Hydraulic Level Five (1) (27 page)

My mind skipped back to that afternoon. I could barely recall it, because I’d only been four. The Cabrals had hosted a Halloween party for Samuel to meet the neighborhood kids and parents. He’d spent the entire time in the corner, fiddling with his white sheet and plastic chains, watching other children as they played a bean bag toss game. I’d gone as a ghost, too. (Much to my mother’s chagrin—she’d wanted me to be a butterfly.) I told him my mother was taking me trick-or-treating. He said his mother was taking him, too. “She’s not here yet. She’s in Boston, but she’ll be here tonight.” I scowled, asking if she was going to live with the Cabrals, too—I already had to share them with this new boy. But all of this happened before I discovered his mother was dead…

“Usually it worked and I made you happy. But this time, Kaye…I don’t know. After last night, everything’s mixed up in my head. I just…I need to
fix
it. I don’t want to be weak or coddled anymore.”

Who was this Samuel? Chasing his quick-moving mind had always been like chasing a river current. But drumming the counter, biting his lip…this nervousness was new. He was usually so decisive, so self-controlled in the slightest pinky-lift.

He said he’d hidden a lot. What? I didn’t think it was just the drugs. I grabbed at what I could.

“Samuel, look. If you miss our friends and family, you don’t need to stay away on my account. Don’t feel things between us need to be fluffy kittens for you to come home. I think we can get along well enough.”

“Kaye.” My name was an exasperated sigh. He warily reached for my hand, his expressive eyes asking permission. I didn’t tell him no. His fingers linked with mine. “What if I want to be
your
friend? What if I want to help you find your answers? I know it will take a lot of work and honesty, but I think we could do it.”

“But what about your book tour? Let’s be realistic, Sam. You’re leaving in two weeks.”

“I don’t give a flying…
cliff-huck
about my book tour, Kaye. I want to make things right between us.”

My breath grew quick, shallow. “I don’t know if it’s still possible. I don’t know if I can…” I wasn’t sure how to finish that.

“If you can what?”

“If I can trust you,” I sputtered. “I want answers to tie up loose ends, not create new ones.”

His face fell like a toppled sandcastle. “I thought with the pranks, maybe…” He squeezed my hand and released it. “Fair enough. Just think about it first, please, before you decide. I’ll do what I can to help you find your answers, regardless.” He smiled, but his brow furrowed. I brushed an index finger over it, smoothing away the creases.

Had I really just called our friendship a loose end? How jaded. I’d sent him mixed messages and I knew it, but what other message could I send when I was so mixed up myself? It struck me—the hypocrisy of it all. Here I was, telling Samuel I couldn’t trust him. Yet I had a file hidden in my bedroom with information that could utterly ruin him if I wanted it to. Just hours ago we broke into his laptop. And if he considered “hiding” to be untruthfulness, then, according to Dani, I was as guilty as he. But what he’d done—leaving our marriage, the drugs, the woman—was much, much worse than my alleged hiding. Wasn’t it?

He had been right about one thing. I had some thinking to do before I could decide whether or not to be his friend. In the meantime, a peace offering wouldn’t hurt.

“Olive oil.” My thumb rubbed the red streaks on his forehead. “Molly said it takes out permanent marker.”

He’d released a shaky breath. “I’ll try that…”

Muffled snoring from Hector broke into my reflections. I gave his shin a nudge and he started, his head thumping Betty’s window.

“Sorry.”

“S’okay,” he mumbled, and went back to sleep.

Samuel’s head lolled against burnt orange shag carpeting as we climbed a hill, Betty’s weight and girth chugging against the incline. I studied the elegant, masculine lines of his face, noting an increased resemblance to Alonso as he aged. Samuel’s father and Alonso had looked very similar, though I’d only seen a single picture of the man in Alonso’s home office, taken near Boston Harbor when they were college students. Samuel’s strong jaw and high hairline must belong to the English Caulfield side, as well as his blue eyes. I’d never seen a photograph of his biological mother, though Sofia had once told me she was insanely beautiful and came from a prominent Boston family. I wondered what other characteristics Samuel had inherited from her. My eyes traced the faded pink letters still scrawled across his forehead…

When I’d tuned in to
The After Hours Show
last Friday night, “I’M A NAUGHTY NACKEN” was still boldly written across his forehead.

I’d been at the farmhouse that evening, helping my mother label honey jars. We’d settled into the familiar routine, too caught up to even notice I reeked of sour milk. When ten thirty hit, we turned on the ancient television on the counter, adjusting the antenna to get a signal. We watched the program in comfortable silence, chuckling every now and then.

“So I’ve got to ask, this forehead art—‘I’m a naughty nacken.’ Is it a hint for a future book?”

The audience had laughed. So had Samuel, charming as ever. I’d noticed the host discreetly covered his nose with his hand.

“I think the Siren series has run its course. No, a friend wrote it as a joke. She believes I have an obsession with metaphorical water creatures. I suppose I’ve written about them for the past decade, so she may be onto something.”

“I don’t know, just a hunch she has?” (More audience laughter). “Your new book is
The Last Other
, being snatched up in bookstores across the country…”

They had talked about the typical topics: the book, the movie, and now the hand-holding picture and Mickey-gate. Samuel, of course, had a practiced, polished answer for everything—no, Neelie Nixie is not real. Yes, Indigo Kingsley is a wonderful woman and that’s all he’d say about his personal life. No, a PETA advertisement wasn’t on the horizon.

My mother had rubbed the back of her neck, leathered by the sun, and stared me down beneath unplucked eyebrows. “Did you write on your ex-husband’s head?”

“I told him how to clean it off.” I’d been a defensive ten-year-old again, conjuring ways to remain free from being grounded.

“He better keep his hands to himself.”

“Mom!” Red had poured into my cheeks.

“I know, I know, you’re an adult, you make your own calls.” Her nose had twitched. “The forehead thing…is that why you smell like old sweaty socks now?”

“Sour milk. And yeah.”

“You can’t get rid of it?”

“I tried soaking in vinegar. It did a little good. But Samuel smells worse than me.”

“Mm-hmm. Just be careful, Aspen Kaye.”

“I will, Mom.”

The next week passed swiftly. My photog stalkers drifted away. I even missed them—or at least having someone to greet me every time I left my house and returned. If they wanted to take a picture of me looking hot in my pencil skirts and fitted blouses (better than the tattered sweater they’d caught me in at the café), who was I to argue?

Molly was out most of the week, helping her sister with the new baby. I went over to Holly’s several times to let them both get out of the house and run errands. Babies made me uncomfortable, but once Molly showed me how to change a diaper and bounce the little girl while maddening nursery rhyme songs looped, I managed well enough. After the third visit, I knew the difference between her “I’ve got poo in my diaper and I want it out now” wail and her “you better feed me or so help me I’ll break your eardrums” wail.

Though he’d returned from LA, I didn’t hear from Samuel at all, save for group emails making final plans for our skydiving and camping trip. Yet our pranks continued, becoming less sophisticated and more obnoxiously juvenile. He crammed a package of Life Savers into my showerhead, coating me in a sticky film. Of course, the only solution to this problem was to take a shower. I exacted revenge by covering the toilet seat in his bathroom with Icy-Hot. Danita said she heard the screams all the way from Jeff’s Welding and Machine. He retaliated by changing all of my computer prompts, desktop scheme, and fonts to black-on-black. I panicked, thinking my hard drive had crashed until our webmaster, doubled over in laughter, showed me how to fix it. At least I didn’t have a picture of us set as my wallpaper for Samuel to discover. I’d have to start securing my computer when I left for lunch.

Pranks aside, I knew Samuel played it low key while I considered his “friend’s” proposal. I was pitching now and he waited for a signal.

Friends. The picture on his laptop hadn’t been our wedding photo, or prom, or anything of a romantic vein. And honestly, if he’d asked for more, I wouldn’t have handled it well. But friendship…more than anything I missed simply being in Samuel’s presence without complications. Having him home for holidays, swapping emails or funny greeting cards, maybe even hitting Planet Bluegrass together. It was tempting, and if we could figure out how to do that again…But could we really?

Being his friend would also mean playing witness to his romances and eventual marriage, whether the woman was Caroline or someone entirely different. It would mean being there for his wedding, the birth of his children, and any other happiness that came calling. Was I strong enough for that? Was I
masochistic
enough for that?

But if I got my answers from him and moved past this…stuckness, I might have those things, too. Marriage. Children. Companionship. Love? And as my friend, he’d also play witness to
my
happiness.

It came down to this: was sharing each other’s lives, and taking the joys that came with it, worth the heartache?

Could I risk it with Samuel Cabral?

I gave the opposite bench a once-over. Samuel yawned and stretched, then folded his arms across his chest and turned his back to Caroline. I wondered if he had even slept last night. I ignored him and dug into the pages of my book…

Neelie was gone. Gone over the cliff, dead in the void after battling the Other. Her body had grown frail under the siren’s curse, but she’d fought fearlessly, driving back evil in the miserable night while her family struggled against the Others. Nora and Noel mourned for a time, and traveled on. But Nicodemus…Nicodemus snarled and tore into the Others. He would shred them, conquer them, demand vengeance with a fury for his lost love until they begged to be hurled over the same cliff that had taken Neelie. And once the Others were defeated, he knew what was left to him…he would fossilize, through and through…

So Neelie was dead, then.

Tears trickled down my cheeks as I read. Odd, how I couldn’t connect with Neelie at all, but Nicodemus moved me. I thought her death would have been incredibly disturbing to read, but I didn’t see myself in her anymore. This Neelie had grown from the girl who couldn’t drink a ladybug under the table to a daring, vicious, self-sacrificing young woman who’d defied Nicodemus, faced down the Others, and saved the people she loved. Nicodemus could love a woman like Neelie. He could die for her, and most likely would if his destructive mindset carried through to the end of the book.

“For the life of me, I can’t figure out what scene in
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
would have you in tears.”

My eyes snapped up from my book and found Samuel’s concerned face close to mine. I slammed it shut. Crap, if only I’d read
Hitchhiker’s
after Angel gave it to me for Christmas. “You know…that sad part. Where he’s in the galaxy…hitchhiking.” I adjusted the dust jacket, making certain he couldn’t see what was behind it.

Samuel’s eyebrows arched in mock shock. “Are you reading something naughty, Kaye Trilby?”

“Of course not! I’m just…the book is really good, that’s all.”

His eyes softened. He pressed my knee and returned to his bench, leaving me alone. I was pretty sure he’d figured out what I was reading. I tucked the book away in my bag, too mortified to open it again.

Angel’s buddy’s plane was a twin-engine, jet-propelled aircraft with the name “Surrealistic Pillow” painted across its body. Samuel and I grinned at each other, both catching the Jefferson Airplane reference. The plane accommodated our entire group. We were jumping at fourteen-thousand feet above ground, which would give us roughly one minute of free fall, then another five minutes of hang time.