Second Glance Read online

  Eli started to nod, to tell her that yes, he could not in his wildest imagination picture spending your life looking for something that seemed only to exist previously in your mind. But then he stared at her sea green eyes and the place where her chin came to too sharp a point, and he felt every inch of skin on his body tighten. “I don’t know what I think,” he managed.

  Heat rushed Shelby’s face, and she stood abruptly, muttering something that sounded like xerothermic as she struggled to raise a window that was stuck. “Here,” Eli said, and he went to help her. They stood side by side at the sash, their shoulders touching. Eli yanked the window up with too much force, and a cool draft fell like a guillotine between them.

  “Thank you.”

  Eli stared at her. “My pleasure.”

  Whatever else Eli was going to say—and at that moment he truly could not have formed words, much less the letters of his own name—was lost in a hail of footsteps bounding down the stairs. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone was asleep upstairs.”

  “Ethan wasn’t asleep,” Shelby said, as the boy came into the room. He was a small kid, skinny, wearing far too many damn clothes for this time of year. A hat shaded his eyes, but even with his face half-covered Eli could see how the boy’s skin was as milky as china. One hand was bandaged, and the other was blistered in spots, as if it had been plunged into boiling water. He had his mother’s skittish smile.

  “Ethan, you can go out,” Shelby ordered.

  “But it’s raining—”

  “Not anymore. Go.” She waited until the door closed and the throaty roll of skateboard wheels scraped the driveway. Then she turned to Eli and crossed her arms, a completely different woman from the one he’d seen moments ago. “That’s my son.”

  Eli watched her fingers bite into the skin of her own arms. Her posture was so rigid he thought she might snap in half.

  “You’re thinking there’s something wrong with him,” she accused.

  He wanted to run his hand down her spine. He wanted to hold her between his palms until she went soft again. “Actually,” Eli said, “I was thinking he looked like you.”

  The sound was as round as a nut, as tiny as a pebble, but it rang in Spencer Pike’s skull. No matter how many pillows he piled over his head, he could hear the cry of that baby. Spencer writhed, scratching at his ears until blood ran into the collar of his pajamas.

  “Mr. Pike! Oh, sweet Jesus. I need some help in here!” the nurse screamed into the intercom.

  It took two orderlies to pull Spencer’s arms down to his sides and secure them to the bed with straps, like they did with Joe Gigapoulopous, the delusional man two doors down from Spencer who tried to eat his own fingers every now and then. “The baby,” Spencer gasped, as the nurse dabbed at the deep furrows around his ears. “Get rid of the goddamned baby.”

  “There is no baby here. You must have been having a nightmare.”

  By now, tears were streaming down his face. That sound, it was splitting his head in two. Why couldn’t they hear it? “The baby,” he sobbed.

  The nurse injected him with a tranquilizer. “This will help.”

  But it wouldn’t. It would put him to sleep, where that baby would be waiting for him. He lay very still, staring at the ceiling, as the drug slid through his system. He felt his hands relax, and then his legs, and finally his jaw fell slack. “When will I die?” Spencer thought, but it turned out he had spoken aloud.

  The nurse stared at him, her brown eyes steady. Cissy had had brown eyes. “Soon,” she said gently.

  Spencer sighed. Her answer was more powerful than this sedative; it eased him like no medication ever could. Truth could do that to a man.

  Men, Meredith figured, were an accessory, like a belt or purse or shoes. You didn’t necessarily need one to complete your look. Granted, if you walked around barefoot you got a few odd stares every now and then, but the important parts of you were covered. And after a string of meeting men she really didn’t want, and wanting men she couldn’t seem to meet, the scientist in Meredith had simply said to cut her losses.

  She was driving home, now, at nearly 11 P.M. The commute from the office—forty-five minutes, without traffic—was the only time of her day when she let the gates free in her mind and allowed herself to reflect on anything but the task at hand. Tonight, by studying cells from four viable blastospheres belonging to a family carrying sickle-cell anemia, Meredith had avoided accompanying a colleague to a dinner honoring cutting-edge scientific companies. Martin was definitely her type—tall and cerebral, with the long fingers of a researcher. In her first year of working at Generra, Meredith’s crush on Martin was so severe that sometimes after speaking to him at the copy machine she’d have to hide in the bathroom until her cheeks stopped flaming. Her prayers were answered a year ago, or so she thought, when her boss sent her to a funding dinner with Martin, who drank enough champagne to float a horse and introduced both her and her breasts to the master of ceremonies.

  It was raining up and down the whole East Coast, or at least that was Meredith’s guess from the ache in her leg. Her left one—the one she’d been having set in an ER when she was told the news about Lucy’s existence—was as good a barometer as any meteorologist’s tool. As she got off at her exit, she drew her thoughts away from her nonexistent love life and focused instead on Lucy, who had been taken off the Risperdal but hadn’t shown any signs of improvement. If anything, her daughter had gotten more fanciful—speaking at the breakfast table to people who were not there, buckling the seat belt beside her around nothing at all. Meredith was an aficionado of scientific fact, but told herself that her daughter was genetically predisposed to fiction. She, who had made a living out of defining “normal,” had broadened the category so that it would include Lucy.

  She pulled into the driveway. The only light on in the house was in the parlor; everyone had already gone to sleep. Meredith got out of the car stiffly and put her weight on her good leg. For a moment she stopped breathing, struck by the sheer beauty of a night littered with stars. She spent so much time looking at the most minute elements of humanity that she sometimes forgot how simple the world could be.

  Meredith let herself in with her key and found Lucy on the stairs, fully dressed and staring straight ahead, a suitcase at her feet. “Luce?” she said, but her daughter didn’t respond.

  “She can’t hear you.”

  Ruby was descending the steps. Her long white hair was a cloud behind her; her hands clutched the banister for support. “She’s sleepwalking.”

  Sleepwalking? Lucy’s eyes were open. “Are you sure?” Meredith asked her grandmother. “Did you ever sleepwalk?”

  Ruby bent toward Lucy and helped her to her feet. “I used to know someone who did.”

  Lucy followed Ruby upstairs, docile as a lamb. Meredith went after them, and tripped over the forgotten suitcase. It fell open at her feet, spilling its contents. Inside were dozens of dolls—dolls that ate or cried or swam, dolls Lucy had not played with for a few years, dolls that stared up at Meredith with their glassy eyes like so many broken babies.

  There is a feeling that runs like a current through the heart when you pull up to the house that holds people you love and see a police cruiser sitting outside. Ross barely slammed his car into park before racing up the driveway and throwing open the door, shouting Shelby’s name.

  She stood up immediately. “Ross!” He looked at her and at Ethan, who’d come up from behind Ross, on his skateboard, and then he looked at the cop standing in the living room.

  Belatedly, he became aware of Shelby taking in his ruined clothes and wet hair. She must have called the police because she was worried about him—something his sister would definitely do. “It looks worse than it is,” Ross said, thinking that if she could see how scarred he was on the inside she’d be horrified. “But I’m fine. You can call off the search party.”

  At that, Eli Rochert stepped forward. “Actually,” he said, “I came here asking you to join it.”