hood so I could see him better.

“Tell me.”

Daniel wiped his greasy hands on his pants. “Just some kids playing around.”

“With a crowbar?”

“Yeah, they’re all the rage these days.”

“And you expect me to just believe that?”

Daniel shrugged. “You can believe whatever want, but that’s all I saw.” Daniel fiddled with something else in the engine. “Your turn,” he said. “You going out with Bradshaw?”

“Maybe.”

“You picked a real prince,” he said sarcastically. “Pete’s a nice guy.”

Daniel snorted. “I’d watch out for that prick if I were you.”

“Shut up!” I grabbed one of his bare arms. His skin was like ice. “How dare you say things like that about my friends. How dare you come back here and try to weasel your way into my life! Stop following me around.” I yanked him away from my father’s car. “Get lost and leave me alone.”

Daniel chuckled. “Same old Gracie,” he said. “You’re just as bossy as ever. Always ordering people around. ‘Tell me.’ ‘Get lost.’ ‘Give it back.’ ‘Shut up.’ Does your daddy know you talk like that?” He wrenched his arm out of my grasp and turned back to the engine. “Just let me get you moving, and then you’ll never have to see my filthy face again.”

I stood back and watched his movements. Daniel had that way about him that could shut me down in an instant. I rubbed my hands together and jumped
up and down to generate some heat. Most Minnesotans have thick blood, but how could Daniel even stand to be outside in only short sleeves? I kicked the gravel a couple of times and worked up my courage again. “Tell me … I mean … why did you come back? Why now, after all this time?”

Daniel looked up at me. His dark eyes searched my face. There was something different about those too-familiar eyes. Maybe it was the way the orange light from the streetlamp illuminated his pupils. Maybe it was the way he stared without blinking. His eyes made him look … hungry.

He dropped his gaze. “You wouldn’t understand.”

I folded my arms. “Wouldn’t I?”

Daniel turned to the engine, hesitated, and then looked back at me. “You ever been to the MoMA?” he asked.

“The Museum of Modern Art? No. I’ve never been to New York.”

“I ended up there a while back. You know they have cell phones, and iPods, and even vacuums in the MoMA? I mean, they’re everyday things, but at the same time they’re art.” His voice seemed softer and less raspy. “The way the lines curve and the pieces fit together. It’s functional art that you can hold in your hand, and it changes the way you live your life.”

“So?”

“So?” He came up real close to me. “Somebody
designed those things. Somebody does that for a living.”

He stepped even closer, his face only inches from mine. My breath caught.

“That’s what I want to do,” he said.

The passion in his voice made my heart beat faster. But his hungry stare made me step farther away.

Daniel slumped back to the engine and yanked something loose. “Only that’s never going to happen now.” He leaned forward, and his black stone pendant dangled from his neck over the open engine block.

“Why?”

“You know the Trenton Art Institute?”

I nodded. Almost every senior in my AP art class was shooting for admission into Trenton. Usually only one student made it per year.

“They have the best industrial design department in the country. I took some of my paintings and designs there. This woman, Ms. French, looked them over. She said I have
promise”
—his voice skirted around the word like it was bitter to the taste—“but I need more training. She said if I get my diploma and graduate from a respectable art program, she’d give me another chance for admission.”

“That’s great, isn’t it?” I shuffled closer. How did he always do that—make me completely forget I was mad at him so easily?

“The problem is, Holy Trinity has one of the few art
departments that Trenton even deems worthy as a prerequisite. That’s why I came back.” He glanced at me. It seemed like there was something else he wanted to say, something more to the story. He brushed the pendant that rested against his chest. It was a smooth black stone shaped like a flattened oval. “Only that Barlow guy kicked me out the first day.”

“What?” I knew Barlow was mad at Daniel, but I didn’t think he’d actually kick him out. “That’s so not fair.”

Daniel grinned in that mocking way of his. “That’s one of the things I always loved about you, Grace. You’ve got this overriding sense that everything in life should be fair.”

“I do not. That’s so not …” I cringed. “Justified.”

Daniel laughed and scratched behind his ear. “You remember that time we went to the MacArthurs’ farm to see their puppies, and one of the pups only had three legs and Rick MacArthur said they were going to put it down because nobody wanted it? And you said, ‘That’s so not fair!’ and took that puppy home without even asking.”

“Daisy,” I said. “I loved that dog.”

“I know. And she loved you so much she barked her head off whenever you left the house.”

“Yeah. One of the neighbors called the sheriff so many times my parents said I’d have to give her away if it happened again. I knew no one else would want her,
so I kept her in my bedroom whenever we were gone.” I sniffed my running nose. “Then she got out of the house one day … and something killed her. Ripped her throat right out.” My own throat ached with the memory of it. “I had nightmares every night for a month.”

“It was my dad,” Daniel said quietly.

“What?”

“The one who called the police all those times.” Daniel wiped his nose with his shoulder. “He’d wake up in the middle of the day in one of his moods and …” He reached under the hood and jiggled something into place. “Start the car.”

I backed away and got in the driver’s seat. I said a small prayer and turned the key in the ignition. The engine chugged a couple of times and then made this sound like an asthmatic cough. I tried the key one more time and it started. I clapped my hands together and thanked the Lord.

Daniel dropped the hood. “You should get out of here.” He rubbed his hands on his arms, leaving black, greasy tracks on his skin. “Have a good life.” He kicked one of the tires and walked away.

As he slipped out of the light of the streetlamp, I jumped out of the car. “That’s it?” I shouted. “You’re just going to take off again?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“I don’t, I mean, aren’t you coming back to school?”

He shrugged, his back to me. “What’s the point? Without that art class …” He took another step into the darkness.

“Daniel!” My frustration fired like a pottery kiln. I knew I should thank him for fixing the car—for coming along when he did. I knew I should at least say goodbye, but I couldn’t make the words come.

He turned and looked at me, his body almost lost in the shadows.

“Can I give you a ride somewhere? I could drop you at the shelter so you can get some clothes and something to eat, maybe.”

“I’m not the shelter type,” Daniel said. “Besides, I’m staying with some guys over there.” He thumbed in the direction of the squatty building across the street.

“Oh.” I looked at my hands. I’d actually thought he’d been following me, but he was probably just walking down the street when he saw me with Pete. “Wait there.” I went to the car and tore open one of the boxes in the backseat. I dug around and pulled out a red-and-black coat. I took it to Daniel and handed it to him.

He held it for a moment, fingering the embroidered North Face logo on the front. “I can’t take this,” he said, and tried to hand it back.

I waved it away. “It’s not charity. I mean, you used to be my brother.”

He flinched. “It’s too nice.”

“I’d give you another one, but the others in this car
are women’s. Jude has the rest, so unless you want to come to the shelter?”

“No.”

Shouts echoed in the background. A pair of headlights appeared around a corner.

“This will do.” He nodded and took off into the darkness.

I stood and watched until he disappeared. I didn’t even notice the headlights stop in front of my car until I heard someone call my name.

“Grace?” Pete ran up to me. “Are you okay? Why didn’t you stay in the car?”

I looked over his shoulder to the white truck idling in the dark. Its cabin light barely revealed Jude’s face as he sat in the driver’s seat. His expression was blank and stiff as if carved out of stone.

“I got the car running,” I lied.

“Good, but you’re freezing.” Pete wrapped his arms around me and held me to his chest. He smelled spicy and clean like always, but this time it didn’t make me want to be closer to him.

“Can we skip bowling tonight?” I said as I pulled away. “It’s getting late, and I don’t feel up to it. We can go some other time.”

“Sure. But you’ll owe me.” He draped his arm around my shoulder and walked me to the truck. “It’s nice and warm in there, so you ride with Jude. I’ll take the Corolla and then after we unload I’ll drive you
home. Maybe we can stop for coffee on the way back.”

“Sounds good.” But the thought of rich coffee made me ill. And that stony look on Jude’s face as I climbed into the truck made me want to find a hole to bury my head in.

“He shouldn’t have left you here,” Jude said under his breath.

“I know.” I held my fingers up to the heater. “But he thought he was keeping me safe.”

“Who knows what could have come along?” Jude shifted the truck into drive. He didn’t speak again all night.

SATURDAY

I wandered aimlessly around the house like a ghost all morning. Except I was the one who felt haunted.

All night long, I’d dreamed of rattling car doors and that strange, high-pitched noise. And then Daniel’s eyes, glinting and hungry, staring back at me through the glass. I woke up more than once, cold and sticky with sweat.

In the afternoon, I sat in my room and tried to write a report on the War of 1812, but my gaze—and mind—kept drifting out the window to the walnut tree in the front yard. After I’d started the first sentence of my report over for the tenth time, I kicked myself mentally and went downstairs to the kitchen to make some chamomile tea.

I rummaged in the pantry and found a bottle of honey shaped like a bear. It was the same kind I’d loved when
I was young enough to live off of peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches with the crusts cut off. But now it seemed grainy and goopy as I squeezed it out in tiny globs on the surface of the brown tea and then watched them sink to the depths of my steaming mug.

“Got any more of that tea?” Dad asked.

I jumped at the sound of his voice.

He pulled off his leather gloves and unbuttoned his wool overcoat. His nose and cheeks were bright red. “I could use a pick-me-up.”

“Um, yeah.” I mopped up the puddle I’d spilled on the counter. “It’s chamomile, though.”

Dad crinkled his Rudolph nose.

“I think I saw some peppermint in the cupboard. I’ll get it for you.”

“Thanks, Gracie.” He pulled a stool up to the counter.

I took the kettle off the stove and poured him a cup. “Bad day?” He’d been so busy with the charity drive and the endless studying in his office for the last month; it had been weeks since we’d really talked.

Dad wrapped his hands around his mug. “Maryanne Duke has pneumonia again. At least I think that’s what it is.”

“Oh, no. I just saw her last night. She looked tired but I didn’t think … Is she okay?” I asked. Maryanne was my dad’s oldest parishioner. I’d known her forever, and Jude and I had been helping out around her house ever
since the last of her daughters moved to Wisconsin when I was twelve. She was practically our surrogate grandma.

“She refuses to go to the doctor. All she wants is for me to pray for her.” Dad sighed. He looked worn, crumpled—as if the parish itself rested on his shoulders. “Some people expect miracles.”

I handed him a peppermint tea bag. “Isn’t that why God invented doctors?”

Dad chuckled. “Now, would you go tell that to Maryanne? Your brother can’t even talk any sense into her, and you know how much she loves him. He told her that if she’d gone to the doctor last time, she’d probably be well enough to sing her solo tomorrow.” Dad hung his head low; his nose just missed the brim of his mug. “I don’t know where I’ll find a replacement this late. And tomorrow is the kickoff for next semester’s scholarship drive.”