Indelible (18 page)

Jonah landed the trout, thinking maybe Tia could eat, then groaned when his radio burbled. But it wasn’t the job intruding on this rare day off. His mother was having a second cardiac event. He closed his eyes.

After a while, Jay gripped his shoulder. “Let’s clean these fish.”

Waving a mechanical lobster claw, Cody wobbled on a tightrope across a cavernous fissure.

“Cody!” Natalie cried.

He moved one sneakered foot back, then the other, canting and jerking.

“Don’t move. You’ll fall!”

“Where are you, Auntie Nattie?” His little body shook.

“I’m here. I’m here!” Gripping the rope, she tried to pull him in, but it unraveled in her hands, becoming dust.

“Cody!”

His robot claw snapped open and shut, open and shut, grabbing nothing but darkness rising up like thick, choking smoke. Heat blistered her face as something formed in the darkness. A giant mouth, laughing. Eyes like bloody flames.

With a cry, Cody toppled, spiraling down, down.

She screamed and woke.

Tears coursing her cheeks, she threw back the covers and slid her bare feet to the wooden floor. In the cramped bathroom, she ran the hot water, filled her cupped hands and pressed them to her face, feeling useless and disconnected.

Back at the bedside, she took her phone and texted her brother. “Tell me Cody’s safe.” Every second accelerated her heart rate until the phone vibrated in her hand. She fumbled her thumb over to press View.

“Cody’s safe. Are you okay?”

She held the phone to her chest, quaking, then remembered he’d be waiting for an answer. “Fine. Sorry.”

A moment later. “Love you, Nat.”

“I love you too,” she said. Paige had issues with their closeness, jealousy maybe. She forgave this latest rejection, but in the dream Cody called to her, and she would do everything in her power to be there for him, as Trevor had.

Swallowing her tears, she wished Trevor was with her now, wished she could text him as she had Aaron, get a response that would make the dread go away. He told her to consider whether she wanted this relationship, but she wanted it more every hour he was gone.

He’d been raw, sharing his loss, and that released a tenderness she reserved for those closest to her. She didn’t need time. The two days he’d been gone had lost their sheen. She fully expected the five still to go would be as dull as old wool. And right now with her nerves all pinchy and reactive, she’d feel so much better knowing he was near.

After spooning the bag out of the tea, she warmed her icy hands with the mug. It was going to be all right. The awful dream images were fading. Thank God they didn’t stick like real vision. She shuddered, thinking of that face in the smoke, waiting to gobble Cody like the mountain lion, only evil.

Lord, whatever it is …

She set down the mug, reached for her Bible, and looked for something inspired to chase the smoke away.
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart …
Some might call it superstition, but she felt the peace descend.

Soothed by the ancient, timeless words, Natalie showered, dressed, and headed over to Fleur’s. She raised her brows in surprise when her friend didn’t come out to walk, but invited her in with a finger to her lips.

“Something important’s happening. Be my eyes.”

Natalie followed her to the kitchen. Hovering at the doorway, she glimpsed Piper and Miles standing on either side of a wooden stool in the sun porch where Fleur painted.

“Ready?” Piper held a comb and scissors.

Miles nodded, but his Adam’s apple rose and plunged.

“You’ll have to sit.”

He went down as though his knees gave out.

“Don’t panic, or I might cut you, okay?”

He nodded mutely.

Fleur whispered, “How’s Miles?”

“A few shades off antique white. He winces every time Piper slides the comb through the hair he wears like a helmet.” Her brow pinched. “Talk about a tender-head.”

He sucked a sharp breath as Piper snipped a strand and said, “I took cosmetology courses in high school.”
Trust me
, her face pleaded. “You need some shortening here at the back and texturizing on top.”
Tenderness and understanding
.

“Miles doesn’t like being touched,” Fleur murmured. “He panics.”

So that was it. She knew his problem with germs, but hadn’t connected an aversion to touch. She felt for him, being so limited. And then she laughed to herself. Look at them all—except for Piper, blessed with normalcy. No, that wasn’t true. Piper was extraordinary, a sweet benison of acceptance.

Miles wore an exquisite, martyrlike expression of ecstasy and torment. He might be dying a thousand deaths, but he didn’t tell Piper to stop. His courage had texture and depth. People conquered obstacles every day. Miracles happened. But, oh, the price.

Too late she looked away.

At last, Piper put down the scissors and exclaimed, “My teddy is handsome!”

“He is,” Natalie told Fleur, “but Piper will have to tell you. I need to go.” She made her way to the door, everything else almost completely blocked by the resonance of his ordeal. Had the poor man never been touched?

She needed clay. It was almost never this intense, but his emotional tension had seared him behind her eyes.
Oh Lord, for a shred of normalcy!

Fleur said, “The gallery, Miles. She needs to sculpt.”

And they thought Miles could help?

“I can drive you.” He loomed over her. “If you let me, I can drive you.”

“I have my car at home.” And a little peripheral vision to see by.

“He doesn’t mind driving you,” Piper said. “He’d like to.”

He was in her head, so intensely vulnerable, but he didn’t realize that, and she wouldn’t tell him. “Okay.” Safer for all this way. She got into the passenger seat of his BMW. How could being driven by an OCD man with an aversion to touch, who had just undergone a harrowing experience, feel so right?

Because angels came in all shapes and sizes, strengths and weaknesses.

He started the engine. “Different is hard. It’s hard being different.”

She pressed her palms to her eyes. “You can do something about your difference, Miles. You just did.”

The car eased backward, swinging onto the street.

“I love Piper. I love her so much it makes a hole in me. But my head feels like a million red ants because the person I love touched me. All I want is to wash it off, to wash her touch away, down a drain where it can’t hurt. To wash Piper away.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t touch. People don’t touch. That’s what happens in my head, but I
want
to touch. I want to touch her.”

“Keep trying, Miles. Find something like the clay is for me, a way to process it out of the part that can’t handle it into a part that can.”

He parked and let her into the studio. She felt the keypad and pressed the alarm code.

Miles said, “Are you all right?”

“I will be.” She turned to face him. “And so will you. Find the way.”

With deep compassion, she sculpted the man who couldn’t be touched getting his first real haircut. She had described it to a woman who listened to a sport she used to love and would never watch or do again. These people didn’t simply survive, they overcame. And while Trevor might look like the most perfect, powerful, and put-together person, he’d overcome injury and loss and become heroic to everyone who depended on him when life hung by a thread.

She strode to the unfinished statue in the corner and removed the drape. It had been raw clay long enough.

For who can yet believe, though after loss,
That all these puissant legions whose exile
Hath emptied Heaven, shall fail to re-ascend,
Self-raised, and repossess their native seat?

W
ith every mile, anticipation; with every change of scene, inspiration. What heights he ascended. What glory. He soared. He swooned. This was heaven itself he entered, and yet mere humans dwelled in mansions, shoulder to shoulder with lowly domiciles, equality bestowed by an overarching grandeur.

In this pristine village, the main street bore charming shops, a coffeehouse, a bakery, no fast food, no pawnshops. No children wandering the streets, no stink and squalor. They played in yards, at a small enclosed park with parents in careful attendance, at a day care closely monitored. Privileged. Protected. Opposing emotions strove inside him as he slowly cruised through the town.

From that road, he accessed intersecting streets with older wood and stone and log houses, seeing not one lost and wandering, hurt or hungering urchin. Through the car’s cracked window, he craned. His mouth and eyes felt dry. No moist and mild clime here, but piercing through, the sun shone bright.

Near euphoric, his thoughts flew at lightning speed. He had sent his missives, and now he must learn what he could of his adversary, beyond what he knew from the news, from the article still tucked inside his cloak. He would prepare to meet him face to face. Soon, soon! A rhapsody of possibilities. He clutched himself in a tight embrace.

Twelve

C
hief.” Mayor Buckley spread his perfect, cap-tooth smile. Not a person Jonah expected to meet outside his mother’s hospital room.

“Mayor.” He felt Tia stiffen. “I don’t know if you’ve met my wife, Tia.”

“I don’t think so. But I know who you are. Candles, isn’t it?” He held out his hand.

“It was.” She gave it a brief shake.

“Ran your mother’s shop.”

“It started that way.” The edge in her voice could etch glass. But she hadn’t planned to come face to face with her alleged father.

Buckley’s silver hair glistened in the fluorescent hospital light, and for the first time, Jonah noticed similarities in the features of Buckley’s face and Tia’s.

Sarge gave up the secret, thinking Tia knew about her mother’s affair and the resulting pregnancy. He had no doubt Stella told him the truth, even though she never filled her daughter in. Not even to explain why she loathed her.

“You’re here for Laraine?”

“My mother, yes.” In the parental department, he and Tia had both drawn chaff.

“The doctors don’t want her upset.”

Jonah crooked a brow. “That’s usually the case with heart attacks.”

Buckley’s smile patronized. “Sure, sure. But you know, Jonah—”

“Nice seeing you, Owen.” He took Tia’s icy hand and eased past the man with whom his dad had schemed and scammed to solidify their power. He hadn’t realized Buckley and his mother maintained a relationship, and didn’t really care. He pushed the door wider and entered her room.

Her gray blond hair spilled over the pillow, her puffy face showing a beauty that could have been amazing. Everything about her had diminished—her hatred had not.

Blue eyes burning from him to Tia, her nostrils distended. “This is what you married?”

Since the wedding happened in his hospital room after being shot, guests had been few, his mother not among them. Nor had she made any effort in the year since. Tia made him stop going to her house to avoid verbal and emotional abuse. But even she agreed a second heart attack required a visit.

“I’m Tia.” She didn’t offer a hand or a hug.

“You’re pregnant.”

As trim as Tia was, the beginning bulge of their baby showed through her India cotton dress. “Four months.”

His mother’s eyes narrowed on his like an adder’s. “I hope that spawn is as sharp a knife in your heart as you are in mine.”

“Kids are what you make them.”

Tia turned to him. “No, Jonah. Some people turn out truly fine, in spite of their parents.” Then, to his mother. “I’m sorry for your illness.”

“I’ll just bet you are.”

“And I’m sorry for you.”

“Get out.” Her monitor started beeping.

Jonah motioned for Tia to go, then turned to his mother. “I don’t care how you treat me, but I draw the line with Tia. And my children.”

“Aren’t you the big man?”

His father’s taunt from her mouth twisted the knife. “I’m sorry for you too.”

“I don’t want your pity,” she spat.