A Shiver of Wonder (21 page)

Had he just forgiven Bill? Did he have any
right
to offer forgiveness to Bill?

David hadn’t offered forgiveness, though.
Only a type of solace based in understanding.

Would Bill take it overly hard when David
handed in his own 30-day notice? Would he see it as a comment on
all that had occurred, not to mention his role in it?

But how could what had occurred within the
walls of the Rainbow Arms
not
play into David’s decision to
move? Bill would understand, hopefully. He’d be hurt, but he would
accept it, eventually.

David knew that a part of him would be sad
to depart his cozy home on Piston Avenue. He had grown here, he had
become his own person here. And yet he also knew that he had little
choice in the matter. The time was ripe. The time was now.

He barked out a small, uncomfortable laugh.
The time may have been now, but it was also impossible! Where could
he move immediately? Genevieve’s? She’d never even lived with Todd,
and presumably the two of them had enjoyed at least a touch more
stability in their seven-year relationship than she and David had
experienced thus far.

Johnson would be happy anywhere, so that
wasn’t much of a concern. He had certainly handled with admirable
aplomb the myriad changes that had led to their residency at the
Rainbow Arms. Nary a complaint after his first foray about the
courtyard, nary a whimper regarding the tight quarters in apartment
1F.

David smiled to himself as he moved toward
the gate that led to the courtyard. They’d be all right. Everything
would end up being fine. It was just another change for them, but a
positive one. He knew what he wanted now, what he and Johnson
needed to live, not to mention thrive. They’d been happy with less.
Having more, at least in moderation, could only be an enhancement
to their lives.

He pulled the gate toward him, and stepped
into the courtyard.

And then David’s heart froze for the second
time in a single afternoon.

Clair was standing a few feet away, facing
him. Her eyes were focused on his, her demeanor was calm but
intense. Behind her, the water in the fountain played in the
sunlight, burbling and spitting silvery tongues of spray into the
various basins as though it were the most ordinary of days, as if
the weapon that had been utilized to bash in the head of a man
named Hector Vance wasn’t right at this very moment a part of it,
ironically protecting the engine that kept the water
circulating.

“Hi, David,” she spoke quietly. Her gaze
hadn’t shifted an iota, and as David began to breathe again, he
studied her, seeking any hint as to what she could want of him. She
was wearing a prim white blouse over a black skirt, her saddle
shoes the perfect accompaniment for these, a simple velvet bow in
her hair a fitting ornamental topper.

The gate had swung closed behind him. He
reached to his side to grasp a fencepost, but didn’t move toward
her. Clair hadn’t budged at all.

“Hi, Clair,” he finally replied. His voice
was thick, his two words laced with more than a touch of
defensiveness.

A wan smile appeared on her face.

David wasn’t comforted.

“Can we talk for a few minutes?” she asked
him.

“About what?” he thrust back.

Her voice lowered. “You know,” she said with
that air of familiarity that had always both vexed and intrigued
him.

David’s hand fell from the fencepost, and he
leaned back into the gate. His pose may have been casual, but he
knew that he wasn’t fooling her for even a second. “Actually, I
don’t know, Clair,” he stated. “Truly, I don’t. Why don’t you tell
me?”

As he’d spoken, her smile had begun to grow.
“What would you like me to tell you?” she replied, almost
sweetly.

But David was in no mood for games. This
wasn’t some elementary school version of
Guess Who?
or
Simon Says
. When he spoke again, his tone was rough, his
words forceful. “Why don’t you tell me how you arranged for
Janice’s boyfriend to be murdered?” he demanded. “Why did you tell
Bill he could get away with it?”

Her smile had disappeared. Her expression
was sad, her eyes hurt. “It wasn’t like that,” she said
faintly.

David took a step forward before he jerked
to a halt again. He couldn’t stop himself from practically yelling
at her. “Then tell me what it was like, Clair! Tell me how it is
that you got Janice to go visit her mother, you got Bill to murder
Heck, and everybody seems to be chasing their tails around trying
to figure it all out, when the center of everything always seems to
be you!”

Her face was starting to crumple, but David
wasn’t buying it. “I didn’t tell Bill to do it,” she said.

“You did! You as good as did!”

“No, David. I didn’t.” She was pleading to
him with her voice, her hands, her eyes.

“But you knew what would happen, didn’t you?
You knew what
could
happen if Janice was away, if Bill was
told that he could repeat the same crime he’d committed all those
years ago without getting caught. You knew all of this before you
said a word to any of them! How can you stand there and tell me
you’re innocent, when you know that everything I’m saying is true?
Who are you, Clair? Who are you?”

Her hands had sunk back to her sides. A tear
began to roll down one of her cheeks, followed seconds later by a
counterpart on her other cheek. A breeze alit in the courtyard,
toying with Clair’s hair, lifting the tired bushes higher while
pushing the fallen leaves about in circles.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t know
who I am.” She sounded pathetic, lost. Her eyes were beseeching
David, though he knew not what for.

“How do you know so many things about all of
us, then? How can you know so much about everybody? Are you able to
look into our minds? See the future?
Make
the future?”

“No!” she answered immediately, shaking her
head. Her countenance was becoming a crazy quilt of tears. “No, I
can’t do that.”

“Do what?” David burst out. “You can’t make
the future, but you can do all the rest?
Tell
me, Clair!
Please, help me to understand what’s been going on here!”

Clair’s eyes closed for a few seconds. The
breeze was dying down, and David steadied himself, inhaling deeply
as he tried to tamp down his frustration and anger.

And then she was meeting his gaze again. A
hand rose to swipe at both sides of her face, but her eyes never
let go of his. “I’ve always known things,” she said quietly.
“Things I didn’t want to know. They just… appear to me.”

“Like the pronunciation of Genevieve’s
name.” David was grateful to find that the edge in his voice was
softening, flattening.

“Yes. I knew about that from the minute I
started talking with you.”

“Her last name is MacGuffie,” David stated.
“But I don’t need to tell you that, do I?”

A brisk shake of her head. “No,” she
answered as a guilty smile emerged. “Will you forgive me for
continuing to ask?”

He nodded. “Yes. For that. How did you know
about what Bill had done all those years ago? Or about Mrs.
Jenkins’ daughter?”

Her head tilted slightly higher. “Mrs.
Jenkins wore her sadness up front. It was what she was always
thinking about. With Bill, it took a while, but I think he could
sense that I was reading his thoughts, and he tried to bury what he
had done. Which only brought it right out into the open.”

David was confused. “But Clair, knowing
things about people isn’t all that is… weird about what you do.
Mrs. Jenkins told me what you said to her, about the purple skies.
Did you make the sky purple for her that night, so she could set
her grief aside?”

Another shake of her head. “No. I told you,
I can’t do that.”

“But how did you know that her daughter was
all right, how could you
possibly
know anything about that?
And how did you know that Mrs. Jenkins would go outside at all that
night? Or that doing so at that exact time would make her feel so
much better about everything?”

Clair’s smile was back, albeit a paler
version. “I don’t know. Truly, David. As for her daughter, I just
felt that she was at peace. I could perceive this. And I wanted
Mrs. Jenkins to know, because it was important to her. I knew that
that Thursday night would bring a rare color to the sky, and that
she would step outside and see it. And so I said to her what I
did.”

“So you can tell the future. You can’t make
it, but you can see it.”

“Sometimes. Not all of the time.”

“And you tricked Mrs. Jenkins into feeling
better, using this knowledge you have of the future to do so.”

Her right hand took hold of a pleat in her
skirt. “Was that so wrong?”

“How old are you, Clair?” Her grip on the
skirt tightened along with the muscles of her face, and David felt
the stirrings of the breeze again. “You never answered me when I
asked you a few months ago.”

“I’m young,” she replied quietly.

“You’re not seven, or eight, or nine. And
your language today is far more complex than I’ve noticed before.
You’re using an adult’s vocabulary, not words that a first grader
would pick up in the classroom, or on the playground of an
elementary school.”

“I’m young,” she repeated. “And I don’t
really want to talk about this.”

The breeze gusted, and David winced as dust
and dirt flew into his eyes. “Are you making this wind happen,
Clair? Are you creating this?”

The wind instantly kicked in harder. “You
are!” Clair exclaimed. “I’m not trying to create anything!” Her
face was defiant, her chin jutting outwards as her fingers
continued to maul her skirt.

“Okay, okay!” David appealed, holding his
hands out toward her. “I’ll ask about something else! We won’t talk
about your age.”

The flurries immediately died down.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a much gentler
voice. “There’s a lot I don’t understand. There’s a lot that I
want
to understand. I don’t mean to be so curious, but I
can’t help it.”

“I don’t really understand a lot either,”
Clair conceded as her chin lowered and the breeze calmed before
ceasing entirely. “But this is part of the reason I like talking to
you. You’ve come to understand so much about your own life in a
very brief period of time. You… you’ve become a better person than
you were. And you did so consciously.”

“It’s not as if I had much of a choice,”
returned David. “I couldn’t have remained who I was. I offered
nothing to the world. To myself, or to anyone else.”

“But you do now.”

He nodded. “I’m trying. I’m still trying.
May I… may I ask you about a couple things, Clair?”

Her gaze was cautious. “Yes. I’ll do my best
to answer. This is good for me, to explore like this. With you.
I’ve always told you that I like you.”

David wasn’t sure what to make of that, or
whether he should even try to comprehend. “Why Heck?” he said. “Why
him?”

Her eyes were keen; he hadn’t needed to ask
a more detailed question. “Because of Janice,” she answered. “I
didn’t like what he was doing to her.”

David looked down at the ground. “I guess I
don’t have to ask how you knew about it. But Clair… Bill will have
to deal with the burden of what he did for the remainder of his
life.”

Her tone was clear as she answered: “I knew
about it because it was obvious to anyone, not just me. You knew.
You actually knew for longer than you think you did, but you had
ignored the signs. Bill knew all along. And as for his burden, your
talk with him just now relieved a good portion of it. Time will
ease the rest, as it did for him the first time.”

David looked up again with a sigh. It was as
if she had been in the cottage with the two of them just now. But
in a way, this was only fair: Bill had eavesdropped on at least two
of Clair’s conversations with others himself.

“What about Stacey?” he asked. “Janice’s
friend.”

“Stacey?” She appeared momentarily baffled.
“Oh, Stacey. Yes.”

“How did you know to tell Janice to stay
with her until the bus came? You hadn’t met her, I’m assuming. So
how could you know about her ex coming after her that night?”

But Clair’s head was already moving from
side to side. “I don’t control it. I
can’t
control it.
Janice was moving past me as she was leaving the building, and it
just came to me, what would happen. I didn’t like what I saw, so I
told her to wait. I knew that it would keep it from happening. And
it did.”

“So you didn’t cause Janice’s mother to have
her asthma attack?”

She winced. “No. No! That was going to
happen anyway. You don’t want to believe me, do you, David?”

She looked pained, and as the bushes began
to sway again, David shifted gears.

“How many others have there been?”

The breeze fizzled out. “How many other
whats?”

He expelled some air while doing some quick
thinking. “People. Towns. Lives saved, lives taken.”

She hadn’t appreciated the last part of his
question; a frown had appeared. “I’ve lived in a lot of different
places. And I’ve known a lot of people.”

Her inability to directly answer a question
had not been affected by her desire to explore, David noted. “What
I mean is, do the same things happen to you everywhere you go?”

A slow nod. “Yes.”

“But do they end up as… complicated, for
lack of a better word, as they have here in Shady Grove?”

Another nod, along with the wince again.
“Yes. Not always. But… yes.”

David kept working ideas over, unsure of how
he could discover more explanations without stepping into the
foxholes. “Is Mrs. Rushen always with you?” he asked.

A genuine smile came forth. “Yes. She takes
care of me. She always has.”

“Are you always in the first grade,
though?”