The Sweet Dead Life (17 page)

"Friend of the family now," she said lightly. "These Samuels folks just can't stop showing their gratitude."

Casey laughed nervously. So did I.

Renfroe nodded, his smile wavering. He didn't look convinced. I didn't blame him. All at once, I panicked. Was there more wrong with me? Had he come to tell us that the Cipro wasn't really going to do enough? That he'd found something wacky mixed with the snake venom and that was why I still felt a mite pukey? Or worse, that the blood Amber had surreptitiously drawn had come back from the lab and that
Mom
was dying? Maybe that's why Amber had come screeching up in the first place! Besides, Renfroe might have no idea about Amber's little move. He wasn't her "friend at the lab." Maybe he and Mom were sitting there reviewing my funeral plans. Then why did she look so happy?

"Y'all are home early," she remarked breezily. "Look who's here." She turned to the doc. "Stuart, you have been such an angel to me, visiting all the time."

Casey stiffened.

Be careful how you toss that A-word around, Mom
.

Right. Dr. Renfroe had to leave. Now. As much as I appreciated his genius and kindness with the vitamins for Mom and all, this was not the time. And it wasn't like we could just announce: "Hey. There's something nasty going on in Mom's bloodstream and it may be connected to Dad's disappearance and the reason I was going downhill faster than a toddler on a runaway tricycle.

You need to leave now so Amber the EMT angel can explain what the tests showed. Which, even if

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she wasn't a supernatural being, would still be off the record since she took the blood on her own time."

"Sweet ride out there," my brother said to Dr. Renfroe. "That Audi belong to you?"

The doc nodded. "Had it a couple weeks now. But I kept my truck. That way I can still haul stuff." He looked ill at ease. Maybe he felt bad showing off the wealth around us. After all, he would have fired Mom if she hadn't quit first.

He stood and turned to me. "How are you feeling, Jenna?"

"Fine," I said.

"You look good. Here. Stick out your tongue." He checked over my throat and my eyes, nodding as he poked and prodded. "How are your feet?"

I shrugged. "I miss my boots. But they feel better."

"Did you change shifts?" Amber asked the doc. "I thought you worked the ER tonight."

"Who are you again?" Mom asked, staring at Amber blankly.

"Amber, Mom--remember?" Casey said. "She's the paramedic who took care of Jenna after our car accident."

"What? Accident?" Mom's hand fluttered to her mouth. I could see the veins pulsing blue under her skin. "I--I do remember now. Why did I forget? I've been forgetting a lot of things these days, haven't I?" Her eyes started to water, of course, like they always did when she forgot something vitally important, such as to take care of her children. "I think maybe I need to lie down now."

In an instant, she slumped, boneless-seeming, against the couch pillows.

She looked less like a human and more like a jellyfish. Again, for the zillionth time, I willed myself not to cry, too. Casey stepped around the coffee table and sat himself on the other side of Mom. He was still clutching the 147

Manny's gift certificate, but set it on the coffee table next to Renfroe's keys.

Then he took both of Mom's hands in his.

"It'll be okay," he said.

Dr. Renfroe nodded, still seeming troubled. "You rest now, Holly," he said. "I need to be going now anyway. I'll be back in a couple of weeks." He turned to me. "And of course I'll keep an eye on Jenna here." He bent to grab the keys on the coffee table, pausing over the expired Manny's certificate. I felt my face flush. My neck, too. What if Renfroe thought we were so poor and desperate that we were trying to use expired certificates to get cheap food?

"Cleaning up around here," I said. "We need to throw that away. You ever been there, Doc? Manny serves up some pretty good enchiladas."

Dr. Renfroe tried to smile. He looked almost as queasy as I felt. Maybe he preferred tamales.

"Stuart," my mother said in a quavering voice. She tightened her grasp on my brother's hands. "Mike might be in Mexico. Did you know that?"

"What?" He swallowed audibly. I wondered how crazy he thought Mom was.

Jabbering about the husband who abandoned her five years after the fact, apropos of nothing. Of course, if I told him the rest of it, he'd drag us all to the loony bin.

Mom started crying. A little bit of color returned to Dr. Renfroe's cheeks. Now it just looked like he felt sorry for her again. Poor guy. It had to be especially tough for him to see her like this. When she worked for him at Oak View, Mom had been the speech therapist for the neurological cases: folks with Alzheimer's and people recovering from meningitis or encephalitis or anything that might have screwed with their short- or long-term memories.

She taught them how to talk

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again, how to swallow. Dad always used to say he never understood how it didn't just depress the hell out of her to work with people who couldn't remember who they were some days. But it never did.

And then she became one.

(Incidentally, "irony" was never nearly as favorite a vocabulary word as

"flummox" or "chicanery.")

Dr. Renfroe moved to the door. "Jenna, I want to see you again next week.

Call Houston Northside and ask for my office there. The nurse will set you up with an appointment. No need for the ER again unless you take a turn for the worse."

I wasn't fond of how that sounded, but I guess that's how doctors talked.

"Amber can watch out for you, too, I suppose," he added slowly. He seemed to be her sizing up again, almost as if he didn't recognize her. Well, why would he? She was a random EMT chick. Did he sense something about her now? Like, that she was a total imposter? This whole angel thing was making me a jittery mess. I'd always been good at keeping secrets, but we'd moved to a whole different level. I was beginning to wonder about Maggie's philosophy. Maybe the universe should have just let a pigeon crap on my head.

"I'll keep an eye on them," Amber said. "Thanks, Doctor."

He nodded. "Y'all take care now."

I let out a huge sigh of relief when Casey finally closed the front door behind him.

Mom flashed a weak smile. "Stuart says I can come back to work when I'm feeling better. I keep trying to make myself go, you know. But then the day goes by and here I am."

Amber flashed a grin: odd, considering the circumstances.

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Besides, cheery smiles, in my experience, are generally phony. "So who's hungry?" she asked us. "How about I whip up something in the kitchen for an early dinner?"

I hoped this was code for:
Let's go to the kitchen so I can tell you about the
blood work and not freak out your mother
. If it wasn't, and she actually thought offering her personal chef skills was the best use of her angel powers, she and I would need to talk.

Casey helped Mom to her bedroom.

I trailed behind Amber. Just for show--I hoped--she peered into our fridge. It was pretty bleak in there. I tried to assess the look on her face. The last thing I needed right now was my brother's angel boss feeling sorry for us. I may have trusted Amber Velasco a little more than I had before, but I still didn't want her nosing around. In case she was wondering, our freezer contained a half empty ice-cube tray, two hot dogs with freezer burn, the remaining frozen Canadian bacon pizza from the stash Casey had bought when Kroger put them on sale for 50 cents each, and a bag of frozen blueberries that had seen better days.

I cut to the chase. "You really planning on cooking us a meal?"

"You hungry?"

Casey reappeared. Amber slammed the fridge shut and straightened.

"Your mother's got some kind of strange drug in her system," she said without any preliminaries. "Terry at the lab hasn't been able to fully identify it.

Just like no one's figured out yet what substance was mixed with the snake venom in your poisoned boots. Truth? Terry and I think we're dealing with the same source even if the two drugs are different." She paused, staring at me with what almost looked like concern.

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"Go on," Casey demanded.

"Whatever was in your system, Jenna, was meant to make you sick or kill you. But the drug we've identified in your mom isn't nearly as lethal. It's more psychotropic, but not exactly. So far, all Terry's been able to isolate is that it has some herbal properties, like the ginkgo biloba you buy over the counter to boost memory. But like I say, that's not it. He says he needs another day or so."

Neither Casey nor I responded. My legs felt wobbly. Amber would have made a good doctor. She spoke about horrible shit with total clinical detachment.

"Trust me, this guy's a genius," she added. "He'll figure it out."

Or maybe not. Now she sounded like an idiot. "Is he an angel, too?" I asked.

"Nope. Not yet, anyway." A wistful grin flitted across her lips. Okay, creepy.

Did she want this guy to die so they could be angel boyfriend and girlfriend?

Better to let that sleeping dog lie. Who the hell knew what Amber really wanted? That was still a big question smack in the middle of this mess.

Casey scowled. "What do we do? How's it getting into her system? Should we check her shoes? Her clothes? Her sheets? It's not like she goes a lot of places. Damn it, Amber. I figured someone was getting at Jenna's boots at school, like when she was in PE or something. But Mom hasn't left our property for a year except the other night to the hospital. Are you saying that she and my sister were--are--being drugged right here in this house?"

I swallowed. My brother might be failing classes, but he wasn't stupid and I didn't think it was the marijuana, either. The look on his face said it all: He wanted to keep us safe, and he was failing at it. I thought back to those first weeks

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when Dad had disappeared. I'd walked into Casey's room one night and found him kneeling at his bed, his elbows resting on the mattress, hands clasped together. "Please let me find him," he'd repeated over and over as I stood silent in the doorway. "Please. I'll do anything you ask. Please." It was the last time I'd heard my brother pray.

"We need to check everything that your mother eats and drinks," Amber said.

"Especially anything that you two don't. That'll be a start."

"Should we have told Renfroe?" Casey asked. "I mean he's looking into Jenna's boot poison and all. Maybe he--"

"No." Amber's tone was sharp.

Casey's brows scrunched. "Why not?"

"Because I'm dealing with your mother's situation, not him. Doctor-patient confidentially."

"You're not even a doctor!" I practically shouted.

My brother's gaze met mine. Here's what I understood right then: Casey wasn't really sure about anything when it came to being an A-word. But he was going to find out what happened to Dad. He was going to uncover what had been destroying our family and why. He wasn't going to stop until he did. Hell, maybe Lanie Phelps had glimpsed that same spark of motivation inside him, something she hadn't seen since he was a football player. It went a long way to making a crap situation less crappy.

"So what do you want to do now, Casey?" Amber asked, sounding defeated.

"I want to go to Manny's. Bryce says there's someone I need to talk to."

"And you believe him," Amber said. It wasn't a question. It was an accusation.

Casey pulled out his cell phone and dialed.

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I decided to use the painfully awkward silence to take inventory of our fridge, to see if there was anything Mom and I ate that could be destroying her brain and turning my pee green at the same time. (Amber
had
said the poisons came from the same source.) The list of items Mom consumed that weren't leftovers brought home by Casey had extended to five: toast, water, juice, bananas, hard boiled eggs.

Casey was deep in conversation with Bryce. "You sure?" he kept repeating.

He nodded. Drummed his fingers on our grimy kitchen counter. "Okay. If you're screwing with me, I quit." He shoved his phone back in his pocket and glanced at Amber. "Bryce says we're good to go. Dude's name is Zeke.

Bryce showed him an old sports column of Dad's--you know, the ones where he had a byline and his picture. Zeke swears he remembers seeing Dad at Manny's--probably more than once. Bryce is smart like that."

This was the first I'd heard of Bryce's IQ. My personal experience had been that a guy who alphabetized his comic book collection by size and thickness was not exactly using his God-given brains to their fullest extent. On the other hand, my brother the angel was still failing Teen Leadership. The world was a funny place.

"And?" Amber waved her hand in a rolling circle, the universal sign for get to the point.

"And he'll be there until Manny's closes around ten. I'm going to go see him.

Talk to him in person. It's a start. You and Jenna need to stay here with Mom.

I'll call if I find out anything."

"No way," Amber and I said in unison.

"But--"

"Casey!" A muscle tightened in Amber's shapely jaw. "No buts. You're new.

You do what I tell you
."

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With that, she blew out a breath. Correction: she blew wind into our kitchen.

Hurricane force. Just for an instant. The ceiling fan in the breakfast room shook. The light over the sink exploded. The overhead light flickered. The hands on our oven clock--the one that had no battery and had been stuck at 2:21 for the past three years--spun to 2:22, then promptly died again.

"Holy crap," I muttered.

Amber's posture straightened. She seemed to grow taller. A golden glow surrounded her, so bright, that it hurt my eyes. "I'm going with you."

Both Casey and I took a step back.

"Did something fall?" Mom called from the bedroom.

"Light burned out," Casey yelled back. His voice trembled. "Made-in-China bulbs."

"I'm going, too." I set my hands on my hips. If I had my boots, I'd have stomped them on the floor. Amber may have been able to flummox my brother with her angel chicanery, but she could not scare me. Besides, I actually agreed with her on this one. No way would I allow myself to be stuck with her and Mom. "Let's face it. Mom can't get much worse. And someone needs to keep the two of you from killing yourselves."