touch (6 page)

“You need to sit down Clavin.”  Hoping I wasn’t making a
huge mistake, I left the porch, grabbed the note and then his arm to help him sit
on the bottom step.  He looked like he was about to throw up.

Skimming the page, I sat heavily next to Clavin.

Go to her.  Apologize.  Without her forgiveness, your
other leg is next.

I looked up and met his watery gaze over the paper.

He cleared his throat before speaking.  “At the hospital,
they told me I walked right in front of the car,” he said softly.  “They told
me that I was lucky the car wasn’t going fast.  Brian was there.  He said he
called my name as soon as I walked out the doors, but I didn’t even look at
him.  I don’t remember any of it.”  He looked down at his hands and I saw a
tear fall onto his sleeve.  “At school, the rumor is that you can see the
future.”  I flinched a little hearing it for myself.  “Do you know what’s going
on?”

My stomach flipped with relief.  For a moment, I’d thought
he would accuse me of controlling the thing, or maybe even him, and causing his
accident.

“I wish I did know,” I whispered looking toward the trees to
give him a minute to wipe his face.  Born knowing I was different, and having a
weird family history, made it marginally easier to deal with this new
information.  Poor Clavin had to be going crazy with fear.  “I forgive you
Clavin.  Whether an accident or a malicious plan, I forgive you.”

He started crying in earnest, relief in his expression.  I
hoped that speaking the words would spare him any further involvement.  He
nodded and then awkwardly pulled himself to his feet.  Without saying anything
further, he limped back to his car.

I didn’t ask him if he was okay to drive, or if he wanted to
stay.  Forgiving him didn’t mean I liked him.  I watched him until he pulled
back onto the road relieved Gran hadn’t heard him or come out.

Looking down at the paper, I got up and went back to my
sandwich.  The turkey and cheese didn’t appeal to me anymore, but I still
munched on it absently while staring at the words on the paper.

When it used Mr. Jameson, it wanted to know who hurt me and
when it found out, hurt them back.  Was that protective or possessive?  I
needed to figure out what the thing was and what it wanted.  Popping the last
bite in my mouth, I stood and tucked the folded paper in my pocket.

Mom and Aunt Grace returned just a few minutes later with
their friend arriving not long after.  We loaded as much as we could on the
trailer and more into our car since they would follow him to the new place.

I waved as they left.  Looking at the piles that remained, I
estimated needing another two trips with the truck.  They would make it back
just before dark.  The house would be empty of everything but cleaning
supplies, sleeping bags, a few blankets and Aunt Danielle’s chair.  The chair
always went last.  That meant a night in an empty house.  The prospect
unsettled me knowing that thing waited out there in the dark.

Gran and I cleaned between loads.  By the time we finished
stacking the final load on the trailer, every muscle ached.  I’d overused my
legs in the last few days and they let me know, loud and clear, that they
wouldn’t put up with anything tomorrow, which meant finishing the bathroom
today.

I imagined kneeling on the floor to scrub around the toilet
would probably send them into a state of mutiny.  I could picture my legs
detaching themselves in a cartoonish way and walking off without me.  Smiling
at the possibility, I went back to work knowing I couldn’t ask Gran to kneel on
the tile.

A while later my mom spoke from behind me.  “Tess, honey,
you look exhausted.  I think you should get ready for bed now.”

I never even heard them return.  Looking up from the dustpan
I held, I nodded just finished with sweeping the corner of every vacant room. 
Without furnishings, the house echoed loudly and chilly drafts drifted along
the floor.  I wouldn’t notice anything once they knocked me out, but wondered
about the rest.

My idea of getting ready for bed consisted of collapsing on
my blanket.  Exhausted, but not tired, I listened to them move around closing
up the house for the night.  Every movement echoed in the empty space.  The
lights clicked off leaving only the light of the candle burning near Aunt
Danielle.  I blinked my eyes slowly, the flickering light playing tricks with
me.  For a second, I saw the outline of the chair handle through her hand.

Everyone started gathering around me.  Aunt Danielle moved
with the rest.  The words filled the space.  Comforting.  My eyes drifted shut
before the first touch.

*    *    *    *

The next day, my legs stayed attached even though they
hurt.  By nine, we all piled in the car.  I sat in front with mom while Aunt
Grace, Aunt Danielle and Gran rode in the back.  Everything we’d kept with us,
including Aunt Danielle’s chair, fit into the twine-tied trunk.  None of us had
any attachment to the house.  We hadn’t been there long enough.  But I still
looked back as we pulled away.  Something told me, this time, moving wouldn’t
be enough.

The updated ranch with paved driveway and garage located in
a quiet neighborhood didn’t fit the norm for us.  The light grey siding and
professional landscaping looked established.  But the dark grey shutters on the
window were new.  I looked at my mom with puzzled surprise.

“My boss,” she said by way of explanation.  “When I told him
why I needed a few days off… what happened at school… he offered this place.  I
couldn’t say no.  The rent is reasonable and it’s still close enough to work,
but a different school.”

“The shutters?”

“A special request that he didn’t mind.  I said it was a
religious thing.  Plus, being in town can be an advantage.  You can walk places
easily and not have to spend so much time on the bus.”

Made sense to me.

Aunt Grace took me on a tour of the house while the rest
helped Aunt Danielle in.  No old plank floors in this house.  Tiles covered the
kitchen floor while carpet swathed the living room.  Light welcoming colors
coated the walls.

Even in an obvious state of disarray, with boxes everywhere,
the place felt homey.  The bedrooms, three of them, lay off a main hallway to
the left of the kitchen.  Three bedrooms meant that mom and Grace would share,
as would Gran and Danielle.  They always made sure I had a room to myself.  The
master suite, which mom and Grace would claim, had its own bathroom.  Gran,
Aunt Danielle, and I would share the one in the hall.  It had more bathrooms
than the prior place, but fewer bedrooms.

Wasting no time, we worked together to unpack as much as we
could, setting empty boxes by the curb, before sunset.

Mom and I debated on whether I should go back to school
right away.  Given the time, it would only amount to a half day, but my face still
looked awful.  I emphasized I had enough going against me that I didn’t need to
add a bad first impression to the list.  She grudgingly agreed, not liking
leaving me home with just Gran, but I figured it might just be safer than
school.

We used the weekend to finish settling in.  By the third day
in the new house, everything went back to business as usual except for school. 
Though I appreciated the decreased swelling around my eye, the coloring
remained so vivid in a small area that concealer did nothing to hide it.  The
edges of the bruised area progressively faded to a noxious yellow.

I used my day with Gran to study Belinda’s book.  It worried
me that this thing appeared to have taken such an interest in me, and I hoped I
might find a clue somewhere in the worn pages.

On the first page, scrawled in shaky penmanship Belinda
wrote the date August 17 1798.  For a well-used book, over two hundred years
old, it held together remarkably well.  It showed signs of repair, none of it
professional.  Imagine if someone outside the family read it.  Life for us was
hard enough without inviting trouble.

The familiar words didn’t tell me much so I started studying
the book as a whole.  The penmanship varied in several areas of the book, none
of it dated as the original pages.  Meaning Belinda’s descendants had added to
it.

In the family tree, no one noted dates of births or deaths,
just a list of feminine names and connecting lines.  No last names, not even
Belinda’s.  It made doing research on the internet very difficult.  Everyone
moving around often didn’t help either.

It never said ‘don’t write a last name’, or ‘don’t enter any
dates,’ so why didn’t we put them in there?  My thoughts went back to the
possibility of someone reading it.  Without dates or last names, who would take
it seriously?  Who would be able to glean any information from it to use to
track down any of us?

Studying the tree, I noticed a pattern.  I knew we only bore
daughters, but not all daughters branched out.

It appeared that only one daughter out of each generation
went on to have children.  If Aunt Danielle had a baby, that child’s name had
never been entered.  I knew from talking to Aunt Grace that she’d purposely
chosen a match where there wouldn’t be children.  Is that what had been
happening for two hundred years?  I counted generations.  I was the
fourteenth.  I cringed thinking how young some of the women had to have been
when they gave birth.

“If you keep frowning at that book, it’ll burst into
flames,” Gran teased walking into the living room where I lay dangling a leg
over the arm of the couch.

“I can’t believe there’s so little information to go by.  If
it weren’t for the chant and me sleeping until sunup every day, I’d think this
whole thing a fake.”

Gran nodded and made an agreeing noise before adding, “You
should go for a walk.  It’s not bad outside and the fresh air will clear your
head.”

“Our ideas of cold are very different,” I mumbled as I went
to bundle up.

Armed with a button-up grey woolen coat, thick cream-colored
mittens, and a cute knit earflap hat with a tassel, I endured the cold to walk
around the block.  The bright sun fought to warm my face despite the chill. 
Gran, as usual, was right.

Breathing in deeply, and coughing out slightly, I let go of
Belinda’s puzzle as I walked toward the downtown area.  On our way through
town, I’d noticed a little coffee shop I really wanted to check out.

Set in the lower half of a narrow brick two-story building,
the door and two picture windows took up the front of the shop.  The right
window sported a white, painted outline of an old-fashioned coffee cup complete
with wisps of steam.  Above the cup, the words ‘
Coffee Shop
’ clearly
identified the type of establishment within.

A handwritten sign hung taped to the inside of the window. 
In black marker, it stated ‘weekend help needed.’

Normally, I wouldn’t pay attention to it, but the hours
caught my eye, seven thirty until one.

A bell above the door jingled as I let myself in.  Coffee
scented heat enveloped me.  Pulling off my hat and mittens, I closed my eyes in
bliss.  The taste didn’t do much for me without a lot of cream and sugar, but
the smell… I loved the smell of it.

Looking around, I counted seven cramped glass topped
tables.  The space felt cozy and welcomed peopled to sit and read a paper while
they drank.  The top half of the interior walls were brick like the outside,
while taupe paneling capped with a chair rail covered the bottom half.  Someone
had managed to hang a few pictures and decorations in the mortar.

An ‘L’ shaped counter quartered off the back of the room
near the bathrooms.  A register sat on the longer stretch of counter along with
a variety of coffee making equipment partially hidden by a high ledge.  The
same ledge hid what the smaller counter held.  Along the wall behind the
counters, a cold storage and food prep unit crowded into the already tiny
space.

At the sound of the bell, a middle-aged woman with a fluff
of orange hair haloing her head stepped away from the food prep unit and leaned
on the high ledge of the coffee counter.  She wore a printed tee shirt tucked
into jeans.

“You can order up here and sit anywhere you like,” she said
with a friendly smile.

I ordered, thankful for the change in my pocket, and while I
watched her make my drink, asked about the sign.  She explained she just needed
help during the weekend, someone to help take orders at the counter and deliver
them to the tables.  On the weekends, she served breakfast sandwiches.  While
delicious, she assured me, they slowed her down.

“I have to be honest.  The pay will suck.  It’d be
waitressing wages because of the tables and tips.  I’ve had a few kids try it,
but they usually leave for something that pays minimum wage.”  She handed me
the application.  “Bring it back if you’re interested.”

I smiled my thanks, taking the sheet and my coffee.

“I’m Mona by the way,” she said introducing herself.

I offered my hand.  “Tessa.”

“I have to ask… what happened to your eye?”

“I’m probably one of the few people that can honestly say I
ran into a door.”

“Clumsy?” she asked her gaze flicking to the application.

I laughed.  “Not usually,” I assured her.  Hiring a clumsy
person in a coffee shop wouldn’t do much for the already slow business.  “If I
can borrow a pen, I’ll fill this out now.”

Thankfully, the simple application didn’t ask for any prior
employment references.  When I handed it back to her along with my empty cup,
she looked over the application.

“First job?”

“Yeah.  I don’t own a car,” I admitted, “and you’re close
for walking.”

She nodded while reading.  “This looks good.  If you’re up
for it, let’s give it a try this Saturday.  Be here by seven thirty.  Wear
comfortable shoes, jeans and a tee shirt.  Nothing freaky.  We’ll see how that
goes.”