Seed (8 page)

Aimee gave Jack a look—
Don’t question it
—and turned back to the stove. Jack turned to make his way to the bedroom, stopped when he saw Charlie sitting dead center in the middle of the overturned table.

“Daddy,” she said. “None of these legs are wobbly.”

“Oh good,” Jack murmured to himself. “I must have fixed it in my sleep.”

In towns as small as Live Oak, folks were tightly knit. They knew who attended church and who didn’t; and those who didn’t were in desperate need of saving. It was no surprise when all eyes went to Jack and Aimee as they stepped out of Arnold’s Oldsmobile.

“This is a bad idea,” Jack muttered under his breath. Aimee, on the other hand, had decided to play it cool, to just walk in like they owned the place. Jack didn’t think that was exactly the best plan. Strutting into the wrong church with your nose in the air could get you crucified.

Jack pulled Charlotte out of her car seat and met Aimee and Abigail on the other side of the Olds.

“What’s the point of this again?” he asked in a whisper.

“We need guidance,” Aimee said, her voice low.

“Can’t we get that somewhere else? You know, like therapy or something?”

“Therapy?” She raised an eyebrow at his suggestion. “What’re you saying?”

“What? Nothing. I’m not saying anything,” he backpedaled. “What I’m saying is… it’s a little weird ask God for help because our dog ate some popcorn. That’s what I’m saying.”

Aimee slowed her steps, her children’s hands firmly held in her own. She leveled her gaze on her husband and narrowed her eyes.

“What are you
saying
, Jack?” she asked again. “It was Nubs? Nubs scattered the popcorn all over the living room floor when I wasn’t looking? I know what I saw. Next you’ll blame the table on Nubs, too.”

“Nubs made the leg wobbly?” Charlie asked.

“He probably ran into one of them with his face,” Abigail chimed in. “You know how he runs and can’t stop on the floor.”

“Like ice skates,” Charlie said with a bounce.

“I just think this is weird,” Jack said. “What are we going to do here, tell the priest that weird shit is—”

Aimee cut him off with a glare. Jack glanced at the girls – they had heard, of course they’d heard – then rerouted.

“—stuff is going on?”

“I don’t know what we’re going to do here,” Aimee admitted, releasing the girls from her grasp as soon as she spotted Patricia close to the front doors. The girls ran to their grandmother and Aimee turned her full attention to Jack. “I don’t know why I suddenly needed to come to church. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t know what to think or what to expect. So what do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said after a moment.

“Well then you know as much as I do.”

“Aimee.” Patricia’s voice cut through their conversation. She bridged the distance between them and Aimee gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“And Jack?” Pat raised an eyebrow, making it clear that Jack’s presence was truly unexpected. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“The girls wanted to see you,” Aimee lied. “We figured it was a good time.”

Sitting in a pew toward the front of the church, Patricia kept her arms around both girls’ shoulders, Aimee kept her eyes on her hands, and Jack couldn’t help but imagine the worst. When it came to dark forces, Hollywood had its typical formula—a cliché that had him searching for the signs he’d seen on the silver screen. Everyone knew demons didn’t like the house of God. They couldn’t stand the sight of holy relics, couldn’t stomach being in the presence of a priest or a crucifix.

Jack sat beside his wife, listening to the dull hum of the sermon that eventually became little more than background noise to his thoughts. He half expected to hear Patricia’s scream cut through the church as Charlie fell victim to a fit of convulsions, all before the priest uttered the word
Amen
. He imagined his youngest daughter running down the center aisle toward the pulpit, her eyes black and her hair whipping behind her like Medusa’s snakes; the priest splashing holy water in front of him, protecting himself, creating a barrier blessed by God and His Angels; pictured him tearing the crucifix from around his neck and pressing it to Charlotte’s forehead only to have her exhale a hiss of pain.

None of it happened.

An entire hour of sitting in a pew, waiting for the floor to burst open like an infected wound so the Devil himself could crawl out and steal Charlie away, and nothing. The monotonous droning went on without incident.

By the time mass was over, Jack was exhausted and Aimee was somehow assured that from then on everything would be okay, that sitting in church for sixty minutes would somehow cleanse them of any mysterious goings-on; that life would go back to business as usual. She felt so confident that she happily socialized on the church’s front steps, laughing it up with old family friends she hadn’t seen in years.

The more he watched her the more he remembered his own mother trying this same tactic. Stephen had protested, insisting that it was a ridiculous idea, that organized religion was nothing but a sham. But Gilda knew her son’s problems weren’t of this world: they were the work of the Devil, and only God could rid him of such a curse. Here, the tables were turned. Jack knew what was plaguing Charlie. He knew his mother was right in turning to prayer. But he also knew she was wrong about one thing: God hadn’t been able to help Jack—He hadn’t even tried—and He wasn’t going to help Charlie either.

On the way home, they stopped at an ice cream shop. It was Charlie’s and Abigail’s favorite place—a charming 50s themed store that specialized in sundaes, shakes, and floats. They played Elvis Presley and Fats Domino on a loop and the girls that worked the counter wore their hair in high ponytails and tied pink kerchiefs around their necks.

Climbing onto red vinyl-covered stools at the soda bar, Charlie ordered a strawberry shake and Abby got a scoop of vanilla with hot fudge, sprinkles and a cherry. Aimee and Jack shared a banana split, and amid all of that sugar and syrup they were, for a moment, the perfect family fresh from Sunday mass.

The moment didn’t last long.

“Can I have your cherry?” Charlie asked her sister, muffling her words around the bright red Maraschino in her mouth.

“No way,” Abby said, pulling her ice cream dish closer to her chest.

“You don’t even like it.”

“Do too. You already had yours.”

“I want another one,” Charlie said and shot her arm out, making a pass at Abigail’s cherry stem. But Abby was quick. She jerked the dish away just in time, leaving her sister empty-handed, with a sour look on her face.

“Give it to me,” Charlie said flatly, her voice low.

Abby hesitated, looking over her shoulder at their parents.

“What’re you going to do?” Charlie asked quietly, her eyes narrowing into a squint. “Tell on me?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Abby asked.

“Because,” Charlie murmured. “I’m your sister. So give me that cherry or I’ll tell on
you
.”

Abigail wrinkled her nose, not understanding the threat.

“Fine,” Charlie smirked, abruptly sliding her arm across the counter, knocking her strawberry shake to the floor. The heavy glass shattered with a wet thump, spraying the black and white floor tiles with bright pink while Elvis growled
You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.

Aimee jumped from her seat, nearly knocking her and Jack’s own sundae to the floor. “Oh my god.” The words reflexively tumbled from her throat. “Charlie, look what you did!”

Abigail sat frozen on her stool, staring at the broken glass on the floor, unsure of what just happened.

Charlie’s mouth hung open, feigning shock. Her bottom lip began to quiver. Her eyes went glassy with tears. A second later she let out a wail so pitifully wounded, anyone who hadn’t seen exactly what had happened would have been convinced of the six-year-old’s innocence.

“Abby did it,” Charlie sobbed. “She wanted my cherry and I said no and I put it in my mouth and ate it, and she got mad and pushed my shake down.”

Abigail stared at her sister, too stunned to react.

“Abby!” Aimee grabbed her by the arm and yanked her off the stool. “You’re going to clean this up, you understand?”

“Ma’am, it’s okay.” The girl behind the counter forced a smile, having seen plenty of accidents like this before.

“No, it’s
not
okay,” Aimee said, her eyes never leaving Abby’s face. “What’s wrong with you?” She shook Abby by her arm. “You’re grounded, young lady. And you better believe your sister’s shake is coming out of your allowance.”

It was Abby’s turn to burst into tears. She wrung her arm out of Aimee’s grasp and ran out of the shop, humiliated and betrayed. She ran to the car, sunk to the ground, and sobbed into her knees.

Aimee pulled Charlie off of her stool and pressed her youngest daughter’s tear-stained face into her neck.

“Calm down,” Aimee told her. “It’s alright. Here.” She plucked Abigail’s abandoned sundae off the counter, holding it out for Charlie to see. Charlie wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand and sniffed, staring mournfully at the cherry atop her sister’s ice cream.

“Go ahead,” Aimee said. “Take it.”

Charlie fought through a sob-ridden breath, eventually plucked the cherry from its resting place, and popped it in her mouth with a meek little smile.

…
and you ain’t no friend of mine.

“All better?” Aimee asked.

Charlie nodded once. Aimee glanced over to Jack before stepping out of the shop, Charlie in her arms.

“I’m sorry about all this,” Jack said to the counter girl. “Seriously.”

“It’s alright,” she said. “These things happen.”

“You’re telling me,” he muttered, fumbling through his wallet for some money before pulling out a twenty. “For your trouble,” he told the girl.

“Oh.” She shook her head with an embarrassed smile. “No, really, it’s okay.”

“There’s shake all over the floor,” Jack reminded her. “It’s a tip.”

The girl hesitated.

“Please.”

Finally relenting, she took it with a blush and nodded at him. “Thank you.”

When Jack stepped into the parking lot, Abigail was being reprimanded for a second time. She sobbed into her hands while Aimee scolded her, eventually pushing her into the back seat of the car.

“Hey, take it easy on her, alright?”

“Take it
easy
on her? Didn’t you see what she did?” Aimee snapped. “You find that kind of behavior acceptable?”

“She didn’t do it,” Jack said under his breath.

“What?”

“I said she didn’t do it,” he repeated, annunciating his words.

“So what are you saying? Charlie knocked down her own shake and then cried about it?”

Jack didn’t say another word. He just got in the car and snapped his seatbelt into place.

By the time they got home, Aimee had gone deathly silent. Jack knew her mind was racing, trying to put things together. He could tell by the way she was pulling on her bottom lip—a habit she’d had for as long as he’d known her. Any time Aimee was deep in thought, her fingers would start to tug and pull, as though her lip was attached to a string that helped her think.

He had seen Charlie swing her arm across that counter. He had watched that shake fly through the air in slow motion, hovering for half a second before gravity caught it by its heavy-footed bottom and pulled. He had seen the glint in his youngest daughter’s eyes, a glint he recognized—the same one that lingered against the color of his own eyes. It would have been easy to say nothing, to let it play out, to let Abby take the fall; but Jack couldn’t bring himself to it. Seeing Abigail’s face twisted with emotion, with the pained betrayal that her little sister had sold her upriver for something as trivial as a candied cherry turned Jack’s stomach. He had suffered through his own twisted childhood as an only child. He couldn’t imagine how hard it would have been for a sibling, someone who was, by default, the scapegoat.

The Oldsmobile crunched to a stop in the gravel driveway. Abby was the first one out of the car. She was embarrassed, ashamed, hurt. She didn’t want to deal with anyone or be lectured about something she didn’t do. When Aimee shoved the passenger door open to yell after her, Jack caught her by the forearm, seizing her attention.

“Let her go,” he told her. “She needs some space.”

Aimee opened her mouth to protest, but something kept her silent. Instead of fighting Jack’s reasoning, she got out of the car and slammed the door shut. He watched her walk around the front of the car, leaving Charlie in her car seat, making a beeline for the house instead.

Jack glanced at Charlie in the rearview mirror. She sat silent as ever, staring at the mood ring around her finger.

“Charlie,” he said after a while. “Do you want to tell me what happened at the ice cream shop?”

She looked up at her father, blinked once, and looked down again with a shake of her head.

“I know what happened,” Jack told her.

“Nothing happened,” Charlie whispered.

“I saw what you did,” Jack said. “And you blamed what you did on your big sister.”

Charlie raised her shoulders up to her ears, refusing to speak.

“Do you remember doing what you did?”

She nodded faintly. She didn’t want to admit guilt—but she had no other choice.

Jack looked out the side window. He could see Abigail’s feet sticking out from behind one of the oaks in the front yard.

“I didn’t even want it,” Charlie said softly. “And then I started crying because I did it, but when Momma looked I said Abby did it and I don’t know why.”

Jack let his head fall back against the seat.

“It wasn’t me,” Charlie whispered, so quietly Jack was sure she hadn’t meant for him to hear. He heard but didn’t reply, deafened by his own thoughts—that faint whisper sing-songing inside his head.

It was you, it was me, it was us, it was we.

Chapter Six

T
he rest of the day was silent. Abigail stayed in her room, hiding from the world. Charlie watched Spongebob and kept to herself in the living room. Aimee didn’t want anything to do with either of the girls, not sure whether to feel guilty or justified in her reaction to that morning’s fiasco. And Jack parked himself in his favorite chair, trying to work on lyrics to a song he’d been putting together for months.