Seraph of Sorrow (6 page)

“Yes or no—do you hit your baby?”

They were in the dangerous territory between clever one-upmanship and a full-blown argument. It was still more interesting than listening to the infant squawk like a strangled cat.

“For heaven’s sake, Jonathan, do something! Feed her, change her, buy her a pony!
I’ve got to get this paper done!
”

Jennifer was squirming so much, Jonathan instinctively laid her down on the floor. Once he let go of her, she stopped crying.

“
Thank
you!”

“You’re welcome,” he snapped up at the loft. Then he glared down at his daughter, whose tears were trailing down her cheeks.

No,
he admitted to himself with a red face,
I don’t like her at all.

J Plus Seven Months

“Jenny, look who I’ve got!”

Jonathan squeaked the spotted plush toy puppy at her. Her gray eyes immediately locked upon her favorite toy.

“Ah, yes. You’d like to have Ruffy back, wouldn’t you?”

“Meh,” she replied.

“And you can. You
can
have him back. All you have to do is—”

“Jonathan!”

“Quick, Jenny! Ruffy’s in danger! The horrible, drooling Mommy-beast cometh! She’s going to eat Ruffy, Jenny! Daddy can’t help you; he’s powerless against the drooling Mommy-beast’s death vision. Walk to him, Jenny!
Save Ruffy!
”

“Meh.”

The sound of footsteps rushing downstairs sent Jonathan into a half-amused, half-real panic. “Jenny, there’s only a few moments left. Jenny, hurry—
arggh!
”

“Jonathan Daniel Scales. We’ve discussed this.”

“Please let go of my hair.”

“You’re pushing her too hard.”

“I’m enjoying her company!” This much was true. Jonathan’s motivations had shifted over the past few months. Not only did he love her as always—but he actually
liked
her now. What was the difference? His daughter’s smile.

She was giving it now, an openmouthed, tongue-out, toothless grin at the sight of her father kneeling at the mercy of his wife.

“Yeowch!” he cried out as the drooling Mommy-beast began to drag him up the stairs. “Jenny, save me! Walk over to me and
save me
!”

“Meh!” She spun on her knees and scrambled away from them both, toward the stuffed squeaky dog.

J Plus Fifteen Months

“Lunch?”

“In a moment, Jenny. You see the wall?”

She stared at the tip of his finger. “Lunch?”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll get to lunch. The wall, ace. See the wall?”

She turned farther and spotted the gold-and-green wallpaper. “Ruffy?”

“No, those aren’t Ruffies printed on the wallpaper. They’re dragons. Can you say
dragon
, Jennifer?”

“Ruffy.”

“Dragon.”

“Duffy.”

“Good enough. What color is the duffy, Jenny? What color?”

“Ruffy,” she regressed.

“What color duffy?”

“Duffy?”

“Yeah, duffy. Is duffy red, Jenny? Is duffy green? Is duffy . . .
gold
?”

“Duffy,” she repeated.

“Duffy
is
gold,” he continued. “What about you, Jenny? Can Jenny turn gold?”

It was a stretch, he knew. But after more than a year of watching her pick up normal, human skills at a normal, human pace, he had begun to pin his hopes for extraordinary development elsewhere.

“Jenny lunch?”

“Come on, ace. Crescent moon’s coming tonight. You can have all the lunch you want with Mommy after I’ve left for the weekend.”

“Mommy lunch?”

“Duffy. Duffy gold. Jenny gold?” He lifted her arm up and pulled back the sleeve of her tiny, ruffled nightgown. “Jenny turn her arm gold?” He gently pressed it against the wall, for inspiration.

“Duffy. Jenny. Jenny lunch. Duffy lunch.”

Sensing this was going nowhere, Jonathan decided to change venue. He lifted his daughter up and took her down the hall into the bathroom, patting her bottom the entire way.

“How about this?” he asked once he had set her on the bathroom counter. She liked to sit here when he shaved in the morning. He pointed at the wallpaper behind her head. “Blue is easier than gold. See the blue flowers? Jenny blue?”

“Daddy face,” she intoned seriously, patting her chunky cheek.

“Yes, Daddy shaves his face here. Does Jenny want to change her face?”

“Daddy face.” Her hand reached out to the faucet, to get him started.

“No, Jenny. Daddy’s face is fine. How about Jenny’s face?” He gently spun her head and pushed her face toward the wall, until her nose touched the wallpaper. “Change face? Feel blue? Feel floral?”

The door burst open.
“Jonathan!”

“Dammit, woman! Don’t you knock when you enter a bathroom!”

“Mommy lunch!”

J Plus Fifteen Months and One Day

“Aha!”

Jonathan unfurled his camouflaged dragon shape, shifted his scales back to their normal indigo and blue hues, and marched across the living room toward the kitchen.

Elizabeth froze, her blonde locks framing a reddening forehead, her lips in an “O” of surprise. She didn’t move her hands from Jennifer, who was sitting on the kitchen counter giggling. The toddler didn’t notice Jonathan; instead, she enthusiastically waved a black plastic knife in her plump hand.

“Sword!” she cried out.

“A
ha
!”

“Jonathan, this isn’t what it—”

“Sword!”

“AHA!”

“It’s just a plastic—”

“Sword!”

“AHH-
HAAA
!”

Jennifer finally turned and squealed with delight at this strange, new shape with her father’s voice. She raised her tiny blade in salute.
“Duffy!”

J Plus Twenty-four Months

“Look at her.”

“I know. Isn’t it incredible?”

“
She’s
incredible. I can’t believe you ever cared about whether she’d show camouflage.”

“I can’t believe you armed her with cutlery.”

Elizabeth twisted in her prone position on the carpet, enough to smack him on the back of the head. “
Plastic
cutlery. Turns out, all we had to do was give her a crayon.”

He snuggled up to his wife, and they resumed watching their daughter. The autumn wind whistled outside the porch door. That and the sound of wax rubbing against construction paper were the only two sounds in the townhome.

“What is it, do you think?”

“A dragon, of course! Look at the wings.”

Elizabeth made a face. “Other things besides dragons have wings, darling.”

“Like what?”

“Duh, birds?”

“That’s way bigger than a bird.”

“Airplanes.”

“It has a face and feet.”

“Angels.”

This stopped him short. It
did
resemble an angel.

She leaned into him. “By the way, the day care center did an assessment on her.”

“They tested our kid?” Jonathan’s brow furrowed. “Did we give them permission?”

“It’s routine, Jonathan. We gave them permission when we enrolled her. They periodically check cognitive development, motor skills, all that stuff. Most parents can hardly wait to get their kids tested.”

“Huh.”

“The packet’s on the end table, if you’re interested.”

Jonathan craned his neck. From his position on the living room floor, he could make out the sealed manila envelope. He thought about it for a few seconds, and then relaxed back on the floor and watched his daughter.

Elizabeth ran her long fingers through his dark hair. “You neither, huh?”

“Me neither.”

It was years after that, long after werachnids burned Eveningstar down and the Scales family had moved to Winoka, when Jonathan ran into his high school crush again. More precisely, Elizabeth found her first.

“Didn’t you used to go out with a girl named Heather Snow?” she asked at the dinner table one night.

“Yeahff,” Jonathan replied with his mouth full of carry-out lemon chicken. He hadn’t had time to cook that evening.

“There’s a Heather Elmsmith-Snow in the oncology ward at the hospital.” His wife poked at her jewel fried rice. “You don’t suppose she’s related to Jenny’s friend Susan . . . ?”

It surprised Jonathan how far his heart fell at the news. “Oncology? What’s her prognosis?”

Elizabeth shrugged. “I saw her name on the board and it stuck in my head. It was busy today. I could check her chart tomorrow.” She chewed a mouthful of rice thoughtfully. “I’ll bet it
is
Susan’s mother. We never talk to that girl’s parents, do we? That must make me an awful mother, that I don’t even know who’s in charge when Jennifer goes over there.”

Jonathan took a deep breath. “Don’t beat yourself up. I’ve never met them either. Susan seems like a nice girl. She and Jenny are inseparable. They both play soccer. Have you seen Heather at the games? I’m usually too far away to see faces in the crowd.”

“I don’t pay much attention to the other parents. Now that I think of it, I think it’s a man who’s always gone to games with Susan, not a woman.” Somehow, this passed for an excuse.

“Well. Let me know what you find out tomorrow.”

What Elizabeth found out was that Heather Elmsmith-Snow, who did indeed live at the same address as Susan Elmsmith, had less than two months to live.

The following day, Jonathan hovered outside hospital room 321 with a bouquet of lilies.

Hello, old friend,
he rehearsed.
Say, your room smells like my mom’s bedroom right before I scared her to death. Or maybe I depressed her to death—hard to say. The point is, she had cancer, and so do you. So there’s something in common. Breath mint?

“Gah!” Jonathan chastised himself, ignoring the startled look of a passing nurse. He pushed open the door and walked inside.

A frail smile greeted him. “Well, as I live and breathe, for a little longer anyway. Jonathan Scales. Your wife told me yesterday you might stop by.”

He was impressed she could place him so quickly. Heather was unrecognizable. The healthy, growing girl who had resembled a plump koala was gone. In her place was a chain of bones with skin so translucent, a slipping vein might have torn it. She wore a flowered silk head scarf, and a pea-green emesis basin lingered on the blanket next to her jutting hip.

“Hey.” He suddenly looked at the lilies he was carrying as if for the first time. The gesture seemed so empty, but it was too late now. “Um. These are for you.”

“Thanks. Plop them on the table over there, will you? I’ll have one of the nurses dig up a vase. Think I’ll live to see them all bloom?” she teased.

“Heather . . .” He sat down heavily in the chair beside her bed. “I’m glad my wife found you here. I mean, not here.” He sighed.
Doin’ great, captain. Stay the course.
“I mean, I’m glad I could see you again.”

“No need to lean on the door this time to keep me in my place,” she teased.

He could feel himself flush. “Ugh. Heather, I can’t tell you how much I—”

“Forget it.” She let her jaw slide to the side. “We were both dumb teenagers, right?” Her hand extended and he took it as if picking up a baby bird. “I’m glad to see you, Jon.”

“It should have been sooner. I had no idea you were Susan’s mom. Jenny and Susan—you must know what good friends they are.”
Good friends,
he repeated to himself. The irony almost made him laugh.

“I do. Though I haven’t seen much of Susan. I can’t bear for her to see me like this.”

Jonathan tried to come up with a reply.
No, you look great for a woman who’ll die within thirty days.
Or,
I’m sure Susan’s glad not to see her mother.
Or,
You’re right: time for the kid to let go, out with the old, in with the new.
None of these seemed appropriate.

“Who would have thought,” she continued, “that I’d die of something like this. After all our family’s been through.”

“Been through?”

“Yes.” It was her turn to blush. “I know this is going to sound silly to you. I’ve always thought our family was being . . . hunted.”

“Hunted by what?”

“It’s probably paranoia,” she hastened to add. “That’s what Rob keeps telling me, anyway. Susan, too. I tell them I know better. Ever since I found out you moved in down the street, I’ve thought of coming to you with this, but I’ve been so afraid. Oh, Jonathan, I hope you believe me. Can you believe me?”

He shrugged, pretty sure of where this was going. “Try me.”

“The first time I saw one, Susan was about six months old. We lived in Duluth. We were out for a walk by the lakeside, when I saw . . . I mean, I could have sworn I saw . . .”

“What?”

She bit her lip and wiped her forehead. “You have to understand, I haven’t told anyone outside of my family about this. I’m going to die anyway, and I need to tell someone. Someone I trust.” She looked at him with all of the trust and devotion he would have killed for at fifteen years old. “I think you and I were meant to see each other one last time, Jonathan.”

“Hey, Heather. It’s okay.” He tightened his grip on her brittle hands. “You can trust me. What did you see?”

Her small frame relaxed into the cream-colored hospital sheets. “I saw a spider, Jon.”

When she didn’t continue, he realized he would have to prod her. “I’m guessing we’re not talking about a conventionally sized—”

“Not at all. And if you’re asking that, Jon, I’m going to guess you’ve seen one, too.”

For the first time in months, he thought back to Dianna Wilson and her glorious, glowing shape. They had often revealed themselves to each other under the crescent moon, both before and after their short-lived marriage. Before meeting her, he had never understood scientists on nature shows who would call the bulbous, eight-legged arachnid form “beautiful.” Dianna Wilson had been, in every sense of the word, a beautiful creature.

“I have,” he finally answered.

Fortunately, she mistook his pause for the same fear she obviously felt herself. “They’re everywhere, Jon. I saw several more in Duluth before I finally convinced Rob to move down here to Winoka. And not long ago, I heard some people around town talking about a place named Eveningstar. They said spiders had attacked it. An
army
of them, Jon. Each one the size of a person! They destroyed the town, and everyone in it.”