Still Life with Shape-shifter (9 page)

“But he loved me.”

I scoot over to drop a kiss on her sleek blond hair. “He
adored
you. He changed his life for you—moved down here, restructured his job, created a place where you could be safe. He didn’t love Gwen quite so much after that, though. He felt she’d lied to him, maybe even betrayed him. They didn’t fight anymore, and I think they still—you know—”

“Had sex,” she says.

I brim with laughter. “Yes, but I meant—they still cared about each other. But it put a rift between them. And then she started disappearing for longer and longer intervals, and he stopped caring that she was gone—” I shrug.
And then he got sick and she went away and you grew up and here we are.

“I think she’s dead,” Ann says.

“What? Gwen? Why do you say that?”

“Because I think she’d come back for me if she wasn’t. Just to see me. I don’t remember her that clearly, but when I think of her, she’s always hugging me. Or laughing with me. Or singing to me. I remember her holding my hand and skipping with me down the middle of Bonhomme Highway.” She gestures to the two-lane blacktop that runs outside the front door. “You were at school, and Daddy was at work. It was early afternoon. She said there wouldn’t be any traffic, we’d be just fine. So we skipped down the road, running for the shoulder every time we heard a car coming. We almost got hit, like, three times.”

“I’m glad you never told me this story before!”

“But it was fun. It’s how I think of her. Happy. A little loopy. But—she loved me. So I don’t think she would have left me behind for good unless she had to.”

It’s never been clear to me which would be worse—thinking your mother was dead or thinking she’d abandoned you. But it’s obvious Ann has figured out the answer for herself, and I have no qualms about supporting her.

“I think you’re probably right,” I say softly. “Because nobody would ever abandon
you
of her own free will.”

The moment is laced with such sadness and sweetness that it almost feels sticky. I cast about for something to say to change the mood, but I needn’t bother; Ann’s already been distracted by something else in the box. She makes an
oohing
sound as she carefully lifts out a hand-painted ceramic bank shaped like an A-frame house, maybe a five-inch cube with a pointy top. There’s a slot in the roof to drop coins in, and a small, removable door on the front to provide access to the treasure inside. The door is held in place with a tiny padlock, just now snapped shut.

God knows why it has been stored in this box among photos and papers; I haven’t even thought about it for at least five years. “I remember this!” Ann crows. She shakes it gently to make the coins inside chime against the china walls. “Our
special
bank where we only put valuable coins.”

“Grandma used to send us real silver dimes and quarters, remember? The ones made before 1964. And we’d put them in here. I think there were a couple of silver dollars, too.”

She rattles it again. “How much money do you think is in here? Let’s open it up and see.”

I shake my head. “I don’t know where the key is.”

She gazes at the bank. “I don’t want to
smash
it to get the money out.”

“Of course we’re not going to break it! I think that bank was Grandma’s mother’s or something. I mean, it’s really old. It’s probably worth more than the coins inside.”

Ann holds the ceramic house up to her ear and shakes it once more, listening intently, as if she will be able to determine its exact contents through sound alone. “There’s something else in here,” she says with conviction. “Paper? Did we drop in dollar bills, too?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe Daddy did when we weren’t looking.”

She sets it down and stares at it thoughtfully. “I wonder if we could pick the lock. It doesn’t look that complicated.”

“Well, go ahead and try,” I invite. “But I don’t think
I’m
enough of a criminal mastermind to do it, even if it’s simple.”

“I bet there’s fifty dollars in here, easy,” she says. “Maybe more. And aren’t silver coins worth more than their face value?”

“I have no idea. Anyway, why do you care? You don’t even
spend
money.”

“I just like the way it feels. When I was a kid, I had a big jar of pennies—remember?—and I’d dump them on my bed and just dribble them through my fingers. I could do that for hours.”

She shakes the bank again and I pluck it from her hands, crossing the rug on my knees to set it on the coffee table next to the couch. “You
are
going to break it if you keep doing that. I’ll take it to the hardware store sometime and see if I can find someone who can make a key for it.”

She pouts ostentatiously. “I’ll be gone before it’s open.”

I try not to be hurt by this hint that she’s not planning to stick around very long. “Well, I’ll make you a promise. I won’t sell or spend any of the silver coins until you’re back again.”

“You better not.”

The phone rings just then, startling me, and I jump up to answer it. Ann says, “Oh, I forgot.”

“Forgot what?” I say over my shoulder.

“Someone called while you were in the shower.”

I hold up a finger—
Tell me later
—as I pick up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Would you like an estimate on having your carpets cleaned? Our technicians will be in your area tomorrow—”

I hang up without answering. Rude, I know, but not as rude as intruding on my time with Ann. Still on my feet, I turn back to her, still sprawled on the floor. “Who called?”

“A guy? He said he had a package for you? He told me his name—” She searches her memory. “Brady Westinghouse?”

I feel every surface of my skin tighten with chill. “Brody Westerbrook?”

“That’s it.”

I come sit near her, perching on the edge of the couch, holding my body very still as if too much random movement will cause my limbs to detach and clatter to the floor. “He has a package for me? What package?”

“I don’t know. He just asked if he could drop it off later today—”

“He
what
?”

She’s startled at my frantic exclamation, and her big eyes open wide. “He asked if he could come by. I said I thought we’d be home. What’s wrong?”

“Did he ask you who you were?” I say urgently.

“No—well, he knew who I was. He said, ‘Are you Ann?’ And of course I said yes.”

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” I say, kneading my hands together. I don’t know what to do. Run from the house right now, drive Ann somewhere safe? But where’s safe? What if he shows up just as we’re leaving and follows us wherever I go? What if we tear out of here before he arrives, and he parks on the gravel edge of the lawn and simply waits for us to return? It’s clear this isn’t a guy who gives up easily. I don’t know how long I will be able to evade him.

Ann’s scrunched over to touch my hand with hers. “Melanie—what’s wrong? Who is it?”

“That guy—that reporter I told you about. The one who wants to write a book about shape-shifters.”

Astonishingly, she laughs. “Oh, for goodness’ sake! You scared me! I thought it was, like, a doctor bringing you bad news or something. Or—you know—one of those bad guys in movies. Someone who was going to beat you up for not paying back the money you borrowed.”

For a moment, I am so supremely irritated at her suppositions that I actually forget to be afraid of Brody. “
What?
You think I’d get mixed up with—forget it. Look, we have to get out of here. I don’t want him talking to you.”

She shrugs and seems to settle more comfortably on the floor. “I don’t think it’s such a big deal. Hey, maybe it’s a good thing. He sees me, I act normal, he goes away.”

“He doesn’t seem like the type who just
goes away
,” I say grimly. “And, anyway, you never in your life acted normal. I don’t know why you think you can start now.”

That makes her laugh. “You just watch.”

“So—did he say when he’d get here?”

“Yeah, like, in two hours?”

She doesn’t sound certain, but I glance at the wall clock anyway. When was I in the shower? It has to be almost two hours ago. “That means he’ll be here pretty soon. Look, just—just don’t say much. Smile a lot. Guys forget everything else when a pretty girl smiles at them.”

“Maybe I should take my bra off,” she suggests.

“Ann!”

“Well, maybe it’ll distract him.”

I lean over to put my hands on her cheeks and press hard enough to make her mouth purse into a fishlike O. “Just don’t sit there and tell him what it’s like to be a shape-shifter, okay? Just promise me you won’t do that.”

Her voice is distorted by the way I’m holding her face. “I promise.”

From outside, through the front door, I hear the muffled sound of a car motor, then wheels crunching over gravel. I drop my hands and stand up, ready to run or rumble. Flight or fight.

“Company,” Ann says, and flows to her feet.

I force myself to walk calmly to the door, but I’ve opened it before Brody’s even made it up the lawn. The first thing I notice is that he’s not driving his little Honda. What’s parked next to my Jeep is a small blue pickup with a dent in the front fender and a sprinkle of rust across the hood. I’m able to summon a supercilious smile by the time Brody has stepped onto the small porch and greeted me with a smile of his own.

“New set of wheels?” I ask politely. “And so environmentally friendly, too! What happened to Earth Day Every Day?”

He looks rueful. “I had to take my car in to the shop. This is my neighbor’s truck. It didn’t seem like the time to be lecturing him on fuel efficiency.”

We’re on either side of the screen door, watching each other warily through the mesh. I’m not sure I’m going to invite him in. “I hear you have a package for me?” I say.

He has a small manila folder under his arm and now he extends it. “Yeah, I thought you might like to see a couple of stories that ran about Kurt Markham in the
St. Louis Business Journal
.” He shrugs. “No real dirt, but he was fined a couple of times for missing a few inspection deadlines. Stuff like that.”

I don’t open the door. “You could have mailed them to me.”

He shrugs. “Yeah . . . Actually, when I called this morning, I just planned to leave a message on your machine, ’cause I figured you’d be at work. And then someone answered, so I thought, well, if you were
home
and I was in the vicinity—”

He has no reason to be “in the vicinity” except to annoy me, and we both know it. But before I can say so, Ann skips up behind me. Even with my back to her, I can feel the radiant friendliness of her expression. “Hi,” she chirps.

Brody smiles as he takes her in. I wonder how clearly he can make out her features through the screen. “Hey there,” he replies. His eyes move back and forth between our faces. “The coloring’s different, but it’s easy to see you’re sisters.”

Ann laughs. “That’s right. I’m Ann.” She reaches past me and pushes the door open. “Come on in.”

He catches the edge of the door with his left hand since he’s still holding the folder in his right, but to my surprise he stays put. “I think Melanie would prefer that I didn’t,” he says.

“Ann’s been gone a while,” I say in a frosty voice. He knows this from yesterday; he’s not likely to have forgotten. “We have a lot to talk about.”

“Sure. Have fun. We’ll catch up later.”

He turns to go, but Ann’s voice stops him. “Oh, don’t be silly. We were just planning to go out to lunch. Why don’t you come with us?”

Brody and I both swing around to stare at her. His expression is speculative; mine is dumbfounded. Her own is both devilish and angelic, the look Ann has always worn when she’s getting into trouble. “You want the reporter to come to lunch with us?” I ask, my voice ominously uninflected.

“Well, I’m sure he’ll be bored,” she says. “Since all we’ll talk about is old friends and people he’s never heard of.”

Now Brody looks at me. “I won’t ask any questions,” he says, an interrogative lilt in his voice. “I’ll just eat my meal and listen quietly. You won’t even know I’m there.”

“I suppose,” I say, my tone still chilly. “You
are
awfully forgettable.”

He laughs while Ann exclaims, “How rude!” I just shake my head. “Let me get a jacket,” I say. “Ann, you, too.”

“I’m not cold!”

“It’s sunny out, but it’s only about sixty degrees,” Brody says, choosing this moment to support me. “Better bring a sweater or something.”

“And put some shoes on,” I add, glancing at her feet. I lift my eyes and briefly meet Brody’s. “Five minutes,” I say. He nods and releases the screen door so it settles back against the frame. He might notice that I never did invite him in.

Looks like I’m about to have my second meal in less than a day with a man I believe to be my nemesis. My life becomes less comprehensible by the hour.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I
’m efficient, and Ann never did spend much time primping, so it is indeed no more than five minutes before we’ve combed our hair, applied the most rudimentary of cosmetics, and donned outerwear. But I can’t bear to leave all the old photos strewn across the rug, so we take another three minutes to gather the piles and set them inside the bins and push the boxes against the wall. Then Ann trips blithely out of the house, and I follow, pausing just to lock the door.

Ann makes a little
oh!
sound of surprise and grabs my arm just as I’ve twisted the key. I turn to see what’s caught her attention, but it’s immediately obvious: a shaggy, skinny, gorgeously hued golden setter on its haunches about ten yards from the house. It looks healthy enough, but its fur is matted and it has that stringy appearance that often marks strays and feral dogs; if it were human, I’d say it looks grungy.

I’m guessing that it
is
human and that my opinion wouldn’t change if I saw it in its alternate state.

Ann turns to me and speaks in a voice pitched to carry to Brody, who’s leaning up against the truck. “Oh—look—it’s the neighbor’s dog. Can we leave him some food and water before we go? He looks hungry.”

I unlock the door again. “Sure. Whatever you think he’d eat. I’ve got some leftover roast beef in the casserole dish on the bottom shelf of the fridge.”

“That would be perfect.”

I let her scoot back inside to fetch the appropriate menu items, resigned to the fact that she won’t think to transfer the meat to an old dish that I don’t mind sharing with a dog. I could go in and help her, but I feel like I need to stand guard and make sure Brody doesn’t get it into his head to approach the newcomer and begin interviewing it about its life as a shape-shifter. I can’t tell from Brody’s expression if the appearance of the setter has tripped any alarm bells in his brain. He rests patiently against the truck, his arms folded, his face incurious, his posture relaxed. It’s possible he hasn’t even noticed the dog.

Quickly enough, Ann comes back outside, precariously managing the casserole dish and a big metal bowl full of water. I lock up behind her as she carries these items to the setter, who comes to his feet at her approach. I try to seem as though I am only casually interested in watching her greet him as she sets down the dishes. She ruffles the fur on his head, runs his ears through both hands, and then bends down to whisper something to him. His tongue flicks out and catches her across the nose and lips. She laughs, straightens up, and pats his head again before stepping away. We converge on the truck.

“You want to drive or should I?” Brody asks.

The truck only has one front seat; not ideal. “I will,” I say.

“I’ll get in the back,” Ann offers, and pretty soon, we’re on our way.

“We’re not going to Corinna’s?” Brody asks, as I turn left out of my drive instead of right.

“We have to get pie at Slices,” Ann informs him. I can tell from the sound of her voice that she’s perched on the very edge of the seat, which means she’s not wearing her seat belt. “It’s my favorite place in Dagmar. We
always
go there when I’m home.”

“I’m sticking with you two,” Brody says. “Pretty soon, I’ll know
all
the cool hangouts.”

Slices is located in a small strip mall about five hundred yards from the interstate. We’re a little late for the lunch crowd, so I know we’ll get a good parking spot and a booth near the front window, not that the view is inspiring. The neighboring businesses are a bank, a nail salon, a mortgage company, and an empty storefront. The surrounding landscape is nothing but parking lot, feeder roads, highway, and wide, empty stretches of dun-colored land waiting with great passivity for spring to turn it green, thereby improving it by only a fraction. But you don’t come to Slices for the surroundings.

Brody almost gasps as he steps inside. The first sight that greets any visitor is the long glass-fronted counter filled with about thirty different varieties of pie. The “mile-high apple pie” is the most impressive, but the cherry, blueberry, black currant, French silk, lemon meringue, and other choices look equally luscious. The rest of the place is fairly bland, a brightly lit white-and-chrome space that gives an impression of airiness. I’m sure the intended effect is to make diners believe there’s plenty of room for dessert.

“I think I’m in heaven,” Brody says.

Ann smiles at him, then at me. “I knew I liked him,” she says.

I just shake my head and follow the hostess to our booth. I sit first, and Ann, just to be contrary, takes the opposite side, making Brody choose which sister he will sit beside and which sister he will watch. She probably thinks he plops down next to me because he likes me; I’m sure it’s because he wants to study her.

“I already know what I want,” he says, when the waitress tries to hand him a menu. That causes another ripple of laughter from Ann.

“So do I,” she says.

I had glanced at the menu board when we walked in, so I know the soup of the day is chicken noodle. “And so do I,” I finish up. “The soup and salad special and a slice of cherry pie.”

“Pecan pie and turtle cheesecake,” Ann says.

I frown at her. “You have to eat a meal first. I have to fatten you up.”

“I had breakfast. That’s a meal. Anyway, I bet there are more calories in a piece of cheesecake than there are in a bowl of soup.”

The waitress nods. “There are.”

“Bring her a cup of soup anyway. And the pie,” I say.

“I’m getting
three
pieces of pie,” Brody says. “Maybe four, but I’ll let you know later. And don’t even bother trying to bring
me
soup.”

Ann glances at me. “He’s perfect.”

“Because he eats badly? You have a fine set of criteria.”

“Because he’s capable of whimsy.”

This has Brody laughing. He still seems utterly relaxed; he’s leaning back against the cushions, one arm along the back of the bench, not quite close enough to touch my shoulder. “My sisters would call it irresponsibility, but it’s the same general personality trait that’s been with me since I was a kid,” he agrees. “I’m glad somebody appreciates it.”

“Melanie’s so serious all the time,” Ann says.

“I can be fun,” I defend myself. “I can be spontaneous. I just can’t survive on sugar and carbs.”

I’ve been wondering how we are possibly going to manage a conversation where most topics, from
What do you do for a living?
to
Tell me about your childhood
, are off-limits. But I have underestimated my companions. Ann is already beaming at me, reminded of some memory.

“Yes, you
can
be fun,” she says. “Remember the first winter we lived here? And it snowed, like, two feet right before Christmas? You built a fort for us on the front lawn. And you had me make a mound of snowballs. And we crouched in the fort and threw snowballs at all the cars going past until Daddy came home and made us stop.”

“Seems a little lawless for Melanie,” Brody observes.

“I had anger issues even back then,” I say. “I wasn’t displaying criminal tendencies, just relieving some of my frustrations.”

“Did any of the passing motorists take exception to being pelted with snow?”

“They might have, if we’d actually
hit
any of them. I have dreadful aim, and Ann was only five or six. No arm power.”

“I’m better now,” she assures me.

“I always loved winter,” Brody says. “My two older sisters usually wouldn’t come outside if there was more than a couple of inches of snow on the ground or the temperature was below twenty. So I had the yard and the swingset and all the toys to myself.”

“What about your youngest sister?” I ask.

“Yeah, Bethany wasn’t so prissy, so she’d be out there sometimes, but it’s a lot easier to share with two than four.”

“Bethany and Brody?” I repeat. “Are they all B names?”

He rolls his eyes. “Bailey, Brandy, Bethany, and Brody.”

“And they all end in a Y!” I exclaim. “I bet you all just hated that growing up.”

“Particularly Brandy,” he says. “The rest of us would sort of like our names, if they weren’t all matchy-matchy, but Brandy always says, ‘They might as well have named me Tequila and
totally
destroyed my life.’ Professionally, she goes by her middle name, which is Amanda, but none of us call her anything but Brandy.”

“Brandy Amanda?” Ann asks in delight. “Do you ever slip and call her Brandy Amandy?”

He cracks up. “We do it on purpose. She
hates
it.”

“I don’t even know her, and yet I find myself filled with sympathy for the wretched life she must have led,” I say.

He makes a rude sound. “Don’t waste your pity on her. She’s tough. She’d eat you for breakfast if you stood in her way.”

“What’s she do?” I ask, and then wish I hadn’t. He now has the right to ask the same question about
my
sister.

By his half-smile, I guess he’s realized the same thing, but he just answers the question. “She’s a corporate lawyer. Travels all over the world making deals. Making money. She’s our success story.”

I’m intrigued. “Huh. Usually the middle children lead the calm, stable, traditional lives. The older children are the overachievers, and the younger ones are the clowns and entertainers.”

Brody and Ann exchange glances. “I think we were just insulted,” he says.
“Clowns?”

“Oops, forgot my audience.”

“I don’t know about you,” Ann tells him, “but I’m
very
entertaining.”

Brody half turns to give me an appraising look. “I guess the jury’s still out on whether or not I am.”

Fortunately, our food arrives before I have to answer that. Brody arranges his three plates in front of him and debates aloud whether to eat them one at a time, or take bites out of each one in sequence. Ann reaches for her cheesecake, but I lean across the table and swat at her hand.

“Soup first,” I say sternly.

She sighs but obeys, spooning up a mouthful and slurping it noisily just to get on my nerves. “So what about your other sisters?” she asks. “What do they do?”

“Bailey’s a psychiatrist and Bethany’s a teacher. God, this is the best blackberry pie
ever
.”

“And you’re a reporter for a TV station?”

“Used to be,” he says around a mouthful of food. “Now I mostly do freelance writing and editing.”

Ann’s gaze is absolutely limpid, her voice innocent as a child’s. “And I understand you’re writing a book? What’s it about?”

For a moment, the silence at the table is absolute. My stomach has clenched so hard and so fast that I’ve momentarily lost the ability to breathe. I can’t even summon the will to glare at Ann as she deserves. God, for a girl as fresh-faced, as happy as she is, to be so bent on self-destruction. She would run headlong to disaster and be laughing the entire way.

Brody swallows, sets down his fork, and takes a drink of water. Then he smiles at both of us. “Ah, let’s not talk about boring work stuff,” he says. “Tell me some more fun stories about when you were kids.”

It’s a moment before I realize that, given Ann’s wayward sense of humor, this topic could be just as dangerous. That’s because all my brain cells are coping with my sense of shock that he would so kindly and deftly turn the subject away from the one I dread above all others. It’s deliberate, too; he’s made me a promise, and by this action, he is demonstrating that he’ll keep it. He is trying, without much fuss or flourish, to prove to me he is someone I can trust.

I am staring at him, but he still appears to be giving most of his attention to Ann. Even so, I catch his quick, sideways glance in my direction, his faint smile. “Man of my word,” he says, so softly my sister might not have heard him. “Always.”

Ann has flopped back against her seat cushions, still highly entertained. So maybe she has caught the byplay after all and correctly interpreted it. At any rate, she finally decides to behave. “Well, the most fun we had—at least as
I
remember it—was the time we took a family vacation out to Yosemite Park,” she begins.

The dangerous moment is past. Egged on by Brody, Ann and I alternate the narration of that disastrous trip out to California. Ann got carsick and threw up all over the backseat; we were stranded on the roadside when the alternator went out; the motel refused Daddy’s credit card because Gwen had forgotten to pay the bills for three months running; and I had to be rushed to a local emergency room when I fell on the parking lot and broke my arm. By the time we get to the dinner where the busboy spilled an entire pot of hot coffee in Daddy’s lap, she and I are laughing so hard that we can barely complete our sentences. Brody is roaring right along with us—even the waitress chuckles as she brings Brody a fourth piece of pie, just because our laughter is so infectious.

I suppose there’s a lesson here somewhere, a moral about how even the most appalling events of your life will, at some point when you reexamine them, turn into treasured memories. How pain and bitterness will fade and even transform, alchemize into something that is both sweet and comforting. Perhaps I am supposed to be discovering that even the things I fear might one day become the things I embrace.

But all I really take away, all I really learn from the afternoon, is how happy I am when I can spend an entire day with my sister.

*   *   *

W
e linger long enough over lunch that I feel we need to leave an awfully generous tip for the waitress. Brody doesn’t protest when I announce that I’m buying the meal, which I rather like; he’s not much of one for macho posturing. Then again, a boy with three older sisters probably never got much chance to try it. It’s close to three by the time we’re back at my house, and the day has gotten grayer and chillier.

“Looks like it’s going to rain,” I observe as I pull up next to the borrowed truck. “You probably ought to get going before the storm.”

He nods as we all clamber out. “You’re probably right. Ann, it was great to meet you. Maybe we can talk more someday. Melanie—” He narrows his eyes, then smiles. “I’ll be in touch.”