Chapter 4
A leisurely celebration dinner at TGI Friday’s, and Mason and Lauren were soon caught up on everything in Shelby’s life—at least everything she was prepared to tell them. She was, after all, almost twenty years old, and her father could tell there were things she was less than forthcoming about. English boys, most likely, maybe something else, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t think it was anything to do with drugs or alcohol; he would know the signs. She had always had a good head on her shoulders, a lot of common sense born from tragedy. Perspective. Near-death can do that to someone.
There was definitely something bothering her though, but now wasn’t the time to press it. She’d have another week with them before returning overseas for another six months. She seemed in no hurry to leave, unlike other times when she couldn’t wait to return to new friends and parties.
After what she’d been through, Mason begrudged her very little. He wanted his little girl to be happy, to live and experience life’s pleasures without his interference. He had almost lost her twelve years ago; so all this was like extended hours at a theme park, time to be savored and enjoyed.
Her research had been going well, and as far as he knew, it involved exciting investigations into early Anglo-Saxon religious practices, with an eye toward nature-worship and astronomical ceremonies. Mason couldn’t wait to read her jealously guarded thesis, but as yet she wasn’t sharing.
A double-decker brownie dessert dish later, along with some decaf coffee for him and Lauren, and they were finally ready to leave, but not yet done talking. They had yet to address the elephant in the room, the particularly large and ungainly one by the name of Gabriel.
What are you going to do? Shelby signed to him. About Gabe?
Mason stared into his coffee for a long time until Lauren pinched him under the table. “Your daughter wants to know what you plan to do about her brother’s offer.”
“Reject it,” he said at last, pushing away his coffee mug and rubbing his eyes. “A new job, I don’t need. I would have gladly welcomed him back if he needed help, or a place to live for a while, anything like that. But this …” He shrugged.
Shelby leaned in, brownie crumbs falling from her lips as she tried to speak. “You dunt trust ’im?”
“I don’t, honey, I don’t. Something about this whole setup …” Mason turned his face to Shelby so she could read his lips. He was too tired to sign. “Gabe has changed, but I sense—I don’t know, some ulterior motive, like I’m being set up to be the butt of some April Fool’s joke. Or in this case, probably a seriously unfunny eco-terrorist prank. No thanks.”
Again, a squeeze under the table. Lauren leaned in. “Don’t you want to at least hear him out?”
“Not particularly, no.”
“Please? It’s been three years. Whatever you believe about his motives, three years is a long time. He’s my son too, you know. I want to see him.”
Me too, Shelby signed. “And I leef on Fray-day.”
Mason sighed. “Overruling me again? I can say this at least. Without Gabe around, I’ve been outvoted by the females in this family for too long.”
“Talk to him,” Lauren repeated. “Just do that. If your stinko-meter still rejects his pitch, then walk away. And if he won’t come back to us, then …”
“Ef him,” Shelby said, stuffing the last brownie piece into her mouth, grinning, then turning red. She signed, Sorry.
Mason and Lauren couldn’t hold back their laughter. Mason reached for the check. “Ef him indeed. All right, it’s a plan, then.”
O O O
Back in their house in Kensington, Shelby went right to bed and gave Mason a nostalgic thrill in letting him tuck her in, four-leaf pajamas and all.
“Still my girl?” he signed as he ruffled her hair.
Always, she signed back, and gave him a neck-twisting hug. As he was on his way out, closing the door: “Dad …?”
“Yeah?”
There’s something, a package I sent to you here. Probably arrive after I’m gone.
What is it? He signed back.
It’s nothing. I want you to throw it out. Don’t even open it.
Mason closed the door, with him still in the room. He turned on the light. “Honey? What is it?”
Nothing. Just promise me you’ll toss it.
“Can you give me a hint? Was it something … you found over there?”
Just something foolish. A dumb gift.
As she signed it, her fingers seemed listless, as if she were signing underwater. It was one of the tells Mason had come to recognize over the years. She was lying.
“Okay, honey.” He smiled. “No problem.”
“Promiss?”
Mason crossed his heart and signed, Promise.
“Good night.”
He eased out this time, after shutting off the lights. Back in his room, Lauren was struggling with her wheelchair. “Let me,” Mason said, coming to her aid.
“I can manage.”
“I know you can. But it’s been a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of tucking in two girls in one night.”
“You rascal.”
“That’s me.”
“One award and the man thinks he’s god’s gift to women. Like we really swoon for the weathermen.”
“You know it’s true.” He scooped her up in his arms.
“Are you going to change me too?”
“Of course.” He tugged off her shoes, and started on her pants. “At least halfway.”
She grabbed him by the tie, pulled him up to kiss her. “I mean it about Gabriel.”
“I know.”
“Enough time has passed.”
“I know.”
He searched her eyes, seeing a spark of life that had been absent a long time. Living with the disability was hard enough, but living with guilt for what she perceived as her fault her children turned out how they did: one deaf, the other estranged, it wore on her. She had been on anti-depressants for years. Finally free of them, her spirits were lifted and fun had returned to her life. Both their lives. They played games. Scrabble, strategized through endless hours of global conquest with Risk, and pursued merciless bankrupt-inducing nights of Monopoly. She was almost all the way back to her old self. It had taken so long, but he needed to nurse her the rest of the way, only a few more steps.
Gabriel could surely help. Or he could unravel everything they had accomplished. He had to hope it would be the former.
“I’ll do it,” he whispered, the word blown gently through her lips as she pulled him close for another kiss.
O O O
In the middle of the night, out of a deep sleep, Mason rocked up in bed. Lauren was snoring, a low grinding of her teeth followed by a throaty warble.
But what woke him wasn’t anything so ordinary. It took another few moments of rushed breathing and a rising pulse thudding at his jugular to realize what it was:
A thunderstorm.
Violent, with tearing winds screaming through the palms; and suddenly, a pounding clap of thunder and a painfully blinding lightning burst.
He launched out of bed.
Again? There was no precipitation in the forecast. Not for tonight, and nothing on the ten-day projection. They were in the middle of a drought. Wildfires were raging to the southwest, made drastically worse due to the lack of rain.
Impossible. He slipped outside his room, into the dark hall where he paused at Shelby’s room. Opened the door a crack and in the next flash he saw her bed.
Empty.
He stepped in, and was about to dash out and down the stairs when he saw the open window and felt the drops of rain slamming in almost sideways through it, splattering off the hardwood floor. Ran to the window, and looked out.
There on the back lawn, behind the kidney-shaped pool and past the grill, in the pounding sheets of rain, were two dark figures. Arms raised, Christ-like, facing each other.
A lightning flash.
Shelby, in her white and green-clover pajamas, hair now wild, dancing Medusa-like in the winds, drenched, facing … Gabriel? It had to be him. He could see the shine of his bald head in the lightning burst. Still dressed all in black, he squared off against her like they were gladiators preparing to strike at the emperor’s command. The lightning’s aura danced along their arms and fireflies swarmed around their heads, causing halo-like glows.
Gabriel? Mason’s mind reeled. His son and daughter, out in this tempest? He was about to call out when he heard something—a footfall behind him.
He turned, but not quickly enough. And glimpsed only an emerald-tipped stick of wood bearing down upon his skull.