The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney (15 page)

Chapter 19

“Favorite
ice-cream flavor?” Jack asked.

“Vanilla,” I said, opting for honest.

“That's pathetic.” He smirked. “Mine's pistachio.”

“And that's trying a little too hard to be interesting,” I countered.

We were walking to Jack's house after school. Somehow the conversation had moved easily from the Great Ghost Debate to What's Your Favorite——? (fill in the blank). We had compared notes on favorite foods (mine: pot roast, Jack's: sausage pizza), favorite words (mine:
serendipity
, Jack's:
effervescent
), and, now, ice cream.

“Favorite movie of all time?” I asked.

“No contest. It's gotta be—” Jack stopped suddenly. His smile vanished and was replaced by a tight-lipped glare. “Shit!”

“What?” I followed his gaze and saw a chubby, balding man standing across the street, peering at us through black-framed glasses. “Who is that?”

Jack took my elbow and began moving me faster toward the driveway, all the time glaring at the stranger as if he were a career criminal with bad intentions.

The man didn't seem that threatening. He wore a rumpled gray suit. His tie was loosened, and the side of his shirt was coming untucked. His shoulders slumped as if it took all his energy just to stand there. He looked like a mournful baby elephant.

“Jack?” I said again. “Do you know him?”

Jack looked at me as if he had just remembered that I was standing there. “No,” he said in a totally unconvincing manner. “Let's go inside.” He was still holding on to my arm, and now he began steering me up the driveway.

“Jack!” the man called out. I turned my head and saw that he was crossing the street in our direction. “I'd like to talk to you.” Even though he had raised his voice, he wasn't yelling. He sounded reasonable, even friendly.

“I think he wants to talk to you,” I said, unnecessarily.

“I don't want to talk to him.” Jack tightened his grip and walked faster, pulling me along like a guard marching a prisoner to a cell. “Hurry up.”

As anyone in my family could have told him, the best way to make me do something was to command me to do the opposite. Especially if the command was issued in an edgy voice and accompanied by an impatient little jerk on my arm.

I stopped walking and did my best to become a dead weight. He yanked on me again, but I didn't budge.

“Will you move?” he snapped, glancing over my shoulder.

“Not unless you stop pulling on my arm!” I snapped back. “And you could say ‘please' once in a while, you know.”

“Fine!” He dropped my arm and took a step back, his arms held out as if to demonstrate to a crowd of onlookers that he was no longer trying to force me to go anywhere. “Will you
please
move?”

By then, of course, it was too late. The man had reached us, huffing a bit (he really was too round for even a minor dash across a street). He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, mopped his forehead, and smiled genially at Jack.

“Jack. Glad I caught you. You got a few minutes?”

“No.” Jack turned to me but knew better than to grab my arm again. “C'mon, let's go inside.”

The man seemed unfazed by Jack's rudeness. “I just thought I'd stop by, see how things were going for you,” he said calmly. “And for your family, of course. You're all doing well?”

“Yes.” Jack spit out his one-word answers as if he couldn't stand the taste of them in his mouth.

“Good, good.” The man sounded breezily unconvinced. His eyes seemed to sharpen a bit as he asked, “So, your dad's doing well then?”

Finally Jack swung around to face the man, his face blazing with anger. “We're all fine, okay?” he shouted. “We're great! And I'm not talking to you about my dad!”

The man held up his hands in a calming gesture. He moved closer to Jack and lowered his voice. “I just want you to know that I'm available if you want to talk. Anytime. Day or night.”

Jack's hand clenched into a fist, and the man quickly stepped back, just as a car turned the corner. The driver swung into the driveway, fast, and braked hard enough to make the tires squeal.

He turned off the engine and stepped out. “What's going on here?” He was a thin man with graying hair, a stooping posture, and sad eyes. He looked at the strange man with barely concealed distaste. “Detective Calhoun. I thought I told you not to bother my family anymore.”

“I just wanted to see how you folks were getting along,” the man said again.

“Right,” said the driver, who I had cleverly deduced was Jack's father. “You just happened to be driving by, twenty-five miles from home.”

Detective Calhoun shrugged, a faint smile on his face. “I take cold cases very personally.”

Mr. Dawson's jaw tightened, but he said, calmly enough, “We're doing as well as can be expected. Now, unless you have some news for us . . .”

He left the question hanging. After a long pause the detective shrugged and shook his head. “No. No news.”

Mr. Dawson nodded curtly, as if that had been just what he expected. “Then it's time for us to have dinner. Good night.”

He turned on his heel and marched to the door, with Jack following. I walked more slowly after them. As I reached the door, I turned to look over my shoulder.

The detective hadn't moved. He was standing at the end of the driveway, watching.

We stood in a cavernous kitchen that was filled with shiny state-of-the-art appliances and absolutely no evidence that food was ever cooked or consumed there. Mr. Dawson stared down at the gleaming white tile floor, lost in thought. I heard a drop of water drip from the faucet into the stainless steel sink. It seemed to echo in the room.

Finally Jack cleared his throat. “So, Dad—”

Mr. Dawson looked up, startled. “Oh, sorry.” His voice was thin and gray and sad. “I was just thinking. . . .” The words trailed off as if he were too tired to remember what he was going to say.

“This is Sparrow. She's in my history class. We're doing a project together.” Jack sounded as if he were reciting lines in a school play. Lines that did not inspire him at all.

His father sounded as if he had been cast in the same dispiriting play. “Very nice to meet you, Sparrow. How are you enjoying school so far?”

“It's great,” I said woodenly. Oh, great. Now I was in the play, too. “I really like it.”

“That's good. School is important.” Mr. Dawson paused for a long, long moment. Was he waiting for his cue? Finally he nodded, as if remembering the next line, and went on. “What's your favorite class?”

“I like English. And history, of course.” I stopped. I would have kept talking if I could have, just to fill the overpowering silence, but my mind was completely blank. The atmosphere in that kitchen made me want to find a dark corner, curl up into a little ball, and weep for days.

The three of us looked at one another, no one saying a word. Fortunately, Jack's mother walked into the kitchen a few seconds later, carrying an empty wine-glass. She smiled brightly at all of us.

“Sparrow, it's lovely to see you again!” She reached across Mr. Dawson to pick up a wine bottle and filled her glass. “Would you like something to drink?” She gave a brittle laugh. “Not the Cabernet, of course! You have years before you're ready for that! But we always keep lots of soda for the boys, so if you're thirsty. . . .”

I swear I felt Jack flinch when she said “the boys.”

“No, thank you, I'm fine,” I blurted. “But we should probably get started on our project. My mother wants me home before dinner.”

A complete and utter lie, of course. There was a reading tonight in the parlor, so my family would assume that I was hiding in my room, as usual. But Jack seized on this excuse, his face practically incandescent with relief.

“No problem. We should be done in an hour.” To his parents, he added, “We'll be working on the computer in my room,” and then moved toward the door.

“Door open,” his father called after us. I gritted my teeth with embarrassment and carefully avoided looking at Jack.

His mother called after us, “Well, let me know if you get hungry. We have lots of snacks, too. In fact, the pantry is full of chips and cookies. Or you could microwave some popcorn—”

I had already edged out the door. I glanced back and saw Jack put his hand on his mother's arm.

“It's okay, Mom,” he said softly.

She looked at him, and he nodded reassuringly. “We're fine.”

She sighed, and I could see her shoulders relax and her smile become a real smile, not the painfully bright and false one that she had been using. “Yes, I know. I do.”

He patted her arm again and came toward me. Over his shoulder I saw Mrs. Dawson's smile slip as she took another sip of wine.

The first thing I noticed about Jack's bedroom was all the maps. I felt a little shock of recognition as I saw them, papered onto the wall behind his desk, floor to ceiling. “Cool maps,” I said, walking to get a closer look. Colorado. Wyoming. Utah. Montana.

“Thanks.” He reached around me, his hand brushing my arm, to turn on his computer.

I jumped at his touch, and he jerked back; I tried to move out of his way and tripped over my feet; he put out a hand to catch me and knocked over the desk lamp.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said, flustered.

“No problem.” He leaned down to pick up the lamp just as I did the same thing.

“Ow!”

My hand went to my nose. Jack fell back into his chair.

“I think I'll get out of your way,” I said weakly.

“Good idea,” he muttered, rubbing his forehead. “Safety first.”

I moved across the room and stared with intense interest at a bookcase, trying to regain my composure. After a few seconds my attention was caught by a collection of figurines on one of the shelves. They all were characters from
Star Wars
: Darth Vader, Princess Leia, a few random storm troopers. I picked up Yoda.

“Those aren't mine.”

I turned to see Jack, looking embarrassed. His eyes met mine. “I mean, they're my brother's. Not that he's a geek or anything,” he added quickly.

“No, they're kind of cool. Really.” I carefully replaced Yoda and patted his head with one finger before sitting down next to Jack at the computer.

“Yeah.” He frowned at the bookshelf, then looked around and spotted the Luke Skywalker figure on the windowsill. “I don't know why Mom keeps moving my stuff,” he muttered as he picked it up and brought it over to put it with the others. “They're all vintage,” he said, nudging Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi back into line. “The complete collection.”

“Really. It's probably worth a lot of money.”

“I'd never sell it.” Jack's voice was abrupt.

“Oh, right. Sentimental value—”

His frown deepened. “I'm not sentimental!”

“No, of course not.” I had a terrible feeling that I had just accused him of being unmanly. A quick change of subject seemed to be in order. “So, who was that guy?”

“What guy?” He managed an expression of honest bewilderment that was almost completely convincing.

I chose to play along. “The guy outside,” I said patiently.

Complete and utter incomprehension. “What guy out—”

“The detective!” I snapped. “The detective who wanted to talk to you, the one your father ran off, the one who kept making mysterious hints, that guy!”

Unexpectedly he grinned. It lit up his whole face and made him look, for one brief instant, like the person in the newspaper photo.

“What's so funny?”

“I was waiting for you to stamp your foot in frustration.”

“You what?”

“I've never seen someone stamp her foot in real life, only in the movies,” he explained, still grinning. “I thought if I kept playing dumb, you might do it. You looked like you were on the verge.”

I grinned back at him. “You do an
excellent
job of playing dumb,” I said, using the breathless tone of an ardent fan. “I mean, I
so
can't believe you didn't win the Oscar last year!”

“No, no.” He waved his hand in airy dismissal, pretending to be embarrassed by the praise. “It's nothing, just an enormous gift that I happened to be born with. I can't take any credit, really.”

I laughed just as Jack's dad knocked on the door frame and stuck his head in. “You guys getting a lot of work done?” he asked mildly.

Jack sobered up immediately. “Oh, yeah.” He pushed the mouse and his Lucha Libre screen saver was replaced with a Web site about Lily Dale. “Just doing some Internet research.”

I could see his dad's eyes flick over the screen. His eyebrows raised in surprise, he asked sharply, “This is for a school project?”

“Yeah. History.” Jack's answers were getting shorter. I remembered his dad's opinion of mediums—con artists, criminals, frauds—and hurriedly stepped in.

“We have to do a report about local history,” I said. “We picked Lily Dale because it seemed, um, I don't know, interesting?” My voice trailed off in the face of his tight-lipped expression.

“Mmm.” He was trying to seem neutral, I think, but that little murmur managed to sound disgusted all the same.

Jack swiveled his chair around to click the site closed. His back to his father, he said, “We have a lot to do.”

“Sure thing.” His dad hesitated, but Jack didn't turn around. “Okay, then. I'll leave you to it.” His father rapped a couple of times on the door, as if tapping good-bye, and walked away.

Jack stared at his computer and clicked on one link after another, checking out Web sites on spirit photography, séances, slate writing, spirit trumpets. I watched the screens flash by and tried to think of the best way to reintroduce the topic of Detective Calhoun. Nothing clever or subtle or convincingly offhand came to mind, so finally I just asked him. “Jack. That detective. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but—”