The Lebrus Stone (2 page)

I tried my best to stay seated. "So, um… what do you…want with me now?"

"My aim is to bring you home." She sniffed.

"Home?"

"To Thorncrest Manor."

"Where is it exactly?"

"West Virginia."

The possibilities behind my heritage had become endless. Thorncrest Manor sounded extravagant and far from my meager life. I had a feeling it could all have been about to change. My heart raced with excitement, but also nerves and anguish. Maybe all three and a zillion more.

"So, was my mother...rich?" I asked.

"Sophia came from privilege, yes."

"Privilege?"

"She would have inherited Thorncrest, but she chose your father.  And since your grandfather despised him, he changed his will just before his death."

"So there isn't anyone else, no other siblings I should know about?" I must have sounded interested in any likely inheritance. I wasn't, just in who could tell me more about my parents.

"I'm afraid that is all. Your files are correct in that respect."

The thought of her poking around in my files without my permission irked me again. It had been typical of the Resident Manager to have acted against the group home rules out of spite, conveniently forgetting I was old enough to be asked first. I shakily poured myself a glass of water from the jug on the table and took a sip, hoping to hydrate my throat.

"How did my mother's father die?" I asked once I was ready. Images of an old man withering away on a large four poster bed suddenly entered my mind.

"Old age. Nothing else could have taken such an abrasive man."

"What about his wife?"

"She also, coincidently, died in a car accident. You see, the aunt you were left with was your grandmother's daughter from a previous relationship. I think he was her first love who passed away rather young. The family hadn't known she had given up a child for adoption. She must have eventually confided in your mother. She must have located your aunt by herself"

It was hard to believe not that long ago, walking ten minutes to the bus stop in the drizzling snow to get to work had been my only problem. "There's so much I don't know."

"Oh, you will learn plenty in time." She sounded adamant.

But I wasn't sure what to believe, whether to believe anything at all. Spending too many years fending for myself in care had made me pretty cynical, defensive and difficult to reach. Yet the more I listened to Isobel, the more I felt that side of me fading. Like her eyes, her eloquent speech was captivating, taking hold of me and lulling me into some kind of open-eyed coma, where the facts, no matter how unconvincing on their own, slipped easily from her lips and into my ears like the gospel truth.

Isobel touched my cheek. I flinched. She didn't care. "You know, you have your mother's eyes and lips. Your father's nose. He had a fine nose." She grinned lopsided, as if the realization made her pity me all the more. "You truly have grown into a beautiful young woman."

"Thanks," I mumbled, easing away.

She smiled, but the previous sparkle in her eyes had vanished.

"Let's get back to your aunt," she said before I could reassure her I appreciated her coming. "How did this…house fire begin?"

I didn't want to talk about it. My aunt not surviving was how I ended up as an orphan in the first place.

"I'm not sure," I muttered.

Isobel placed her hand over mine and leaned forward. I allowed it. Her hand was nice and warm against my freezing one. "Who rescued you?"

"Firefighters, I guess."

"And have they been good to you at the group home?" she whispered, as though it was a secretive topic.

"I suppose so." They hadn't loved me if that's what she meant. There were always too many residents for that kind of treatment.

"When were you planning to leave?" she asked.

"I'm looking for suitable accommodation."

"I am presuming you will be renting an apartment?"

"Yes."

"Alone?"

I'd never met anyone so direct. "No. I would need to find a roommate."

Isobel's shoulders relaxed. "That's a relief. But will you be able to cover costs? Rent?"

My other guilt for accepting an offer I couldn't refuse returned fresh to my conscience. "I think so. Jared has said he would help."

Isobel raised a perfectly arched eyebrow. "Oh."

"He wants to give me a bonus, a loan, really, that I plan to pay him back as soon as I graduate and find work." It all spilled out of me at once.

"That's very kind of him."

"We've become close over the last few years. He sees me as the daughter he never had."

I had to stop her from coming to her own conclusions.

She smiled, relief written all over her face. "Then I'm pleased you found one another. How about College? Are you attending any?"

I nodded, smiling genuinely this time. "Yes. I'm studying to be a fashion designer."

"Ah, yes." Isobel gushed. "You look the arty type. Your mother would have been delighted. She was quite the skillful painter."

"She was?" My mood brightened.

"Yes, much like you she took great pride in her appearance."

Isobel admired my precious Pandora bracelet, the one recent extravagance I'd accepted from Jared over Christmas. But I still felt plain next to Isobel. It would have taken more than a Gap sweater and faded old Helmut Lang boots to live up to her Jimmy Choo and Prada ensemble. Even my much loved Givenchy coat looked like a threadbare rug beside her high-gloss chic.

"Which college do you attend?" she asked, breaking me from my careful analysis.

"Um, I started Westminster this year. I wanted to stay in Utah."

Isobel smirked. I wasn't sure why.

"How about you?" I asked, wanting to prove I was interested. "You seem well…educated."

She laughed, throwing her head back slightly. The movement enhanced her elegance and beauty. "Oh, don't be fooled. My looks are deceiving."

I stared at her in disbelief.

"You see in reality, I'm a middle-class, college dropout." She chuckled. "Of course, I took elocution lessons and classes in etiquette, feeling determined to fit into my surroundings at Thorncrest. I even did well for a time, until I began to feel outside of myself, unrecognizable." I noticed her voice had become smoother and less wary of answering me.

I felt more at ease, too.

Over the years, I had taught myself to be
well spoken. Much like Isobel, I had been determined to do well in my education. To an extent, I spoke eloquently. Not as much as Isobel. Not by a long shot. But I hadn't wanted to be a moping loser who failed to make a go at life due to having no parents. I thought being well spoken would improve my chances of being taken seriously.

"For that reason we left Thorncrest and moved to Michigan," Isobel continued. "We remained there for the next fifteen years, even after your Great Uncle Theodore's death a few years into our arrival." She closed her eyes. "The children and I…Well the children and I returned to Blacksville three years ago."

"I'm sorry," I offered, realizing it might have been expected of me.

She opened her eyes, tears afresh. "Thank you. It was a heart attack that took him." Holding a tissue to her mouth, she coughed and seemed to pull herself together, then straightened what I thought was already a rigid sitting position.

"As for my parents," she continued, "they passed away some time ago. My sister moved to Europe. There was little left for me in West Virginia. Even so, I decided I owed it to Theodore to make Thorncrest our home again. I now feel the house has grown to like me and I it. I have rather settled into the being the dignified and sophisticated woman I was supposed to be. The children, however, still complain of its gloominess. Yet I see it as lived in, old, and brimming with history. Much like myself."

Isobel had clearly had an interesting and long life, but she didn't seem a day over thirty. She had to be at least in her fifties. With her wealth, I figured she must have been using an anti-aging cream or had had a facelift. I looked for the telltale signs, but found nothing. Maybe she was naturally youthful.

"So how many children do you have?" I asked.

Isobel's eyes lit up at the question, just like I knew they would.

"Gal is my eldest. He will be twenty-one in July. Cray has recently turned nineteen and Zella…" she beamed, "is an adorable fifteen."

"Sounds like you have your hands full."

"Indeed. But they are good children."

For some reason, my thoughts lingered on the name Cray. I began to imagine his face and every feature down to the curl of his lips. It had me wondering if he had Isobel's dark hair and porcelain skin. I could almost seen him in my mind's eye, distant, coming into focus, like a hand grasping me from within a thick, dark fog, or a dream I had long forgotten. Goose bumps prickled my skin as I forced the image away.

"You shall get to meet them soon if you accept my invitation to Thorncrest," Isobel said, awaiting my response.

The thought made my brow sweat. "But I barely know you. And I…I haven't seen any proof."

Isobel rummaged through her purse and pulled out a photograph. "This is one of a few photographs I have of your parents. Your mother took most of them with her when she left." She handed me what my fingers itched to touch. My heart literally stopped beating for a moment.

"Take your time," I heard her say faintly in the background.

In the photograph, my mother was smiling in the arms of a young and equally happy man. A large, pink floppy hat shaded most of her face, and her honeycomb eyes were just about visible beneath the brim. Her russet hair rested in voluptuous curls around her freckled shoulders. Her skin was paler than the man's who I assumed was my father. He was exotically handsome: tawny hair, piercing, clear blue eyes, and full, wide lips. My lips. He was bare above the waist, and wore black shorts and matching flip flops. It looked like they were on a boat.

It confirmed I did look like my mother. I could see how Isobel's friend must have recognised me. I also did have my father's small, but strong, bridged nose. I had further proof I was theirs, and it warmed me in a place that had become bitter and cold with thoughts of what could have been.

"Can I keep this?" I asked, unshed tears pricking my eyes.

"Of course." Isobel chirped, fingering a wave of my hair.

I allowed it, needing the motherly gesture that only she probably could give me.

"I plan to stay at a hotel nearby for as long as I can, Crystal," she confessed. "I will be returning often. You will have plenty of time to get to know me."

"You will?"

My eyes bulged. She chuckled.

"I hope your surprise is in favor, not against."

"I...It is in favor. I would love to hear more about my parents…and…more about…you, obviously."

Isobel grinned at my blubbering. "Then that settles it." She squeezed my hand. "I am here for you now, Crystal. I always will be."

"I know," I found myself saying, a smile becoming fixed on my face.

The three mile drive to the airport from Cedar City allowed me to enjoy the cool breeze and lightly scented air from the sand on alpine mountains, savor the sun beaming down a vibrant yellow like spinning buttercups reflecting off my cheeks.

I was going to miss the busy warmth of my hometown, miss the waxy leaves from the honey locusts lining the streets, the towhee birds singing all day as pedestrians smiled like they floated by you on the wide apart sidewalks.

Since Jared had insisted on giving me a lift in his weather-beaten Subaru, I had no choice but to put up with his bad mood. He was against me staying with the Lockes for a few weeks, even if it had been five months since Isobel found me.

She had kept her word and visited often, taken me for expensive meals and shopping for clothes while she detailed her life with my parents. But I sensed she was holding back. She even admitted it, eventually, claiming she would feel more comfortable going into specifics if I came to stay with her and her children for a while. She needed to be in familiar surroundings to dredge up the difficult past. I chose to understand and take a risk for once in my boring life.

"Oh, I almost forgot," Jared said without looking away from the road. "T.J.'s waiting."

"Waiting? Where?"

"At the entrance. Maybe even in the terminal."

T.J. wasn't just a colleague anymore. He was a good friend, but also a hot blooded high school sophomore with a romantic interest no longer just staring me in the face. And I happened to like uncomplicated, straight forward relationships. I liked the simplicity of having my own space. I wasn't exactly predisposed to dating. I wasn't exactly normal.

"But I didn't tell him exactly when I would be leaving. This was sup..." I stopped short to look at Jared's mouth twitch. His silvery grey eyebrows rose even higher.

"You told him, didn't you?" I groaned.

"Could it hurt to explain why you're leaving your perfectly good home to meet with a bunch of strangers without seeing him?"

I could hear the leniency in his voice, detect the restraint to go on with a much sharper tongue. I tried to ignore it and enjoy the view instead of answer his judging questions, watch my hometown rush by as a stream of mountains, lakes and periodic benches. But it made me realize how a few weeks were probably going to feel like light-years away from a return. Yet I had to do this. I had to take a leap.

"Maybe T.J. could talk some sense into you," Jared droned on, mumbling something else as he cut corners and drove too carelessly for a usual road-travelling perfectionist.

I ignored the grumbling. It was the only option I had when he deliberately picked at my nerves.

"Look, Crissy, I don't think you know what you could be getting yourself into."

He turned the radio down, but his voice still blended in with my inner thoughts, someplace where I slipped into a vault from the left cortex of my brain, a place where I absorbed my visions, rather than the disturbances going on outside my head, a haven where I imagined sipping coolie and taking picnics in the Artesian Well Park, eating ice cream on a diet Sunday and bingeing on full fat potato chips the rest of the week.

"Are you sure you're even ready for this?" I heard him say in the background.

"I'm sure," I said, walking, in my mind, on the shoreline trailhead.

But if I was to be honest, I wasn't
that
ready. I didn't want to have to leave downtown Trolley Square or the Sandy City Amphitheatre, nor my favorite Canyon restaurant east of Mill Creek, or the ski lodges in Deer Valley. Not even the chocolate salsa in Provo. And darn it, definitely not speed skating at the Olympic Oval. I
especially
didn't want to leave Jared and T.J.

A big part of me wanted to stay and expect the usual.

"Crystal, are you even listening to me?" He switched the radio off. I had to reassure him, and properly.

"It's just for a little while, Jared. Everything will be fine, just like you said." I disbelieved the weak sureness of my voice.

"I know I did. But why chase this now? I thought you were settled, feeling independent. Couldn't you have waited a year or…two?"

I'd waited long enough in my opinion. And I thought Jared knew why I didn't need any longer to make a decision. I assumed it was obvious I needed a change to the current course of my life, that I had been taking steps back instead of forwards, living among ghosts that shielded a familiar face; that I was becoming the same and indifferent, a sheer lie and a living fraud.

"It's important that I stay with her, Jared. Meet the rest of the Lockes. You know I can't move on properly unless I do this."

He had wanted to come with me, but I chose to stick with my stubborn decision to fly solo. We both knew he couldn't leave the bookstore to T.J. to run alone, anyway.

"I'll take my chances." I shrugged, clutching my handbag for support.

"You know I've never told you this," Jared said after a while. "But Selma wanted me to tell you something."

"She did?"

He nodded. "She predicted this would happen."

I had known Jared's wife. She had died a year ago of a terminal illness. I also knew she'd had a sixth sense and could predict a child's sex before it was born, guess a number from the national lotto and sometimes help the police to locate a murder weapon. But I never knew she saw something for me. Maybe something wrong. Something serious enough to hide.

"Oh," I said nervously.

I couldn't stop shaking. I'd been having uneasy feelings and strange dreams of my own since meeting Isobel, but had tossed them aside, blaming them on paranoid excuses, an inexperience to such fear and dramatic change.

"Before she…passed on," Jared chose to say. "She saw West Virginia in your future."

"And?" I pressed. Since I knew that part.

"She saw many around you"

"There must be more."

He didn't say anything, just carried on driving, biting the inside of his cheek.

"What else did she say, Jared?"

"It's hard to explain."

"Why? Am I…dead?"

"No." He gasped, turning to look at me like I was already a corpse.

"Abducted then?"

"NO!"

"Then what?"

I thought about it for a moment, since he seemed interested in watching the jam of traffic.

"Am I sold to Bangkok?"

There was a lot I hadn't considered. But those kind of abductors preferred blondes. I was dark haired, considered boring and ordinary compared to a Barbie thin Playboy bunny. I couldn't be sold. I was too opinionated.

"No." Jared tsked. "No, you're not dead, buried, abducted or even probed by the United States government."

I looked around me. We were still sandwiched in traffic. It seemed as though even Salt Lake City was trying to stop me from getting to the airport.

Jared turned in his seat and took my hands into his. "If I tell you, you have to promise to think twice about this."

"Okay." I nodded, wanting him to just hurry up and get on with it.

"Well do you remember that day at work when you fell from one of the sliding ladders and broke your ankle?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember how you couldn't crawl to the door to the basement and yell for help?"

"Yes," I said, all the more confused.

"Do you recall the pain you suffered? How helpless you felt?"

The fear in his eyes was enough to make me want to back out from making him tell me.

"Do you remember how long you couldn't walk without your crutches?" he continued.

"I do. But just tell me, Jared. I think the suspense is giving me a brain leak."

He looked at me sternly. "Now don't panic. Nothing's set in stone."

He was turning worryingly pale.

"Jared what is it?"

He blinked a few times, squeezing my hands. "Crys, you're…" He swallowed. "Crys you're…broken."

"Broken?" I scowled, my voice hoarse. "As in…snapped…in half?"

He shook his head.

"Severed from the head?"

"No," he shot out, clearly disturbed by that description. "I mean like a mirror with no face. No soul. No future. Just a…darkness always prevailing." He shuddered. "You also had blood red eyes. Selma could see someone kissing you and then you were being burned. At the time I thought she was reading the messages all wrong; that her illness and medication might have been making her hallucinate."

My mouth curved into a smile as I thought about all the things I had imagined in the time it had taken him to tell me the useless prediction. He was right, Selma had been imagining it.

Jared just frowned at my smirking, and let go of my hands to grip the steering wheel.

"Sorry, Jared. But that didn't make any sense. It's not like breaking an ankle."

He stared out of the window blankly. A car beeped from behind.

"You promised to think twice," he muttered.

"I have. You really had me going."

"But you still insist on leaving?" He ignored more beeps.

"This is the only way."

He revved the engine and yanked the clutch. "Then there's nothing more I can say," he finished flatly.

He drove the rest of the way in silence, taking the longer, congested routes and choosing detours from Liberty and Rose Park and the usually quiet Marmalade district of Capitol Hill as a way to perhaps keep me from getting to the airport on time.

The sun beat down on the windscreen and warmed the leather seats. My hands still stung a little from Jared's tight grasp. I told myself I had nothing to worry about; that there was a bad conclusion for everything in his rulebook.

When we finally reached the airport parking lot, T.J. strolled over with his usual open expression. The one that said, "I'll stare at you until you give in and let me take you on a date."

His ash blond hair was a curtain to his uncomfortable grimace. His pale blue eyes darkened with what I guessed was disdain at my current choice of actions.

"Need any help with that?" he asked as I pulled out my small bits of luggage from the trunk.

"I'm good, thanks," I said, heaving one bag onto my shoulder.

I let Jared take the rest of my belongings and wheeled suitcase toward the sliding door entrance. "I'll meet you inside," he said. He wouldn't look at me or strain another smile.

T.J. either didn't notice the tension brewing in the air or was avoiding having to question it. "I think it's real brave of you to do this," he eventually said, taking the bag that had been drooping my left shoulder. "It takes guts," he added, with a grin.

"Try telling that to Jared while I'm gone," I said with a smile that wasn't forced.

T.J. had a way of unwinding me, making me easier to deal with. It was probably why I didn't want to disappoint him by telling him I could never be his girlfriend; that he should never want to be with me anyway. How I was baggage, a heavy loaded gun.

"He gets it," he said, simply. "Why d'ya think he's allowing it?"

I huffed, wanting us to stop talking about Jared and his need to keep me captive.

"So…," T.J said, nervously, blocking my path. "Think we can talk for a sec?"

"About what?"

"I think you know what." He ran a hand threw his floppy hair.

I looked at my watch. "I have a plane to catch T. I'm not sure if —"

"It won't take that long," he said, shoving his hands in his jeans pockets and kicking away a stone.

I peered around the parking lot, at the light posts and a boy in a wheelchair being lifted into the back of a car, anything to avoid seeing T.J. squirm and make me feel like a queen bitch.

"About last week," he began. "At Joel's party."

"I don't remember much from that night," I muttered.

"You must remember something," he said, staring at the ground.

"I don't even remember leaving." It was the truth.

"You weren't that z'd out, Crys."

"No, but I was pretty drunk."

"Well, the kiss meant something to me," he said in a hurry, trying his best to look at me. "Even if you're choosing to forget it."

"I'm not choosing to T. I was out of my mind. I had no logic. I couldn't even walk straight."

"So you do remember something?"

I winced, regretting what I'd just said. He looked hurt and dejected.

Plus he had me. What could I have said? I remembered the kiss, but felt nothing; still didn't.

"Sorry, T. It's all I have."

I didn't know how to deal with it. I didn't know how to cope with other peoples' emotions or my own.

I tried to get by him, but he gripped me by the arm and turned me to face him. "Don't you feel anything for anyone, Crys?" he ground out. "Don't you feel anything like the rest of us?"

He actually shook me.