Seed (9 page)

He was doomed to fail: he kept zoning out every few minutes, music the furthest thing on his mind.

Reagan eventually arrived to help Jack flip the kitchen table upright. The tension made him uncomfortable and he was quick to excuse himself.

By the time dinner rolled around they sat around the table without a word, none of them enjoying their mac and cheese. The silence was eventually broken by the sound of something scurrying across the floor. All four of them stiffened visibly. Aimee was the first to speak.

“What the hell was that? Was that a rat?”

The moment she suggested it, both girls squealed and pulled their feet onto their chairs.

Jack swept the kitchen with his eyes, searching for the intruder. A second later the sound of tiny nails running across the floor were heard again. Jack pushed his chair back and fell into action, searching the kitchen before someone decided to scream bloody murder. The girls got their phobia from Aimee. During the summer, when a field mouse had chewed through the screen door, it was a wonder they hadn’t destroyed the house the way they leapt from chair to couch to coffee table—they may as well have been a family of Russian acrobats.

“I don’t see anything,” Jack finally announced.

“Well there has to be
something
,” Aimee insisted. “We all heard it.”

“But I don’t
see
anything. I can’t just wiggle my nose and have the damn thing come out from wherever it’s hiding.”

Jack returned to his seat, smoothed out his napkin, and grabbed his fork.

“Let’s all just keep quiet and eat,” he said. “We’ll trick him.”

“Or he’ll trick us,” Aimee muttered.

Less than a minute later the sound was back, but this time it was in the walls.

“Great. Now it’s gone and crawled inside the wall,” Aimee said with a huff. “We’re going to have rats making little rat families inside the house.”

Jack narrowed his eyes at the noise. It didn’t sound like an animal. It sounded more like someone scraping their nails across a surface, like claws being drawn down a plank of wood. Aimee’s eyes grew wide the louder the sound became. Abigail sat petrified, her hands pressed over her ears. Charlie, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be bothered by it. She still had her feet up on her chair but continued to eat her dinner.

After a few minutes, Aimee shot up from her chair and grabbed her plate, not able to take it anymore.

“Okay,” she said, “that’s it. Abby, get your books ready for tomorrow. Charlie, bath time in five minutes.”

Abby bound from her chair, anxious to get out of the kitchen. Conversely, Charlie took her time, stabbing another elbow macaroni with her fork.

“We need to call an exterminator,” Aimee said. “I can’t live with rats in the walls, Jack. Just the idea of it makes my skin crawl. How are we supposed to sleep with that scratching? What if they crawl into… oh God. What if they crawl into the beds?”

Just then, as though the source of the noise had heard Aimee’s question, the room went silent. Charlie slid from her seat and padded down the hall, her fingers dragging along the wall. The scratching tailed her like a loyal companion.

That night, Charlie left her bed, stepped across the room, and stopped beside Abigail’s mattress. She stared at her sleeping sister for half an hour before going back to sleep.

Charlie had missed a few days of school due to her illness, and today would be her first day back to Robert Cavalier Elementary. To no one’s surprise, it was nearly impossible to get her out of bed. Abigail was in the bathroom brushing her teeth while Charlie rolled around on top of her mattress like an ornery sea lion, emitting pitiful whines and pleas for mercy. After ten minutes of moaning, Aimee lost her patience, yanked the covers off her daughter, and plucked Charlie out of bed.

“Enough,” she said. “Get in that bathroom and brush your teeth right now.”

Charlie exhaled another grumble, her arms hanging loose and boneless at her sides.

“I don’t feel good,” she protested.

Aimee hesitated, recalling what happened the last time she sent Charlie to school when she hadn’t felt well; but with a shake of the head she put it out of her mind and pointed to the bedroom door.

“March.”

Charlie fell into step with another whine, dragging her feet to make sure her journey to the bathroom was a slow one.

Aimee set out the girls’ clothes for the day and took inventory of what needed washing and what they could go without for another few days. By the time Charlie returned from the bathroom, Abby was already dressed and pulling on her shoes.

“You take as long as you are and you won’t have time for breakfast,” Aimee warned.

Charlie stuck out her bottom lip and grabbed her socks, defiantly pulling them on with a pout.

“I don’t care,” she said. “I’m not hungry. I don’t want to go to school. I want to go back to sleep.”

“Well that’s a shame,” Aimee told her. “It seems like you’re going to do a lot of what you don’t want to do today.”

“I’m tired!” Charlie snapped.

Aimee blinked. She marched across the room from where she’d been tidying up Abigail’s desk and caught Charlie by the chin.

“Did you just
yell
at me?” Aimee asked, her nose mere inches from Charlie’s. Abby watched the stand off in slack-jawed surprise.

“I yelled at you because you don’t listen,” Charlie said matter-of-factly. “You think you know everything but sometimes you’re just stupid.”

Abby’s eyes went wide, as did her mother’s.

“You did
not
just call me stupid.” Aimee straightened, staring down at her youngest. The girl—who was typically an angel—was quickly turning into the monster Aimee had always dreaded.

“I couldn’t sleep!” Charlie yelled again. “There were rats in here and they kept touching me!”

“There were no rats in here,” Aimee said, her voice steady, trying to keep her composure.

“Then what was touching me?” Charlie asked. “If you know everything, what was touching me? Do you know?”

Aimee turned to a stark-still Abigail.

“Abby, were there rats in here last night?”

Abby slowly shook her head no.

“That’s what I thought. Go eat your breakfast.”

Abigail’s tense expression relaxed when she was excused. She snatched her backpack off the floor and dashed out of the room, avoiding the general perimeter of Charlie’s bed on her way out.

Aimee turned her attention back to the six-year-old. She leaned in close, peering into her daughter’s face.

“Charlotte Marilyn Winter, if you ever yell at me or lie to me again, do you know what I’ll do?”

Charlie didn’t move. She rebelliously stared back at her mother, challenging Aimee to look away first.

“Remember Annie?” Aimee asked. “Remember how she had to scrub the floors at the orphanage?”

Charlie narrowed her eyes at the threat.

“Daddy would never let you,” Charlie said under her breath.

“Wouldn’t he?”

“No.” Her face went hard with anger. “Daddy loves me better than any one of you.”

“Is that right?” Aimee crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe we should ask Daddy if he loves you more than he loves your sister after you get home from school today. We’ll see if he tells you he loves you best.”

“He won’t say it,” Charlie muttered.

“Why not?”

Sliding off her bed, her hands were balled up into fists. She glared down her nose at her mother, her sleep-tousled hair a chaotic tangle around her face.

“Because,” she finally said, her voice taking on an unfamiliar heaviness, “he can’t tell you. It’s our secret. We have a lot of secrets and you can’t know any of them.”

Once the girls were out the door and on the bus, Aimee collapsed onto the sofa. She stared at the blank TV screen, replaying Charlie’s words over and over inside her head. She needed to clear her mind, to get away from the chaos. Reagan had given Jack a ride to work that morning and their borrowed old boat of a car sat in the driveway for the taking.

It took twenty miles to get to Mabel’s Curious Curios, a small mom and pop place where she had found Jack’s piano and wingback chair. Mabel was in her eighties—a sophisticated woman who was as much a Southern Belle as Scarlet O’Hara. She ran the curio shop with her husband, Phil. In Aimee’s imagination, Phil flew B-52s during the war; he took handsome photographs in his leather bomber jacket while posing next to the propeller of his plane. Phil wasn’t much of an antiquer. She’d never seen him do anything but sit in his rocking chair, flip through the paper, and mutter to the old hound dog sleeping at his feet.

Phil and Mabel had come to be two of Aimee’s favorite people. They never judged, never pried, and always had an extra cup of tea ready for anyone who needed it.

Aimee had mentioned Charlie and Abigail to Mabel before. She’d also made a few passing complaints about Jack running off to New Orleans too often for her taste. But today she resolved that there would be no talk of family. Today she wanted to lose herself in Mabel’s stories about her ancient artifacts, nothing more. The tiny bell that hung above the door marked her entrance with a fairy’s chime.

“Aimee Winter,” Mabel said, approaching her with open arms. “I thought you’d forgotten about us. Thank heavens…” She placed her hands on Aimee’s shoulders with a smile. “I was wrong.”

“How could I forget?” Aimee asked. She glanced over Mabel’s shoulder and waved at Phil, who was slowly rocking back and forth, the dog still at his feet, unmoving, much like Jack’s taxidermy collection.

“Oh, stranger things have happened,” Mabel said. “Life gets in the way. Tea?”

“Please.”

“Good.” Mable looked satisfied. “Then I trust you’ll stay awhile.”

With a cup of Earl Grey balanced on a delicate saucer, the two began their rounds of the shop. Mabel pointed out new items she’d acquired since Aimee’s last visit, but the more they explored, the more Aimee’s attention wavered. Her thoughts kept drifting back to that morning, to the anger in Charlie’s eyes. Item after item, she tried to throw herself into exploration, willed herself to forget the outside world, to absorb the dusty magic of Mable’s store. But no matter how interesting Mabel’s stories were, Aimee’s mind was twenty miles away.

The old woman was far from oblivious. She stopped her storytelling and sipped her tea instead, watching Aimee with as much thoughtfulness as she gave to the pieces she placed in her store.

“You didn’t come to shop,” she finally surmised. “You came here for something else.”

Aimee offered Mable an apologetic smile, her eyes fixed on the floral design that circled the rim of her tea cup. The delicate porcelain could have easily been a hundred years old. Knowing Mable, she wouldn’t have had it any other way.

“I really don’t want to bother you with my personal problems,” Aimee said, but the old gal shook her head and motioned for Aimee to join her at the front of the shop, where Phil continued to rock and that hound dog continued to snore.

Aimee reluctantly situated herself in a stiff-backed chair and forced a half-hearted smile.

“Now,” Mabel said, “what’s bothering you, sugar? You tell your old Aunt Mabel and we’ll fix it up in a jiff.”

“If it was only that easy…” Aimee exhaled a weak laugh.

“Well, how do you know it isn’t? This is the first time you’ve come to me with a problem, which means you aren’t all that familiar at how good I am at solving them.”

“It’s true,” Phil said from behind his paper. “Mabel can’t keep her nose out of anybody’s business. She’s had that nose in everybody’s business since nineteen thirty-three.”

“Don’t listen to him.” Mabel waved a hand in disregard. “He’s gone and lost his mind since the last time you paid us a visit. All his marbles fell out; rolled under the tables and counters, and he’s too old to bend down and find them.”

Aimee smiled.

“Well, go on then. What’s got you distracted?”

“My girls,” Aimee admitted. “Or, one of them; the youngest. She’s been acting differently these last few days.”

“Differently?” Mabel asked. “Did something happen?”

“We got into an accident.”

“What sort of an accident?”

“A car accident. We were coming home from Charlotte’s birthday party. Jack was driving. I’m not really sure what happened because I dozed off, but the next thing I knew we were flying through the air. We landed on the roof of our car.”

Mabel pressed her hand to her chest with a look of surprise.

“Heavens,” she said. “Everyone was alright?”

“It seemed so. We all walked away without a scratch, which seems almost impossible for how bad the car was beaten up. The next day Charlie was sick, and now she’s acting out.”

Mabel nodded thoughtfully, sipping her tea as she mulled over the news.

“Well, children have mysterious ways of dealing with crises,” she said. “She might have something pent up, something that was a result of the accident. Trauma.”

“I’ve considered that.”

“Well there you have it,” Mabel said cheerfully, lifting her cup as though toasting the revelation. “Simple as that.”

“Simple,” Aimee echoed, but she didn’t believe it.

“Sugar.” Mabel leaned in and lowered her voice, like two girlfriends sharing a secret. “You take that little girl to one of them psychologists, have her talk it out with someone other than her own momma; she’ll be right as rain.”

With each passing incident, Aimee was starting to suspect her youngest was possibly disturbed. A psychologist wasn’t a bad idea.

“Either way, you never know until you try,” Mabel assured her. “And you’ll never try until old Mabel tells you so.”

Jack sat next to his momma in a waiting room fancier than any he’d seen in all his life. The walls were covered in striped wallpaper, soothing tones of muted grey and blue, perfect for lulling the deranged into a calm and peaceful state. A glass coffee table sat in the center of the room, covered with the latest magazines: Time, Newsweek, even National Geographic, which Jack had begged his parents to buy him but still hadn’t received. Potted plants flanked the walls; wispy palms with delicate fronds that swayed whenever someone walked by, others bearing waxy leaves that seemed too flawless to be real. Pictures hung in perfect order, projecting images of glasslike lakes and peaceful forests.