Something Of A Kind (29 page)

As if she made an open invitation, her grabbed her elbow,
guiding her the short few yards before waving inside and leaving her
to her own devices.

Gee, thanks.

“You must be Alyson,” Ajay said. He lifted the sleeve of his
blazer, a piece to a brown pants suit, scratching his golden skin
mindlessly. Though an older man, he had a quaint sense about him,
already setting her as ease. Smiling from beneath an oddly shaped
graying mustache, he motioned for her to sit, adding, “Please join
me.”

Pulling a chair out, she blurted, “Is this about the old report?”

“No, no. The new one,” he explained, lifting a stack
of
paperwork. “I just had a conference call with a Noah Locklear. This
boy says he is your boyfriend?”

She smiled, glancing at the hands folded in her lap.

“Yes, I was young once too. Blushing the darkest violets, when I
met my wife. Prettiest girl everseen, I almost say,” Ajay laughed.
Getting serious, he dove for allbusiness. “Now, don’t get upset,
Allí, but I have to ask, do you believe you had a bear encounter?”

“It was the Wood Beast,” Aly corrected, grimacing, “Which, I
know, sounds totally cliché when you say it out loud.”

“You know,” Ajay said, hesitating, “some scientists think that
most ‘big-foot’ sightings are actually an error in the human
cognition, part of our psyche, to see ourselves in other animals.”

“This wasn’t anthropomorphism. This
is me telling you exactly
what I saw. It wasn’t a humanoid wild-man. It was some… freaky
primate,” she explained, feeling inadequate. Her hands moved as she
spoke, trying to convey the words that didn’t come. They fell into
her lap.

“You are sure this is not a bear? Some of the biggest live in
Alaska. Have you heard about the Kodiak bear?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of the Kodiak. I grew up in the Adirondacks,
with their little cousins. I was in the truck’s cab with my aunt when
my uncle slid a ladder in a dumpster so a baby could crawl out. I
grew up around life-size carvings and local stories about encounters.
I’ve studied and painted them. I know grizzlies have a lot on the
black bears, but I’m telling you, I have never seen or heard of
anything like this”

“Except for Sasquatch,” Ajay finished, nodding. “Your
boyfriend, he said the very same thing.”

 

“You don’t believe me.” Aly sighed, slumping back in her seat.

“No, Allí, I believe you,” he corrected, adding, “This is my
career, all my life. I have heard stories much stranger that I have
believed. You know, it’s a very big deal that this species is in a place,
like, like America and has not been studied. It may not feel like it
now, but you have had a very lucky experience. You should keep
that with you, because someday there will be many people who
know of it, but you are someone who can say, ‘I told you so! I’ve
seen this animal!’Am I right?”

She smiled to herself, raising her gaze to share it and nod. “Yes,
thank you.”

 

Ajay grinned. “You know, Allí, you are a very nice girl when
you let yourself be. You should let people see you a little bit more.”

 

Biting her lip, she asked, “He really called you?”

“Well, I called him. Your father asked. But Noah has told me,
‘you have to listen to this girl. She’s very smart, and she does not
lie.’ He’s quite taken with you, Allí. He said, ‘I have a good feeling
about this. You’ll see, it is worth it.’”

She nodded, standing to go.

 

“And Allí?” Ajay added. “I believe him. I believe you, as well.”

 

CHAPTER 24 | NOAH

Sarah stood behind the counter, transferring ketchup between
bottles before filing the emptied containers. She was humming a
song to herself, and from the sound of it, it had been stuck in her
head all morning. In spite of her good-natured agreement not to pry,
Noah could barely look at his sister. Even more than his own
bafflement, he was filled with guilt for not being able to tell her
what he’d discovered just yet.

This is part of her too.

 

Overwhelmed, Noah stood, walking back and forth across the
diner.

 

Maybe there’s a reason we’ve always been different.

 

Glancing up, she frowned. “No’, you’re pacing. Why are you
pacing?”

 

I don’t even know if it’s true.

 

He blurted, “Any clue if Lee was drunk yesterday?”

Sarah raised her brow, clearly trying to evaluate wheth
er he’d
broken their pact. Too curious not to encourage more details, she
replied, “I didn’t see him. I mean, it didn’t seem like it to me. I think
they’re broke this week. I was surprised they forked it over for your
meds, but I, ah, made the case. Even if he had some stashed, I think
he was scared sober.”

“Okay. Thanks,” he mumbled, sprinting to the door and leaving
without another word.

Speed walking to the docks, he headed straight for his father’s
junky vessel. Clutching his arm to cushion the pressure of jogging
up the ramp, he stood, half-crouched and breathing hard, at the
center
of
attention. His brothers, amongst the few hired help,
dropped what they were doing, pulling their heads out of buckets or
pausing as they wound rope around a forearm.

Raising his voice in spite of strained gasps, Noah demanded,
“Everybody off.”

They stared, unmoving. When the shock began to wear off, some
of them laughed, most nervously. John looked between Mark and
Andrew, glancing
at Isaac
and the
part-time
navigator, Clark
Thomas, before settling on Noah. His face twisted into a sneer as he
crossed his arms, stepping forward until he was close enough to
breathe on him. Noticing that he nearly met John’s height while
slouched, he wondered if the aggressive tactics his brothers used on
each other was really what they sought.

They’re not my brothers.

 

“Cousin,” Noah warned, “You have about ten seconds to get out
my face.”

He deadpanned, backing up a step in shock, as though Noah had
smacked the bear in the nose. As John’s face warped into a homely
snigger, Lee climbed from below deck, commanding his crew to get
off his boat. Looking perplexed, sharing glances that said they’d be
talking
about
it, they
left in silence,
John backing
away
and
following with reluctance.

Unexpectedly, Lee grumbled, “Your mind, boy. Say what’s on
it.”

 

Unsure how to even approach the subject, Noah demanded,
“What don’t you like about Alyson?”

 

Glaring, Lee replied, “I’m disgusted with your priorities.”

“Well, she is. She’s what I’m concerned with at the moment,”
Noah admitted, unashamed. “She’s the only thing that’s changed in
the past eighteen years. At least, enough for you to say a thing like
that.”

“You mean, to tell you the truth about your mother,” Lee
paraphrased, his voice dropping an octave below irritation. “Your
brothers played a prank and sabotaged his little Squatcher-group, or
whatever they call it, and the Glass man raised holy hell. The people
look after their own. He is not one of us.”

“What does that have to do with Aly?”

Lee flinched, the subject changing in a sudden burst of anger,
“Your biological ‘father’ and your mother…. The Rob boy, he
comes in and gets her hooked on more drugs than you have fingers.
Things no one should mess with. Overnight, my sister’s on Jupiter,
no idea who anyone or what anything is. She ran away with him.
One day she shows up with you, says she can’t take care of you,
your father left her again. She says you need to grow up in a house
with parents, and tells us to name you. She never went to no
hospital, so we say my wife didn’t know she was pregnant. Three
years later, and she does the same, has a little baby she names Sarah
Maria Grace, and we do the same, and I told her, ‘No more babies.
You need to come home.’ I don’t hear from her again until her
body’s identified in some hotel in a dirty part of Seattle. She
overdosed, and she was dead. Her desire
to leave,
to be
unappreciative… She had no love for our culture, no respect for her
family. She wanted to live in the big city, and forget her people.”

Noah listened intently,
a
hand subconsciously
probing
his
wounded shoulder. It was too much information for a drunken spiel.
It fit too well into empty stories, making sense in ways it shouldn’t.
It should feel alien, a wild headline under weird-news tags or a
television talk-show story, nothing that belonged to him.

He’d seen Aunt Maria, this woman he should call mother. From
her photographs, she didn’t look like a drug addict – young and
lively, she was beautiful, long hair and bangs, wearing a colorful
scarf and a dimpled smile. It was more put together than he’d ever
seen Lee or Mary-Agnes.

He couldn’t imagine the woman sprawled across the bathroom
floor of a motel, though he’d heard the tale a thousand times. He
certainly couldn’t picture her as his
mother,
although
her
resemblance to Sarah had always been noticeable.

“You drink, hard,” Noah noted.
Lee grunted, “Not like that, boy! She’d been arrested twice by
fifteen, ran through that very street, bare assed”

 

“As a babe,” Noah finished, adding grimly, “With milady’s sour
bastard.”

 

“Yeah,” Lee snorted, astonished. “How-”

 

“An old lyric.” Noah sighed, chewing his cheek.

 

Tony’s my freaking grandfather.

Noah busted an awkward silence, assuring Lee, “I cherish this
culture, my culture, our culture– and I’m telling you, Alyson’s
different. You should hear how she talks about the dancers from the
troupe, the legends in the tunnels, even the foliage has that girl
amazed. You should see the art she’s capable of, the love she has for
this. No one said it was all pretty, but she sees it. She gets it.”

Looking hesitant, like a kid going to get teeth pulled, Lee
agreed, “If you feel this way, and she does not act like a Glass
daughter, I will not fight this unless there is something to be
concerned with.”

“Lee
-” Noah paused, taking an uncomfortable leap of faith.
“Dad, I am not Aunt Maria, and neither is Sarah. Alyson is not Rob
Gabriel.”

“She thought you deserved better than a disowned mother,
addicted to drugs and moving through the cities in the lower fifty. A
better life.”

“What about my license? School papers?”

“It’s all paperwork,” Lee mumbled. “You have any idea how
many a child is born each year? You don’t need a test to say it’s
mine or hers.”

“And Sarah? Saying Maria showed up for her birth?”

“Sarah Maria Grace,” Lee began, “was an incident at the age
where you are too old to hide it from, too young to know how to
keep it a secret. You, boy, were a little child. You wrote her story.”

Noah whispered, “That’s not right.”

Hesitant, Lee put a hand out for a shake. When Noah took it, the
old man pulled him
into a hug, somehow
managing to avoid
harming his shoulder wound, bursting open a thousand others.

“No,” Lee rumbled. “I don’t suppose it was.”

CHAPTER 25 | ALYSON
Standing in the doorway to Greg’s office, Alyson didn’t know
what to think. As he spun in his chair, she heard the low sounds of
fast forwarding and rewinding, playing over and over. Folded in his
hands was a camcorder, her camcorder, the digital panel opened to
reveal the tiny screen. Resisting the urge to freak out at his lack of
privacy, she couldn’t help but wonder how he’d gotten his hands on
it.

Choosing her words carefully, she announced her presence.
“Investigating myths – I can’t imagine there’s much profit, there.
Why is this office?”

“It’s a secretive research facility,” Greg snapped. Looking up,
he blinked, as though it took a moment to recognize her. Wincing, he
softened. “We have private ownership and we know better than to
ask.”

Closing
the panel, he
set the camera
on the
desk, typing
something into his computer. Pointing, her gaze followed his to a
flashing flat screen on the wall across.

The video was straightforward and unwavering at first, the
unbelievable image of an infant Gigit, a baby bigfoot, swinging
through the trees. She and Noah spoke in the background, her voice
sounding soft and lyrical, unlike the powerful speech that resounded
in her head.

As the video progressed, the screen swung between the ground
and the spaces in front and behind her, like a pendulum. She
shuddered when Noah slammed into a thick branch jutting into the
path, twigs flying off like splintered wood. He subconsciously
recoiled, half his body held back while the other kept moving
forward. Shuffling to regain his footing, they barely lost speed.

Only flashes of the large primates were captured, rather than her
steady view of the baby in the trees. In a few seconds, he fastforwarded an additional sixteen minutes of footage. The screen went
dark.

“When you left the hospital to drive the Locklear kid’s truck to
Lee’s,” Greg offered, “I was just about to leave when someone
handed this to me. I suppose it’s because of the label on the back.”

Aly raised an eyebrow, weary of the hope twisting in her lungs.
She prompted, “And?”

“And you
did what I would have done,” he sighed. “You got
evidence of an indisputable nature, a credible claim, and video or
photographic documentation –
twice. You had more
than one
witness on multiple occasions.”

He believes me– us, Noah and I. He’d never say it, but for Greg,
this is groveling.

Aly nodded, talking in his comments. They sounded just short of
flattery. “You weren’t looking in the right place, or the right time, or
using the right tactic or something.”