“See this bit of vine right here? I forget what it’s called, but when you grow it, it clings to anything.”
I had put down the rag and taken Joss’s free hand in mine, running my thumb over her knuckles as I talked to her sister. I reached out for Jill with my other arm and hugged her to my side, giving her a smacking kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.”
Her eyes got huge. She slapped her hand to her cheek and bolted across the room. I was about to feel worse, like I had really freaked her out on top of everything else, but she grabbed the cordless off the wall and whirled back to us. “Excuse me, I have to call everyone I have ever met, right now.” And she ran out of the room.
I turned back to Joss and felt the grin at Jill’s cuteness evaporate as I met the hollowed-out look in her eyes. I ran my hands up her arms. “You’re too cold.” I started to take my jacket off.
“Hang on,” Tim said, coming around the table.
“What are you doing?” I asked with menace when he put his hands on her bare shoulders.
“Relax, man, we’re practically cousins or something.”
“What’s ‘or something’?” I wanted to know as his hands, now glowing, slid down her arms.
Joss shuddered and flung the ice pack back toward his head. He caught it and it immediately melted limp over his hand. “We’re so not related.” Her voice sounded almost normal.
I touched her arm again. She felt better. Warm. Her color was better too.
Tim shrugged, tossed the wet mess in the sink and sat down. “You’re always so pleasant, Joss. Like the big sister I never wanted to have. Been a long time since we’ve done this, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess so. You potty-trained yet?”
“I was potty-trained!”
“You had Pull-ups.”
“See?” he said, getting up and shaking a finger at her. “This is what people mean when they say you’re abrasive.” He looked at me. “You must put up with a lot.”
He didn’t wait for an answer, but strolled out of the room. Immediately the attitude she had been wearing the last few minutes dissolved and she seemed to shrink into herself again.
“How’re you doing?” I asked her, wondering if it was the dumbest question ever.
She just shrugged.
I tucked her hair back behind her ear, kissed her forehead. “It’s gonna be okay.”
She didn’t look at me or bother to tell me how ridiculous that was.
“What was Tim talking about? Been a long time since you’ve done what?”
“Since we were stuck in a house together. His dad babysat me a lot last time Dad…got sick.”
“Oh.” I didn’t really know what I was supposed to say or do now. It was getting on toward morning. It seemed like we should be doing something, but everyone who knew what to do was, like, monumentally distracted. And all I knew to do was sit here and hold Joss’s hand until she snapped out of it and became Joss again.
“When I was little I had these blocks,” she said, kind of startling me, “lots of them. I used to like to stack them on top of each other, see how high a tower I could make before it fell over.”
Okay, about the last thing I expected her to do right now was start talking about childhood toys. It kind of worried me.
“I know kids just do that, but I liked to do it sitting across the room. I could hold the tower up with my mind and keep floating blocks up and setting them on the top. ‘Look, Mom, no hands!’ It was a challenge. I could spend hours doing that.
“I was never supposed to let Dad see me doing it. Mom was really serious about that. I guess somehow she knew my Talent was going to be a problem for him. I usually did what I was told, so I was pretty careful.
“This was just after the fire. Like, right after, when I’d just gotten out of the hospital. Emily wasn’t home yet, so there was no one next door to play with. Mom started talking on the phone and she asked me to go to my room and play for a while, so I was sitting on my bed and stacking blocks when Dad came home from the shop. He’d just heard that NIAC had taken Emily from the hospital and came home to tell Mom in person. But she was on the phone with Emily’s mom, so he came up to check on me.
“One minute I was stacking blocks, and the next minute he was just there, in my room, staring at me with this look I’d never seen before. The tower fell, but I still had this one block hanging in air that I was too stupid to drop.
“‘What the hell are you doing?!’ He screamed it at me. Dad had scolded me, sure, but he never raised his voice to me. I mean, he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t have to, right? But that day he screamed.
“I dropped the block. It ricocheted off the pile and landed against his shoe. He bent down and picked it up. He was studying it, like he…I don’t know, like maybe it was the block and not me. Like that’s what he wanted it to be, and if he glared at it hard enough, he could make that be the truth. I just sat there on my bed, shaking, waiting for something else to happen.
“I heard my mom racing up the stairs. She bolted into the room and skidded to a stop, looking from the pile of blocks, to me, to my dad, and she knew exactly what happened.
“So I said, ‘Sorry, Mommy,’ because I knew it was supposed to be our secret.
“I swear it was like the air in the room changed. Dad closed his fist around the block and turned toward her. That moment, they both seemed, like, broken. Dad looked like someone had put a knife in his gut. Mom was crying.
“He said, ‘You knew.’ And she said his name. And he said, ‘You knew that she was like this, and you… Why?’
“She tried to answer, but he cut her off.
“‘Why would you keep that from me?’
“‘I was trying to protect you!’ She yelled it like that, like she was pleading with him to understand.
“‘By lying to me? By hiding from me the fact that my own child was—?’
“I don’t know, it was like…If I think about it now I hear all this pain and disbelief in it. But then I think I was just totally scared myself and didn’t know what to think. And then he said, ‘Oh my God,’ and he was shaking his head. He brought his hands up, pressing them against his skull, the block still in his hand, digging into his scalp.
“‘Gene, please,’ she said it like she was begging. She was crying and she swiped the tears off her face and held out her hand, took a step toward him. ‘Please, stay with me.’
“And not ‘stay with me,’ but ‘stay with me,’ you know?”
I nodded, but I don’t think she was paying attention.
“He stopped pacing, and something was different. Like, really different. He said, ‘You lied to me. You hid this from me because you’re with them.’
“And she was like, ‘No, honey, I’m with you. I’m always with you. You know that.’
“‘I don’t know anything anymore!’ He screamed it at her. ‘Have you already called them? Are they on their way?’ Then he raced over to the window and looked out.
“Mom grabbed me by the arm and pulled me off the bed. She slung me out the door before my feet ever hit the ground. ‘Go to the kitchen and call Aunt Jayce,’ she said. ‘She’s on speed dial. Tell her Daddy’s sick and I need her and Uncle Ben over here right now.’
“And I was like, ‘But Mommy—’ because I was scared and I didn’t want to leave them and I wasn’t supposed to touch the phone.
“She said, ‘Please, baby, help me. Go!’
“I mostly fell down the steps while Dad started screaming for me. I pushed a chair up to the phone and called Jayce. She told me I did good and to go find a place to hide, not to come out until she or my mom came for me. So I did. I hid in that cabinet,” she pointed across the room, “under the kitchen sink, and listened to a lot of pounding and screaming for a few minutes, and then there was just nothing. For what seemed like forever.”
“What happened to your mom?” I asked, when it seemed like she wasn’t going to go on.
She jumped, like she forgot I was even there for a minute. She sh
ook her head once, like she was trying to break free of the story. “He broke her arm and her jaw. And she still managed to keep him away from me and lead him back to their room where she tranqued him.”
Jesus Christ.
Joss shook her head again. “It wasn’t until years later that I realized not everyone has a syringe full of sedative hidden in a drawer. She must have known something, known she might need that someday. I never asked her about it.”
I wondered what had happened to that plan tonight. “And she let him come back after that.”
“Of course she did,” Joss said, in this are you some kind of moron? tone.
“He broke her jaw.” I drew the words out, like I could somehow help her understand what that meant. What was it with the Marshall women?
“He’s my dad. Don’t you get that? She said: ‘I’m with you. I’m always with you.’ That’s how it is.” Then the absolute faith of that bled out of her face and she went back to looking defenseless. “Dad’s just…sick, you know? Then he’ll go and get better, and he’ll come home again.”
I saw it coming and yanked her into my lap as she totally came apart.
I hated it when Joss cried. I hated the way it made me feel, the helplessness, the way it took me by the throat and clawed at my gut. I felt like shit because she was hurting so bad and there was absolutely nothing I could do to fix it. And that, even though it was horrible, the sounds she made, and the way the sobs jerked her whole body, part of me kind of thrilled to the way she clung to me, the way she trusted me, the way she was so completely mine to care for in those moments.
And that was just totally fucked up.
I held her, rocked her, told her stupid stuff she couldn’t possibly hear over the sounds of her own grief. Jill poked her head in, looking worried, and I mouthed “’S okay,” and waved her off again. Joss wound down, twisting her fist in my jacket like it was the valve that could turn off her own emotion. I turned the damp rag to a clean spot and put it in her hand, knowing she was about done having me mop at her face for one night.
“I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely, when she could talk again.
“You don’t ever have to apologize for that.”
She tossed the rag on the table and buried her face in my neck with a sigh. I just held her like that until her mother looked cautiously into the room. I tapped Joss on the shoulder and she raised her head, meeting her mom’s eyes. She slid back to her own chair, raking her hair back with both hands while her mom, whose red eyes matched her daughter’s, took the chair at the head of the table.
She reached out and took Joss’s hands in both of hers. “What Jayce gave your father,” she stopped, cleared her throat, “was a relatively small dose of tranquilizer. We waited until he started to come around to see if…maybe…if he would be more like himself. He wasn’t. She had put him out again.”
Mrs. Marshall spoke very calmly, her words clear and deliberate. I thought about Joss’s story, about this normal, human woman with a small child taking on a madman by herself like that, keeping her head and coping with her own injuries to do what needed to be done. And then bringing that man back into her home and living with the threat of that hanging over her head. For love.
I’d always seen how Joss was similar to her dad, their eyes, their toughness, the way they brushed everyone aside. But now I was looking at how much Joss was like her mother and I saw devotion, raw nerve, and pure steel spine.
“Ben told me you probably heard things that gave you some questions.”
“Dad called Ben ‘Brian Nichols.’ Ben called Dad ‘Sarge’ and ‘Joe.’ And he answered to it. It was like they were different people.”
Mrs. Marshall sat there for a moment, considering her words. “I guess we were all different people, a long time ago, and that’s not really my story to tell.”
“Dad’s never going to tell me.”
“Jocelyn, if your father ever decided to tell anyone, he would tell you. The important thing for you to understand right now is that his…problems…pre-date you. This is not your fault.”
“Okay.”
“Not ‘okay.’ I need to know you understand me.”
“I don’t understand anything, Mom. But I hear you.”
“We’re going to have to move him to the hospital, and he’s going to be admitted. And you know there’s no way of knowing how long it’s going to take before he’s well enough to be released. And honey,” she breathed in and let it out slowly, her hands tightening around her daughter’s, “you have to go.”
“I know,” Joss whispered.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“You’ll stay with Dad. Help him get better. He needs you and I— This is what he trained me for. I’ll be okay.”
Mrs. Marshall bit back a sob, shook her head as her eyes found the ceiling and tears she couldn’t blink back rolled down her cheeks. “I know.”
She looked at me. I swallowed, hard. “I’ll stick,” I told her. “I won’t leave her. No matter what happens.”
She nodded. “Your sister.”
“I’ll take her. Marco knows about her, and we don’t know who’s implicated. I’ll take her with me and I’ll keep her safe. It’s what Dad wanted.”
She nodded again. Then shook her head. “Maybe…maybe you don’t have to go. Maybe they won’t go through with it.”
“Mom. You know we can’t just wait and see.”
“I know, I just—I just want to go with you. I want to go with you so much, honey. You’re my baby.”
I felt like I shouldn’t even be there, seeing the raw pain in that woman’s face.
“You promised him. He needs you. Even more than we do. And you can’t leave him. No matter what happens.” Her mother looked like she would say something, but Joss cut her off, “It would break you.”
A look of surprise flickered across Mrs. Marshall’s face, and then her brows came down. She looked at Joss for a long moment, then at me, and then back at Joss again. “You are too young to understand that.” She reached out a hand to me and I took it without thinking, so that she was holding on to both of us. “And I’m glad that you do.”
Jayce poked her head in the door. “Sweetie, we’re ready to go.”
“I’m coming.”
We all got up and moved into the hallway. Ben was standing by the door, not impatient, even with the weight of Joss’s unconscious father over his shoulder. Tim stood in the doorway, holding Jill’s hand. She clutched a nappy pink unicorn to her chest. Joss’s mom changed. She suddenly seemed nervous, maybe a little panicked. She whirled back to Joss, taking her daughter’s face in her hands.
Joss caught her mom’s wrists and cut off whatever she was going to say. “Dylan, go write down my cell number. There’s a pad in the kitchen by the phone.”
I went to do as she asked, straining to hear what was being said.
“We won’t leave yet, okay?” Joss was saying. “We’ve got places we can hide. Dad’s found us lots of places and I know where they are. We’ve got somewhere safe we can go right now where we’ve got supplies laid in. We can move around if we need to, but we can stay in town, stay close and see what happens.”
“Is that what your father would want you to do?”
“I don’t know.”
She nodded. “Okay. Okay.”
I held out the paper and Joss took it from me, putting it in her mother’s hand and wrapping her fingers around it. “This is the number for my cell phone.”
“When did you get a cell phone?” Jill asked.
Joss ignored her. “Don’t call it from your cell phone. Don’t call it from anywhere near Dad’s room. Try not to use the same phone too much. Use pay phones as much as you can.”
“Jocelyn, I haven’t been asleep for the last twenty years. I did learn a few things from your father.”
“She’s her Daddy’s girl, isn’t she?” Jayce said.
Joss ignored that, too. “Don’t panic if I don’t answer because if reception isn’t good the
call won’t go through. But when I see the missed call, I’ll get back to you, okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered, like that’s all she could manage.
Jayce opened the front door and led Ben down the steps. It was just starting to get light on the horizon. We didn’t have much time left.
Mrs. Marshall had a few more private words with her girls in the open doorway while Tim and I tried to pretend we weren’t there. When she was gone, when the SUV had disappeared from sight and they closed the door again, Jill looked like she was ready to cry.
“Miss Jill,” I said, “did you know your sister has a secret hideout?”
“Really?”
“It’s…kinda like a base of operations, really.”
“You have a base?” Jill asked Joss who was giving me a look I couldn’t quite interpret.
“I’m not sure I would call it—”
“Why do you have a base?”
“Because she is just that awesome,” I told Jill, taking her hand and leading her up the stairs. “How do you think she snagged me?”
“I’ve been wondering about that.”
“So you wanna go, right? To the secret base? Skip school, hang out, have a sleepover?”
“Are you serious?”
“I never joke about slumber parties.”
“Jesus Christ,” Joss muttered behind us. I looked back to grin at her but she was looking back at Tim.
“You are so not invited.”
“Like I’d want to go to a slumber party with a girl who cries if her mac and cheese touches her peas.”
“I don’t do that!” Jill protested.
“I meant your sister.”
“Oh yeah. She’s still all weird like that.”
“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school?” Joss snapped at Tim.
“Dad’s not going to care if I’m late for school. Come off it, Joss. I know how to pack. Let me help.”
“Whatever.”
We needed Tim’s help. The family was prepared—understatement—and there wasn’t a lot to do, but it took two of us to manage the Marshall girls: one to convince Jill not to pack every single thing she owned, and one to soothe an already stressed out Joss into not biting her head off.