A month later, I was doing my version of cooking: microwaving four cheese pizzas, one after the other. While some things changed in life, the combination of me and an oven remained a catastrophe of nuclear proportions. I also had bowls of chips and dip and a case of beer in the refrigerator. Abby had promised to bring cheesecake for dessert. Houdini was intrigued by the smell of so much extra food, but he was suspicious, too. He wanted to believe that it was all for one big Houdini-and-Jackson buffet, but sometimes even dogs know when something seems too good to be true.
I gave him a slice of pizza and pointed toward his couch. “When Hector gets here, he’ll probably try to con you out of a seat whining over his broken leg. Don’t give an inch.”
Chuffing curiously, he trotted over, jumped up, and went to work on his dinner. He’d be surprised when Hector and Meleah, now engaged, showed up along with Abby. Abby he was used to. Add two more people to that, and, well, that was two more people than he’d seen in the house. As I’d thought, things change, and he’d probably adjust faster than I would. But adjust I would. I didn’t have much choice after what I’d seen, although half the days I still spent firmly lodged in denial. Blood loss, hallucinations, a statewide secret project to unplug abandoned and dangerous wells-possibly for population control-who knew? But there were the other days, and those days had changed me.
“I was perfectly fine the way I was, right, Hou?” I said aloud. “What’s not to love about cynical and sarcastic?”
The dog knew his cue when he heard it and gave a strangled rumble of agreement around his mouthful of cheese. That’s when a knock at the door came, and as he had almost two months ago when Hector had shown up on my doorstep, Houdini looked as shocked as if the roof had suddenly fallen in without notice. Once maybe, but twice? Insanity. He’d get used to it, and so would I. Fingers crossed.
I opened the door without bothering to put on my gloves. Hector, Meleah, Abby-they all knew by now why I wasn’t a handshaker. They were careful. I didn’t have to be on guard with them. But it wasn’t Hector, Meleah, or Abby who waited for me.
“Finally,” Glory said impatiently. “I am so sick of this thing, you have no idea. I was almost busted by the cops when I tried to sell it. It’s a complete leech on my social life. It’s nothing but trouble. And now, big brother, it’s your trouble.”
She pushed the blanket-wrapped bundle into my hands so quickly I almost dropped it. As the skin of her hand touched mine, I pulled the warm weight against my chest automatically before I nearly dropped it again.
Since the moment of our childhood separation, Glory had never let me touch her, and she had never touched me. No brother-sister hugs, even when she’d shown up on my doorstep after I’d given up on ever seeing her again. I learned later that she’d checked me out first, to see who I was, if I had enough money to make it worth her while to come calling to take me for everything that wasn’t nailed down. I didn’t know if she believed that I was psychic or was just Glory being Glory and taking no chances when it came to her uniting with a potential pile of money. With each visit, few that they were, she’d been as careful every time.
Now I knew why.
When her hand touched mine, I saw it.
She saw it, too, in my eyes.
“God, yes, it was me. I wouldn’t think you’d need to be psychic to figure that out.” Her smile was the cruel smile of a five-year-old brat not getting her way. “She wouldn’t give me those stupid pink shoes, and I wanted them. They would’ve looked cute on me.” Her red-blond hair was pulled in deceptively cute if Lolita-esque pigtails and she twirled one, as casual as a high school cheerleader. “If she hadn’t been so stubborn. Mine, mine, mine-that’s all she could say.” She gave a shrug delicate and far too pretty to belong to a born monster. “So I took them. Or I tried to. I did get the one, but she fought and screamed, and it just wasn’t fun anymore, having a twin. The well was convenient and into the well she had to go.” Blue eyes identical to her sister’s but as empty as Tess’s had been full of every emotion under the sun. “My biggest regret was that I didn’t get the other shoe before I pushed her in. But there’s always something bright and shiny and new around the corner. You know that, Jackie.”
I’d known Glory, the last of my family, was a sociopath the same as Thackery. I’d known she’d done bad things as a teenager, bad things as an adult, and would keep doing them. Bad to worse. But I hadn’t thought that at the age of five… I’d never thought that a monster was already a monster that young.
“Don’t look all grim and holier than thou.” She snorted. “You killed Boyd for something he didn’t do. Or did you kill him for something he did do? Like stab our bleating sheep of a mother in the throat. She was worthless. I could see how he was tempted. I guess in the end, it’s really no one’s fault. Can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, and can’t get a pair of pink shoes to save a life.”
She was right. I had killed Boyd for something he didn’t do… and something he did. But my mother wouldn’t have attacked him if I hadn’t assumed he’d murdered Tess. That one assumption had triggered an avalanche of bloodshed that might not have happened otherwise. Boyd had been an abusive son of a bitch with the potential for murder, but I was the one who’d brought that ugly potential out in the open. Glory had killed Tess-killed our sister-but I’d killed the rest of the family. I had done that. I had brought us all down.
No. Hell, no.
I’d read Hector and told him he judged himself too harshly. Was I going to lay a far worse blame on a fourteen-year-old boy? A kid who’d just seen the body of his sister? Boyd had raised a fist to me more than often enough to know what curled in him, dark and gloating, without needing any psychic assistance. He could’ve taken the knife from my mom. She didn’t weigh a third of what he had. Even in her fury, she wasn’t a match for him. He didn’t have to kill her. And I didn’t have to blame myself for shooting him as he tried to do the same to me as he’d done to her.
I didn’t have to carry that responsibility at all. Anyone who lived with Boyd, knew Boyd, they would’ve thought the same. It went wrong and it went bad, but life can. There isn’t anything anyone can do to change that. I was right. It was like an avalanche-a horrifying act you couldn’t stop or prevent. You could only ride it out and hope to be around when it was done.
Glory… that knowledge didn’t involve notions of blame or responsibility. Boyd or no Boyd, no one could’ve guessed or known about Glory. It was nearly impossible to know it now with the confession still hanging before happily curved lips. The last of my family, as dysfunctional as I’d discovered her to be over the years, and now she was gone. Worse, the sister I’d taken care of until she was five, she hadn’t existed. That sister had been a lie.
Tess was dead and Glory had never been.
This woman was a stranger and her smile was the smile of a beauty queen as she said, “Have fun with that. ” With a fingernail painted pearlescent white, she gave a disparaging flick to the blanket. White. The color of purity. Or in some cultures, the color of death. “But don’t think it’s free, big brother. The only reason I didn’t toss it in a Dumpster is knowing what you’d be willing to pay me for it.”
It. She only called the bundle it. I suppose that’s all she could see.
She named a price and I was certain she’d ask for more in the future, over and over, unless she finally met someone worse than she was. If there was such a thing. It didn’t matter. I’d pay the money and I wouldn’t miss a penny.
“Call and leave an address. The money will be there in two days. Don’t come back here again. Call. If I see your face again, I’ll think the river that runs through my front yard is as convenient as any abandoned well.” Would I? I didn’t know. Could I? Yeah, I thought I could. Self-defense I’d done. Defense of the innocent trumped that.
Her smile changed. It was the first uncertain flicker I’d seen on Glory’s face in my life. “Like you have the balls.”
“Ask Boyd about that.”
A liar at the genetic level, she knew the truth when she heard it. I closed the door in the face of a Reaper walking the earth. Seconds later, I heard a car drive away and felt the shadow of death that had hovered overhead pass away to let the light of a sunset shine through again.
A small gurgle drew my attention to better things.
I looked down at the baby in my arms, sweating lightly over how many times I’d almost dropped it already. Blue eyes, skin the deep golden blush of a ripe peach, and a thick head of curly black hair that was destined to test any brush or comb under the sun. I doubted that Glory had known who the father was, but, like with Hector and Charlie, you get something unique when you mix the best of worlds. Not that Glory was the best of anything, but you couldn’t judge a baby by what her mother had done.
I liked babies. Hector would no doubt laugh in disbelief when he heard that, but it was true. People I could often take or leave, but babies, yeah, I liked. They were new, and their feelings all began and ended in wonder. Unless a dirty diaper was involved, but that was easily fixed. I held down a finger to let the small hand wrap around it with a grip of silk. I felt the sheer marvel at everything new and clean in its eyes wash out from it-no, her, definitely a girl-as I always did with babies, and then I felt something else. Something so familiar that my chest ached more than it had when I’d been hit with the shotgun blast. My life was changing yet again. It was a phenomenal change and a terrifying one to prove I was up to it.
Second chances come hardly ever. They were miracles in the truest sense of the word. Was I able to handle a miracle?
Have faith, Jackson.
I would. If I couldn’t find faith for anything else, I’d find faith for this.
Five years is too short a life, no matter how much that person loved and lived that life to the sky and beyond. You should get a do-over. The rules of childhood games didn’t apply to life, but what about after?
Birthday party.
She’d said “birthday party” while pulling Charlie out of thin air: I’m going to be late for my birthday party.
“Well,”-I smiled as the grip tightened on my finger-“Happy birthday, Tess.
“Welcome home.”