The vibration of the sound suddenly burst tenfold inside my head. I winced and clasped my hands over my ears. Great time for my superhearing to decide to pay me a visit. “What’s going on?” I called over the din. “I put James to bed two hours ago.” I’d made sure James was tucked in for the night and Charity was started on homework before I’d left for the evening. It was the least I could do with Dad being gone.
“I don’t know. He woke up screaming about an hour ago,” Charity said, narrowly missing getting smacked in the face by James. “I finally got him calmed down, but then he started freaking when I tried to take him back to his room. I think maybe he had a nightmare that there was something at his window.”
I exchanged a look with Daniel. He nodded. What James had seen at his window might not have been a nightmare.
“Arg, James! Stop!” Charity yelled as James arched his back in her arms and kicked his legs. She nearly lost her grip and almost dropped him down the stairs.
“I’ll take him.” Daniel slipped past me in the doorway and pulled James out of Charity’s arms. “Calm down, Baby J,” Daniel said, and bounced him on his hip. James quieted almost immediately and wrapped his trembling arms around Daniel’s neck. Daniel was still his mighty hero, and
James, in his footie pajamas, looked so tiny wrapped in Daniel’s strong arms. I couldn’t help remembering the way Daniel had caught him when he fell off that forty-foot cliff in the woods behind our neighborhood.
“How about I read you a story?” Daniel asked, and nuzzled his nose against James’s cheek.
James nodded and wiped his puffy, red eyes.
“How about that Wild Things one? I like the kid with the wolf suit.” That was James’s favorite book—a present from Daniel when he turned two six months ago.
James shook his head. “Nah, too scawey.” His chin quivered. He must have really had a fright.
“Winnie-the-Pooh, then?” Daniel swung James onto his shoulders and looked at me. “I’ll put James to bed.”
“Thanks,” Charity and I said in unison.
I watched Daniel trot up the stairs, talking to James in his best Eeyore voice—which sounded more like Marlon Brando, if you ask me. How could anyone not love him? And why would Jude still think he couldn’t be trusted?
“Finally,” Charity grumbled. “I’ve got like three more pages of math homework to do.”
“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have stayed out so late if I’d known.”
“It’s okay.” Charity traced the grain on the oak banister with her finger. “You’re not the one who should be dealing with James anyway.” She glanced down the entry hall toward the family room. “Do you think you can get Mom to turn it down? I really need to concentrate.”
“So it’s Zombie Queen mode again?”
Charity nodded.
I should have known better than to think a day with Aunt Carol would have made Mom feel any better. Carol liked to come out to “help” every once in a while when Dad was gone, but her snide remarks about how our Divine little family wasn’t so perfect after all got old really fast.
“Wonder how long it’ll last this time,” Charity said, and headed up the stairs.
I sucked in a deep breath and made my way to the family room. James had stopped crying, and I could even make out a trill of his laughter coming from his bedroom, but the TV volume was still up at full blast. My ears throbbed as I got closer to the set. I picked up the remote just as the newscast started in on a new story.
A reporter stood in front of a police line outside a jewelry store called the Family Jewels that I’d passed more than once while in the antiques district of the city. “Two jewelry stores were hit in broad daylight in the last two days,” the reporter said, “but with no eyewitnesses of these bold crimes, the police are left scratching their heads. Employees at both stores claim to have been knocked unconscious before seeing anything, and both stores were completely vandalized and robbed of all their merchandise in a matter of minutes. Security cameras failed to pick up anything at either scene, and authorities speculate that the cameras were somehow disabled before they were able to capture anyone on film.”
The screen cut to a plump anchorman with puffy hair sitting behind a desk. “Wow, Graham,” the anchorman said. “These robberies sound frighteningly familiar, don’t they?”
“Yes,” the reporter said. “These two robberies may be related to a string of other bizarre and unexplained thefts and attacks in the city, which we’ve reported on in the last few months. But it seems the police are just as baffled as everyone else.”
“Hmm,” the anchorman said. “Perhaps we should all be worried that the Markham Street Monster has turned to a life of organized crime.…”
I turned down the volume, cutting off the anchorman chuckling at his own lame joke. I never did find any kidding about the Markham Street
Monster funny—especially now that I knew the truth about it … or him, I guess I should say. Mom didn’t protest my messing with the volume. She just stared at the footage of bystanders being interviewed about the mysterious robberies. Her eyes flicked from face to face in the crowd. I knew who she was looking for.
“Mom?” I picked up the empty wineglass and the bowl of cold tomato soup off the coffee table in front of the couch. “You didn’t eat. Do you want me to make you something else?”
Mom shifted slightly so she could see the TV past my legs.
“Dad said I should call Dr. Connors if you stopped eating again.”
She didn’t even blink.
Every ounce of me wanted to tell Mom about Jude’s calling. That he’d been right here in Rose Crest. That I’d talked to him. That while she was busy watching the news for any sign of him, he may have been right outside her other son’s window.
But it was that last thought that stopped me. I didn’t know why Jude had come back. I didn’t know what he wanted. I didn’t know if he was more monster than human now, staring into the windows of the people he’d once called his family. And I didn’t know if he’d even come back again after tonight. What I did know was that it was best not to say anything to Mom—at least for now.
She reached for the remote and clicked the volume up a few notches. I took her bowl to the kitchen sink and dumped out the contents, watching the red of the congealed tomato soup slip down the drain. I rinsed the bowl and then started in on the rest of the dishes, filling the sink with the hottest water possible. I don’t know why, but I liked the way heat swallowed my hands as I plunged them into the scalding water and scrubbed the dishes. Mom’s Zombie Queen mode always made me want to feel something extra—like I was feeling pain for both of us.
I prayed silently while I scrubbed a pot that Mom wouldn’t see anyone on the news she thought looked like Jude. She’d get all worked up, call
Dad, and make him go looking in whatever city or state or even country she thought she’d seen him in. And Dad would go, even if he’d already been gone for almost two weeks, because maybe this time it really was Jude. Maybe this time he’d find him and bring him home.
I’d been just as hopeful as Mom the first time she thought she’d seen Jude on the TV. I’d waited with her by the window all night long while Dad was gone looking for him. But when Dad came back—alone—it felt like Jude had left all over again. Mom didn’t eat for an entire week—that is, until she thought she saw Jude in the background of a CNN newscast about an industrial fire in California. But that didn’t pan out, either, and Mom only got worse the longer Dad was gone.
The third time he left to follow one of her wild leads—a bear attack in Yellowstone, where a dark-haired boy supposedly saved a young girl from being killed—I got angry. I’d stood in front of the door, my arms crossed, unwilling to let Dad leave. But he took my hand and sat me down on the porch. “You know the story of the Good Shepherd, don’t you, Grace?”
I shook my head, even though I did. I was too upset to speak.
“The Bible says that a good shepherd, even if he has one hundred sheep, if he loses but one of them in the wilderness, he must leave the other ninety-nine behind to go looking for that one.”
“But doesn’t that mean he’s basically throwing the rest to the wolves?” I asked.
Dad sighed. “It’s what I did for Daniel—helped him no matter what. It’s what you did for him. Now we owe that to your brother, too.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
Dad squeezed my fingers. “Besides, I’m leaving the rest of the family in capable hands,” he’d said, then he got up and left.
But I didn’t feel very capable right now. I mean, what was I supposed to do when the lost sheep found us and the Good Shepherd wasn’t here?
And what if the sheep wasn’t a sheep at all?
What if he was the wolf?
LATER
I’d almost emptied the sink when Daniel came into the kitchen. “James is finally down.” He brushed my arm and then picked up a towel and dried a saucepot.