Indigo (13 page)

He nodded.

“You’re not telling me the whole thing here.”

“I think she’s not okay. Mia-Joy will have a setback, if I’m right. And then we’ll have to, you know, figure out a way for you to …” He let his voice trail off, and I realized then what he meant. He looked at me like maybe he had said too much.

“So you’re sure that I’m a healer?” I said, taking a bite of my sandwich.

“Aren’t you?”

I shrugged.

“My grandmother’ll tell you stories about my mom, about the people she healed, the lives she saved. But she’ll tell you too that Mom only really remembered the few that she couldn’t help, the ones she couldn’t heal.”

I sat silently looking out the window at the garage. Thinking of the beauty it held. Thinking of Sophie.

“Your sister,” he said, setting down his sandwich. “I know what you’re carrying around.”

We sat in silence, and I heard the clock above the kitchen sink ticking quietly. Bouncer came and rested his head on Rennick’s lap. Rennick gave him a pickle. “The monster eats pickles, for God’s sake.” He shook his head and laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. The timbre of his laugh. It was a beautiful note, G-sharp, then F-sharp.

“Go lie down,” he told the dog, and the dog did.

I swallowed hard. “Sophie … It was the same as with Mrs. Two—I mean, your grandmother, the whole thing. It just didn’t end up the same, you know? How can I ever … I mean, who knows if I might save somebody or kill them?” I shook my head, put my hand out for Bouncer, clicked my tongue. He came over and let me scratch him behind the ears. I needed something else to do, to look at, besides the well of concern in Rennick’s eyes.

Rennick shook his head. “I don’t think—”

I couldn’t hear his excuses right then. I didn’t want to. I changed the subject. “Tell me about your mother. Her power.”

He didn’t like this, and there was something there, in the way he held his jaw, guarded. “She could only summon it about half the time she wanted, Grandma said.”

At that moment, the front door opened. An older man with a shaggy beard and salt-and-pepper hair came in. When I saw his hat, I realized it was the man who had been
sleeping in the recliner in Mrs. Twopenny’s room. Of course. Dodge.

“Hey-o,” he called. He walked into the kitchen with heavy footfalls, whistling loudly.

“Dodge,” Rennick said, standing up from the table. “This is Corrine.”

Dodge stood up straighter, put a hand to his old fishing hat in greeting. He looked kind of like a quarter note standing there. “The famous Corrine. How can I ever …” His voice trailed off. He held his hands to his heart in a gesture that was at once so genuine and so heartbreaking, I had to look away. “Thank you, my dear.” He walked toward me, put out his hand. I considered it. Then I offered my own. He held it between both of his for a beat, then kissed the back of it. He looked at Rennick, winked as he let go of my hand. “Prettier than you even said.”

“Dodge,” Rennick admonished him.

I tried not to blush, however impossible that was. Dodge’s eyes held mine, and I saw a bit of Rennick in his grizzled gray face. The same dark blue eyes. I smiled. How could I possibly be standing in this man’s house? A man whose wife I had just saved from imminent death? A man who accepted that fact with no question?

I didn’t know which seemed more impossible.

“You want a sandwich?” Rennick asked, gesturing toward the stove.

“No sirree,” Dodge said, pulling out my chair for me at the table. Rennick would not meet my gaze, and I saw the little boy inside him again. He didn’t blush, but he laughed to himself, head down.

Dodge crouched down to nuzzle Bouncer. “Got myself some pickled herring.”

“Fabulous,” Rennick said, wrinkling his nose.

“Son, just go on out to the lake, sit on the swing if you can’t handle the smell of it. Take the rest of your lunches. You can have some privacy.”

“You mind, Dodge?”

Dodge shook his head.

Rennick grabbed his plate and motioned to me. He avoided my eyes, held the back door open for me. “This okay, Corrine?”

I nodded. “Nice to meet you,” I told Dodge, grabbing my food.

“My pleasure,” Dodge said, giving me a wink. Bouncer stayed with Rennick’s grandfather, and we went out the back door toward the lake. It was gorgeous back there. I hadn’t fully appreciated the wildflowers when I had been there yesterday. The scents. The scenery.

I took in the big vegetable garden too. I spied ripe purple eggplant. The frilly edges of coriander. No wonder Mr. Twopenny and my mother knew each other. Mom would love these gardens.

Rennick and I sat down on the big old swing that hung
from the magnolia-covered arbor. It faced the lake, which was murky and swampy, yet serene and beautiful in its own way. The muddy green tones of the water reflected in the way the sun played on the waves, the grasses and bulrushes swaying in the breeze on the water’s edge, the throaty, buzzing croaks of the locusts and frogs echoing in the distance.

“So how long have you lived here with your grandfather?”

I picked the crust off my sandwich, pushed my feet on the ground to move the swing a bit. Rennick smelled like his clothes had been dried on a line outside on the first day of spring. And the shape of his jaw just kept drawing my eyes. Chiseled, that was a good word for it.

“I moved here last summer.” He looked at me from the corner of his eye and added, “I didn’t get kicked out of Penton.” He wolfed down the last half of his sandwich. I did the same and became very interested in my iced tea, trying not to ask but hoping he would elaborate.

He didn’t. I held my tongue for a quarter rest, tried to wait out a whole note. I wanted to hear more. A crow swooped down and cawed near the water’s edge, picked up something in its mouth. I had to fill the silence.

“Do you think the newspapers, the reporters, will give up after today?” I asked.

“No.”

I hadn’t expected this answer. Rennick turned to me. “Things have been going on in New Orleans.”

“What do you mean?”

“More people like us.” I gave him a look. “People with extrasensory powers. Sixth sense of some kind. Clusters of us.”

Bouncer came storming out of the back door, Dodge following. He walked hurriedly, a hitch in his step, and spoke in a low whisper. “Some reporters at the door a minute ago. Told ’em you weren’t here.”

“Should we take a walk?” Rennick looked at me seriously.

“Maybe if I just answer a few questions,” I offered.

“No,” Rennick said. “Bad idea.”

“Take a walk,” Dodge whispered, grabbing Rennick by the shoulder for a moment in such a serious way that it unnerved me. I wondered again how Ruth had died. And how she had lived too, with this secret, with people’s judgments. With all her own doubts?

I followed Rennick, and I got that feeling again that I could see myself from the outside, going off into the woods with someone I hardly knew.

But Rennick motioned for me to follow him, and I felt that tenuous string between us. Some kind of real connection. I wasn’t ready to break it. I wasn’t sure I totally trusted him and everything he said, but he hadn’t steered me wrong yet.

I went with my gut instinct. My heart knew this guy in some weird and cosmic sense.

I went with Rennick, not deep into the woods, just along the edge, and I was a little bit scared about everything. A little bit chilly in the shadowy canopy of the trees. A little
bit excited about how every few steps Rennick would turn around and check on me with an easy smile.

My senses came alive as we hiked through the little patch of forest that backed up to Rennick’s grandfather’s property, the sprawling live oaks, the pungent pine trees, the swampy masses of kudzu. It felt good to hike, to walk and feel my body move and not to hold it in, not to cross my arms and hold my limbs close. I found a sliver of freedom out there in the shade of the forest, and I felt the blood pumping through my veins, my heart working. And I liked it.

We quickly came to a little shack, really only three ramshackle walls with a slanted aluminum roof. Rennick said it was a hunting blind, his grandfather’s, although I had never even heard of one before.

“Dodge and I camp out here and hunt for deer and turkey.”

I tried to picture Rennick as a hunter. It didn’t seem to work. But I reminded myself that I didn’t really know this guy. At all. He sat down on the floor of the hunting blind, rested his back on the inside wall, and patted the ground next to him. “We only shoot what we can eat. Nothing more,” he said, as if he had been reading my mind.

“Before, you said that you knew someone like me, long ago. Were you speaking of your mother? Or—”

“Someone else too. Dell was his name.”

“Dell.” I sat down next to him, my shoulder grazing his.
“Could he just heal anyone? Anything? Did he ever
hurt
when he didn’t mean to?”

“We were kids, Corrine. I think Dell didn’t quite know what he had. It’s only looking back that I sort of put the pieces together.”

“Could I talk to him?”

Rennick shook his head, his eyes dark. “You don’t remember me, do you?” he asked, looking up at me through his lashes. He looked almost apologetic.

“Should I remember you?”

“We met once a long time ago.” He didn’t look at me now but instead drew in the dirt with a stick—his initials, a compass rose, squiggles.

I thought hard. Rennick Lane? Wouldn’t I have remembered meeting this guy? This part nerd/part dreamboat/part meddlesome
Scooby-Doo
kid who showed up right in the middle of trouble? “I don’t remember. Where? When?”

“Summer. We were probably nine or ten. Lake Pontchartrain.”

It hit me then. “You were the boy with the sparklers?” I looked at him wide-eyed, my jaw dropped. He nodded, didn’t quite meet my eye. I couldn’t believe it. I remembered that night. Of course I remembered that night.

I tried to reconcile this cool, easy young man with the awkward kid I had met on that Fourth of July.

He had worn thick black-rimmed glasses and had the kind of hair that lots of ten-year-old boys have: unwashed,
untamed, too long in parts, too short in others. His ears stuck out from his head, and he was all hands and feet and teeth. Gangly. He had been an absolute nerd, no question.

So, I had been right about that. And for some reason, I liked that.

My family and I—Sophie had been just three or four years old then—were having a campfire on the shore with a big gang of my parents’ friends and their kids. It was a Fourth of July tradition. Rennick—or the kid I knew now as Rennick—sort of hung around the outside of our little group, on the fringe, for a long time that night. He was digging a lot near the waves, near the rocks, I remembered that.

An older boy, Rory Kelleher, started picking on Rennick. Calling him names. Looking back, I think that Rory kid was trying to impress these two blond girls in bikini tops and cutoff jeans.

The whole thing went on through the evening, with Rennick moving along the shore, digging with a stick, Mia-Joy and I playing kick the can with some friends, and the older group of kids and Rory doing nothing, like only fourteen-year-olds can. And this Rory kid kept yelling over to Rennick once in a while. Calling him a nerd and a dork.

It wasn’t anything too horrible, but even at nine I knew what a moron that Rory kid was. I remembered clearly that I was building a hill of sand for the tin can to sit on, and I was going over the circle of sharps in my head as I did it. And I saw Rory filling up a water balloon from a canteen. He
called over to the nerdy boy, to Rennick, “Hey, kid! Come show me what you found down there digging!”

Rennick looked up all eager, glasses cocked at a ridiculous angle. The girls around Rory giggled with delight, and I just couldn’t stomach it. I stood up and shouted real loud, “Rory Kelleher, would you just shut up, you fat bully? Go bust that water balloon on your own head!”

I got busy playing kick the can then, but I could feel Rory’s stare on me, the whispers of those older girls. I also heard a few snickers from some of my playmates. But what really made me smile was the sound of the little boy’s laugh. Just one yelp, one guffaw, right from the belly, had gotten out too quickly for him to edit.

The timbre of that laugh. It hadn’t grown to G-sharp yet, but in my memory I could hear the hint of it.

That had been Rennick.

And it had been Rennick who had stood rapt, twenty, maybe thirty feet away, still and at attention when I played the violin around the campfire that night. I had been impressed with that. Because so many people didn’t care, so many of the kids ran around, screaming, playing, ignoring me. And that was fine. But that kid—Rennick—he listened intently. And when I chose my second song to play, I picked
Canon in D
. For him. I thought he would like it. A lot of action.

When it was dark and the teenagers had found better things to do down the beach at their own fire, my mom began making s’mores for us, and she told me to politely go
offer that left-out kid one of them. That’s what she said, I remembered that: “that left-out kid.”

“He seems like he wants to join you guys,” Mom had told me. “Invite him to play with you.”

So I did. He waved over his brother, an older, tough-looking kid with the shaggiest dishwater-blond hair. They both had dirt on their faces, and I had no idea where their parents were, but these kids were more than happy to join us in a game of flashlight tag. I remembered that Rennick came walking up, and he didn’t look at me but said, “It’s so true when you play your violin.”

I always remembered that, till this day. I knew what he meant.

But what happened after that game of tag was what he probably remembered most. Rennick brought out some sparklers. My dad’s friend Mr. Parker lit a few with his cigarette lighter, and the rest of us kids lit our sparklers off each other’s. Well, Rennick’s brother’s hair caught a spark. The wind had been just right. I was spinning in circles with my sparkler, my feet squishing against the now-cool sand, and I was watching my sparkler leave a trail of rainbow lights. And then from the corner of my eye, I saw his hair just light up, a big poof of a flame, yellow and orange and bright and fast.