Vampire Blood (19 page)

“Not without me, you don’t,” Joey sighed. “Just let me tell Laurie I’m leaving; she can keep the place going until we return.”

A minute later, as Jenny trudged out the door, her brother, without the apron, was beside her.

“Have you tried Mom’s place, yet?” Joey asked as they got into his old red pickup truck with the bald tires.
I’m not letting you drive in your agitated state,
he’d informed her.

“It was the next place I was going to look, Joey.”

* * * *

Estelle Lacey lived in a one-room apartment on the other side of town. The complex was dilapidated. The grass outside the front door hadn’t been cut in weeks, and the paint was peeling. There was an oily rag stuffed into a broken windowpane.

Their mother didn’t answer the door and Jenny pounded at it in vain. Joey shoved gently in front of her.

“Mom, it’s Joey, let me in. We’re looking for Dad. Have you seen him?” he shouted through the closed door.

Something was moving on the other side.

“We know you’re in there, Mom,” Joey persisted.

“Mom, open up! We have to talk to you! Dad’s
missing.”

“What did you say?” a hoarse voice from inside.

The door creaked open and a gaunt face stared out at them, squinting at the sunlight. “Ernest... something’s happened to my Ernest?” it rasped.

The cloying smell of alcohol could have knocked Jenny down. “She’s drunk, she doesn’t know what’s going on,” Jenny hissed, her desperation making her short tempered, ready to give up. “Let’s just go.”

“He’s not here, neither?” The woman on the other side coughed into her hand, turning her head away from the light. “Hot in here, not feeling too good. Who’d you say you were?”

“Joey, Mom. Remember?” his voice was unexpectedly tender. He sounded like a little boy. “Your
son.”

“Oh, yeah, now I recall.” She started to rattle on about things completely off the wall. Bugs that were red and then turned green. How she had to hide from people from Mars who wouldn’t leave her alone. She must have remembered who they were because her mistrust had evaporated. She’d opened the door wider.

“Ah, forget her, Joey. She’s in la-la land.” Disgusted, Jenny spun around, anxious to leave. Worried sick about her father, she couldn’t stand to look or listen to her drunken mother. There wasn’t time. Something terrible had happened to her dad, and time was one luxury she didn’t have. She had to go. The world she knew was falling apart in front of her eyes, and she had to find him and to hell with her mother!

“Wait a minute,” Joey pleaded, catching her arm. He glanced back at the drunk in the doorway.

“Mom, have you seen dad today?”

The woman’s face had been changing even as they spoke, her eyes clearing and filling with fear. Confusion. “No, Joey ... haven’t.” The words were slurred, but, at last, something had gotten through the fog to her.

Then she blurted out, “Ernest is missing? My God!”

Jenny turned and strode away.

When Jenny was at the car, tugging open the door, waiting for Joey to catch up, she looked behind her. Her mother’s worried, white face hovering in that dark doorway seemed a bad omen. A truly bad omen.

For the first time in months, Estelle was showing signs of life, even if it was only fear. It was just a shame, Jenny fretted, that it took something like this to jar the woman out of her self-induced stupor. Also a shame, that at that moment, Jenny didn’t give a damn.

“Where do we go now?’“Joey inquired, once they were in the truck. It was getting hot. The day moving on. Joey’s face was drenched in sweat.

“Oh, God. I don’t know. I don’t know,” Jenny whispered, rocking in place beside him.

“I think we should notify the police,” Joey offered after a minute. “Sheriff Samuels. What do you think?”

“Yes,” Jenny replied, halfheartedly, right before they started off towards the police station.

“Then, after we talk to him, we’ll drive to the farmhouse and see if Dad came back. Check the worksite, that theater, maybe he forgot you and went on to work alone. We should have checked there first.” He went on and on.

Jenny said nothing.

“Then, if he’s not there, Jenny, we’ll look all over town if we have to. Ask everybody he knows if they’ve seen him. All right?”

Still she didn’t say a word.

Yeah, sure. Look. Tell. Ask. Pray. What difference did it make? For she suspected that whatever they did, whatever they tried, or wherever they searched, they wouldn’t find him.

Just like the Albers.

He was gone.

Chapter Ten

August 31

“What are you doing here?” Jenny demanded as she walked in the door of the farmhouse and saw her.

Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, slurping coffee as pretty as you please, as if she’d never run away and left her husband to fend for himself; never pretended she hadn’t known her own children and had never gone on an eight-month booze binge.

“Waiting for Ernest to come back, Jenny.”

“He’s not here. We couldn’t find him.” Jenny choked on the words.

“I know, but I’m still gonna wait for him.” Her mother’s voice was tired. Her gray hair was neatly combed and tied at her neck in a bright blue ribbon. Her eyes were bloodshot, but aware. The old intelligence had been restored to them as well. She even had a clean lounging dress on. Purple with tiny white flowers. Jenny remembered it. It’d been a birthday present to her mother from Jenny’s father a few years past.

With a start, Jenny realized her mother wasn’t drunk. For the first time in years, the woman was practically sober, or as close to sober as she’d been in a long time.

How had she done it alone?

“I’ve come home,” her mother spoke in a guilty whisper.

“For how long this time?” Jenny scoffed, searching for something, anything to hurt her mother as she’d been hurt.

“I’ve come home to stay.”

Jenny looked at her mother’s wrinkled face, saw the truthfulness in it, the regret, and ended up giving her a wan smile. The loving face was as she remembered it.

Jenny stood there rigid, her tall body drained from the heat. She wiped her hand on her dirty white shorts and tugged down her striped terrycloth top. Her hair was falling out of the long braid she’d tied it into early that morning, and a streak of grime along with the sweat shining on her face made her look frazzled.

In the last few days, she’d lost even more weight.

Perhaps the old woman really meant it. God, Jenny needed someone. She needed the mother she’d once had. It felt good to see that woman again, if only for a moment or two, but Jenny was damned if she’d hand her heart back on a silver platter to her that easily. Her mother would have to do a heck of a lot more to earn it.

It was late Sunday afternoon. The dying sunlight seeped in through the farmhouse’s windows, sparkling amidst the dust. It was a warm summer day like so many others before. Outside soon the fireflies would be chasing each other over the lawns.

The two women stared at each other cautiously.

“Sit down, child, and have a cup of coffee.” Her mother finally waved a hand at the chair across from her. “You look like something the cat dragged in.” A faint, warm smile glimmered a second and then faded when it wasn’t returned.

“Thanks,” Jenny mumbled, taken aback by her mother’s cordial tone and the caring in her face. She sat down, too much in shock to protest, too exhausted.

She stared around the kitchen in amazement. It was as clean as a whistle. The floors mopped and shiny, and the dishes washed and put away. The curtains looked freshly laundered. The tantalizing aroma of brewed coffee and freshly baked apple pie hung in the air. Jenny couldn’t believe it. This had to be a dream. Yeah, and the last three days a nightmare. Fat chance.

“I’ll get you a cup, child.” The voice was the same voice that had calmed Jenny when she’d been a child. “And a piece of apple pie. I remembered it was your favorite.”

“Sounds good, Mom.”

Jenny hadn’t slept for the last two nights. She could barely keep her eyes open. She and Joey had searched everywhere for their father. He’d been missing three days now. Jenny’s grief was ripping her to shreds.

She could no longer keep the feud going with her mother.

She laid her arms on the table and rested her head on them. Listening to her mother move around the kitchen, she tried not to cry, but the tears slipped out anyway.

Jenny felt a soft hand on the top of her head, stroking her. “It’ll be all right, honey. Go ahead and let it all out. Go ahead, cry.” Just like when she’d been a child.

Jenny gazed up at her mother through blurred eyes, and suddenly they were in each other’s arms, both crying.

Her mother pulled gently away first and sat down next to her, still holding Jenny’s hand.

“Jenny, I know this is hard for you. It’s hard for me. When you and Joey came by the other day looking for your dad, when you said he was missing...” she hesitated and looked away, somewhere out the window, maybe into the past. “Something snapped in me. I realized how much I still loved your dad. It was like someone took hold of my heart and squeezed so hard it took my breath away. It hurt. As long as I knew he was here; that he’d always be here, it was different. You never know what you have, Jenny, until you think you’re gonna lose it.”

She looked at Jenny, her eyes full of love and sorrow.

“With Ernest missing, I couldn’t hide in a bottle anymore, Jenny. I can’t lie no more to myself. I love Ernest. I do. Now I know it. This has made me see just how much. I love you and Joey, too. I did a stupid thing by leaving all of you. I was a fool. My life was a mess because I thought I’d missed out on what I
should
have been,
should
have had, but in truth, Jenny, I always
did have
something special.” Her face quivered, her eyes swimming with tears. I had the love of a good man, the love of my children and friends. That was so much more than I deserved.”

Jenny knew she was also referring to the poor Albers. Somehow she’d found out about them.

“All that really matters in this life, I was too blind to see. Now I do.” She paused, watching Jenny mechanically put apple pie in her mouth and chew.

“I’m sorry, Jenny, if I caused you pain or embarrassment these last months. I was so mixed up. So selfish. Forgive me?”

“Oh, Mom, you’re forgiven. You’re all I have left.”

“Jenny.” Her mother shook her head. “He’ll be home. I know I’ll be with him soon. I
feel
it here.” She touched where her heart was.

Jenny bit her lip, her face tortured. “Mom, we can’t find him. We’ve searched everywhere. He’s
gone.”

“No, he’s
not.
He’ll be found. He’ll be back,” her mother stated stubbornly.

The two women stared dismally at each other, the words they wanted to say but were afraid to say in the end, unspoken between them. There would be time later.

Jenny stayed for another cup of coffee and another piece of apple pie that her mother urged on her. They talked about the past, the present and what was being done to find Ernest and the Albers. Then she went home.

She was so bushed she fell asleep on the couch, completely dressed. That way, if a phone call came in the night, her dad wanting a ride home from wherever in hell he’d gotten himself to, she’d be ready.

She awoke sometime in the middle of the night, disoriented. Someone was standing in front of her in the weak radiance from the kitchen night light. Jenny glanced over to the door, a lighter slice of night than the rest. The door was open. It slowly swung shut by itself.

Jenny came awake so fast, leaping off the couch, she nearly tripped over herself.

“Whoa!” a familiar voice came out of the darkness. “It’s me, Jenny, Terry Michelson.”

Jenny scrambled to find the lamp and snap it on. Still shaking, she faced her uninvited visitor.

“Mister Michelson? How did you get in?”

“The door was unlocked. You should always lock your doors, especially now.”

“What are you doing here in the middle of the night?” She flopped back down on the couch, rubbing her eyes. She felt strange, as if she were drugged.

“Oh, Jenny,” his voice hypnotic. “It’s not the middle of the night.” He gazed down at her and their eyes met. Jenny felt a deep falling sensation; a cloud settled on her mind.

Something about his eyes, so piercing, so all knowing, took her will away
.

He reached out and touched her cheek, his gaze full of sympathy. “I heard about your father. I’m so sorry, Jenny, so
sorry.
I truly liked him. I had to come by and see if there was anything I could do.”

Jenny wanted to look away because her eyes were filling with fresh tears, but she found she couldn’t. “No, there’s nothing you can do,” she said softly. “We’re doing everything we can.”

“Any word yet from him?” His hands were tightly clenched at his sides, and his jaw was tight in the faint light. Who was he angry with?