“The Monets are your favorite?” He had an odd expression; part surprise, part hopeful.
“Well. Yeah. He’s my favorite artist, though, so that follows. Right? But listen, I don’t think you did it. I certainly don’t think you did it on purpose so you’d have an excuse to call me because you’re secretly a stalker.” It’s wrong that I would have no problem with that. Very, very wrong.
“I would— I would never do something like that to you. To anyone,” he corrected. And yep, he was blushing. No question this time. Eh. It’s a warm day and he’s in a suit.
“I know.” Wasn’t that strange? She barely knew the guy, but she would have bet five figures he had nothing to do with blacking out her father’s name. “But the timing is interesting, don’t you think? Dad’s case is back in storage. You’re turning your attention back to your regular workload and buying weird socks. And I’m only working Dad’s case part-time.”
“So why do this now?” he finished. “Yes. Those were my thoughts also.”
“Well, thank God you found it first. I’d have hated for Jack or Jordan or any of the others to see it like this. And we’re gonna have to clean this up, I’m not sure the cheapie package covers it. I’ll check with the office.”
“That’s another thing. I don’t understand why the office didn’t call you. The paint’s dry, it doesn’t even smell. This happened at least two days ago.”
“I can tell you why—my mother. She told Graceland years ago that she was paying for minimum coverage and didn’t want updates and don’t call her, she’d call them.” Which, again, Angela had chalked up to the pain of widowhood. How it had hit her so hard she couldn’t bear to be reminded of it by anyone, and certainly not the boneyard where her husband rested.
Again, she wondered if she hadn’t been reading Emma Drake completely wrong all this time.
Stop it. Your mother did not murder your father. Okay?
Okay?
“Are you going to notify your mother?”
That brought her back. “No. And she’ll never find out, either. She’s never been here.”
“Your mother strikes me as a rather vengeful mourner.”
Angela laughed, a short humorless bark. “That is the perfect phrase.”
“I think it might be time to visit your uncle again.”
“You think he knows who did it?”
“He might. Or he’d know why it was done.”
“And if you know ‘why,’ you know ‘who’?”
“Yes. Or he might be able to point us in a new direction. It’s worth a discussion.”
“In the loop” is a glorious place to be. “Agreed. I’m going to tell Archer what happened, see if he and Leah want to come with us—when?”
“Tomorrow, late afternoon,” was the prompt reply. “I’ll have to put in the request and take care of a few other things first. Can you keep your family away from the grave for thirty-six hours?”
She sighed. “That won’t be a problem at all.”
Which was, in itself, a problem. One she was ill-quipped to solve. But then, that had always been the case.
THIRTY-ONE
They’re terrifying but likeable, Leah decided. Which was pretty fine for a family motto. Certainly better than the Nazir motto: Quid de mi residuals?*
It was late. Angela had come back from her mysterious errand with Detective Chambers, pulled her and Archer aside, and in a low voice explained what Detective Chambers had shown her at the cemetery.
“Are you fucking kidding?” Archer hissed, mindful that the house was full of ears, even in the guest bathroom they’d crammed all three of themselves into (one of the few rooms in the house that locked). A toilet, a tiny sink, and three adults in a three-by-five bathroom made Leah grateful Jack had taken it easy on the garlic for dinner. “They wrecked your dad’s grave?”
“I’m so sorry,” Leah added. “That must have been a horrible sight.”
“Why didn’t you call us, cuz? We’d have come to help. We’ll go right now if you want.”
“Archer, it just happened. And I don’t want your pregnant fiancée scrubbing paint off a gravestone and helping us shove a two-hundred-pound stone back on its base. Jesus.”
“Okay, good point. I didn’t mean to jump on you, I was just surprised. So what’d you say? What’d you do? Are you going to tell Aunt Emma? Do you want me to?”
“Are you kidding? It’s all Mom can do to handle the mail.”
Leah had been unsurprised when the answer was nothing, nothing, no, and no. Emma Drake had a Ph.D. in a peculiar kind of grief that was, at times, more selfish than suffering.
There was a selfish side to grief, but no one talked about it because it was such tricky ground. It sounded heartless: I’m mourning. I’m suffering without him/her/it. How can you say that’s selfish?
That was true as far as it went. But when are you finished? Well, it’s different for everyone. It’s grief! You can’t put a time limit on it! Sure you can. Six months, a year? Five years, ten? When will you come back to life? When does mourning become hiding? And for how long?
I didn’t get to say good-bye! was a common theme. And it was understandable—but what they were really saying was, I wanted them awake and aware—and yes, given the injuries, he/she/it would have been in tremendous pain but I needed this, dammit! Sure, he/she/it would have been racked with pain and terrified to know death was coming, but I wanted my good-bye!
I deserve closure!* was another one. An understandable instinct, but ultimately futile, since there really was no such thing. Not even in a world where you could meet up with your loved ones in another life.
Emma Drake was displaying all the symptoms of grief-turned-selfish. Even without Insight, Leah likely would have figured it out.
Be fair, she told herself. If it was Archer who went out one night and never came back? And Jack or Angela or Paul got life imprisonment for it, though you knew they were innocent? Are you sure you wouldn’t instantly morph into your mother? What makes you think you wouldn’t spend the rest of your life mourning your glory days?
But thinking about what Nellie Nazir would do just made things worse. Because in about six months, her mother would be here. There’d be no more speculating about what she would do, because Leah and Archer and the world would be able to see what she would do.
What if she wants to be an actress again?
What if she does? Is that the worst possible scenario?
Yes. And what the hell are we going to name her? Nellie 2.0? Nnnellie? Nellie Squared? Nellie “I’m Back” Drake? What? Whaaaaaaat?
Which is why Leah tried not to think about it.
After further whispered updates, and an attempt by Paul to get in the bathroom,
(“C’mon, I just need the spare tape measure! It’s right there under the sink! What are you weirdos even doing in there? You’d better all be fully clothed!”)
she and Archer agreed to meet Angela and the detective at ICC tomorrow afternoon.
Later, they were treated to another fine meal by Jack, who had little to say, despite Paul’s attempt to wriggle out of doing the dishes. As it happened, Leah was in a generous mood and was happy to clean up. The Drakes had asked nothing of her in more than a week, and if their noisy squabbles and power plays sometimes made her feel invisible, she reminded herself that once upon a time, all she’d wanted was to be invisible. There were worse things than being the quiet weirdo in the crowd.
She also thought helping in the kitchen might be a way to coax Jack into telling her what was on his mind (though she had a good idea), but he didn’t linger once the table had been cleared. So: The kid was tired or he wasn’t feeling forthcoming or both. Or it has nothing to do with you, or what you think, she reminded herself, and you’re projecting.
Now it was late, close to midnight. Archer had dropped off to sleep after a bout of e
nergetically tender lovemaking. It had started innocently enough with Archer blowing raspberries on her belly.
“Stop that.”
“She’s gotta learn the world is a cruel place full of raspberries. Pppphhhhhhbbbttt!”
“Idiot!”
“Raspberries to the right of us! Raspberries to the left of us!”
“‘Half a league, half a league onward.*’”
“What?”
“Idiot.”
Then he went lower. And stayed there for a while.
A few minutes later, she was reminded that Archer might not be up on his nineteenth-century British poetry, but he was an expert in how to make her gasp and shake and want him. Pregnancy hadn’t dampened their sex drive, though she wondered if that would be true five months from now.
She’d cleaned up, then came back to a snoring Archer; he’d dropped off before she could offer him a washcloth. Normally Leah would have followed suit, but too much had happened in too short a time. She’d start thinking about Dennis and the tombstone and then would wonder about Jack. Then she’d think about Angela, who, for all her controlling ways, was quite pleasant and to be commended, partly for her own talents but also for being the head of the family since she was a child. Then she’d start wondering if there was any juice left and what it would taste like with a tablespoon of mustard stirred in.
The cravings. They sicken me even as they delight me.
Enough. One thing she knew about insomnia: Making yourself stay in bed when you couldn’t sleep was not a good plan. All you did was lie there and think about the time. I have to get up in six hours. In four hours. In two. In ninety minutes. So she slipped into Archer’s robe and padded out of their room, kitchen-bound. For orange juice and what might be even better: If her suspicions were correct, she could finally be of some real help to this nutty, exhausting band of charmers.
That was worth some lost z’s.
THIRTY-TWO
She found Jack, as she’d hoped she would, sorting through what looked like hundreds of cookbooks. She found that equal parts commendable and exasperating. How many books about pudding does any one family need?
He turned his head—his back was to the kitchen doorway—and nodded. “Hey.”
“Hello, Jack. Please don’t leap to your feet and prepare me a nutritionally sound prenatal snack. I’m just here for the orange juice.” Which was one of the silliest things to drink when you wanted to sleep—hospitals kept it on hand because it got a patient’s blood sugar up in a hurry—but oh, well.
“Wasn’t gonna,” he muttered.
“Oh. Then this just got awkward.”
A muffled snort. She stepped to the fridge, got the juice, ignored the mustard (the poor boy was going through enough without having to witness that horror show), poured herself a glass, sipped, set it down, went to him, touched his shoulder. After a moment, he looked up at her. He was sitting cross-legged in front of the jam-packed bookshelf, and it might have been the overhead lighting, but he looked haunted. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
She smiled. God, the bags under his eyes. “That’s my line, Jack. Can I help you? Will you tell me?”
“I’m okay.”
“Bullshit. Which I say with deepest respect as a guest in your kitchen.”
He blinked up at her. “I’m okay. You’re the one who should go and sleep, you’re making another person.”
“I can do more than one thing at once. Well, sometimes. I’m sorry to pester, and I know we only just met, but I’d like to help you.”
“I’m o-kay.”
Sure you are. “If I can guess what’s bothering you, will you confirm?”
A shrug. But this time, he didn’t immediately go back to pretending to read a cookbook.
She sat on the floor beside him. “It’s not that you can’t sleep. It’s that you’re afraid to sleep.”
Silence.
“You don’t want to sleep because you’re having bloody, violent, terrifying dreams. So being awake is good, right? But it’s a problematic long-term solution.”
“Everybody has nightmares.”
She nodded. “Oh, yes. And lots of people fight them the way you are—by trying to avoid them. Or they go the other way, self-medicating with Ambien or alcohol so they go down deep and don’t dream.”
“I can’t do that, though.” He immediately went red, like he knew he’d showed his hand and was now resigned to her taking advantage.
“That’s right, you can’t. And you’re clever to know it. Access, for one thing, is a problem. You’re the youngest in a house full of people who’d bust you in a cold minute, that’s another one. So you’re stuck with coffee, which is why you’ve slipped caffeine into every dessert for the last three days.”
“Everybody likes triple coffee cheesecake. And mocha brownies with coffee frosting. And coffee meringues. And coffee cinnamon rolls. And—”
“Sure, Jack. Please don’t misunderstand; I’m not criticizing you. I think you’re to be commended.” She nudged him gently with her elbow. “You had me buying you more coffee—you got me to feed your habit right under my nose, that’s how long it took me to catch on. You made me your dealer, dammit!”
“Kinda,” he mumbled. “But I usually made two batches of desserts, so I’ve actually been feeding you decaf.”
“Huh. Well. That’s something to be proud of, you duplicitous jerk.”
He giggled, but immediately sobered. “I wasn’t trying to trick you.”
“You literally just explained how you tricked me. And how you tricked anyone who had one of ‘my’ desserts and thought they were getting caffeine.”
He shrugged. “I just needed it.”
“I know. But it’s just another stopgap measure. It’s not a long-term fix. And other problems are cropping up, too, aren’t they? Because the more exhausted you are, the more the world seems bigger and louder. Things that didn’t bother you before are bugging the hell out of you now.”
“But again, that happens to a lot of people.”
“Here’s what doesn’t: You’re starting to get pictures in your head, but they’re not your pictures. They’re not your thoughts. They’re about people you don’t know . . . Except you can’t shake the feeling that you do know them. You were gray as a ghost when you and Paul were done wrestling for who had to paint the deck.”
“Only because he forgot to put on deodorant.”
“Or because you realized he was born in 1934 and his name used to be Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space. And the shortest person in space,” she added under her breath, and managed to lock back a snicker.
Leah waited while Jack looked away and fiddled with his shoelaces. Then: “Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly right and I shouldn’t know that so why do I know that? I don’t want to know that.”
“No, I imagine you don’t.”
“So why?” His voice cracked on “why” and he flushed red.
“Oh, Jack. You know why.”
“I don’t want to know that Mitchell starved to death in a potato famine or that Angela has a history of getting innocent people killed or that Mom ends up alone in every single life,” he cried. “When I was little—”
“When you were little,” Leah said quietly, “they chalked it up to a vivid imagination. If you talked about it at all. In this house, it’s easy to get lost. If someone said ‘Insighter,’ they were talking about Angela. Right? So you didn’t say anything to disabuse them. And that worked for a long time.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“But puberty often kick-starts the ability, or gives it a sizeable boost—you can blame that on the pituitary gland. The same thing directing your body to grow several inches got your Insighting going, too. Because ordinary puberty isn’t horrifying enough.”
It fell flat; he wasn’t in a joking mood. “I don’t want a biology les
son and I don’t want other people’s lives in my head! I’ve got enough trouble juggling my own. Did you know I drowned in molasses in 1919?* I mean, what the fuck?”
“If it makes you feel better, my mom killed me in several past lives.”
His eyes almost literally bulged. “Why? Leah? Why would that make me feel better?”
That brought her up short. “Well. When you put it like that, I have to admit, that was a dim move on my part.”
“I don’t want to be an Insighter,” he said, lips trembling. His gray green eyes filled and she knew he would be embarrassed and angry if even one tear fell. “No offense.”
“I’m not offended. I wasn’t happy about it, either. And my mother . . . my mother was horrified.”
“Well, yeah.” Jack sniffed and raked his forearm across his face, dashing away tears. “Because she wanted an easier life for you.”
“You’re adorable,” she said dryly. “Because she didn’t want anything that might take the spotlight off her. She insisted it was just my overactive imagination. She spent years denying it.”
“That’s when you tried to get emancipated?” When she raised her eyebrows, he added guiltily, “I Googled you.”
“Oh. No, I tried to get emancipated because she was making me work—shows, movie cameos, endorsements, all of which I hated—and keeping all my money.”
“But your mom banged the judge so you were stuck.”
“Uh, yes.” I should probably look myself up online.
“But then you got famous. Famous-er. You were always in the news, but not because of TV anymore. Archer was super excited when he got to meet you, he told us all about it.”
Got to meet me. Well, that was one way to put it. “Was hired to stalk me” would have been a tad more accurate.
History. Focus. “Yes, I was famous. On quite my own merits.” Leah smiled, but it wasn’t a happy one. “The unforgivable sin in Nellie Nazir’s eyes is that I wasn’t even on TV anymore and I was still more famous than her. Her only focus from the time I was seventeen until I—until last year—was luring me back to revive her career with ‘our comeback.’” Leah still couldn’t say “our comeback” without a shudder.