"You brought me here to do this," I said. I spread my hands. "There is nothing you can verify, even if you dug your grandfather up. I warned you that might be the case. Of course, you can find out about Mariah Parish, if you really are concerned. There should be a birth record, or some paper trail."
"That's true," Lizzie said. Her face was more thoughtful than repulsed now. "But aside from the issue of what happened to Mariah's baby, if she really had one, it makes me sick that someone would do that to Granddaddy. If you're telling us the truth."
"Believe me; don't believe me. That's up to you. Did you know about his heart condition?"
"No, he wasn't one for doctors. But he'd had a stroke already. And the last time he went in for a checkup, he came back looking worried." She'd thought about this many times since her grandfather's death, it was obvious.
"He had a cell phone in his Jeep, right?" I said.
"Yeah," she said. "He did."
"He was trying to reach it." Some last moments are more informative than others.
I glanced quickly in Tolliver's direction, and then away. The tension was leaving his shoulders. I thought we were going to be okay.
"You believe this stuff?" Chip asked the sisters incredulously. He'd recovered from whatever had ailed him, and he was standing at Lizzie's side. He looked at her as if he'd never seen her before, when I knew from our research that he'd been her escort for the past six years.
Lizzie was too confident to be hurried. She appeared to be thinking hard as she got out a cigarette and lit it. Finally, she tilted her face up to him. "Yes, I believe it."
"Shi-it," Kate Joyce said and pulled off her cowboy hat. She slapped it against her lean thigh. "You'll be wanting to bring in that John Edward next."
Lizzie shot her sister a look that was not fond. Drexell said, "I think she made all of this up, you ask me."
We had gotten a deposit from Lizzie. We were coming to Texas anyway, but we sure wouldn't have stopped if we hadn't gotten the up-front money. Clients this rich, oddly enough, often change their mind. Poorer people don't. So, though we'd already deposited the first check from RJ Ranch, the balance was due, and a blind man could tell the whole Joyce party was dubious about what I'd accomplished. Before I could get a good start on worrying about it, Lizzie pulled a folded and creased check from her hip pocket and handed it to Tolliver, who'd gotten close enough to slide his arm around me. I was a little shaky. This hadn't been as hard as some readings, because Rich Joyce'd only had a second's surge of fear before he passed over, but direct contact with the dead is draining.
"Need candy?" he asked.
I nodded. He got a Werther's Original out of his pocket and unwrapped it. I opened my mouth and he popped it in. Golden buttery goodness.
"I thought he was your brother," Kate Joyce said, inclining her head toward Tolliver. Though I knew she had to be in her late twenties, there were more years of experience than that in the way she walked and spoke. I wondered if this was the result of being brought up rich but practical in Texas, or if life in the Joyce household had had other sources of stress.
"He is," I said.
"Looks more like your boyfriend." Drexell sniggered.
"I'm her stepbrother and her boyfriend, Drex," Tolliver said pleasantly. "We'll be on the road. Thanks for asking us to help you with your problem." He nodded at them all. He's less than six feet, but not by much, and he's thin, but he has a set of shoulders on him.
I love him more than anything.
THE sound of the shower woke me up. We see the inside of so many motel rooms that sometimes I have to spend a second or two recalling where the particular motel room is located. This was one of those mornings.
Texas. After we'd left the Joyces, we had driven most of the previous afternoon to reach this motel off the interstate in Garland, outside of Dallas. This wasn't a business trip; it was personal.
I had that consciousness when I opened my eyes, that grim awareness that I was thinking too much about the old, bad times. Whenever we visit my aunt and her husband outside of Dallas, the bad memories resurface.
It's not the fault of the state.
When I'm close to my little sisters, I start remembering the broken trailer in Texarkana, the one where Tolliver and I lived with his father, my mother, his brother, my sister, and our two mutual sibs, who were practically babies at the time that household dissolved.
The delicately balanced deception we older kids had maintained for several years had collapsed when my older sister, Cameron, vanished. Our unpleasant home life had been exposed to public view, and our little sisters had been taken away. Tolliver had gone to live with his brother, Mark, and I'd gone to a foster home.
The two little girls didn't even remember Cameron. I'd asked them the last time we saw them. The girls live with Aunt Iona and Uncle Hank, who don't like us to visit. We do, though; Mariella and Grace (called Gracie) are our sisters, and we want them to remember they have family.
I propped up on one elbow to watch Tolliver drying himself off. He'd left the bathroom door open while he showered, because otherwise the mirror became too foggy for him to use while he shaved.
We don't look unalike; we're both thin and dark haired. Our hair's even about the same length. His eyes are brown; mine are dark gray. But Tolliver's complexion is pitted and scarred from acne, because his dad didn't think of sending him to a dermatologist. His face is narrower, and he often has a mustache. He hates wearing anything besides jeans and shirts, but I like to dress up a bit more, and since I'm the "talent," it's more or less expected. Tolliver is my manager, my consultant, my main support, my companion, and for the past few weeks he's been my lover.
He turned to look at me, saw I was watching. He smiled and dropped the towel.
"Come here," I said.
He was quick to oblige.
"WANT to go for a run?" I asked in the afternoon. "You can take another shower afterward, with me. So you won't waste water."
We had our running clothes on in no time, and we took off after we'd stretched. Tolliver's faster than I am. Most often, he pulls away for the last half mile or so, and today was no exception.
We were pleased to find a good place to run. Our motel was on the access road right off the interstate. It was flanked by other hotels and motels, restaurants and gas stations, the usual assortment of services for road warriors. But to the rear of the motel, we found one of those "business parks": two curving streets with careful, still-small plantings in the flower beds in front of the one-story buildings, each with a parking area. A median ran down the middle of these two streets, wide enough to support a planting of crepe myrtles. There were sidewalks, too, to give the place an inviting and friendly look. Since it was late Friday afternoon, the traffic was minimal among the rows of rectangular buildings chopped up into characterless entities like Great Systems, Inc. and Genesis Distributors, which might conduct business of any sort. Each block was marked off by a driveway running between the buildings, a narrow thing that must lead to a parking lot in back for the employees. There were almost no cars parked in front; customers were gone, the last employees were leaving for the weekend.
In such a place, the last thing I expected to encounter was a dead man. I was thinking of the ache in my right leg, which has flared up from time to time ever since the lightning ran down that side, so I didn't hear his bones calling me at first.
They're everywhere, of course, dead people. I don't hear only the modern dead. I feel the ancient dead, too; even, very rarely, the faint, faint echo of a trace of people who walked the earth before there was writing. But this guy I was connecting with here in the Dallas suburbs was very fresh. I ran in place for a moment.
I couldn't be sure unless I got closer to the body, but I was thinking this one felt like a suicide by gun. I pinpointed his location-he was in the back part of an office called Designated Engineering. I shook off his overwhelming misery. I've had practice. Pity him? He'd gotten to choose. If I pitied everyone I met who'd crossed over, I'd be weeping continuously.
No, I wasn't spending my time on emotion. I was trying to decide what to do. I could leave him where he was, and that was my initial impulse. The first person to come into Designated Engineering the next workday would get a rude shock, if the guy's family didn't send the police to check his office tonight when he didn't come home.
It seemed harsh, leaving him there. However, I didn't want to get involved in a long explanation to the police.
Running in place was getting old. I had to make up my mind.
Though I can't agonize over every dead person I find, I don't want to lose my humanity, either.
I looked around for inspiration. I found it in the rocks bordering the ho-hum flower bed at the entrance door. I pulled out the largest rock I could handle and hefted it. After a little experimentation, I decided I could throw it one-handed. I glanced up and down the street; no cars in sight, and no one on foot. Standing a safe distance back, I took a balanced stance and let the rock fly. I had to retrieve the rock and repeat this action twice more before the glass shattered and an alarm began to go off. I took off running. I had to take a metaphorical hat off to the police. I had barely reached the motel parking lot when I saw the patrol car turning off the access road and speeding by the motel to cruise into the business park.
An hour later, I was telling Tolliver what had happened while I put on my makeup. I'd had a long shower, and sure enough, he'd jumped in again to "help you wash your hair."
I was leaning my clean self over the sink to peer into the mirror to apply my eyeliner. Though I was only twenty-four, I had to get closer to the mirror now, and I just knew the next time I had an exam, my eye doctor was going to tell me I needed glasses. I'd never considered myself vain, but every time I pictured myself wearing glasses, I felt a pang. Maybe contact lenses? But the thought of sticking anything in my eyes made me shudder.
Every time I thought about this, I worried about the money correcting my vision might cost. We were saving every cent we could to make the down payment on the house we were hoping to buy here in the Dallas area. St. Louis was more centrally located from a business point of view, but we could see our sisters more often if Dallas was our home base. Probably Iona and Hank wouldn't care for that, and they might throw a lot of obstacles in our way. They'd formally adopted the girls. But maybe we could persuade them that the girls would benefit from seeing us as much as we would from seeing them.
Tolliver came into the bathroom and paused to kiss my shoulder. I smiled as my eyes met his in the mirror.
"Police activity down the street," he said. "You know anything about that?"
"As a matter of fact, I do," I said, feeling guilty. I hadn't taken the time to explain to Tolliver before I'd gotten in the shower, and he'd distracted me after that. Now I told Tolliver about the dead man, and I explained about the rock and the window.
"The cops have found him by now, so you did the right thing. I have to say, I wish you'd just left him," Tolliver said.
Pretty much what I'd expected him to say; he was always cautious about being pulled into any situation that we hadn't been paid to deal with. Since I was watching him in the mirror, I saw the subtle changes in his stance that said he was going to switch the subject, and he was going to talk about something serious.
"Do you ever think maybe we should just let go?" Tolliver said.
"Let go?" I finished my right eye and held my mascara wand to the lashes of my left eye. "Let go of what?"
"Mariella and Gracie."
I turned to face him. "I don't understand what you're asking," I told him, though I was very much afraid that I did.
"Maybe we should only visit once a year. Just send Christmas presents and birthday presents the rest of the time."
I was shocked. "Why would we do that?" Wasn't that the whole purpose of saving every cent we could-so we could become a bigger part of their lives, not smaller?
"We're confusing them." Tolliver stepped a little closer and put his hand on my shoulder. "The girls may have their problems, but they're doing better with Iona than they would with us. We can't take care of them. We travel too much. Iona and Hank are responsible people, and they don't use alcohol or drugs. They take the girls to church; they make sure they're in school."
"Are you serious?" I said, though I'd never known Tolliver to be facetious about family topics. I felt blindsided. "You know I've never thought we should take the girls away, even if we could legally manage it. You seriously think we should keep even our visits to a minimum? See them even less?"
"I do," he said.
"Explain."
"When we show up-well, to start with, we come here so... irregularly, and we never stay long. We take them out, we try to show them things they don't get to see, we try to interest them in things that're not part of their daily life-and then we vanish, leaving their, well, their 'parents,' to deal with the result."
"The result? What result? We're the bad fairies or something?" I was trying very hard not to get angry.
"Iona told me last time-you remember, you took them to the movies-that it usually took her and Hank a week to get the girls back into their routine after one of our visits."
"But..." I didn't know where to start. I shook my head, as if that would arrange my thoughts in order. "We're supposed to do things for Iona's convenience? We're the girls' brother and sister. We love them. They need to know the whole world isn't like Iona and Hank." My voice rose.