The Society of S (44 page)

“Ever the obedient one,” my father said.

Then a nurse walked into the room, wearing a brightly patterned smock. My father shuddered at its design and closed his eyes.

“Time for visitors to leave.” The nurse smiled at us, most insincerely.

My mother sighed, and abruptly hypnotized her.

“Only for a few minutes,” she said. “Let me finish telling this. So, they were trying to get in through the metal shutters at the back, and the others used axes to break down the front door. I am
very
impressed with the Siesta Key firefighters, in particular the ones from Station 13. They pried off the shutters somehow and found Ari in the study, and carried her down in the basket thing. Or is it a bucket? What do you call it? Never mind.

“And you were the first one
we
found.” She looked at my father as if she might cry. “You were in bad shape. Much worse than you-know-who, and much worse than Ari. You were black with soot, and oh, the burns on your back —”

“Who’s you-know-who?” His shoulders moved off the pillows, as if he were trying to sit up.

I’d never known my father to interrupt anyone. He’d always said that, no matter how dire the situation, rudeness is inexcusable.

“Lie back.” My mother stretched her hands as if to push him, and his shoulders fell back. “Malcolm,” she said. “You-know-who is Malcolm. You’re too weak to read my thoughts.”

“He was there?” I asked.

“They found him in the entryway, not far from your father.” Her eyes were on his face, not mine. “Didn’t you know? Didn’t anyone tell you?”

“How did he get in?” my father asked no one in particular.

“He must have made himself invisible,” I said. “He might have come in when I put out the trash. Then, when the fire got to him, he would have lost the concentration and become visible again. But Father might not have seen him in the smoke.”

“I’d thought Raphael must have let him in.” Mãe pushed her hair back, straightened her shirt.

“I saw no one.” He lifted his hand again, looked at the IV with disgust. “I awoke with smoke in my room. I found the fire near the kitchen and tried to put it out, but it moved too quickly. The smoke was overwhelming.”

“Ethyl ether,” Mãe said. “That’s how it started. The firemen found a canister in the kitchen. Whoever planned it did a thorough job. He even took the batteries out of the backup switch for the hurricane shutters.”

“Malcolm started it,” I said. “It makes sense.”

My father said, “It could have been Dennis, I suppose. But I tend to agree with you — Malcolm’s more likely. Why didn’t he leave, after he set the fire?”

Mãe said, “I suspect he wanted to watch.” Her voice was bitter.

“Where is he now?” I hoped that he was dead.

“Who knows?” Mãe’s face looked far away. “They put him in an emergency van to take him to the hospital, but somehow or another they lost him. When they opened the doors, the van was empty.”

“He escaped.” My father sank into his pillows and closed his eyes.

“You need to rest.” My mother woke up the nurse, and we said good-night.

Back in my room, I told her about the argument the day of the fire — and about the expression on Malcolm’s face as he left.

She didn’t show surprise. “Yes, he loves Raphael,” she said. “I’ve known that for years.”

And her face, and her voice when she said his name, told me that she loved my father, too.

O
n a sweltering afternoon about a month later, Harris and I were lounging at either end of a hammock on the front porch of a house owned by Mãe’s friends in Kissimmee. The friends were in Orlando for the day, so we had the place to ourselves. An overhead fan kept the air circulating enough to keep us tolerably cool, and we drank lemonade in tall glasses through long, bendable straws.

I was writing in my journal. Harris was thumbing though an art book:
The World’s Greatest Paintings
.

Hurricane Barry had not been kind to Homosassa Springs. Blue Beyond was no more. A storm surge from the river had destroyed most of the house, Mãe said, and the trees and gardens had been shredded by tornadoes. Luckily all of the animals had been evacuated safely — even the bees, whose hives had been moved off the property to higher ground and secured, before the storm. The statue of Epona also survived intact, and currently guarded the front door of the house where we were staying.

Mãe and Dashay sat up late, talking about whether the structure could be rebuilt. They’d been back to Homosassa twice, and each time they returned to Kissimmee with rescued items and more stories. Flo’s Place and the Riverside Resort were ruins, missing roofs and walls, their windows smashed despite plywood nailed up to protect them. Monkey Island was nothing but a rock, its trees and rope bridges gone. Its lighthouse had been found floating in the river several miles away.

Today they’d left an hour before, to make another assessment of the damage and do some cleaning up. They’d invited me to come along. I declined. I didn’t want to see the destruction.

My father was in Ireland. He’d sent me a postcard of an island in a lake; the message read “Peace comes dropping slow,” a line from a Yeats poem, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” After his too-lengthy convalescence in the hospital, he decided he’d had enough of Florida. Root went on a summer vacation, and my father flew to Shannon to explore, possibly to find a new home base. He’d invited me to come along. That offer, too, I declined. I needed time to sort things out.

For the first time in my life I wondered about my future life. Would I go to college? Get a job? It had been months since I’d spent time with teenagers. In becoming
other
, I’d lost my contemporaries, my friends.

Human friends, at any rate. At some point Harris nudged me and pointed at a painting in his book — John William Waterhouse’s
The Lady of Shalott
. It could have been a portrait of my mother, I thought, and Harris thought so, too. Pleased that we agreed, he settled back into his end of the hammock again, and I returned to my brooding.

I wondered if I’d have a boyfriend. Michael and I had talked on the phone a few more times, but we found less and less to say. I couldn’t tell him I knew who killed Kathleen, and that knowledge constrained my end of our conversations.

And I wondered if Malcolm was out there, somewhere. Would I spend my life being stalked by him?

Or would I spend it trying to reconcile my parents? I didn’t know how things stood between them. My father had left for Ireland without confiding in me. When I asked my mother, her face was enigmatic. “The summer’s not over yet,” she said.

The front gate’s buzzer rang, and I was glad to stop my thinking.

“Stay here,” I told Harris. He’d been allowed to remain with us for the summer, as a gift to me. And in truth, he seemed to like Florida more now. Joey had been sent to the rehab center a few weeks ago, and early reports from Panama claimed his personality had blossomed.

I went down the driveway to the gate, not resentful at all about being disturbed, waving at the horses grazing in the paddock as I passed. Grace emerged from beneath a sweet olive shrub and followed me after a fashion, pausing frequently to sniff the ground or wash herself.

But my heart sank when I saw the man at the gate. Agent Burton stood in the road, talking into his cell phone. His suit was too dark for a Florida summer, and his forehead glistened with perspiration. A white Ford Escort idled behind him.

In the space of ten yards, I formed a strategy.

He put the phone in his pocket. “Miss Montero!” His voice boomed. “Long time, no see.”

I kept walking toward him. I opened the gate.

“Do you want to come up to the house?” I said. I made my voice young and perky. “My mother’s not here, but she’ll be back later. We’re staying here with friends. We lost our house in the hurricane.”

I should mention that I was wearing a two-piece bathing suit, because he noticed it.
Kid is growing up
, he thought.

He smiled. “I was visiting the area, you know, and I heard you were here —”

“Where’d you hear that?” But his thoughts told me: he’d traced one of my calls to Michael.

“Somebody told me. And, uh, we thought you might have some further insights into the death of your friend Kathleen. You left the Saratoga area very suddenly.”

“I needed to visit my mom.” I held the gate half open.

He was thinking it might be strategic if he came to the house, but it also might be risky. Better to do it with an adult present.

“Sure you don’t want to come up? The house is cooler.”

He wanted to. He didn’t move. “No, this is okay. By the way, I was sorry to hear about your father’s passing.”

He wasn’t sorry at all. “Thank you,” I said. “But, you know, he isn’t dead.”

His thoughts began to swirl then, because all along he’d found my father’s death hard to believe.
A man in his prime, dying so suddenly. But no indication of foul play
. “He isn’t dead,” he repeated. “You mean he’s still alive?”

“He lives, he wakes
—
’tis Death is dead, not he,”
I quoted.

Is she nuts?
he thought.

No
, I wanted to tell him.
I’m fourteen
.

I recited a few more lines, making my eyes wide, using the full range of my voice:

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep
—

He hath awakened from the dream of life
—

’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep

With phantoms an unprofitable strife.

Clearly Agent Burton didn’t know Shelley’s poem
Adonais
.

Poor kid
, he thought.
She’s gone over the edge. And no wonder, with all she’s been through
.

I could have gone further. I could have recited the entire poem. Or, I could have told him,
By the way, my father is a vampire. So is my mother. So am I
. I could have told him who killed Kathleen.

I could have told him about the fire. The investigators weren’t sure if Malcolm had set it, or if it was Dennis’s form of revenge. Maybe Agent Burton could solve that one. Or maybe he could find out who left the roses on my father’s grave.

I could have told him how things look, at fourteen, under an aspect of eternity.

Instead, I repeated,
“Peace, peace! he is not dead.”

I gave him a sad smile. In practicing the art of confusion, there is no better weapon than poetry.

“Yeah,” he said. “Peace.” He made the V-sign with his right hand, turned, walked back toward his white rental car. I heard him think,
This case will never close
.

And I turned, walked up the path back to the house, Grace following me. I’d go back to the hammock for a while, dream away the afternoon. For now, it was enough.

L
ong ago, when my father told me, “It’s a pity that more vampires don’t write the facts,” I’d thought,
Well, I’m doing my part
.

But I decided to stop writing. I’d put down all the facts I had, and it was time for me to figure out what to do with them — to take two steps back and consider the puzzle as a whole picture, with light and dark and shadows. Later, I copied all the useful parts into this new notebook.

I’d like to think that someone will read my notes and find them useful — that
you
will read them. I dedicate this book to you — the child that I hope to have one day. Maybe you’ll have an easier time growing up than I did. Maybe this book will help.

Maybe, someday, humans will read it, too. Once they take the first leap — believing that we exist — perhaps they’ll begin to understand and tolerate us, even value us. I’m not naïve enough to imagine us living with them in complete harmony. And I know now that my life will never be
normal
.

But imagine what could happen if we all felt that we were citizens of the world, committed to a common good? Imagine forgetting ourselves, and forgetting that we’re mortals and
others
, and instead focusing on bridging the schisms that keep us apart. I think I could do that, serving as a kind of translator between the two cultures.

In the last chapter of
Walden
, Thoreau wrote,
Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work
.

That’s my plan, one way or another: to carry on the work.

Grace still is with me, but Harris is gone, off to the sanctuary in Panama to learn how to be wild again. Will there someday be a sanctuary for us?