“I’m sorry. I hoped it would give you some answers.”
“Me too.”
He sighed loudly. “I love you, Kendall.”
“I …”I almost answered him and stopped. We weren’t married anymore, and whatever steps we’d taken toward getting back together, I didn’t know that I was ready to start back up the I love yous.
He laughed, a low snicker. “We’ll get there. You’re going to say it, too. Soon. And then I’ll move back in.”
“You’re so sure, are you?” I rounded a corner toward the direction of the woods.
“I am a man who gets what he wants. That’s how I got you in the first place.”
I wished I could simply fall into his words. Sure, Levi, let’s get back together and make it work. I walked through the dark toward the woods trying to find out about my missing years. At best, I wouldn’t saddle him with more of my problems. At worst, I wasn’t sure I could be the me I wanted to be and bring Levi along with me anymore. Or, if I could, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow. We’ll probably leave here early.”
He cleared his throat. “Drive carefully.”
I disconnected the phone and placed it in my pocket. If I got in the car, I could be home by the early morning hours. But I wouldn’t do that to my pregnant friend. After her less than stellar nap, she needed a good night’s sleep before we hit the road again.
I came to an abrupt halt. The field, or where I’d expected to find one, had been developed. Smack up next to the woods was, not a deserted lot, but rather a baseball diamond for kids to play Little League.
Empty at the moment, I could almost picture the place filled with happy children and stressed out parents. I wrapped my sweatshirt tighter around myself and crossed the street to the baseball mound. The moon shone down on me. It was nearly full but not quite. Still, between the lights shining down on the park and the moon, I could see almost as well as I could during the daytime.
No one living or dead was with me.
Two cars drove slowly down the street behind me.
Hold my hand; I won’t let you go.
I swore I heard Molly behind me, and I whirled around, but no one was there. “Hello?” I called out, but no one answered.
My heart raced hard, and I had to breathe. Molly was safe at home, and yet I heard her again. My daughter was safe. Levi had just told me. Come on. This way. We have to run.
I wasn’t sure who spoke or why, but my legs took off, seemingly of their own volition. I ran across to the woods. Wherever the not-Molly needed to go, I would follow.
Chapter Fourteen
I stopped running and leaned against a tree. I didn’t even know how far I’d gone although I doubted I’d covered any real distance. What had drawn me into the woods? Had I lost more of my mind? I rubbed my eyes.
“What the hell am I doing?” Maybe some squirrels would hear me. Nausea rolled my stomach, and I bent over to grip it. Something was wrong. Sweat poured down my face. Was I sick? Was this some horrible thing the shadow guy was doing? Was he somewhere holding onto me, and I didn’t know?
Victoria rushed into the clearing. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you wait for me? Are you okay?”
“Something’s wrong. You should go. I don’t know what it is, and if I can’t see it, then it’s really bad. You should go.”
She pursed her lips and walked toward me, putting her arms around me instead of running away. “It’s okay.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Trust me. I’ve got a problem, and you need to go.”
She indicated with her chin that she wanted me to walk with her to the tree. I didn’t resist; doing so might cause me to actually lose my cookies. I didn’t want to puke. We sunk down together, and Victoria sighed.
“I wish you had waited for me.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t.” I wasn’t even really certain why. “And now I feel like I’m dying.”
Victoria kissed my head. “Shhh.”
Okay, her behavior wasn’t exactly right. Why was Victoria kissing my head? Why weren’t we running away?
“I’m sure you’re reacting to the fact that there are two dead bodies down there.” She pointed to the ground. “I’m not sure why you’re reacting to it this way. But you are.”
Dead bodies? I wiped at the sweat on my face. Why were we standing over dead bodies? This wasn’t a graveyard. A thought dawned on me. “How did you find me here?”
She shook her head. “You told me you were going to the clearing. After that, it’s a question of tracking your aura, which is really off right now. I think we need to figure out why you’re so unhappy being here around the dead.”
“I don’t have a particular problem being around the dead. I deal with them constantly.”
Victoria sighed and stood. “I hoped we’d ease into this.”
“What?”
She shook her head. “Do you believe in the moon?”
That question struck me like ice, as though she’d frozen me with her words alone. When I spoke, it was softly. I could barely form words. “Why are you saying to me just what Malcolm did?”
Victoria looked down. “This is so hard.”
“And you’re blowing it, Vic. Why did you come here without discussing it with me first?”
Malcolm’s voice filled the clearing, and I stepped back. What was he doing there? I put my hands in front of me. This wasn’t okay. He shouldn’t be here, and Victoria shouldn’t be acting as though she knew him.
She pointed her finger at him and struck him in the shoulder. “I don’t answer to you. Never have, never will. She’s my friend. If I want to help her figure out this mess, then that’s what I’m going to do. She’d have done the same damn thing for me.”
“It’s supposed to come naturally. Do you think I couldn’t have done this the second she came into play?” he hollered back at her before turning like he wanted to come over to me. I put my hand out in front of me. He wasn’t a ghost; I couldn’t clear him, but so help me if he took another step in my general direction I would slap him hard. I might not win, but I’d hurt him. He held his hands in the air like a criminal. “I’m not going to hurt you, Kendall. Neither will Victoria. I promise. We’re fighting with each other. It has nothing to do with you.”
My pulse, already jackhammering from before, skyrocketed. The world threatened to spin, only I couldn’t let either of them know how badly I was shaken. He was a very powerful practitioner who could do god knew what else, and she was a witch. Together, they could put me on my ass or, worse, in the ground with whomever else was down below me.
“You know each other.” I had to start slow, calm myself down. I needed to think. “And this feels like betrayal, like you’ve been plotting. What do you both want from me?”
Victoria moved next to Malcolm. “I want you to be safe, happy, healthy. I want what I’ve always wanted. You’re my best friend.”
“I don’t believe I actually know you. And you.” I could hardly swallow past the sickening fear surrounding me. “I knew I should never have trusted you.”
“There’s where you’re wrong. You can trust me.” Malcolm lowered his arms. “You always could. Victoria, too.”
I couldn’t hold off the dizziness, and with no other choice I sunk to the ground.
“Kendall.” Malcolm stepped forward like he wanted to grab me, only Victoria touched his arm, stopping him.
“She’s not ready for either of us to place our hands on her right now.” A tear slipped down her face. “Who’s in the ground, Kendall? I think you know. Stop blocking it. You have all the energy you need to manage the memory. Your parents have fessed up to their deceit. No amount of magic done to you should be holding you back. Not anymore. Help us out and remember before it’s too late.”
Malcolm stormed backward, stopping before a tree. “No pressure in that.”
“Stop babying her. She’s more powerful than either of us. And we need her.”
Their word
s made so little sense I could hardly focus on them. I had to believe that if either of them was going to harm me, they would have already. Instead of listening to them bicker, I put my hand on the ground.
If Victoria were to be believed, there were two dead bodies beneath me. Before either of the liars in my life showed up to make me seriously upset, I’d been affected by this location. I ran my hand over the dirt.
Their argument faded away to nothingness. Instead, I looked up and saw something else entirely.
A man wearing a uniform that read “Waffle Cones” on it stared down at me.
“Why are you running, little ones?” He pointed a gun at me, and I cried out, only it wasn’t my own voice. It was Molly’s again. Except it wasn’t. My daughter, she was home with my husband. Ex-husband. Safe and secure.
A little boy stepped in front of me. “Don’t touch her. Don’t bother us. Go away. We haven’t done anything to you.”
“I’m afraid you have. You’ve seen too much, and I can’t have you reporting what’s going on to the police.”
I shoved the boy out of the way. He couldn’t get hurt saving me. I cared about him. He belonged with me. I wasn’t even sure what that meant, but I could feel it.
“We won’t say anything to anyone.”
The gun fired.
I grabbed my stomach. Falling backward, I hit the tree behind me and came back into the here and now where Malcolm and Victoria had stopped arguing. Tears slipped slowly down Victoria’s face. She didn’t wipe them away. Malcolm bent over at the waist, his hands on his knees.
“Who’s in the ground?” Victoria asked me again.
“I am.” I didn’t know how what I said could be, except it was. Nine-year-old me was in the ground, dead and buried by a man transporting guns in his ice cream truck. I’d died. And he’d buried me in the ground.
Malcolm’s gaze found mine. “And who else?” He held up two fingers. “Two bodies.”
The little boy who shoved me away. I knew his eyes, his dark skin, the slope of his nose. “You are. We’re both dead in the ground.” He extended his hand for me to take it, and yet I still couldn’t move. “Are we ghosts? Is this some kind of penance? Some kind of purgatory?”
“Stop,” Malcolm hissed. “Before you make yourself crazy. Come with me. I don’t want to be here any more than you do. It hurts to be at your own death scene. I want to puke. Come on. I need coffee and sugar.”
Victoria sighed. “I didn’t die here. Mine came in Thailand. I don’t like it here either. Bad enough it was the two of you.”
Malcolm rolled his eyes. “No one needs to hear your death story right now.”
“God, you’re such an ass.”
I took Malcolm’s hand and let him help me to my feet. His fingers in mine felt strong. His skin was warm. How was any of that possible when I knew now that we were both buried in a shallow grave beneath my feet?
I didn’t feel the hysterical tears coming on until they fell. Truth was, I didn’t cry all that often. I’d even gotten through my divorce on minimal sobbing, only now I couldn’t seem to control myself at all. Weeping wracked my body. Victoria cried out and rushed to my side a second before Malcolm scooped me up in his arms.
“You’re okay. It’s a shock for all of us to feel it the first time, and you’ve been in magical denial for so long it must feel like you’re being stabbed. Coffee and sugar. Onward.”
I didn’t think anyone had ever carried me around in such a gallant manner before. The thought, at least, stopped my tears. Or maybe it was moving into a vicinity away from my own dead body.
“Just tell me something.”
His eyes were kind when he stared down at me. “Sure.”
“Is this a bad dream?”
Victoria laughed from where she hurried next to Malcolm. “Welcome to the rabbit hole, Alice. You just fell down.”
If Malcolm found her words funny, he didn’t laugh and neither did I. It was possible I’d never be amused again.
****
Malcolm had said to drink coffee and eat sugar. I would have loved to comply, except the diner he’d found five miles outside of town smelled like eggs and my stomach couldn’t seem to handle the aroma. I sipped the coffee and hoped I wouldn’t puke.
“Feeling any better?” Victoria sipped a milkshake while Malcolm stared out the window. He hadn’t spoken since we got out of the car.
“No.” I pushed away my coffee. “But then again, for a dead person, I must be doing okay.”
She extended her arm and pointed to it. “Touch me.”
“No.” The negative constituted my go-to response for the moment. I didn’t want to do anything. “I don’t even know who you are.” My statement made Malcolm turn his gaze from the window and back to me. I saw a flash of something in his eyes that I couldn’t identify before he covered his facial expression with nothingness. I wasn’t done being surly. “You’re both liars. Particularly you, Victoria. I’ve only known him for a little while, but you’ve been outright deceiving me into believing you were my friend.”
She pulled her arm back, and when she spoke it was with a cracked voice. “I am your friend. I’ll always be your friend. You needed one, and I showed up. Yes, I didn’t start out by saying, ‘Oh hey, we know each other from a time not on this plane of existence, but let’s have coffee.’ I made a point of never interfering in your life, never forcing you to do what I really wanted you to.”
“Is that so?” I leaned forward. “How about the most recent visit? When you acted like you’d read my parentss auras so you knew they were lying to me?”
She pointed her spoon at me. “Well, that was simply getting out of hand. I had to sit there and watch while they said nothing to you about the fact that you’d disappeared for three years. Oh, yeah, you’re missing some memory, but everything was normal. What the hell? They’re supposed to be such good, honest, helping-others types in the practice, and they’re lying to their own daughter.”
“Raising children is complicated, as you will soon find out. Sometimes we lie to them for their own goods. It’s not easy to explain to someone that you love, who is counting on you to help them make sense of the world, that things can be monumentally scary for adults. So you lie to them. Maybe they should have stopped sooner. I don’t dispute that they had ample opportunity to fess up. They’re flawed. I don’t know a single perfect parent. Most of us are simply trying to get by.”
I’d made my little speech, and I sat back. Malcolm shifted in his seat next to me and glared at Victoria. “Tell me you’re not pregnant.”
“Only if you want me to lie to you.”
He slammed his hand on the table. “Have you lost your mind? You I could see making this stupid decision, but Henry? He should know better.”
I leaned over the table toward her. “Henry is in on this vast conspiracy of death?”
She met my eye contact unwaveringly. “He died in Montreal. A drunk driver killed him after he walked all the way to the store to get his little sister some medicine because his mother was also too sick to get up. And as for you”—she turned her spoon to point at Malcolm now—“we decided if Kendall could manage to raise children, there was no reason we couldn’t.”
“How about the fact that we might all be dead very shortly? Or you could be orphaning the baby which, trust me, is no picnic for the kid?”
Victoria hissed through her teeth. “Not one of us knows when our time here will be over. Not every day has to be battle. They told us we’d have lives. I’m living one.”
“Kendall would never have had those kids if she’d known who she was.”
I put my hand on his arm. “I’d have those kids any day of any week regardless of the circumstances of anything, and since you’ve never met them—and even if you had—I’d really appreciate it if you’d never mention them again in any way except possibly to tell me how wonderful, cute, or smart they are.”
Victoria snorted, and Malcolm alternated between staring at my hand on his arm and at m
y face. He nodded once, and I let go of my grip. I hadn’t realized I’d gripped him so hard before I saw the fingernail marks in his skin.
“Someone needs to explain what the hell is going on. How can I be in the ground and also here?”
Malcolm closed his eyes and leaned back in the bench of our booth. “I guess it didn’t all come rushing back?”
“Nope.”
No one spoke for a minute, and the silence stretched out between us as a chasm. They were on one side, knowing everything about me, and I sat across, my world shattered, staring at them.
“Either one of you want to answer?”
Malcolm opened his eyes slowly. “What I want is for you to go back twenty-three years and not make the same choice. I want you to have discussed it with me before you did it. That’s what I want. I don’t think I should have to enlighten you to what we did and how it happened and what the whole world needs from you now. You’ll have to excuse me if I’m really not in the mood to play narrator for you.”
“We were all given a choice.” Victoria’s voice was low. “She made hers. She wasn’t the only one to do so. You’re only mad that you didn’t know, so you didn’t do the same yourself. We both know if you’d been informed you would have followed suit. She wanted you to do what was right for you.”
“Enough talking around me.” I steepled my hands in front of me. “Please.”
“Well, Sage.” There he was with the nickname again. “We died. Big old gunshots to the gut. Took a long time to fade out. Then again, you’ve seen that, so I guess I don’t have to enlighten you on the how and where and the damned pain.”
I shivered at his words. “I actually didn’t see anything past getting shot in the stomach.” I rubbed the spot to make sure it was whole.
“Well, aren’t you lucky? Getting to forget how we bled forever while psycho-man laughed, how you crawled over to me like you could help me while you died yourself. How we held each other. You went first, by the way.”
“Malcolm.” Victoria took a bite of her eggs. “You’re so hard all the time. Give the girl a break.”
“Then you tell it, witch. I need some air.” He scooted out of the bench, and without a backward glance left the diner. A small bell above the exit jingled from the force he applied to the door.