The Reaping (6 page)

“I think a better question is what are
you
doing home?”

“I just- I don’t know, Dad.  I’ve had a really bad day.”

“Do you want to—“

I knew what he was going to say before he finished his sentence and I answered accordingly.  “Can we just talk about it tomorrow?”  When his stony expression didn’t soften, I added
please
for good measure, hoping that would seal the deal and he’d drop it.

His lips tightened disapprovingly, but then his expression finally softened into one of exasperation and he sighed.  That was always a good sign.

“Alright, Carson, but you know you can’t make a habit out of this.  School is still top priority,” he preached, as if I could’ve forgotten.

“I know, I know,” I said then moved to change the subject.  Turns out it was a very effective
subject change.  “Do you know any other Greys?”

Myriad expressions crossed my father’s ruggedly handsome features.  I could tell he was thinking of families with the last name Grey.  When it went carefully blank, I knew he’d landed on the Grey that I was talking about.  “Not that I can think of.  Why?”

Without a word, I handed him the letter and the envelope.  He took them from my fingers and sat next to me on the couch.  I settled back to watch his face as he read. 

He was white as a sheet under his tan by the time he finished the short note.  It only confirmed what I suspected.  There was something he wasn’t telling me.

I crossed my arms over my chest and turned on the couch to better face him.  “So, is there anything you’d like to tell me?  Something you’d like to talk about?”  I loved to turn the tables and aim his parental questions and comments back at him; it was incredibly satisfying.

His eyes bored into mine for several seconds before he got up and walked to the window.  He stared out in silence for what seemed like an eternity before he spoke.  When he did, his voice was quiet.  “They’re alive.”

His words hit me like a freight train.  I didn’t even have to ask to whom he was referring.  I knew.  My mother and my sister were alive.  I don’t know what I thought he might’ve been hiding, but that wasn’t it.

I felt lightheaded.  The quiet buzzed in my ears like a thousand bees.  A car passed on the road outside and it sounded miles away, like I was hearing it through a tunnel.   My chest was heavy with an unfamiliar emotion that lay somewhere between fury and hope.

The air between us was thick with tension and my mouth was desert-dry when I spoke.  “Why?  Why would you keep this from me?”

I saw his big shoulders slump and his head tip forward.  “I felt like it was the best way to keep you safe.  You don’t know her.  You just don’t know…”

“Know who?”

“Your mother.”

“Duh!  You never gave me a chance to know her,” I spat, not even trying to contain my sarcasm.  “Why?  Why would you keep us apart?”  My tumultuous feelings finally settled down, picking hurt as the emotional port of choice to dock in. 

I felt the hot sting of bitter tears for the second time that day.  The pain of betrayal ripped through me like a slug, piercing my heart and shattering it into a million tiny pieces. 

Though I’d never known them, I’d mourned the loss of my family, especially as I’d gotten older.  Not having a mother, not having any siblings, had taken its toll.  And now, knowing that my whole life could’ve been different, I was devastated. 

“Carson, you don’t know what happened, what I was trying to save you from.  I did what I thought was right by getting as much distance as I could between you and your mother.   You don’t know her,” he repeated, this time his tone conveying some of the bitterness he felt.  He turned back to me, his expression pained yet steely.  “You don’t know what she was capable of.”

“And what about my sister, Dad?” 
Grey’s gone,
the note had said.  What had become of her? 

He bowed his head, but not before I could see the raw pain that flickered across his face.  “She was already gone, Carson.  She came back- she wasn’t- she-” he stammered.  “She didn’t come back the same.”

“Come back? From where?”

Dad lifted his head, his glistening hazel eyes meeting mine across the room.  In that one look, I could see what his secret had cost him all those years ago.  And what it was still costing him.  “Death.”

He sounded like a crazy person.  I had joked about it for years, but I’d never really thought Dad might be…
unbalanced. 
Until today.  “I don’t understand,” I said, suddenly feeling wary.

Dad retold the story of “the accident”.  For the most part it was the same as he’d always told it:  hard rain, unstable bridge, car goes over, everyone trapped inside, Dad gets out, drags us all to shore.  Only this time he filled in some crucial details, details that would forever change my life. 

“By the time I could get you two out of the car and out of the water, you were already gone.  Your mother and I did CPR on you for I don’t know how long.  But it didn’t matter.  You were both so cold and blue.  And still,” he said, his voice soft and quiet and a million miles away.  “So still.”

My heart pounded in my ears.  “Then what?”

“Your mother and I sat with you for a long time, crying and holding you.  I knew I’d have to go and get some help eventually, but I wanted to wait until she settled down a little bit more.  She was…hysterical.

“When she did, I left to go find a phone or get us some help.  She wanted to stay with you two, which was fine.  I wasn’t gone more than an hour or so, but when I got back…” He trailed off again, leaving me on pins and needles.

“What?  When you got back what?”  I prompted sharply.

He paused for several seconds, obviously reliving a horror that I couldn’t imagine.  “When I got back with the police, you were alive.  Both of you.”  His eyes met mine.  I could see that he was once more in the present.  “And she was bleeding.”

My stomach clenched painfully.  I had no idea what that meant, but somewhere deep inside me, instinctively, I knew that it wasn’t good.  “What happened, Dad?”

A frown crept across his face, followed by an expression of repulsion.  “I don’t know what she’d done to herself, I just know she was bleeding and smiling and you two were alive. 

“After the police dropped us off at home, I waited for her to say something, to explain what was going on, but she never offered to tell me.  And, in a way, I think I was afraid to ask.  I knew something was wrong, though.  I could feel it.  She was different,” he said mysteriously.  “And so was your sister.”

A sick feeling overwhelmed me.  The implications of what he was saying registered on a visceral level, even though I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.  Something inside my mind, and my heart, wouldn’t allow it, shunned the very thought of what he was insinuating.

I sat quietly on the couch, overflowing with emotions, but unable to put any of them into words.  I listened as he finished.

“That night, I couldn’t sleep.  I lay on my side and stared at the wall, wondering what I should do.  I kept thinking that you weren’t safe with them in the house.  Something was telling me to get you out of there. 

“Right before dawn, I felt your mother get out of bed.  I waited for a few seconds then I followed her. 

“She went into the nursery and got your sister out of her crib.  She held her in her arms for a minute, talking to her, cooing to her.  She took her blanket off her, then her pajamas and her diaper.  She was mumbling things to your sister, things I couldn’t understand.  Makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up just thinking about it.”  I saw a fine shiver pass through him as he remembered.  He raised one hand to massage his nape as he continued.  “Your sister started making these terrible sounds.  I thought at first she was choking and I was about to go in and get her.  I had just stepped through the door when I saw her skin change.”

My breath caught in my throat.  I was terrified to ask him to finish, afraid that in the next moments he might divulge what
I
was to become.  But on the other hand…I had to know.  “Her skin?  What do you mean?”  My heart hammered against my ribs as I waited for him to finish. 

“I swear I think it turned black.  And shiny.  The moonlight coming through the window made it glisten, almost like it was wet.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  Then she started shaking like she was having a seizure, but she was still making those noises.  Unnatural noises. 

“Wind started pouring through the windows and doors, howling through the house.  I don’t know where it came from.  Don’t think I wanted to, really.  The gusts were so strong they knocked me against the doorjamb a couple of times.  But I hung on, stayed right there.  To watch, I guess.  I don’t know.  I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes away from what was going on
.
”

I waited for him to continue, but, once more, he was lost in time.  “Then what happened?” 

“Then your mother let her go, just dropped her,” he said simply.

I sucked in a gulp of air, literally waiting on baited breath for the finale.  “What happened to her?”

“That’s the thing.  She didn’t fall.  She just…
hovered
there.  It’s like the wind was holding her up in the air.”  He paused then said softly, “And she didn’t even cry.” 

CHAPTER FIVE

We sat quietly for several long minutes, him reliving the nightmare, me digesting my family’s horrible history.  I knew I’d have questions.  It only made sense after such an astonishing revelation.  But, at that moment, I couldn’t think of one.  I was too shocked to think much past the sinister portrait Dad had painted.

“The next morning, I waited until your mother was in the shower.  I took you and left.” He paused then added under his breath, “And never went back.”

The jingling of the telephone forced me from my shocked shell.  On wooden legs, I rose from the couch and made my way to the kitchen where the phone rested on the counter.

Leah’s voice brought me back to reality like a bucket of cold water to the face.  “Mom wants you to come for dinner tonight.  She fixed pineapple upside down cake.”

Dina Kirby had adopted me, figuratively speaking.  From the first time we’d met, she’d been the mother I’d always wanted, but never had.  She took me shopping with them, she took me to the movies with them, she took me swimming with them in the summer and skiing with them in the winter.  And she always invited me over when she fixed my favorite dessert, pineapple upside down cake.

I could’ve cried.  Never had the longing for a mother, a
normal
mother, been as poignant as it was right then.  Wild horses couldn’t have kept me away.  Plus it would give me a chance to apologize to Leah. 

“What time?”  I wasn’t even going to ask if I could go.  I was going.  Period.

“Six or so.”

“Okay.  See you in a while.”

After I laid the phone back in its cradle, I walked back to the living room.  Without so much as a pause or a glance in Dad’s direction, I continued on to my room.  When I turned to close the door behind me, I saw Dad sitting on the couch.  His head was cradled in his hands.  From across the room I felt his grief and misery, an echo of the pain in my own chest.  His shoulders shook with sobs too quiet for me to hear.  For an instant, I thought to go to him, offer him some small comfort, but tonight, for the first time that I could remember, I had none to give. 

********

At nearly seven that night, I sat with Leah and her parents around their oval dinner table, listening to their family chatter.  Their
normal
family chatter.  It was the soothing balm my bruised and tender soul needed.