Invisible (15 page)

“Lots of people do.” I pushed past her into the dining room.

The small space was hot and crowded with people. I didn’t see Frank, but Joe was leaning against the doorframe in that easy way he had, talking with Doc Lindstrom. I had a sudden urge to cross over to him, slide under his arm the way I used to, his arm warm and heavy along my shoulders. He didn’t look over, but I was certain he knew I was standing there. That was the way it had always been with us; we could sense each other even when our backs were turned.

“Hey, Dana.”

I turned at the familiar voice. Tall and lanky, his eyes the color of water, and a craggy nose he’d broken in a right-of-way argument with a mailbox when it refused to move as he was backing his car out of the driveway. Brian Gerkey. “Wow,” I said, stepping into his hug. “You cut off your ponytail.” I pulled back and regarded him. “And I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without a Grateful Dead T-shirt on.”

“You know how it goes.” He gave me a sleepy, sexy smile. “After a certain age, it stops looking good and starts looking sad.”

“I hear you’re a grown-up now, running the plant and everything.”

“Yep. Only way I could keep myself in race cars. It’s good to see you.”

I had mixed feelings seeing him, though. We’d had a complicated
relationship. I thought he was lazy and spoiled and could sometimes be a bully. He thought I was bossy and headstrong, though the terms he’d used back then hadn’t been as polite. “You got married, right?” I asked.

“That’s right. A girl from Detroit Lakes. We have two girls, seven and three. She’s home now with them. It’s naptime. But she sent flowers.”

Joe had moved into the other room, and was talking now with a group of teenagers. Their smiling faces were tilted up to his.

“Hey, I’m sorry about Julie. She was the best.” Brian poured a cup of fluorescent orange punch and handed it to me. “If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think I would’ve gotten the clinic up and running as quickly as I did.”

“What clinic?”

“The one at the plant.”

“Julie worked for you? I thought she was freelance.”

“She went freelance when she got sick.”

I studied him, his face completely open and guileless. Brian wouldn’t have fired Julie when she could no longer work full-time—would he? “So Gerkey’s has a clinic
and
a gift shop now?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral. “I remember when there was just the one washroom, and we all had to share.”

“Dude, I loved that washroom. It was the only place my mom never went.”

And, because of that, it had been his favorite place to get high. “Seems like you’re getting along okay with her now.”

“Yeah, well. I grew up some.” His gaze moved restlessly around the crowd. That was Brian, always angling, always searching for the next encounter. I wondered if he’d been as unfaithful to his wife as he was to his friends. “Mike!” he called. “Join us.”

Sheri’s husband and Joe’s best friend. I hadn’t greeted him when I spotted him in the bar that first night. Now I gave him a warm hug hello. He’d thickened around the middle and his shoulders
had rounded a little, but he wore his dark hair clipped short and parted the same way he had in high school.

“Sad about Julie.” His eyes were red-rimmed and he cleared his throat. “Real shame.”

He was holding back tears. I hadn’t realized he’d grown close to Julie.

“She was a saint with Logan, a real saint,” he said. “She talked him through all sorts of hideous procedures. I don’t know what Sheri and I are going to do without her.”

Of course. Sheri had told me Julie had been helping them. “I’m glad you got to know her,” I said.

Mike nodded and cleared his throat again. “So Sheri tells me you’re in demolition.”

“No kidding.” Brian looked at me with interest. “Doing what?”

“She blows up buildings,” Mike told him. “You know, like that high-rise they just brought down in Chicago.”

“Oh yeah. Someone died in that one, didn’t they?”

Now they were both looking at me with interest.

I flushed. It wasn’t that I was keeping Chicago a secret. Not exactly. But I certainly didn’t want to talk about it now, among all these people, in my sister’s house on the day of her funeral.

“Dana! Dana Carlson!” Someone jabbed me in the side with a pointed finger.

Wincing, I turned to see Miriam Kelleher, her eyes narrowed and her mouth twisted in disapproval. Throughout the church service, she’d kept leaning forward to glare at me, sitting back only when Karen gently put her arm around her mother’s shoulders. Then Miriam had faced me down in the middle of the path at the cemetery, gripping her walker as though she wanted to hurl it at me and refusing to budge until Frank finally took hold of her elbow to lead her away.

At first, I hadn’t been sure what had brought on this change. Frank’s mother and I had always gotten along okay. But when I spotted her an hour or so before, uncapping the saltshaker on the
dining room table to give it a dubious sniff, I realized Miriam Kelleher had simply gotten batty.

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” she now told me.

Brian winked at me. “I know,” he said to her in a cajoling voice. “Dana staying away all these years.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot,” she snapped. “I know exactly why she ran off like she did.” She pointed a gnarled forefinger at me. “You’re not here to make trouble, are you? You know it’s too late for all of that.”

I stared at her with mounting unease. Her eyes weren’t as cloudy as I would have expected, her gaze not as unfocused.

“She’s here for Julie’s funeral,” Mike said helpfully.

She waved a hand at him, peering at me. Then she smirked. “
You
know what I’m talking about. Did you really think Julie wouldn’t have told me?”

My throat went dry. Julie couldn’t have told Miriam. She wouldn’t have told anyone. She was the one who’d sworn me to secrecy. I wanted to ignore this crazy old woman, turn and walk away, but I remained rooted in place, my heart hammering loudly in my ears.

“Mike,” Brian said evenly, and nodded across the room. “I think Sheri needs you.”

Sheri was kneeling in front of her young son, her fingers pressed to his forehead. She looked over at Mike. Her eyes were wide with fear.

Without thinking, I started toward her. Something was terribly wrong with Sheri’s little boy.

Mike pushed past me, and I hesitated. Sheri didn’t need me. Her gaze was fixed on her husband as he strode toward her. She stood as he scooped up Logan and they headed to the front door. People parted to let them through. Voices grew hushed.

“Those poor things,” Miriam said. “They’ve had a rough time of it.”

I’d forgotten she was there.

Logan had seemed perfectly fine the day before, if only a little cranky. But tonight, he’d collapsed against his father and let his head loll against Mike’s shoulder. The stricken look on Sheri’s face was terrifying.

I glanced to the window and saw that the hilltop where Peyton had sat all afternoon was bare. Miriam patted my arm and moved off, leaning heavily on her walker as she went. So her brief moment of clarity had passed. Frowning, I looked all around the room. Joe and Brian stood together by the front door, and Frank stood in the living room, surrounded by a group of people. In the opposite corner, Irene Stahlberg sat in quiet conversation with Karen. A cluster of teenagers perched along the brick hearth, their arms around their bent knees. I turned and turned, but didn’t see Peyton anywhere.

 [PEYTON]

S
EAHORSES ARE SHY FISH THAT DWELL AMONG THE
sea grasses and coral reefs in the shallow waters around the earth’s warm midsection. They’re slow swimmers, easily picked off by predators, so instead of running for their lives, they prefer to hide in plain sight, wrapping their curly tails around a blade of grass or a piece of coral and changing color to blend in with their surroundings. They don’t have teeth or stomachs, so they feed constantly, greedily slurping whatever can fit into the tube of their mouth. They eat so fast that a mist of animal parts hangs around their faces
.

It’s the male who carries the eggs, tucked into a pouch on his tummy. He’s pretty committed to his role. As soon as one brood is hatched, he mates to carry another. It’s the female who travels for food. But even so, she doesn’t go far, maybe a few feet in either direction. Seahorses like to pick one tiny patch of the ocean and stay put
.

The only time in their entire lives that they’re free is when they’re born and the ocean currents catch them and sweep them along, turning them this way and that to see the world, before releasing
them to settle to the bottom and make their home. It’s got to be a fun ride, so long as they’re not caught and eaten along the way. It’s only by pure luck that a seahorse survives to adulthood
.

But isn’t that true of everything?

The branches of the apple tree chopped the sky into blue diamonds. If Peyton tilted her head, the leaves moved in front of the branches and scooped out different sections of sky. Hard little green apples grew among them. Sometimes her mom had made applesauce, adding lots of sugar and cinnamon to overcome the sour flavor. They’d tried a pie once, but that had been a disaster, the apples all crumbly and sour. They’d each taken a bite, then looked at each other’s twisted expression and both of them had burst out laughing.

Down the hillside, people walked in and out of her house, carrying casserole dishes and plates of cookies. They gathered in the kitchen and drank coffee. They wandered out onto the deck and collected in the driveway. Every so often, one would glance up at her, but Peyton’s keep-away signals were working: no one came up to bother her.

The bark of the old apple tree bit through her clothes to her skin.

She didn’t know where her dad was. She should be visiting with her aunt Karen, but Peyton didn’t feel like talking about how school was and whether she played any sports. For a while, Mr. G had stood on the back deck, wearing the dark suit he’d worn to the church. He looked like a store dummy, and he kept tugging at his necktie. He should just take it off. Other people were in jeans and sweaters. People kept coming up to him and talking, but nobody made him smile. He’d liked her mom. Everyone had.

Peyton closed her eyes. The afternoon sun turned the inside of her eyelids orange, like she’d trapped flames inside them. Maybe she’d paint her room that color. A mosquito whined past
and she blindly waved her hand. The whining faded, but she knew it would return. Mosquitoes really loved her. She was always drenching herself in DEET, but it didn’t matter. Her mother used to tease her that she was just a banquet for mosquitoes.

The warm light across her face darkened; she opened her eyes.

“Hey.”

Eric looked like a giant, the long legs of his dark slacks going up to the white of his shirt, where a swath of blue silk cut it in half. “Nice tie,” she said.

“Everyone’s looking for you. Your cousins want to play. And Brenna’s been asking if she can come up and sit with you.”

“Can you believe she wore a leather miniskirt? To a funeral?”

“She’s clueless. Don’t let it get to you.” He sat down beside her. It felt good to have him close, but if he moved any closer, say, put his arm around her, she’d smack him. Or push him down the hill. He seemed to sense it: he just leaned back on his elbows and squinted at the sky.

“Your aunt Dana seems nice.”

Nice
was not the word she would’ve used to describe Dana. “My grandma says she’s trouble.” Which sounded scary, even coming from a crazy old lady.

“Yeah, but your grandma’s not really all there, right?”

“Sometimes she is.”

“So what do you think?”

She plucked a stalk of grass and split it with her fingernail. “I
think
I should never have called her. It’s awful, having her around.” Dana was always there: cleaning, cooking,
watching
. Meals were agony. Every time Peyton raised her gaze, she found Dana casually looking away. And just that morning, Dana caught Peyton just as she was sneaking outside to smoke a cigarette to ask if she wanted help straightening her hair, which only made Peyton worry that her hair looked like crap or something. But that wasn’t the worst thing. “She and my dad
hate
each other.”

“Yeah. You said.”

“Sorry I’m so boring.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

Kids ran laughing around the corner of the house, and an adult shushed them. The branches waved, scrambling up the sky shapes, then stilled to make new ones. Was the normal world the right size, or had it gotten huge and swallowed her up? The right size, she guessed.

“Did you hear Logan got sick?”

She turned her head, stared at him. His face was bland, his gaze fixed on the people moving around below them. “Sick how?”

“I think he was running a fever or something. You know, kid stuff.” He shrugged.

Red lights danced in front of her eyes like sparklers. She pushed herself up.

“You okay?” Eric said.

“It’s not kid stuff.” How dumb could he be? Hadn’t he heard a word of what she’d said all these weeks? Hadn’t he listened to anything? Fevers were serious for people on dialysis. Logan wasn’t just a regular kid. He was
a kid on dialysis
. “That’s how it started with my mom.”