What is real? How much of what I see is influenced by how I feel? Do I want my father to be bad, or good?
I am a person who already has problems with reality. I see things that aren’t there. But my psychic ability isn’t going to help me figure out my own life—it doesn’t work that way. It just confuses things more. I don’t know if the feelings I’m picking up from him are true or not. I don’t know if the yearning I felt in him the other night is real.
I flip through the pages of the album. When I was born, my mom and dad lived in a tiny house in Maryland, on the Eastern Shore. There’s one photograph that my mom said my dad took of me. I’m probably about two, I guess. I’m sitting on the lawn, wearing my mom’s hat, which makes me look like a baby version of the Cat in the Hat. My father picked the wrong place to stand, because the sun is casting his shadow on the lawn next to me. Some of his shadow lies over me.
It always has. It’s all I ever had of him—a shadow. Now I have the real thing, the real man, the one I’ve hated. The one I’ve loved. The one who broke my life into two pieces.
I close the book. I’d rather have the pictures, have the shadow. The man is too real.
It’s late when Shay struggles in the door, carrying grocery bags. I run forward to help her. We go toward the back of the house and put the grocery bags on the counter. Instead of unpacking them, Shay plops down in a kitchen chair, still in her coat.
“Founders Realty was vandalized last night,” she says.
“What did the vandals do?”
“Threw some files on the floor, put trash on the desks, unplugged the little refrigerator, stuff like that,” Shay says. “Joe says it’s like they didn’t want to do too much damage to push it into a serious crime, which sounds like—”
“Teenagers,” I say. “Do you think it could be Mason?”
Shay shrugs out of her coat. “Diego has always been sort of idiot-proof,” she says. “I mean, even as a kid, he knew what kids to avoid. He’s got a good head on his shoulders. But he’s in love. Sometimes you’re looking so hard at who you love that…you miss things. Big things. Because you’re trying to fit your love into the kind of thing you want it to be.”
“Is he really in love with Marigold?” I ask.
Shay smiles gently. “Yeah. Look, Gracie, I’m as surprised as you are that it’s this girl. But love is love. He’s got to go through it. And we have to stay out of it.”
She says this last part with meaning, and I nod slowly. “I guess I haven’t been so nice about Marigold sometimes.”
“So I hear. Let’s just try to keep our mouths shut and support him, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Joe will find out who’s doing this. That’s his job. Not ours. Your job is to do your homework, and my job is to get through this next few weeks with my job, and then we’ll all be happy again. Right?”
“Absolutely.” We smile at each other. We’ve been talking in the dark. It reminds me of the early mornings we once spent together, when I first moved here and wasn’t talking to anyone. When I’d wake up in a panic, I’d sit in the kitchen, and somehow Shay would know I was awake, and come and join me. She wouldn’t say a word, just pad around the kitchen warming up milk and cups until my crying stopped. She wouldn’t even touch me. She knew if she’d touched me, I’d run back in my room. So she’d make hot chocolate, and we’d sit in silence, sipping the hot drink, and watching the light turn from navy to deep blue. And then, still without saying a word, I’d wash the cups and the milk pan, and we’d both go back to bed.
I have this, I think. I don’t need him. I have this.
“Well, I’m going to take a shower, and then start dinner,” Shay says. “Maybe trays in front of the fire tonight. I’m beat.” She heads for her room, stretching as she goes.
I head to my room, which used to be a mudroom that Shay and Diego had fixed up for me. I reach out for the light switch, but for a moment, I get disoriented. I’m not seeing the room as it is, with glass panes. I see a broken screen, blowing. I see a door where a window is now.
And I smell that smell again, mildew and rot and staleness, as if the house had been shut up for years and years. I can’t find the light switch, and my heart is pounding, and suddenly I feel terror well up in me, because the floor is sticky underneath my feet.
I see it in flashes. Footprints on floorboards, the outline smudged and rusty-looking.
Blood. Someone walked in the blood.
Clean it up clean it up clean it up…
A bloody towel.
The smell of it in the house.
“No!” I shout, and I step back, my hand desperately scrabbling for the light switch. Light floods the room, and it’s just my room again, with the headboard painted yellow and the blue floor and the patterned curtains. I can hear Shay in the shower, singing a Joni Mitchell song.
I sink down on the bed and grab my pillow and squeeze it.
I don’t want to see what I see.
I want it to go away.
I know that whatever it was that I saw—past or future—was murder.
SIX
It started when I was ten, when I almost drowned at the beach in Maryland. A lifeguard rescued me, and when I came to, I could hear what she was thinking.
I didn’t tell anyone but my mom. She almost got me tested, but somehow we always found excuses not to. I think we just hoped it would go away. I know I did.
I could never read my mom, and I never got flashes about her, but the day she died was the worst day of my life, even before my grandparents showed up at the door to give me the news. I sat on the couch all day, knowing something was wrong. I stared at the phone and couldn’t move.
I was smelling oranges that day, and I didn’t know why. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t know why.
Then I heard she was hit by a truck carrying oranges. That she was choking on her own blood. And I knew why.
Even today, the smell of orange juice makes me sick.
Whatever this ability I have is, it’s not something I can shut off like a faucet. It sneaks up on me. It comes when I least expect it, when I’m eating ice cream or sitting in the car or listening to the principal read the school announcements. And then I know that the girl behind the ice cream counter is worried because her boss is hitting on her, or the man on the bike stopping to wipe his forehead at the stoplight is short of breath because there’s something wrong with his heart, and the principal wants a divorce but is afraid of what would happen to her kids if she went through with it.
I don’t want to know these things.
And I don’t want to walk into my room and see a river of blood on the floor.
I don’t want to walk through the house and feel spooked. But that’s what happens. I see something out of the corner of my eye. Something I’ll catch if I turn quickly enough. A shadow. An outflung hand. A spreading stain on the floor, a pool of blood.
I’m afraid of being alone in the house.
School is school. Some days it’s not too bad, and other days it makes you want to run shrieking into the wilderness.
Beewick High squashes kids from three towns into one school, and it’s still small. Everyone has known each other since preschool, so I felt a little left out at the beginning. I got befriended by Emily Carbonel, but she was kidnapped last year. I think what we went through together drove us apart instead of bringing us closer. I think I just remind her of what she went through. This year she’s turned into a skittish, nervous geek who never takes off her earphones from her MP-3 player, which kind of reminds me of me last year, actually. Sometimes kids talk to me, and I have a few classroom friendships, but nobody is inviting me home for soda and pretzels.
My rep has not improved since everyone found out I get psychic flashes. You can break down reactions into three areas:
You’re so weird. Are you reading my mind right now?
Can you see the questions on tomorrow’s test in your mind?
Can you tell me if Jason real
ly, really likes me?
You see, the thing is, when you’re in high school, you have secrets. You have crushes, you have thoughts, you want things you shouldn’t want. And if you’re afraid someone can see inside you, you don’t slide your tray next to hers at lunch.
I wish I could tell them that I can’t see inside them. My flashes are unpredictable. The closer I am to someone, the murkier they are. For example, I can’t tell what my aunt Shay is thinking just about one hundred percent of the time if she doesn’t want me to. Diego is as much of a mystery to me as any boy.
And then there’s dear old Dad. I won’t even bother trying to figure him out.
After school, I stuff my books into my backpack, taking my time while I do it. I’m stalling for two reasons. One, I’m afraid to go home. Two, I always do. Everyone congregates outside on the steps after school. Plans are made, promises to call, running jokes. I don’t want to have to walk through that, so I usually wait until kids have headed off to their cars or into town.
It’s a gloomy, wet day. I decide to go to the town library and do my homework. If I stretch it out long enough, I can walk home and Shay will be just getting home from work. Diego works late on Mondays.
When I come out of school, Nate is sitting on the stone column at the bottom of the railing, just like kids do. He’s got a paper cone of French fries from the Bluebay Drive-In, which has the best fries in the known universe.
He holds out the cone to me. “I thought you might need a ride home.”
I ignore the French fries, even though the smell of them makes my stomach growl. “I’m not going home. I’m going to the library.”
He jumps down. “The library, then.”
“It’s two blocks away.”
“I think I can manage it.” He swings into step beside me. “So. I have a proposal. We each get three questions we can ask each other. And we have to tell the truth.”
“I don’t want to—”
“Here’s my first one. Do you want these or not?” He holds up the cone.
“No.”
“Liar.” He holds them out, but I refuse to take one. It will feel like some kind of surrender.
He shrugs. It is with some regret that I watch the full cone of fries sail into the garbage can.
“That was my best bribe,” he says. He puts his hands in his pockets. “Okay, go ahead. Your turn.”
“Are you still a lawyer?”
“No. I left the law when I left Maryland. I always hated it.”
“What do you do now?”
“My last job was in commercial real estate. Before that…a bunch of things. I sold houses in Santa Fe. Wrote a newspaper column once. Oh, and I ran a surf shop in San Diego. That was fun.”
Great. While he was having fun on the beach, I was growing up fatherless.
“Where do you live now?”
“Wallanan. It’s right outside of Tacoma.”
I stop. “Tacoma?” For almost a whole year, he’s been less than two hours away.
He stops, too, and looks me full in the face. “I didn’t know you were here, on Beewick, until last week.”
We both breathe in and out, passing through the moment.
“Look,” he continues. “I came here to tell you that if you want me to leave, I’ll leave. But I also came here to tell you that even if I leave, I’ll keep trying. Brace yourself for birthday cards, kiddo.”
We continue down the hill into town. And I have such a weird moment of feeling normal. Here is my dad, and we’re walking into town. As if all my heartbreak had never been.
And then the normal moment is gone, and I’m walking with the man who abandoned me and my mother. My whole body stiffens up again.
“The thing is,” he says, “I have a lot to catch up on. So I thought I’d start with these.” He hands me a stack of envelopes.
“What are these?” I ask, but I know what they are. Thirteen birthday cards. One for every year he missed.
He leaves me at the library steps without a word. I take out my books, but I spend most of my time there looking through the cards. He’s chosen them carefully, I see. Each one is age-appropriate. One after the other. Blues Clues. Dora the Explorer. Birthday cakes. Balloons. Sailboats. And then sentimental ones, near the end. Signed at the bottom of each is a message: Love, Dad.
There’s something sort of goofy about the gesture. It should really piss me off, but it doesn’t. And for some reason, it doesn’t make me sad. Maybe it’s because he chose such stupid cards. I can’t help smiling.
The light is dimming outside, and I know it’s time to leave. The other kids here have left long ago, and the moms with toddlers. Everyone wants to go home to dinner. And I’m still stalling.
Joy the librarian stands behind my chair, holding a stack of books. She leans in close to my ear.
“Murder will out.”
Her breath on the back of my neck makes me start and pull away.
“What?” I ask, twisting around.
She nods significantly, except I don’t know what the significance is. The fluorescent lights overhead shine in the frames of her glasses, and I can’t see her eyes.
“Murderers get caught. He’s on Beewick somewhere, with his normal face. But he’ll be caught.”
I realize now she’s trying to reassure me. Because I was around when the body was found. But instead, she just creeps me out.
“Thanks,” I say.
I walk home slowly in the dusk. When I open the door, I smell the fire and feel the warmth. I know the smell of this house now in my bones—of the beeswax Shay rubs on the wood floors, the floors she refinished herself when she bought the house, after tearing up the thick shag carpeting. Every house has a smell, and this house is starting to smell like home. I want to grab on to this feeling and ride it. I want to make it the one true thing I have. But I can’t.
I wake up on Tuesday morning early. I hear noise in the kitchen, and when I walk out, Shay is already up. Papers are stacked on the kitchen table, and she’s going through them, frowning.
“Work?” I ask as I pour myself some cereal.
“What? Oh. Problems, as usual,” Shay groans. She looks at the clock and jumps up in a panic. “I have a meeting!”
“At seven in the morning?”
“Seven-thirty, and I haven’t showered… Oh, I’ll be so glad when this project is over,” Shay moans. She runs out, the belt of her bathrobe trailing behind her.
I chomp on my cereal. The papers are still spread out on the table, so I reach over to put them back in the file for Shay. She’ll probably need them for the meeting, and in this state, she’ll probably just run out the door without them if I don’t remind her.
DEED OF SALE
I read the words upside down.
17 Fieldstone Lane.
This house. Why was Shay looking at the papers for this house? She bought it twenty years ago. I turn the deed around. I can’t believe how cheap the house was, but Shay has told me what a wreck it was when she found it.
My eyes travel down to the bottom, where the owner’s signature is.
SHAY MILLICENT KENZIE
NATHANIEL G. MILLAR
Nate? My father?
My father owns the house with Shay?
I can’t believe what I’m reading. I look at the date. I know I was born about three years after my parents got married. That means that Shay knew my father before my mother did. Knew him well enough to buy a house with him.
I drop the spoon into the bowl. Milk splashes over the rim.
Shay has been hiding this from me.
Shay, who I thought was the most honest person I know.
Shay, who always told me that hiding your feelings can backfire.
Shay is as big a liar as dear old Dad.
SEVEN
When Shay comes out in her work clothes with her hair wet, I’m still sitting at the table. She starts hunting for her keys. “I hope they have bagels at this meeting. And coffee. Definitely coffee—”
She sees my face and stops. “What is it?” Her gaze travels to the papers on the table.
“You lied to me,” I say.
“Not really,” she says carefully.
I slam my hand down. “You lied to me!”
“Oh, honey, no, no. It just never…when I would bring up your dad, you would always just shut down. So I thought…one step at a time.”
“So when were you going to tell me he owns half of this house? Is that why you took me in? Because you thought he’d come back and want the house, and if I was living here, he couldn’t turn you out on the street?” I don’t know where that idea came from, but suddenly it blazed across my brain. I feel tears sting my eyes, and I will them to go away.
Shay looks shocked. “No! No, of course not!” She puts her briefcase on the chair. “We need to talk about this.”
“You have a meeting. It can wait.” I turn away to go back into my room.
“No, it can’t.”
She picks up the phone and calls someone. I hear her murmur something about a family emergency.
“You’re a pretty cool liar, Shay,” I say after she hangs up. “I didn’t think you could lie to save your life.”
“That wasn’t a lie. This is a family emergency. Will you sit down, Gracie?”
I don’t want to sit. I want to run. I want to run and run and run until the blood pounding in my ears drives out every thought in my head.
But I also want answers, so I sit.
“Were you a couple?” I ask her. “You and Nate?”
“No, we were never a couple. We were friends. Let me start at the beginning,” Shay says. “I met Nate a long time ago in Seattle, where I was living at the time. I had dropped out of grad school and was working as a waitress, and I joined this environmental group. We heard about what Monvor was doing up here, destroying the wetlands, and a bunch of us decided to come up here one summer and camp out for a month and do protests.” Shay shrugs. “We were young. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”