Approaching Menace (9 page)

A distinct
thunk
came from outside the wall.

Josie jumped. She worriedly glanced at Colin, who gave a hacking cough with his eyes open.

Focusing on her, he frowned. Like he wanted to prove he hadn’t slept, he reached over and turned off the stereo. Grabbing the remote control, he snapped on the TV, where cartoon creatures fought horned toads in space.

Josie knelt on the sofa and pressed her head against the glass pane to see down below the window.

Nothing looked unusual. There was no sign of anyone.

Shrugging off uneasiness, she returned to her table, her peripheral vision letting her know Colin was staring to make certain she wasn’t watching him.

He turned wide brown eyes toward the television.

Josie studied the child-like sketches she’d made and wished she could have known enough to focus her goals long ago.

Erasing the bride’s long straight hair, she realized why she hadn’t. When her father was home, Josie tried to please him, just like Sylvie did. Josie had played with dolls in her room, changing their dresses and somehow knowing a different outfit would look better on them. If only she could make or buy them the clothes she envisioned, she would be perfectly happy.

From her bedroom, she’d often hear her parents. It usually started with her father’s voice rising. Josie sometimes shut her door when they argued. But she liked hearing his voice when he was home.

She hadn’t liked the shouting. Especially not during those times when he exploded in a rampage at her mother. “If you hadn’t gotten pregnant, I could’ve gotten a degree in something,” he’d yelled in their bedroom, making little Josie wonder what he meant.

“By now I could have
owned
a factory instead of only working in one!” Then he complained about money. Josie later learned Jack Aspen had made a good salary. But he always complained.

Sylvie’s voice had come through the hall on that day she retorted something about other women.

Josie recalled trembling. She’d risen and quietly shut her door. It amazed her now that even as a small child, she knew that discussion was not one she should overhear.

Trying to brush away the recollection, she stared at her drawing. Erasures had made her bride baldheaded.

Glancing at Colin, she found him intent on the program. Josie grabbed a new pencil and began putting curls on her female. The curls, which of course would be brown like hers, grew longer and longer. The bride’s hair snarled in tendrils.

“To hell with that job. We’re moving!” Jack Aspen had announced to his family. But by then Josie was older. Older and believing she had more wisdom. He’d left them enough. When he decided to go again and take everyone, Josie made up her mind not to leave with them.

Her father took her family away. They moved from Nashville down to Florida.

Josie’s hand whipped furious curls on the bride while she reminisced. The beaches had enticed her, but she had a nice job then and had started college. Again she experienced the yearning, almost a sense of mourning to see her entire family go. Colin had been born. “Another mistake,” her dad said when he’d thought she couldn’t hear him.

Warmth bit Josie’s eyes. She couldn’t see the tendrils. Rubbing her eyelids, she felt them moist.

She brushed away her tears and stood. Colin turned to stare while she walked toward him, and she smiled, happy to be with her brother who needed so much. “Hi,” she told him.

He eyed her. His gaze went to the blood pressure machine and then back to her face.

It wasn’t time yet for a new recording of his pressure. “You know what?” Josie asked.

He waited. Finally he said, “What?”

Her smile grew. “You’re pretty special.”

His forehead wrinkled. He was waiting for a remark to counter her first one. That was their way. It was how they played, and their games made him comfortable.

But Josie couldn’t come back with smart comments. Her fingers closed over his hand on the arm of his recliner.

Colin’s gaze located their hands and then her face. Still he was waiting.

She shook her head. “I just like you.”

Small craters formed in his cheeks. “Oh, okay.” He coughed, clearing mucus from his chest. Josie squeezed his hand. Then to dissuade him from worrying about her motive, she checked his pressure.

Once she recorded the numbers and returned to her station, Colin looked her fully in the face, and the deepest dimples he’d ever worn creased his face as he smiled.

Content but again glancing toward the window, Josie drew more curls. The hair grew until huge orbs encircled the bride’s feet. This time Josie grinned, aware of her mockery. She hadn’t been a mistake. And neither was her brother. Colin had been a gift. Of that she was certain.

The mistake had been her college major. Office administration.

Why she had pursued that course angered her. She hadn’t realized it when she stayed back in Nashville, but now she knew. Her father would have chosen that field. Josie heard him say it while she was a young teen and then decided what her goal would be. If office administration would have cured all of their family’s ills, it was the course she would choose.

Smirking, she sketched the bride’s tresses so long they became a train on her gown, while she recalled dozing in those classes. Or sometimes she drew gowns during lectures. She’d taken one art class and grew tired of creating ovals and flowers.

Now she found herself circling ovals throughout her bride’s hair.

She ripped the page off the pad and tossed it in a basket. Colin watched. Josie offered him a weak smile.

His brows wrinkled and concern showed in his eyes, but he didn’t speak. He turned back to the TV.

Josie drew dollar bills around the bride, chastising herself. If only she had gone after her own dream instead of her father’s. Before leaving Tennessee, he’d griped so much about money that she let her classes go, quit college, and took on a full-time job. The boutique where she worked was located in a busy section of the mall, and before she left to move here, there was talk of making her assistant manager. Fashion design was her interest, she’d come to realize by that time. But it was too late.

It seemed, Josie believed, that she’d lived her life in shadows, haunted by her parents’ footsteps.

As she again saw Colin’s worried glance at her, she knew she had done the right thing, coming down to Windswept, especially with the flightiness she’d been seeing in their mother.

She gave Colin a full smile, which seemed to appease him. He gave one right back, looked at the television but immediately turned again to her. Josie assured him she was still smiling even as she shivered, wondering who or what had been outside that window.

* * *

The man strode across his bedroom. He stopped right before the wall, paused a moment, and again crossed the room.

Josie had been almost smiling when she walked to her house earlier. She looked cheerful.

Why had she done that? When he made his move, he didn’t want her amused. Happy faces didn’t entice him.

Surely she must know he’d be watching. No, she hadn’t seen him. But of course she realized he was near.

She’d been with her brother. That especially confused the man, for she usually looked distressed when she was around the boy. But she only seemed perplexed when she gazed at the child within this last hour, when the man peeked through her window and tapped against it.

He expected her expression to change to alarm when she looked outside.

But from the tree he hid behind, he could see she didn’t seem timorous as he’d hoped. And she hadn’t peered outside for long.

If she had, if she would have discovered him peeking and made contact with his eyes, he would have made his move.

Now he needed to wait. Surely she realized her frightful moods attracted him. She was only teasing.

“That’s it,” he said, aware no one could hear. Josie had taken that look of assurance to keep him interested, knowing he would be near.

He stared in a mirror. The eyes peering back revealed a mature male with courage.

She would be thrilled to see them.

* * *

While Colin dozed again, Josie retrieved the page she’d tossed in the wastebasket. The gown she sketched on that stick figure bride looked similar to the one she had thought she would’ve worn in Nashville with Samuel.

Brushing off bitter remembrances of their relationship, she squeezed the page and sent it back to the trash, wondering if their mother’s concerns would ever return to the present. She needed to leave that dream world where their father would return and all would be happy.

But had our family ever been happy when he was around?

He’d been the father the child Josie had dreamed of. Her daddy would be the perfect man to marry. “I must’ve been a real kid then,” she murmured, now dreading that her own imagined perfect world ever included him.

She drew, this time penning a cross on top of a church.

Tomorrow would be Sunday. Colin had probably never been inside a church. Their mother gave up on religion fulfilling her fantasy of the perfect family and stopped attending services long before Colin came along.

Josie considered locating a church to take him to. She had contemplated going back to one in Nashville. But then she’d neared a church and seen the churchgoers heading inside with a look that said they all had some secret.

She didn’t recall what it was.

If she ever entered a church again, all those faces might turn as one with looks that said, “Why are
you
here? You don’t know the secret.”

Josie set her pencil down. The only thing familiar in that imaginary scene was the cross above the building. She had uttered many prayers since Colin’s kidneys failed, and again she said one.

Beeping pulled her away from the table.

A flashing red light added importance to the malfunction. Josie twisted a knob, made adjustments, and before the light stopped glowing, saw Colin’s hand stroking the machine.

“It’s okay, Fred. Don’t cry.” He spoke as though to a wounded pet. “Josie’s gonna get that bubble out of your stomach.” Colin coughed and gave Josie a weak smile.

“Yes,” she said, “I do take care of bellyaches.” She gazed at the shunt stuck in between light freckles on his arm to the connecting tube carrying his blood to the artificial kidney that filtered out impurities. The blood returning to him looked no different from when it came out, yet what happened to it inside the machine he’d named Fred made the entire difference between Colin’s living and dying.

If only that could happen inside of him, she considered, then he wouldn’t have to live tied to a machine. Someone besides Fred could become Colin’s best friend.

His eyelids looked heavy again once the machine functioned properly.

Josie heard a noise from the kitchen. “Sylvie?” she said.

No answer came.

Josie went there.

Dressed with her usual flair with a skinny silk dress and hosiery matching her pumps, Sylvie attempted to hide behind her back something that hung to the floor.

Josie pointed. “What’s that?”

“Nothing.” Her mother’s eyes shifted. Like a child caught stealing, Sylvie brought what she held in front of her. The name printed on the plastic said its contents were expensive. Through the long clear bag Josie could see a slender black dress.

“I had to have it,” Sylvie said. “I haven’t had a new dress in so long.”

Josie knew. It had been exactly two months.

Sylvie smiled at the dress. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Josie was thankful that the house was paid for. She wished all of Colin’s bills were. Shaking her head, she returned to the den. He was sleeping again.

The crinkling package came behind. Sylvie entered, folding her head down like a reprimanded young girl. “I love that dress.” She lifted the plastic bag and caressed her purchase, molding the skirt to her body, which seemed almost as slender as Josie’s hopes of saving enough money for Colin’s future.

Josie needed to talk to Andrew. She could locate him only on his answering machine.

“It’s Andrew,” his voice said. “And Johan here,” announced his German roommate. “We’re not actually here,” Andrew’s voice amended. “But when we are, we’ll return your call if you’ll leave a message.”

His voice, although lively, made Josie apprehensive. He might be only outside, or possibly he was shopping. But Andrew told her he would be home all day taking care of his share of the chores. Johan worked today and had done his share of the cleaning.

Whenever Andrew didn’t answer her call when he was supposed to be home, Josie felt an unwanted sense of doom. He had done this before.

But, she told herself while shrugging off her anxiety, he had quit gambling. Andrew was no longer a practicing addict. He’s just not home, she reassured herself. She left a message for him to call her.

The timer on Colin’s machine said he still had quite some time left. He was sitting up, telling Sylvie about school while she wiped liquid polish across the den furniture.

He stopped speaking when Josie entered and pressed his lips tight.

She figured he was remembering to show annoyance for her having taken him away from Annie. He loved Josie as much as she adored him, but her brother was a child with a child’s mind. Other children were becoming most important.

Josie looked at their mother. “I’m going to the supermarket. Would you finish him up?”

Sylvie’s contented expression vanished. She stared up from her kneeling position.

“You know how,” Josie said.

Sylvie swallowed and her eyelids fluttered, shaking their new violet color.

Josie left telling herself not to worry. She and her mom had been trained together. Even though Sylvie felt queasy about the dialysis process, she knew what to do. Josie drove from the house trying to feel assured that their mother would take care of what needed to be done with her own child.

Gathering groceries in a hurry, Josie avoided the apple counter. She returned home and finished putting away her purchases right before Andrew arrived.

“I thought you’d be in the apartment today,” she said, expecting his reply to dissuade her concerns.