The Truth About Mallory Bain (21 page)

“Insidious now.”

She looked over my shoulder to an innocuous place behind my chair. “We're getting a hard freeze this weekend.” She dropped her napkin beside her plate. “Your mother should cover her plants if she wants to spare them awhile longer.”

“I'll mention it. We're finished discussing the Fowlers?”

Ronnie took a long sip of water. “Very.”

“I'll revisit this, you know. You're not telling me what you're thinking, Ronnie Moore, and I'll keep at you until you do.”

“Watch yourself, Mallory. There are better people to befriend.” She nodded. “Did you ask Natalie about girl's night?”

“She can get theater tickets for a week from Saturday.”

“Which theater?” Ronnie's eyebrows raised.

“Not sure.” I waved our server over to our table for the check. “A night out is a night out.”

“You're not too selective.”

I shrugged.

“You and Chad must have gone out.”

“We had a few date nights.” I picked up the thin black folder from the table and we both declined boxes. “They dwindled. He made excuses for being out on Friday or Saturday evenings. I thought he wanted time with the guys. Later on, he groomed and dressed like a man needing to impress women.”

“Disgusting.”

“Not easily proven, either. I followed him a few times. No luck.”

Ronnie grinned at me. “A husband stalker. My, my.”

I chuckled. “Our next door neighbor in Bartlett is raising two teenagers alone. She noticed Chad's absences and wasn't shy about handing out advice.”

“Yet you never let emotions destroy you. That puts you above lunatics dwelling on homicidal ideations.”

“Not like he didn't push that button.”

“I know. But you possess strength of character. You could have murdered the man or her.”

“You're right. I am not a killer.” I shoved my plate away and folded my arms on the table. “My neighbor told me, scum that he is, my best revenge was to let the woman have him.”

“Soon she will know your pain. I'm sorry to end this. I need to get back to work.”

“I think I'll do some window shopping before the next bus.”

“Tell Natalie I'm good for that Saturday, regardless which play. We should plan on dinner before. We can make a night of it.”

We parted looking forward to our next visit. I appreciated Ronnie far more than she knew, and I started noticing how I often felt ill at ease around Dana when I never used to—or had I?

A
shrill whistling brought me to my feet in the middle of the night. I ran from my room into the hall, pounding on Caleb and Mom's doors before flying down the staircase. A blue gas flame glowed in the darkness of the kitchen. The tea kettle steamed like a freight train. The room reeked of molten plastic. A plastic ladle had melted against the kettle. I threw open the window and leaned against the apron front sink.

Mom appeared in the doorway. “What happened?”

“You left the kettle on!”

“I did no such thing. I've been sleeping for hours. You must have.”

“Don't fight.” Caleb's small frame stood in the doorway behind Mom. He rubbed his eyes.

Mom knelt beside him. “We're not fighting, little one. The noise startled us. Its barely three in the morning.” She went to the sink and started rinsing the kettle. “It's ruined. You were sleepwalking again.” She turned and glared at me. “You came down here in your sleep and turned on the stove.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Good thing the whistle woke you instead of the smoke detector. The house might have burned to the ground.”

“I doubt that.” I circled the kitchen, looking up at the ceiling. “The smoke alarm didn't sound.” The dishwasher display lights were flashing. We had lost power at some point. “Maybe the batteries are dead.”

“Can't be. Rick puts in new ones every spring.” She shut off the water and stared at me. “I hear you walking around at night.”

Caleb trotted across the room and stood beside me.

“He has dreams,” I said. “They wake me up. You left the ladle too close to the kettle.”

“It was cheap. What kind of dreams?”

I looked down at Caleb's face staring up at me, waiting to see if I'd honestly report what he truly believed. “He hears knocking at the window.”

Mom glared at both of us. “What's the matter with you two? There aren't any trees on that side of house.” She padded out of the kitchen and back upstairs to bed.

My first thought was that one of Judith's ghosts turned the fire on under the kettle, yet I worried as I secured all the door and window locks before returning to bed. What or who did the locks keep out? Perhaps the locks kept something sinister in. If true, the finest alarm system in the world wouldn't ever sound.

Caleb ran upstairs ahead of me and hopped into bed all by himself. At the top of the stairs, a few feet from my bedroom, a glimmering figure appeared beside the linen closet in the hallway. My breathing shallowed. The figure barred the path to my son. Even my slightest breath might force it into Caleb's room.

While watching the figure watch me, I whispered, “Who are you?”

The figure wavered. Its glow brightened.

“Daddy?”

The glow dimmed.

“Are you Ben?”

Please be Ben.

As the figure started to approach, it vanished in a swirling cloud and left the hallway cold as winter.

Dana texted me a few hours later with an invitation to a “soirée” at their home. She apologized for the one-day notice, explaining how Erik was confident I'd decline. He thought right, but I accepted anyway, only because I was too tired to dream up a convincing excuse.

Mom offered to spend the next evening with Caleb. Dana would send Emma back to Missy's for the weekend, which she said worked out well because Emma had the same bout of flu as Missy's girls.

I looked through my closet later in the day, but it failed to supply a suitable dress. “Wearing the same thing twice in front of the same people won't do,” I told Caleb, sitting in the middle of my bed with Edgar and his smaller dinosaurs. Not that he cared, I added, “A woman can't go wrong wearing basic black. We need a trip to the mall after supper.”

Soon after arriving at the Mall of America, I found a lovely dress with spaghetti straps, a satin waistband, and optional bolero-style jacket on sale. Caleb decided we should celebrate my huge find with sundaes. Since he'd been so patient with me, I agreed.

“I'll bet you're happy the weekend is here.”

He licked the whipped cream off the cherry and poked it in his mouth. “What am I doing when you go to Dana's?” He mopped the line of chocolate syrup running down the back of his hand.

I shoved a handful of napkins at him. “Grandma invited Chris and Tuck over for a campout in the family room.”

He stopped eating and stared at me.

“A campout is a bad idea?” I asked.

“They might get scared.”

“Grandma can leave a nightlight on.”

“I don't mean the dark. I mean the man might come back.”

“He scares you?”

“He did at first. Not anymore. I feel sorry for him.”

“Why?”

“I think he's sad and I don't like him being cold.”

Caleb's impression of the presence eased my concerns over the effect the encounters were having on him, if he was indeed seeing apparitions similar to the ones I'd been seeing and not having imaginative dreams. Perhaps the hauntings were real but not harmful.

“Your cousins might not see him, Caleb.”

“Yeah, but they're littler than me.”

“Only a year. He's not a real man like Uncle Rick or Carl.”

He shoveled spoonfuls of ice cream into his mouth.

“Eat slower. You don't believe you see and hear a real man, do you?”

He looked me in the eyes while he was thinking how to answer. He dropped his spoon and it clinked against the empty dish. “He's a different kinda real man, Mom.”

I sensed a gap widening between us, one that I was not able to bridge unless I spent every second of the day and night with him. He was becoming as obsessed with this elusive man as Judith, and I felt helpless to divert his attention.

We strolled store to store in silence afterward, until he grew tired of window shopping for nonessentials I couldn't yet afford. Back at home, we had the house to ourselves once again. He finished his worksheets in the dining room, and later on, I checked for mistakes. I periodically glanced at him through the archway into the living room, watched him crawl along the hearthstone, wheeling his cars back and forth, screeching and singing:

“Eight little monkeys jumping on a bed.

Eight little monkeys still not dead.

Mama called the doctor and the doctor said,

‘Make them monkeys stop jumping on the bed!'”

The changed words stumped me, yet I marveled at his creativity. The rhyme started blending into a series of varooms and squeals as he raced his cars back and forth, faster and faster. I moved into to the living room to help him collect his toys. As soon as he saw me, he jumped up with his arms full of little cars. He bobbed his head back and forth.

“Seven snot-nosed monkeys jumping on my bed.

One stuck his nose in and now he's dead.

Mama told the doctor what the tall man said,

‘Six snooty monkeys jumping on his bed!'”

I stopped arranging sofa pillows and watched until he finished. “Why do you change words?”

He snuggled his cheek against his raised his shoulder. “Because.”

“Because why?”

He shrugged.

“Caleb. Talk to me,” I said, my tone firm.

He looked upward to the top of the staircase. “So it's not boring.”

“Only changing the number of monkeys makes the rhyme boring?”

He bobbed his head.

“Did Gavin teach you to change the words?” I picked up the empty plastic container.

“Uh-uh.” He dropped his cars in. “I learned here.”

“Here at Grandma's?”

He nodded.

“From the TV.”

“No.”

“Uncle Rick and I recited that rhyme when we were kids but we never changed any words.”

Caleb gathered his dinosaurs into his arms and dropped them into the container. “It's not about monkeys.”

I dropped down on the rocking chair, picked up the store bag, and impulsively bit off the tags from my new dress. “Tell me what it's about, then.”

He started to leave the room, pushing his box of toys across the carpet. He stopped and shrugged. “I want ice cream.”

“No more sugar. A glass of milk and toast.”

“Jelly.”

“Peanut butter.”

Caleb shoved the box against the bottom step and trailed behind me into the kitchen. “May I sleep at Gavin's?”

“We'll see.”

I set the peanut butter jar on the counter. “Did Gavin's parents invite you or did he?”

“Gavin.”

“I need to discuss sleepovers with his parents.” I paused with my palms firmly planted on the counter. “Are you feeling okay?”

“It's about people.”

I twisted the lid off the peanut butter jar. “What's about people?”

“The monkey thing.”

I chuckled. “A monkey thing about people.” I slipped the slice of bread into the toaster. “The monkey rhyme.”

“Yep!”

“A monkey rhyme about people.”

“Yep.”

“If you say so. You aren't jumping on any beds here or at Gavin's.”

He nodded. His sparkling eyes took on a new rascally glint I'd never seen before.

Later on upstairs, while Caleb paged through a dinosaur book and I read my novel, the motorcycle rumbled down the street again, traveling slower than usual this time but it did not stop.

Caleb rolled onto his side to face me. “It sounds like my dad's bike.”

“You weren't even born.” I chortled. “You are right, buddy, it does sound like his bike did.”

I envisioned the man Pam and Caleb had met. He might become a friend, since Judith and Mom were respecting my wishes. Truth was, ghost or not, I wanted Ben with us in the worst way. I propped my pillows and leaned back with my book positioned in both hands. In a few pages less than a chapter, I clicked off the light and fell asleep.

Caleb slept better in my bed than his after Judith's demonstration. With him beside me, my dreams were less vivid, although I knew it was a matter of time before my nighttime visitor returned. Had I given credence to Judith's superstitions, I might have believed that together Caleb and I warded off the dead.

Caleb awakened me with his snoring. I repositioned him and rolled onto my side. Within minutes, I was dreaming disconnected dreams about motorcycles, polishing teeth, dinosaurs, and Halloween decorations at the mall. An assortment of friends and family from our party the other day comprised the featured cast. Each dream blended into another, and after a time dreaming, I would either move onto a new dream or resume one I dreamt earlier. Regardless the sequence, both the red motorcycle and Caleb took center stage.

At some time before dawn, as though summoned on cue, my bedroom door swung open. The air carried a soapy fresh scent. Seeming to see through transparent lids, I peered into the brilliant light for the figure of a man. I frantically searched left, right, up, and down. I attuned my ears to hear his garbled voice.

I moved onto my back, and as I rolled my head away from the lighted doorway, I saw him sitting at the edge of my bed, the alabaster figure of a man. I sensed a friendship existed between us even though his physical characteristics remained indistinct.

My limbs were paralyzed, preventing me from reaching out for my son. My throat throbbed from my voice clawing its way to my mouth, frantic to speak my child's name.