Out of the blue, a nagging thought crossed my mind.
Max had been in her room almost all day, ever since just past breakfast. I worried that maybe something was wrong.
Then I thought I knew what it was: She was missing Ozymandias again. We all were, of course. He was such a great boy, so much potential. Every time I thought about Oz, I choked up myself.
Max’s room was upstairs in the southeast corner, and it had a special view of the quarry, the lake, and the woods.
I went up there on tippytoes.
At the door, I thought I heard her moan. What is going on in there? What now?
Every one of us had had night terrors and waking nightmares, post-traumatic stress disorder that just wouldn’t quit. The most graphic scenes from the Hospital and the School were still with us. They always would be.
“Max? You okay in there?” I called out. “Max, sweetie?”
She didn’t answer. So I opened the bedroom door a crack and peeked inside. I relaxed as I saw Max in bed under a lot of fluffy covers. She stretched out a hand and beckoned.
“Frannie, come in. Please, Mama. I need to talk to you.”
“Okay. I’m right here.” I shut the door behind me.
I could see that Max was flushed. She was perspiring. Then, to my shock, I saw blood on her outstretched fingers!
“I need your help, Frannie. I really need you right now. Seriously.”
I clamped down on my fear as I walked across the creaking bedroom floor. I dragged a chair up to Max’s bedside and sat beside her. “I’m here.”
I put my hand on her forehead. She was extraordinarily warm. Her long hair was matted and damp.
The doctor in me began to take over.
“Honey? What’s the matter with you? What are you feeling? How long have you had a fever? Talk to me.”
“I’m not exactly sick, Frannie. I’ve just been working real hard,” Max said.
I must have had a puzzled look on my face.
“Labor,” she said. “Labor is hard work. I had some babies!”
I gasped when I finally understood. I think I almost fainted. “Oh, Max, why didn’t you tell me? Oh, Max, sweetheart. Oh, Max, oh God, Max.”
She shrugged and then said, “I wanted this to be private. But I’m really glad you’re here, Frannie. Just us two girls.”
“Just the two of us,” I promised.
Now I stared at a miracle never before seen in this world, at least I didn’t expect so. My God! Snuggled right up to Max’s body, lying in the crook of her arm, were two magnificent human eggs. Oh, Max.
The eggs were quite large, the shells ivory white with a pearly pink sheen. They looked to be three or four pounds, and the sight of them made me weak with tenderness.
I imagined Max’s precious babies inside the eggs, their arms and legs tucked in the fetal position. Two beautiful babies with wings.
“You’re going to be a mother,” I whispered. “This is so beautiful.” Then I started to choke up.
“They’re mine with Ozymandias,” Max said, still whispering. “I have to keep them warm. I don’t know why I know that, but I do. Oh, I wish Oz were here to see this.”
I reached out and gently put my arms around Max, holding her, calling her name. I felt tears rolling down my cheeks.
Max’s face was so joyful and radiant, so full of hope, and then she whispered, “Aren’t they just the most beautiful things? Isn’t life a miracle sometimes?
“Okay, you can call the other kids now. And Kit. This is gonna blow all their minds, isn’t it? I’m going to be a mother.”
108
OVER THE NEXT few weeks Max began to learn real honest-to-God patience for the first time in her life. She was going to be a mom, and she’d need it. It was so quiet in her part of the house that she sometimes thought she might be going a little mad. Going, going, gone.
Her mind was frayed from being alone too much, watching and nursing her eggs every minute, thinking about Oz constantly, missing him so much that it hurt. Constantly and forever.
But she had good reason to be extra-watchful and careful. She was going to be a mother, and her children were going to be very special. Of course, Max knew, just about every mother felt that same way.
She was all cozied up in bed, re-reading The Hobbit by candlelight, when she heard a creak coming from the deck right outside her bedroom window.
Strange.
What was that?
Perhaps the low, steady whistle of the wind had frightened an animal. There were plenty of critters out there, skittering here and there in the woods. If anything, her superior hearing was better than ever.
She touched the eggs with her fingertips, one, two.
Buckle my shoe.
Going, going, gone.
Max couldn’t take her eyes off the two eggs. The babies were growing bigger day by day. They were also starting to move now. She could see their shapes pressed up against the shells. That got her every time. She was going to be a mom.
Max blew out the candle, lay very still, and listened again. She heard the same funny creak again!
Probably nothing.
Probably . . .
It was like the sound of a branch or the wind pushing at the deck, but there were no overhanging branches out there, were there?
No, the creak was more like a damn footstep. Out on the deck.
A footstep she was imagining in her head? A boogeyman footstep? A fantasy footstep?
Max held her breath and listened closely again. This was too dopey for words.
Finally, she slipped out of bed. Even dopier.
She moved three paces to the window, waited, then parted the white eyelet curtains Frannie had made for her. She looked out onto the second-story deck.
Then Max jumped back.
She was staring into another pair of eyes!
Eyes she knew. And hated. A face she knew. And hated. Yes, it’s me, the mouth formed words. Hel-lo, Max. I’ve come for you.
The window broke inward as a gloved fist smashed through it. Shattered glass rained around her. Then Dr. Ethan Kane-Harold Hauer burst into the room, and she knew this just had to be a dream, like really bad simulated reality.
But it wasn’t.
He was alive.
He was in her bedroom. He had come for her and the eggs.
109
“GET OUT OF HERE!” Max shrieked.
But Hauer grabbed her around the waist and threw her backward toward the bed. He had a scalpel in his hand. And he was strong—much more so than normal men. He wasn’t normal.
Of course he wasn’t! He had made himself over; he was the first to experience Resurrection; he was the new Frankenstein.
Max twisted her body as she fell, to avoid the pillow nest she’d made for her babies. She just missed crushing the eggs!
When she lifted her head, there was a sharp blade pressing into her throat. Hauer’s free hand covered her nose and mouth. He was suffocating her. Did he even know how strong he was?
“Why, hello, Max. So nice to see you again, dear girl. Yes, I’m alive. You killed a clone, Max, not me. Of course, you probably know that.”
Then he warned, “Don’t you dare move, you fine-feathered freak. Don’t even think of screaming for help because I’ll kill them, too. In the blink of an eye. Fight me and I’ll kill you. You’ll die without seeing your babies. You’re smart. You understand me. Don’t you?”
Max nodded. Her lungs were aching. She needed air. Hauer finally took his hand from Max’s mouth and she actually growled, a sound she’d never ever made before.
“You’re the freak. Godless creep. What do you want?”
“Well, I’ve come for a few of my papers, which Frances Jane apparently swiped. And the eggs, of course. I’ve come for your eggs, Max.”
“You can’t have them,” Max hissed. “I’ll die first.”
Hauer shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me. You die, you live. Either way, I have your precious eggs. I am Harold Hauer. N
ot a clone. Do you know why I’m here, Max? Do you know why I kept you alive all this time? Want to know the big secret? You’re even bigger than Resurrection. Really and truly you are. These eggs were more important than anything I’ve done. I’ve seen the future, Max, and it flies!”
Max couldn’t speak at first. Finally, she understood why she’d been kept alive. I’ve seen the future, and it flies!
“You’re a sick ghoul,” she finally said.
Then Max found herself making the terrible growling sound again. What was that noise anyway? Her way of protecting the eggs?
“You’re incorrigible, hopeless. I should have done this at the Hospital. Die, you little twit.”
“I don’t feel like it!” Max shouted. She kicked out and sent the doctor reeling against her dresser.
He recovered quickly, though. Bearlike, he shook himself off. And laughed, just as that robot’s head had laughed when it hung down, broken, on the airport runway. The same laugh, note for note.
He cursed and felt around for the scalpel in the darkened room. Found it in a fold of the scatter rug.
“Dead or alive?” he asked as he showed Max the sharp blade. “It’s your choice.”
“I choose my babies,” said Max.
She spread her wings, making a wall of feathers and bone between Hauer and her eggs. “Get out of here! Get out of here now,” she screamed. “I’ll kill you, Hauer! Kane! Whatever your name is, you creepy bastard! Get away from my babies!”
He rushed her, and Max sidestepped the attack. Barely. He was quick, too.
She reached out and grasped for something. What? She felt a brass candle holder. She swung it very hard, very fast—very accurately, too.
There was a solid crunch as the heavy object connected with Dr. Hauer’s skull. She’d hurt him! He moaned and fell against her, pulling at Max with the full weight of his body, dragging her toward the far wall.
“Let go! Don’t touch me.”
“You little son of a bitch,” he groaned through gritted teeth. “I’ll show you something. I’ll show you pain. Then death.”
Max heard yells and footsteps in the house. Frannie and Kit were coming. Running. The kids, too!
Hauer was so strong, though, obviously something else he’d engineered in his lab. He was relentlessly pushing her backward. Max lost her footing. She was going down.
She was falling right through the broken window behind her. No way to stop it. She reached out. For something, anything! Grabbed Dr. Hauer with both hands. Held on to him for dear life.
“You’re coming, too!”
The bedroom was only on the second floor—that was the good news.
The bad part was that her window overlooked a steep cliff, a drop of another hundred and twenty feet into the woods, which was so far below.
Max and Dr. Hauer crashed through the picture window, and fell several feet together—then she let him go. Just like that! Say good-bye to old rubbish! Max flapped her wings furiously, struggled, but then hovered as she watched the screeching doctor falling to the forest floor far below. He spiraled; he cartwheeled; he dived. He didn’t laugh like the robot. It took a few seconds that seemed so much longer.
“Help me, Max!” he screamed. Maybe she would have if she could, but she couldn’t dive and swoop up his falling body. Even if she’d wanted to.
She saw him hit a tree, then carom to the ground with a sickening thud, then he lay very still. Crumpled, twisted, still. As she had hoped, as she’d solemnly promised Ozymandias, she’d broken the bastard’s neck.
Dr. Harold Hauer, ninety-four years old, was finally dead. Good riddance to the human monster, the creep of creeps, the sick prick. The real deal, the real person, was dead as dogshit down there.
Max whispered. “I’ve seen the future, too . . . and you’re not in it.”
She finally had to look away. She caught a breath, and then flapped her wings and took off toward the bedroom window of the house.
Frannie and Kit were up there, with the other kids, and also her precious babies, her eggs.
Less than four weeks later they were born.
In the perfect, perfect spot.
At the Lake House.
A boy and a girl, just what she’d wanted.
The most special and beautiful babies in the whole world—tiny infants with gossamer wings like angels. Maybe they were angels.
Frances Jane and Ozymandias.
She couldn’t wait to teach them to fly.
James Patterson, The Lake House
(Series: # )
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