Extraordinary (24 page)

Phoebe sat down on the cushion across from Mrs. Tolliver. She took a Skittle to be polite.

“Try the sour raspberry,” Mrs. Tolliver said, pointing.

Phoebe wondered how much, if anything, Mrs. Tolliver knew about what was going on with Catherine. But this was still Mrs. Tolliver, who, even if she knew, would never lean forward and touch Phoebe and say, “How are you, dear?”

Mrs. Tolliver popped a sour raspberry Skittle into her own mouth, smiled again, and then held up one of her magazines. “I was just thinking about that place, you know, the place where they go, because I was looking at this picture.”

Phoebe took the magazine—a gardening magazine—and looked. Her hand tightened on the magazine. Her breath caught in her throat as she stared.

The picture was of a small garden glade, spring-like, enclosed by flower beds, framed by trees, and with a pretty upholstered chair in the middle. Phoebe gazed at it in shock. Then she looked back up, straight into Mrs. Tolliver's utterly clear, utterly understanding, and utterly knowledgeable eyes.

“The place where they go,” echoed Phoebe. She stared at Mrs. Tolliver, and Mrs. Tolliver smiled at her, and then Phoebe looked again at the magazine picture.

The upholstered chair in the picture was not the throne that Phoebe had seen, or hallucinated, the last time she had been in this house. This magazine picture was merely an advertisement for furniture, and the chair was upholstered in a flowery fabric, intended to imply that buying this chair would make you feel like you were sitting in a bower. It was not what Phoebe had seen. This was not Ryland's bedroom, or anyone else's. It was a magazine fantasy.

But the composition of the picture was a dead ringer, and Mrs. Tolliver's oddly sparkling eyes were now telling Phoebe the impossible: that she too had found the garden.

Mrs. Tolliver clasped her hands. “It is there, isn't it? I knew it! You've seen it too. I can tell by your face.” She leaned forward confidentially. “You won't tell on me, will you? I'm not supposed to know it's there. But I do know. That's where they're from. And there's a gateway to it right here in my house.”

Mrs. Tolliver nodded her head decisively. “They're faeries. Both of them. What I don't know is what they're doing here. Besides pretending to be my children, that is.”

“My queen, please. Don't try to speak. Please—”

“No, Ryland, let her talk. Can't you see that she needs to? Your Majesty, try again. Just a little louder and I will hear you—”

“She is near.”

“What? Your Majesty? Who is near?”

“I can feel her. The girl. She is ready. Bring her to me.”

“No, she's not ready. She has to admit that she's ordinary. She hasn't. Not yet. Ryland said she wouldn't even say it last night when he—”

“It is done. She has said the words, just not to Ryland. But they are said, and they were meant.”

Phoebe sat with her mouth agape.

A wistful look passed over Mrs. Tolliver's face. “Do you know what I'm hoping, Phoebe? What I've been hoping for all this time? That if I'm very good, and if I keep pretending, then they'll give me back my own Mallory someday. The faeries must have her, don't you think? They must have made it seem like she died, but that didn't really happen. The faeries took her. They saved my Mallory from leukemia and they gave me the other Mallory in exchange.

“But one day they'll have what they came for and then they'll go away and give me back my own daughter. Don't you think, Phoebe? So I help them all I can, by pretending. I'm just what they want me to be.”

She's not well, Phoebe thought to herself. Mrs. Tolliver is not well. Whatever she's babbling about, I don't have to listen. She's—Phoebe reached for a word Catherine might have used—she's psychotic. I'll get up. I'll walk away.

But she didn't move.

Mrs. Tolliver traced the edge of the candy dish with a loving fingertip. “The Skittles are my secret weapon. I remember better when I eat them.” She giggled. “I think it's because Skittles are so sugary. Dark chocolate doesn't work. Twizzlers do, but I hate them, don't you? I think any refined sugar will do the trick, really, but I stick with my Skittles.”

Crazy as a loon,
Phoebe thought. She began to push herself up from the floor. She was suddenly frantic to escape. “I actually came here looking for Ryland, but since he's not here, I can't stay. Thank you for—”

“No!” Mrs. Tolliver grabbed for the candy dish with one hand and with the other reached across to take hold of Phoebe by the front of her dress. Phoebe found a Skittle pressed to her lips. She opened her mouth to protest and the candy was within, melting a little in her mouth.

“Don't go,” said Mrs. Tolliver. “I have more to tell you!”

Phoebe's instinct was to spit out the Skittle, but she didn't. She had no conscious awareness of deciding to settle back onto the cushion, but there she sat. Then carefully, consciously, she chewed and swallowed the Skittle, although the candy seemed to fight her throat as it went down and a moment later, her stomach roiled. She pressed her lips shut.

“Thank you.” Mrs. Tolliver put her hand to her throat. “Who knows when I'll be able to talk to you again? Maybe never. And it's such a relief. You're probably the one person who knows I'm not crazy.”

Phoebe managed a small, polite nod. She felt cold. So cold. This
was
craziness; it had to be. She twisted her hands together.

“You're such a nice girl,” Mrs. Tolliver said. “You were always good to my Mallory. Wait. Not my Mallory. The other Mallory. It's confusing, isn't it? She was in such a terrible place when she met you. So vulnerable and scared. And I couldn't do anything. I needed to pretend not to notice. You can't know how terrible it is, to be helpless concerning your children. I mean, not my child at all. But she looked like my Mallory. Then, she did. Not now. But she's always been nice to me. Well, maybe not always. But mostly. She tried. Which the other one—you know, the man—he's never bothered. Not that he's been here long. They think I'm stupid, but I'd never forget I had a son! I didn't. I only had a daughter. My Mallory. But I pretended. I always pretend.”

Mrs. Tolliver paused for another Skittle. “The other Mallory. You helped her fit in; you helped her stay here. And so, you helped me. You have no idea how grateful I was. I will always be grateful. Especially if in the end I get my Mallory back!”

Now Mrs. Tolliver was looking confused. “I'm drifting,” she muttered. Her hand hovered over the candy dish, and then attacked it and retrieved five Skittles. She put them in her mouth and chewed quickly.

“I was glad to help Mallory,” said Phoebe uncertainly. “And I want you to know that I was aware she needed help. My whole family knew. My mother knew.” Her voice stumbled over the reference to Catherine. “We wanted to help,” she said. “Mallory needed a friend.”

“I'm starting to feel sick,” Mrs. Tolliver said. “There's no sense in my finishing these, even.” She dumped the Skittles back into the candy dish. They left colored smudges on her palm.

Phoebe saw her escape route. “Let me help you to bed. And I'll get you your medication if you tell me what to do.”

A visual memory formed in Phoebe's mind. Mallory, that very first day, with the cheap fairy wings hanging drearily from the shoulders of her costume. She'd been wearing clothing she'd gotten from her mother, Phoebe recalled.

Suddenly the rational explanation came to her. The young Mallory, sane where her mother was insane, had occupied her time playacting, going along with her mother's faerie lunacy. It was a wonder Mallory hadn't gone insane too.

Fury filled Phoebe. At Mrs. Tolliver, a little, but mostly at Ryland. Why hadn't he done something? Why hadn't he protected his sister at least, and been there for her?

Phoebe had a moment of desperately wishing for her mother, who was so much the opposite of this passive, loony creature. But there was no sense in that.

“Let me get you to bed. Come on.” Decisively, Phoebe got up, and five minutes later, she had gotten Mrs. Tolliver off the floor, down the hallway, and into her own bed.

But what to do next? Mrs. Tolliver had reverted to mumbling incoherence, but also seemed sincerely in pain, abdominal pain that was increasing every minute. Phoebe retreated to the bathroom to look at the row of prescription medications lined up there. She looked at medication names, she looked at dates, but she had no idea what would help.

Finally, she pulled out her phone to try Ryland again. Of course he still wasn't responding. And so, the next second, she tried calling Mallory. And when Mallory too did not pick up, Phoebe impulsively left a message.

“Mallory, it's Phoebe. I'm with your mother right now, at your house. She's sick. I don't know what to do. She's in pretty bad shape, a lot of pain. It might be nothing—she's been into a lot of Skittles—but I can't take the risk. So if I don't hear back from you in five minutes, I'm going to call 911. I know you're mad at me and I'm mad at you, but this is about your mother. Call me the second you get this, okay?”

It didn't even cross Phoebe's mind to leave a similar message for Ryland. He had umpteen messages from her already today. She looked at her watch to note the time and returned to Mrs. Tolliver's room to check on her.

And found her passed out and snoring like a hibernating bear. Beside her, rolling on the floor next to the bed, was a bottle of ordinary non-prescription Tylenol PM.

“Well,” said Phoebe aloud. “So much for that.” She hesitated, in case it only looked like Mrs. Tolliver was all right. But that snore announced health in just about the loudest possible terms.

There was a further safety precaution to make, to put Mrs. Tolliver on her side, just in case she vomited and choked while she slept. Phoebe heaved her into place and propped some pillows around her.

Now she could leave, drive home, collapse into bed, and forget she'd ever come here. Her only regret was that she'd left that telltale message for Mallory. She'd have to call and leave another, explaining and telling her not to worry. And then leave a long explanatory message for Ryland too.

What a tangled mess. At least she was breathing okay.

And she no longer felt that she desperately needed to see Ryland. That had been odd, that feeling ...

Faeries! She had to get away, out of this house ...

After one last check of Mrs. Tolliver, Phoebe headed back down the hallway toward the exit. But her feet slowed and then stopped halfway down the hall, in front of the closed door of the room that belonged to Ryland.

She could close her eyes now and see her hallucination from before. The little walled garden. And then Mrs. Tolliver's magazine picture of what was essentially the same thing.

There was a logical explanation. Of course there was.

But she still couldn't move on past the door. Her hand twitched. She wanted to open it. She wanted just to check. Just to see.

Behind her, she could still hear the regular, stentorian notes of Mrs. Tolliver's snores. Phoebe thought of all the stupid heroines in horror books and movies who went into the haunted house, where they met their deaths. But she knew this was an ordinary room. She knew it. This was the real world. In the real world, there was plenty of horror of the regular kind involving war and famine and floods and disease and crime. And mothers in comas from which they might never wake up.

But there were no faeries.

She would prove it right now.

Phoebe turned to face the door to Ryland's room, grasped the knob, and threw the door open.

And came face-to-face with Mallory, panting, one hand extended as if to open the door from the other side, her phone in the other hand, and, behind her—

Behind Mallory was Faerie.

Phoebe was filled with cold, hard fury. All right, then. The impossible was not only possible, but true.

She wasted not a second more on doubt. She launched herself at Mallory in a full tackle, overturning her onto the cobbled stone path and landing on top of her where she could hold her down and grab her arms and scream directly into her face.

“You lied to me! From the very first, you lied! Homeschooling, yeah, right, absolutely. Clinically depressed mother! Brother in Australia! Everything about your brother! Both of you, liars! What about that legend that says faeries never lie? They can trick people but they never directly lie? It's not true, is it? I can prove it! You both lied to me. And to my parents!

“And why? That's what I really want to know. Is it about my mother's money? I may be a Rothschild, but beyond that we both know I'm nothing special. I admit it, I'm ordinary. So what? Why was that so important for me to realize? To say? Did you tell your brother I was an easy mark for—for whatever it is you're up to?

“You know, I wondered at first how he could possibly be interested in me. I wanted to believe it, so I did. I was an idiot, okay, granted, but I'm not one anymore. He never cared about me, the real me, any more than you ever did, right? You've both used me! It was all about some faerie thing. Something to do with that crazy story you told us on Nantucket about Mayer Rothschild. Right? Well, now I'm sorry I missed the end. Would it have made a difference if I'd listened to the whole thing? Or would we still be here now, only I'd know why you've betrayed me, not to mention my mother—my mother—

“My mother—that mysterious coma—I saw your brother on Nantucket. Both of you were there! Did you put my mother in that coma? You did, didn't you? Both of you! Why?
Why
? What do you want from us? From me? Whatever it is, why didn't you just come out and ask for it? My mother—she was never anything but good to you! My dad—he's a wreck—you—you—evil—”