Читать книгу Something Beautiful - Marilyn Tracy - Страница 9

In the glow of the small mock-kerosene lantern on the adobe guesthouse wall, Steven rocked in the old-fashioned chair, his shoulders pressed against the carved oak. His head was bent slightly forward, a furrow on his brow, as he read the book in his lap.

“…that good comes out of evil; that the impartiality of the Nature Providence is best; that we are made strong by what we overcome; that man is good because he is as free to do evil as to do good…”

Steven read the passage again and sighed. Then, aloud, he recited the final line of John Burroughs’s treatise Accepting the Universe, “…that man is good because he is as free to do evil as to do good.”

His words echoed in the small guesthouse, seemed to sweep into the flames of the small fire and crackle and burn there.

Steven sighed and leaned his head against the chair’s high back. His thoughts were even darker than usual, and by nature he was inclined to somber reflection. After several long moments, he turned his gaze to the nightstand beside him and stared at the steel blade of the long-knife he’d set there earlier.

The weapon was a relic of the fifth century, a gift from someone he’d long ago forgotten. He’d had the knife for so many years, it had become a part of his wardrobe, his life. The blade’s polished steel captured the colors of the blaze and held them trapped there.

Like Beleale. Like himself. Both of them trapped in a world not their own. Each wanting, needing, the other gone. Brothers on one plane, enemies on another.

Steven stared at the blade as if it would transform, become something other than an instrument of bloodshed.

Once, just once let it be useless.

But it wasn’t useless. It was as sharp as ever, and as deadly.

Steven ran a finger along the knife’s thick shaft, the deceptively paper-thin, razor-sharp blade, and the curvature of the handle. Intricate carvings had once adorned the handle, but he’d worn them away over the long, long years.

It was only a knife. Just a simple tool.

He slipped his fingers into the grooves created by his countless years of handling it, and lifted the heavy weapon into the air, turning it, letting it catch the fire’s reflection. The blade caught the reds and golds of the blaze, and more, it caught his eyes, as well, shadowed, green, and hard.

Unable to bear seeing his own reflection, he rose and lowered the knife to his thigh, resenting the flow of memories of the innumerable occasions he’d used this blade before. Too many times he’d used it, and afterward, mortals had fallen victim to its bite.

And for the first time in this ten-thousand-year hell, Steven resented knowing the intimacy of the knife, hated the certainty that within the hour he would use it yet again.

He thought of that perfect moment he might offer Jillian Stewart. The day of her marriage? The birth of her daughter, Allie? That summer afternoon she, Dave and Allie had lost their way in the forest and huddled together like nesting cups, a day when her husband had clung to her and told her all the things a husband should? She might choose any of them. She’d called them all perfect days, perfect moments.

And he wondered, if he had that choice, what moment he would choose. What day, what instance, what timeless, perfect moment, would epitomize his entire existence?

There were none. No perfect moments. No perfect days, afternoons, nights. Only that almost endless stream of war, of living only to fight, of winning only to fight again.

Even to himself, he felt he was little more than an instrument, a machine in human guise, who was forever doomed to search for meaning in immortality, to live vicariously from the perfect moments he reflected back to the dying mortals who allowed him to vanquish one more of the fallen.

But he couldn’t even achieve that vicarious joy. He’d long ago realized that only mortals could measure joy by perfect moments. Only a mortal could feel that infinite pleasure of recognizing the brevity of life, of knowing that a single moment, one singular day, one hour, even one second, could put paid to an entire lifetime of pain.

He’d decided that only a mortal being could fully appreciate the notion of perfection of a moment, because, from the moment of birth, mortals were faced with dying. Carpe diem…. But seizing the day only had relevance when one was tortured by thoughts of the succession of days ending.

Steven’s hand trembled slightly as he turned the knife’s blade over and again, allowing it to catch his own reflection. He’d held this absolute evidence of his betrayal of humankind a hundred times—a thousand times—before. But it had never troubled him as it did now.

Did his betrayal bother him tonight because this was the final battle, the last one? One of them would win and the other lose for all time. Was he, after all these centuries, learning fear at last? Or was he merely afraid he would never understand the depths that could mean to a mortal?

If only he were simply a man. Just a man. A mortal. If only he could know what a single perfect moment might truly mean.

If only Jillian weren’t the one.

Steven slowly crossed the small room to the heavy wooden door. The long-knife felt like a lead weight in his hand.

Jillian didn’t deserve the gift of the perfect moment, he thought. Not because she wasn’t deserving, but because it wasn’t fair. She might carry the portals in her, but that was purely a random chance, a once-in-a-hundred-years occurrence. Like the others, the ones before her, she didn’t deserve dying. Like them, she had so much good to offer, such a tremendously strong life force in her. But also like them, her creation of the portals, her death because of them, was her ultimate destiny.

What moment would she choose?

Steven started to open the door and hesitated. For some reason, he didn’t want to do this tonight. He wanted to wait, delay the inevitable.

In so many of the others, those who had carried the portals, he’d perceived an arrogance, an awareness of their destiny, a brightness honed to the same sharp edge as his blade. Their gift moments had captured times of triumph, achievement.

Jillian was different from these. She seemed too vulnerable for this, too much love lingering inside her.

He knew this. Had seen it, had tracked it for years. Jillian hadn’t yet achieved what she could hope to find, hadn’t had the time to place her mark upon the world. And she had a child. It wasn’t fair that she was the last one to give her life for this too-long, too-bitter war.

But, of all beings, Steven knew that nothing was fair. Nothing at all. Perhaps that was the definitive awareness that an immortal carried…knowing with utter certainty that all life was unfair, an unending stream of imperfections.

He should know. He’d traded his entire being, his existence, for the dubious honor of fighting the fallen, others like himself, but those who had eschewed mortal form. He, better than other men, knew how little of life could be considered fair, because fairness was born of impartiality, of balance, and nothing about mortal life was neutral or symmetrical.

It didn’t serve any purpose to hesitate. The rules of this damnable war had been laid down long ago, and were carved in every fiber of his being, in his very soul. One couldn’t argue destiny, one didn’t dodge fate. Or duty. No matter how little sense it seemed to make, or how much he might be reluctant to act.

Steven depressed the handle of the guesthouse door, and with unaccustomed violence, wrenched it open, the long-knife held fast in his other hand.

Like Jillian, he had no choice in his role in this battle. But for the first time in his many years of battle, he found himself pausing, casting about for alternatives.

He knew he had no choice. No options existed for him.

And yet he frowned heavily, his heart pounding roughly in his chest. He knew the reasons Jillian had to die; he knew the consequences of this of all battles.

How was it, then, that even knowing these things, he could feel regret? When had he, an immortal, a warrior, learned remorse?

Jillian drew a deep breath after switching the cordless telephone to the standby position. Glad that Allie wasn’t in the kitchen or the adjacent dining room, she simply stood beside the counter, staring at the receiver still cradled in her palm.

“Dark with excessive bright,” she murmured. That had been the phrase she’d used after linking eyes with her gardener…after losing herself in Steven’s gaze. His words, repeated while thinking about his sharp contrasts.

The phone call had come from Elise, who had looked up the odd quotation as soon as she got home and riffled through her battered copy of Paradise Lost. The quote was from Milton, she’d told Jillian, taken from the epic poem that wove the tale of the creation of earth and the angels’ war over its governance. It was essentially the tale of fallen angels, beings “dark with excessive bright.”

Insignificant, inconsequential words, a snippet of a poem written eons ago, yet made somehow important by Elise’s agitation over them, her recounting of Allie’s strange comment—or rather Lyle’s—that Steven wasn’t real. Whatever that might mean to Allie.

How utterly ridiculous, Jillian had thought, but, oddly, she hadn’t voiced that to Elise.

The phrase had only occurred to her because Steven had said the words a few days earlier. Then, when she was standing there looking at him this afternoon, feeling the effects of that oddly compelling gaze and thinking about her dark, frightening departure into surreal paintings of doorways, she’d thought of them again, felt a connection with them.

Why didn’t Allie want Steven in the house, even if such an event was wholly unlikely to happen? Or was she asking the wrong question? Should she alter it to “Why didn’t Lyle want Steven in the house?”

For the first time since she’d hired Steven, she wondered if she might not have made a serious mistake. And for the first time in his two-week tenure on her place, she wondered if there wasn’t more to his being there than his needing a job, than her needing a handyman.

From the first day he’d come and taken up residence in the small one-bedroom guesthouse flanking the main structure, she’d slept a little more soundly, feeling safe because the somber-eyed man was close enough to respond to an alarm raised in the dark, lonely night.

Now, tonight, she thought of that unusual connection she’d experienced when she looked into his eyes, of that taut expression on his face while he was loading the plastic bag with leaves, and she worried that Elise was right, that she’d made a colossal error in trusting him so much.

And, more than her disquiet over allowing Steven such access to their lives, she worried about the wisdom of having admitted Lyle into it.

“This is bunk,” she muttered, angry with herself, half-angry with Elise for calling her, scaring her with such nonsense.

What if Allie’s right and Steven’s not a real person? Elise had asked, her voice hushed with possibility, conjecture and, yes, even a tinge of excitement. The white witch at work, apparently forgetting that she was talking about strange things in her best friend’s house, not some bizarre event in the abstract.

Jillian shook her head. Milton was a writer of fiction, and hard-to-read fiction at that.

A series of noisy thunks and rattling of shower-curtain loops from down the long, arched hallway flanking the kitchen told her that her daughter was finished with her bath and would soon be ready for the nightly ritual of story and cup of cocoa before bedtime.

She found herself tensing again as she set the milk to heat. Before Dave’s death, this had been the best time of the day, the three of them curled up on the sofa, Dave’s deep voice bringing a story to life. And even after, it had remained the one sane constant in a world gone awry.

But ever since Lyle had arrived in their lives—or had it come later than that, when Steven had moved into the guesthouse, bringing with him that unusual sense of recognition?—storytime had become something of a torture. She had to share the sofa with Allie and Lyle, and had to endure Allie’s whispered explanations to the invisible creature—or his to her—and, worst of all, Jillian was all too often asked to blow the imaginary friend a kiss good-night.

The first few nights hadn’t been so bad. But one night, just a week ago, Allie had told her that Lyle wanted to kiss her back, that he found her very beautiful. What should have been amusing, even sweet, considering it came from Allie, only made her slightly queasy.

But Allie hadn’t said, “You’re beautiful, Mommy.” She’d worded it differently: “Lyle says he finds you beautiful. Especially when you wear that nightgown.”

Something in the peculiar wording, and everything about the adultlike nuance, made her exceedingly uncomfortable. She’d taken to wearing her thickest robe after that, never tucking Allie in while wearing the sheer negligees Dave had so loved, had needed. And she had taken to covering up, not because of Allie, but because of Lyle.

She shook her head and shoved the cordless telephone onto the counter without replacing it in the cradle. Maybe the battery would wear down and she wouldn’t have to listen to any more ridiculous speculations.

That was exactly what Elise’s suggestions were, she thought. Ridiculous. Foolish. And she was the most ridiculous, foolish person of all, for listening to Elise, thinking fantastic and scary thoughts about an imaginary creature. About a gardener who might be unusual, but was still a man for all that. Allie wasn’t the only one with a wildly vivid imagination.

She made short work—anger at herself a tremendous spur—of cleaning up the supper dishes, and by the time Allie appeared in her footed pajamas, book in hand, looking like a sleepy-eyed angel, Jillian had her mask of cheer in place. She didn’t even wince when Allie stopped the story to point out a few of the more interesting facets of the context to Lyle.

She was even able to answer Allie almost truthfully when she suddenly asked if Jillian was afraid of Lyle. “As long as he doesn’t ever hurt you, I guess he’s okay in my book.”

Allie seemed to accept that, but it made Jillian think. She was frightened of Lyle. Not because he came across as sly—which was how his comments often struck Jillian. Nor was it because he seemed too inventive for an eight-year-old—which was most certainly true. She distrusted him because he represented a quasi-tangible problem…another manifestation of Dave’s loss, Dave’s final abandonment. And every time Allie mentioned him, Jillian was torn between guilt and anguish.

And Jillian felt scared of him because he represented the dark and torturous unknown, an intangible problem existing in her own home.

It was only thinking all this that made her realize what scared her most about Lyle: She thought of him as real, as if all the comments were truly coming from him, and not Allie, as if Allie’s newly acquired destructive streak were supernatural, and not the willfulness of a little girl.

Scary stuff, indeed.

She held all this in, as she had every day since that day when Allie had “found” him. With Allie asking if Jillian was afraid of him, however, she had great difficulty keeping her thoughts inside. She wanted to simply admit that the invisible creature gave her the “creeps” every bit as much as he did Elise. She wanted to draw Allie into her arms and tell her daughter that she didn’t need some imaginary friend telling her what to do…that she had a mother, for heaven’s sake.

But when Allie hopped off the sofa, calling for Lyle, asking Jillian to come tuck “them” in, Jillian remained silent, however chilled. After she managed to blow a kiss to Lyle, she secured the house for the night, and poured herself a rather large tot of brandy. She walked to the French doors and first stared at her reflection, then forced her eyes to see beyond it and into the darkened courtyard.

Steven was nowhere in sight, though if she craned her neck she was able to see the lights on in the guesthouse and the thin trail of smoke snaking upward from the kiva chimney. She could picture him sitting in the old oak rocking chair by the fire, a lamp’s glow on the book in his hands. She could imagine his long, work-callused fingers turning the yellowed pages, and wondered what classic, and in which language, he would be reading tonight. What was it about the man that seemed to affect everyone so? Except her.

But that wasn’t quite true, either. He did affect her, she just didn’t have a name for the feelings he inspired. Gratitude didn’t seem to cover her reaction to his dedication, and acceptance of his presence didn’t enter into it, either. For she realized now that she always felt aware of him, seemed ultrasensitive to his comings and goings. She had the unusual sensation of seeming to know when he was present, when he wasn’t.

Rather than being indifferent to him, as she’d tried telling herself, she was all too conscious of him. Was this due to that odd sense of recognition she felt about him? Or was it far more dangerous than that? Was her awareness of him what troubled both Elise and Allie? Were they concerned that Jillian was aware of someone outside her immediate family circle for the first time in a year?

She realized that her fascination with him might be much darker than any of those suppositions. She might deliberately be blinding herself to things her loved ones could see. She might be a textbook case, a vulnerable widow actually falling willing prey to a fortune hunter.

She flicked on the outside lights and studied the courtyard, as if it offered proof of Steven’s benign intentions. How different it looked now from the way it had only two weeks ago. Steven had trimmed the trees and evened the lilac hedge, and had gone so far as to rehang the tall wooden gates in the even taller adobe walls. He had seamed cracks and even whitewashed the creamy thick walls surrounding the courtyard.

What was not to trust about a man who did such careful work without even needing direction? Especially a man who took the money she paid him and, without looking at it, folded the bills and casually shoved them in his back pocket? And did this with an apparently deliberate avoidance of touching her.

“I only wanted a place to stay,” he’d said that first time, but he had given in to her insistence that he be paid, as well. That sort of indifference to money didn’t seem to indicate a fortune hunter. Unless it was part of an elaborate scheme.

The huge flagstones gleamed with some sort of wax or sealant he’d applied, and now looked as though they’d been designed as interior flooring rather than as an exterior patio. The flower beds were turned, mulched and ready for a long winter’s nap. The narrow strip of grass had been mowed, the hammock shaken and rolled up and stored for the cold season and all the light fixtures painted and repaired, fitted with new energy-saving bulbs.

Even the pile of leaves Steven had so carefully been raking that afternoon was already gone, scooped out of sight, almost out of memory. He seldom spoke, hardly seemed to move, and yet had managed to make his presence felt in every inch of her property.

She shivered, remembering how their eyes had linked that afternoon…

And how many times in the unknown past?

…but her reaction wasn’t based on fear, unless it was misgivings about that odd trembling that seemed to snare her still.

Allie materialized at her side and pressed her silky, still-damp head against her. Jillian ran her hand over her daughter’s warm, soft hair, down over her thin, rounded shoulder, and pulled her even closer. This was a moment of total affirmation, of acceptance, of that all-too-elusive concept of “bonding.”

Though Jillian knew she should send her daughter back to bed, she couldn’t make herself spurn this evidence of Allie’s need. And she couldn’t possibly have denied herself this precious gift.

“It looks a lot different, doesn’t it, Mom?” Allie asked.

“Yes,” Jillian said. “A lot better.” She felt her chest tighten with love for Allie, love for this fragile child, grateful for Steven’s handiwork, grateful that tonight Allie could see good in things again.

“Like when Dad was here.”

Jillian forced a smile. “Better, sweetheart,” she offered.

She felt Allie tense slightly, and wondered if Allie would ever be able to accept that anything in life could ever be better than the days with her daddy.

“Remember that day when I first found Lyle?”

Lyle. Jillian felt herself stiffen. Was the invisible creature with Allie now? Was Lyle standing behind them at this minute, hovering too close, looking at her curves, eyeing her back?

Jillian craved a moment with Allie, devoid of the ever-present fantasy-inspired companion. And she desperately wanted a second or two when her shoulder blades didn’t itch or her skin didn’t tighten against that ridiculous, if pervasive, feeling of being watched.

“I remember,” Jillian said. Did her voice sound as tightly wound as she felt?

“The grass was really deep, and there were weeds everywhere.”

Jillian patted Allie’s shoulder. “Quite an improvement, eh, kiddo?” Was she trying to sell Allie on Steven, or to convince herself?

“I was dancing,” Allie said, her voice dreamy with memory, her reflection revealing a wistful smile.

Jillian tried to smile, too, remembering.

On that afternoon, Allie’s mouth had been working as she sang some melody Jillian couldn’t hear. Her hands had been crammed with fading yellow dandelions and dull orange calendula blossoms and had wavered on the air in counterpoint to her peculiar-rhythmed dance.

Totally unaware of her mother’s troubled gaze, she’d sung and danced in that neglected garden, a tiny nymph performing a haunting rite of passage on that last day of summer vacation. Jillian recalled how a single tear had carved a hot trail down her own cheek, scalding her with her own inability to stem it, making her thankful her daughter wasn’t seeing that fresh evidence of the unassuaged wounds in their lives.

But at that moment, on that afternoon a little over a month ago, Jillian hadn’t been crying because Dave was absent. She’d cried because Allie looked so normal, dancing in the grass, petals and blossoms in her hands, her hair swaying in rhythm, a song on her full, delicate lips.

Jillian had felt that sense of wonder steal over her and had known that anyone watching Allie, anyone spying that farewell-to-summer homage, would never have guessed the tragedy that had swept through her daughter’s world. And the realization of how rarely she’d seen Allie simply being a child had made her almost ill with pain. And the hot tear on her face had carved the first trail of hope Jillian had felt in months, a hope that recovery was finally within their grasp, that Allie would be okay.

Now she thought that her own reflection looked confused, even abandoned, as she—and Allie—replayed a mental tape of that ethereal, unconscious dance.

Jillian said, “I remember wanting to run outside and grab you and hug and hug you.”

She found herself wishing that Allie would understand the underlying meaning. Her hands tightened around her daughter’s shoulders, holding her very close, the way she hadn’t done that sun-dappled afternoon. She touched Allie’s hair now, stroking that child-soft face.

She shook with the memory of how she’d longed to smell her daughter’s dewy skin, kiss those stained, sticky fingers, but hadn’t, because she didn’t want to interrupt that carefree dance, that innocent romp, that momentary return to normality.

If only she had.

Instead, Jillian had simply watched, a dazed smile on her own face, as her daughter—unbronzed by the summer sun, fair hair dark from too many days spent inside, knees unskinned from lack of romping outdoors, cheeks free of the normal freckles—had danced in the wilderness that their courtyard had become.

Jillian’s heart had wrenched then, and was still torn by the realization that the clear honey-brown eyes had, for a miraculous moment, been unconstrained by the clouded remnants of the explosion that had torn a hole in the very fabric of her childhood universe.

“I was happy that day,” Allie said. She seemed to be implying that she wasn’t happy any longer.

Jillian murmured an affirmative, but couldn’t hold back the frown that her daughter’s words engendered. She wanted to fall down upon her knees and beg for the universe to realign itself.

And, for some unknown reason, this thought reminded her of Steven, of the way he stood with his hands splayed, his face to the sun. And the way he’d locked gazes with her that afternoon. She shivered.

Allie said, “I was singing a song. Do you remember what I was singing?”

“No,” Jillian said honestly.

She hadn’t really heard it, and she’d been too busy reveling in the contrast between the dancing child and the little girl who at night issued long, keening wails, the heart-wrenching screams of an innocent who had witnessed too much, had smelled, felt and tasted the raw, undistilled evidence of her father’s last gasp of life, his body cradled in too-small, too-frail arms.

And on that day when Allie had discovered Lyle, Jillian had simply been entranced at the sight of her daughter’s dance, calendula stems trailing chlorophyll down soft, rounded arms, joyful that for a blessed moment Allie was simply a child again, forgetful of past or future, just eight years old on a sunny day, singing to flowers, skipping with butterflies and bees.

She hadn’t heard the song, but for a truly magical moment Jillian had felt as if she could possibly depress the door’s handle, slip down the steps into the brown, untended grass, and join her daughter in that strange and innocent herald to autumn. Her tears had dried, and her heart had pounded in sudden promise. She had felt her fingers tingle in anticipation as they encircled the brass lever.

“That’s when Lyle called to me,” Allie said. “That was the first time I heard him.”

Jillian stared at Steven’s miraculously different courtyard, locked in memory, locked in that day only a month old, a day when hope had blossomed and then abruptly altered.

She held her daughter against her now, warm, parental, but on that day, during that moment, her daughter had turned her head slightly, not toward Jillian, but to the overgrown lilac hedge to the left side of the courtyard, the dividing line between their inner courtyard and the other side yard, leading to the guesthouse, the only part of the enclosed patio not contained by the thick adobe walls.

“I remember,” Jillian said. “You turned to the lilac hedge, like someone had called to you.”

If only she’d called to Allie instead.

“He did,” Allie stated firmly. “Lyle called me. By my name. He already knew it, I guess. I couldn’t see him at first, but then I did.”

Jillian withheld a shudder.

“I wonder why Lyle says Steven is like him,” Allie said, her speech slow with puzzlement. “I saw Steven right away.”

Jillian didn’t answer. She couldn’t think of a thing to say to this. Gloria, the ubiquitous grief therapist, had suggested accepting Lyle as fact and avoiding pointing out his obvious unreality. She’d said that Allie needed this invisible friend because he represented something no one could take away from her. But now Allie seemed to be implying that Steven might be a figment of her imagination, as well.

“Well, that’s because Steven is a real live man,” Jillian said.

Was she saying this a little more strongly than might be necessary? As if to negate Allie’s earlier assertion that he wasn’t?

Allie shrugged a little, then continued with her story. “I looked and looked in the lilacs…then suddenly I saw him.” Her voice rose with satisfaction. “He’s so amazing, Mommy.”

Jillian realized Allie was describing Lyle, not Steven. According to Allie, Lyle was something so beautiful, so incredible, that he was hard to understand at first. She knew how Allie felt.

“Light stands out in spikes all around his body, like fur. Light fur. Rainbow fur,” she said, and she always giggled a little. “And his eyes are so green. His eyes are ’xactly like Steven’s…only bigger, you know?” She held up her fingers and made a two-handed circle. “This big.”

Jillian, unable to hold in the shiver this produced in her, as if she almost recognized Allie’s description, as if she had seen something like Lyle once upon a nightmare, wanted the conversation over. She was tired of hearing about Lyle and his seemingly unending virtues.

Jillian finished the description abruptly. “And when he moves, the rainbow light moves all around.”

She knew her voice sounded flat, even cold, and was sorry about deflating Allie’s enthusiastic memory of her first meeting with Lyle, but felt unable to continue the game tonight. It was all too similar to how she herself felt about Steven—all light that moved around. But she was an adult who knew that all things hold contrasts, opposites, and that nothing was ever always “good.”

“Remember, Mommy?”

Jillian nodded, having heard the tale before, having witnessed all of it but the “seeing” of Lyle. Allie’s beautiful creature still remained invisible to her adult eyes.

Maybe, as a favor to Allie, she’d try again to paint him from Allie’s instructions. But she somehow knew that her rendition wouldn’t capture him, that she would depict him too “silly.” In her rendition, Lyle would appear a toy. And he’s not, Mom. He’s something beautiful.

“He told me he really liked my dancing,” Allie said now, continuing with her account of the moment of discovery.

Jillian frowned as she remembered how Allie’s hands slowly had lowered to her sides. Then Allie had stood with one leg still slightly raised, as though ready to resume her skipping. But to Jillian she’d appeared a music-box ballerina, wound down and waiting for someone to turn the key. Or maybe she had been so poised because some part of her remained attuned to her mother’s warnings about strangers or, suddenly mindful of her own dark memories, had been prepared for flight from the sharp report of a gun, the shattering of glass, her daddy’s bleeding body pitching sideways onto hers, the car crashing into an adobe wall. Maybe all she’d appeared was ready to run, to race up the few steps and into her mother’s arms for what little safety Jillian could offer her.

And I didn’t move, Jillian thought, her frown deepening.

Now, as she had almost every day for the past month, she wondered what would have happened if she had gone ahead and stepped outside, as instinct had told her to do. Would Lyle have simply disappeared at that moment? Would he never have become that unseen presence in their home?

“Where’s Lyle now?” she asked. She didn’t want to know, not really. But she had to ask.

“Oh, he’s over by the table.”

The table behind them. Lyle was standing at a place that would account for that itchy, watched feeling prickling her shoulder blades.

“Does he sleep?” Jillian asked.

Allie cocked her head in that endearing considering pose she’d used since she was an infant. “I dunno. When I’m asleep, I can’t see what he’s doing.”

That was eminently logical, Jillian thought with a smile.

“Oh,” Allie said. “He says he watches you sleep sometimes.”

Jillian’s smiled faded abruptly. She felt the heart-stopping sensation that Allie was telling nothing but the absolute truth.

“Why would he do that?” Jillian asked. Her mouth was dry, and her lungs felt constricted.

“He likes looking at you.”

If Elise was here, she’d be giving Jillian one of those I-don’t-like-this looks.

Jillian heard a faint rustle behind them and swirled to see what caused it.

The dining room table sat empty, its wood grain gleaming in the soft glow of the outside lights. The chairs were all pushed into the table, and nothing moved. For an unbelievably strong moment, she wished she’d housed Steven inside their home and not out in the guesthouse. Then, if she heard a noise, she might attribute it to him, not this invisible Lyle. And, if she heard something, she might call for him to investigate it.

“Mommy?”

Jillian reluctantly turned around, gazed into the reflection to meet Allie’s innocent eyes. “Yes, sweetie?”

“Do you still think about Daddy a lot?”

“Yes. Of course I do.”

“Lyle says you won’t for much longer.”

Jillian felt a swift rise of anger. “Well, you can tell Lyle he’s wrong about that. I’ll never forget your daddy. And neither will you.”

“Lyle says a bunch of his friends are coming soon.”

Oh, God, Jillian thought, a whole houseful of invisible creatures. Just what she needed.

“He says when they come, you won’t remember Daddy anymore. That no one will remember any bad stuff anymore.”

“I wouldn’t exactly put your father in the ‘bad stuff’ category,” Jillian said, and ruffled Allie’s hair to take the sting from her words.

To her relief, Allie smiled. “Me either.” Then she added wistfully, “But it would be nice to forget bad things, wouldn’t it?”

Jillian felt her heart wrench painfully. “Yes, it would, sweetie. That would be very nice.”

“Lyle can do that for you, Mommy. He can just touch you and make the bad things go away.”

Jillian couldn’t possibly have said anything to that. The idea of Lyle touching her made her skin crawl, made her breath snare in her throat. If she felt even the gentlest of breezes stir her blouse, she would probably scream.

“You want him to touch you, Mommy?”

“No!” Jillian said sharply, then held Allie tighter to let her daughter know it wasn’t her she was snapping at. She drew a deep, shuddering breath and tried finding some semblance of rationality. She said, finally, “Allie, the bad things don’t just go away by themselves. Or by something like Lyle touching you—”

“They do, Mommy! I know, because—”

“No, Allie. The bad things that happen to us…happen. And we have to learn how to live with them, understand how we’ve been changed by them. We have to learn how to go on. Like going on without Daddy. We’re learning that. If we ignore that pain, pretend it never happened, we can’t go on. Do you understand?”

“Lyle made it where I don’t have nightmares anymore,” Allie said, almost belligerently, as if daring her mother to come up with some other reason the bad dreams were subsiding.

Where was Gloria now? What on earth was Jillian supposed to say to this revelation? She decided to take the coward’s way out and say nothing at all. Allie’s nightmares were becoming less frequent these days, and had seemingly since Lyle’s arrival.

But a year had passed since Dave’s murder. She herself was sleeping better lately. Not since Lyle, she thought with an odd feeling of shock, but since Steven had come.

For the first time, she thought she understood Allie’s fascination with Lyle. Whenever her daughter talked about him, her features seemed suffused with delight, flushed with pleasure. The invisible, imaginary creature seemed to grant her daughter some respite from grief, some lessening of the hold that fear had over her.

She understood it now, because that was exactly the same reaction she had to Steven’s presence. Hadn’t she felt that way when she opened the door and saw Steven standing there? Had she felt that first relaxation of grief at that precise moment?

Somehow, the day that Steven had arrived seemed every bit as important as the day when Allie had awkwardly danced for Lyle. And that night, for the first night since Dave had been shot, she’d slept soundly, peacefully.

Jillian stroked Allie’s hair, comforting herself as much as comforting her daughter.

“Mommy…”

“Yes, sweetie?”

“What’s the equinox?”

Jillian didn’t blink at the swift change of subject. Abrupt departures into other topics were the prerogative of children everywhere.

“There’re two equinoxes, the spring and autumnal. Those are the first days of those seasons. The summer and winter first days are called solstices.”

“Why is this one so important?”

“I didn’t know it was, sweetie.”

“Lyle says it is. He says that’s the day all his friends are coming over.”

She’d been mistaken; Allie hadn’t changed the subject, she’d only swung back around to an earlier one. “Well, I hope he isn’t planning on putting them all up here. We simply haven’t got the room. Maybe they can go to one of the bed-and-breakfast places near the Plaza. But they’d better book their rooms now, because Indian Market is that weekend, you know.”

As she’d hoped, Allie giggled, covering her mouth with her hand, as she’d done ever since losing that all-important front tooth. Jillian smiled with her, grateful that whatever strange hold Lyle had on Allie, he hadn’t totally squelched her sense of humor.

But she’d smiled too soon, for Allie turned abruptly, her eyes unerringly going to that spot some four feet above the ground. Her shoulders tensed, her body stiffened, as if she were trying to hear something far away. Then she looked back up at Jillian.

“He says it’s not funny, that we shouldn’t laugh.”

Irrationally, Jillian felt a strong urge to whip around and chew Lyle out. She said stiffly, “You tell Lyle that I’ll laugh whenever I please, and so will you. And if he tells you not to, he’ll have to reckon with me. You understand, Allie? You have every right to laugh.”

Allie continued looking up at her, as if surprised by her vehemence, stunned by her reaction to Lyle’s words. As well she should be, Jillian thought. The source of the words wasn’t any creature, invisible or otherwise, it was her little girl. All the more reason for letting her know she could laugh.

A year of darkness was long enough. Allie had to find the brightness again. And Jillian had to help her. Lyle was a dark side of Allie…and she had to serve as his counterpoint. It was a hard role to play.

But hadn’t she already felt a difference inside herself? Walking around the grounds with Steven, she’d noticed the condition of the yards for the first time in a year, seen the passage of time in the accumulation of debris. And had felt the rays of the Indian-summer sun warming her shoulders. It was as if his arrival somehow punctuated a change in her, a change in the season, a change in life.

Now she had to convey that difference to Allie, that sense that all things—bad and good—would eventually pass away.

“Allie, has Lyle ever told you exactly why he came here? Came to you?”

Allie tilted her head, making Jillian ache. “Yes,” Allie said finally. “To change things.”

Jillian felt herself relax. Gloria had been right; Allie needed Lyle. As she had apparently needed Steven. She remembered trying to ask him, that first afternoon, what he wanted, what he needed, but instead she’d only asked if she could help him.

And he’d answered promptly with a simple “Yes,” as if that answered everything. Then he said he’d seen her place, and thought he might be what she needed. And she remembered thinking that he’d spoken nothing but the raw truth, that on some deep level she did need him.

Was that how Allie felt about Lyle?

Allie was quiet again, assuming her “listening” pose. She nodded once, but didn’t translate for Jillian.

Jillian waited, trying to convey love through her touch alone.

Finally, Allie said somewhat defiantly, “If Lyle touched you, you’d know what I mean.”

Jillian steeled herself. “Okay, sweetie. Tell Lyle to touch me.”

“He can hear you,” Allie said. Then, sending a chill of pure horror down Jillian’s spine, she added, “He’s coming now.”

Jillian felt her entire body go cold, suddenly, abruptly, and felt she might faint. Anticipation made her dizzy. This was patently ridiculous, but she found herself holding her breath.

Then, lightly, grazingly, against her loose trousers, just above her knees, she felt a brush of air, a soft, delicate touch.

Lyle!

Instinctively, as though responding to an atavistic knowledge of the rainbow creature, she jerked aside, her mouth wide with an unvoiced scream. Her eyes strafed the reflection in the glass for some glimpse of what—who— had touched her.

And saw Allie’s hand outstretched behind her. About knee-level. She gulped in air, sagged against the doorway a little, and pulled Allie sharply closer.

“Don’t ever do that again!” she gasped out. “Not unless you want to have to run get Steven to pry me from the ceiling!”

“Do you feel changed, Mommy?”

“Do I ever!” Jillian said with heartfelt honesty.

“Lyle says Steven can’t change you like he can.”

Jillian felt inadequate to answer this, too. She didn’t like the implication, and she didn’t like knowing that Lyle was wrong. Steven had already changed her, though she couldn’t have spelled out exactly how, or why. Just his very presence had shifted her life on a fundamental level.

She remembered how that first day Steven had hesitated before taking her proffered hand, almost as though he were as conscious as she of the significance of their first touch. And she’d lowered her hand, rubbing it against her thigh, feeling relief, because she’d had the singular, staggering thought that their palms were meant to be touching, that she would be safe as long as she remained linked to him.

“Lyle can do anything,” Allie said with a matter-of-fact attitude. She even nodded, as if settling some unvoiced question.

Jillian couldn’t help but smile. “Anything but become visible to everybody but you,” she quipped.

“Oh, Mommy!” Allie said, and then giggled.

Allie’s hands dropped to pat her jumper in a parody of an adult performing a knee-slap, only to become serious again almost immediately.

“Lyle says someday soon you’ll be able to see him, too.”

Jillian felt her smile stiffen. This was a new twist, a turn she didn’t particularly care for.

Allie, still smiling up at her, said, “But he can touch you again, if he wants. ’Cause you said he could.”

For a glittering moment, Jillian actually thought her daughter was telling her that Lyle was about to touch her. Again. She felt a shudder of horror course through her.

“Well, he can’t now,” she said through dry lips.”

“Oh, yes, he can. He’s like a vampire. All you have to do is invite him once.”

Jillian heard an odd conversation played in her mind. A friend meeting her on the street, asking how Allie was doing these days. “Oh, she’s just fine,” she’d say. “She has an invisible friend who is just like a vampire. We love that creature of ours.”

“Tell him I uninvite him.”

Allie looked up at Jillian, her expression somber. “You can’t do that, Mommy. It’s against the rules.”

Jillian forced a smile to her lips. “What rules are those?”

Allie shrugged. “The rules.”

Jillian’s back tickled, her skin seemed to contract in on itself. Allie made Lyle seem so real, so present. Jillian couldn’t hold in the shiver this time. The idea of Lyle’s reality thoroughly revolted her.

She wished she knew, with complete certainty, what was real and what wasn’t.

At that precise moment, like an echo of her thoughts, she heard the sound of the gate’s latch and focused her eyes to see beyond her own reflection.

Jillian couldn’t withhold a gasp as Steven stepped through the narrow aperture.

At first glimpse, she was certain he was naked. His bare golden shoulders reflected the dull light from the bug lamps.

Then she saw that he held one hand tightly against his chest and his profile was rigid and stiff. Something was dreadfully wrong.

She realized then, with some relief, that he wasn’t naked, only minus a shirt. His golden, muscled shoulders were hunched in obvious pain.

With only the slightest of hesitations, she released the catch on the lock and depressed the French door’s handle and pushed the paned glass outward, exactly the way she hadn’t done the day Allie found Lyle.

“Are you all right?” she called.

Steven looked up, and even through the gloom of the thick, moonless night she could make out his green eyes.

He’s in terrible pain, she thought. She knew.

Automatically she reached for and clicked on the back floodlights, the extra lights Steven had installed a few days before. The harsh glare from the floods struck his eyes, and he froze, like an animal snared by a poacher’s illegal hunting lights, and yet he didn’t look afraid, only vastly wary. His eyes glittered, and her breath caught in some unreasoning atavistic fear.

His eyes are this big. She heard her daughter’s voice, saw the little hands forming a two-fisted circle.