The Pact Read online

  Chris wondered whether God had met Emily yet. He closed his eyes, imagining the long blond hair he'd wrapped around his hands like reins; the point of her chin and the soft blue hollow of her throat where he could touch his lips to her pulse. He remembered something he'd read that night: "A new heart also I will give you, and a new spirit will I put within you." He hoped, now, Emily had that.

  As he drifted off to sleep, still kneeling on the floor like a penitant, Chris heard God. He came on the sounds of footsteps, of key turns and disembodied whistles. And He murmured, stirring the fine hairs on the back of Chris's neck: "Forgive, and you shall be forgiven."

  GUS WAS AWAKENED BY a heavy object falling across her chest. Startled, she began to fight her way out, only to realize that it was Kate pinning her. "Get up, Mom," she said, her eyes shining, her smile so infectious that Gus momentarily forgot waking meant she'd have to get through another day.

  "What?" she asked groggily. "Did you miss the bus?"

  "There is no bus," Kate said. She sat up, cross-legged. "Come on downstairs." She poked under the covers, receiving a grunt from her father. "You too," she said, and ran from the room.

  Ten minutes later, Gus and James walked into the kitchen, dressed and bleary-eyed. "You want to start the coffee," Gus asked, "or should I?"

  "You can't start the coffee," Kate said, bouncing in front of them. She grabbed each of their hands and drew them toward the shoji screen that separated the kitchen from the living room. "Ta-da!" she trilled, stepped away to reveal a scraggly, potted eucalyptus tree, hastily decorated with a handful of glass balls and ornaments. "Merry Christmas!" she sang, and wrapped her arms around her mother's waist.

  Gus glanced at James over Kate's bowed head. "Sweetheart," she heard herself say. "Did you do all this?"

  Kate nodded shyly. "I know it's kind of dorky, the tree from the foyer and all, but I figured if I cut down something outside you'd be pretty bummed out."

  Gus had a fleeting image of Kate pinned beneath a fallen pine. "This is lovely," she said. "Really." The Christmas lights, small and winking, were on a timer. They faded in and out, reminding Gus of the ambulance parked outside the hospital when she was summoned for Chris.

  Kate walked into the living room and happily settled herself beneath the small tree. "I figured you guys weren't around enough, with everything that's been happening, to decorate." She held out a package to Gus, and another to James. "Here," she said. "Open them."

  Gus waited while James unwrapped a new DayTimer calendar in a faux alligator-skin cover. Then she tore away the wrapping paper from her own gift, a pair of jade earrings. Gus stared at Kate, still beaming, and wondered when her daughter had been to the mall. She wondered when her daughter had decided that at all costs, she was going to celebrate a normal Christmas.

  "Thanks, honey," Gus said, hugging Kate close. And she whispered into the shell of her ear, "For everything."

  Then Kate sat back down again, expectant. Gus fisted her hands in the pockets of her robe and glanced at James. How did you tell your fourteen-year-old you'd completely forgotten Christmas this year? "Your present," she announced extemporaneously, "isn't quite ready yet."

  The smile fell away from Kate's face in degrees.

  "It's ... being sized for you," Gus said.

  A wall went up between them, solid and unforgiving for all its transparency. "What is it?" Kate asked.

  Unwilling to lie any further, Gus turned to her husband, who only shrugged. "Kate," Gus pleaded, but her daughter was already on her feet and accusing.

  "You don't have anything for me at all, do you?" she said thickly. "You're lying." She flung her arm out toward the eucalyptus. "If I hadn't done this lame Christmas thing, you would have just moped around today like you always do."

  "Things are different this year, Kate. You know that with what's happened to Chris--"

  "I know that because of what happened to Chris, you don't even know I'm around!" She grabbed the earring box out of Gus's hands and threw it against the wall. "What do I have to do to make you see me?" she cried. "Kill someone?"

  Gus slapped Kate across the face.

  A heavy shock settled over the room, the only sound the faint hiss of the lights as they glowed and faded. Kate, palm pressed to her burning cheek, whirled and ran out of the room. Trembling, cradling her hand as if it did not belong to her, Gus turned to James. "Do something," she begged.

  He stared at her for a moment, then nodded. And walked out of the house.

  IT WAS ONE OF THOSE rare years when Christmas and Chanukah overlapped. The world was celebrating, which meant that Michael got the day off, and he knew exactly what he wanted to do.

  He had been sleeping on the couch for months now, so he did not know if Melanie had awakened yet. But he showered in the downstairs bathroom and made himself an English muffin to take in the truck. Then he drove to the cemetery to visit Emily.

  He parked some distance away, preferring the walk for the solitude and peace it offered. Snow crunched beneath his boots and the wind bit at the tips of his ears. At the cemetery gates, he paused to stare up at the wide, blue bowl of the sky.

  Emily's grave was over the top of the hill, hidden by the crest. Michael walked along, thinking about what he would say to her. He had no qualms about speaking to a grave; he talked all the time to things that conventionally were considered unable to understand--horses, cows, cats. He puffed up the last bit of the long path, to the point where he could first see the grave. There were flowers there, brittle stalks now, from the last time Michael had come. And ribbons trailing, and bits of paper bleeding into the snow. And Melanie, sitting on her bottom on the frozen ground, unwrapping gifts.

  "Oh, look at this," she said, when he was close enough to hear. "You're going to love it." And she draped a sapphire pendant over the dead necks of the roses Michael had left behind.

  Michael glanced from the glittering jewelry to the other presents, arrayed like offerings on either side of the marker. A single-cup coffee maker, a novel, several tubes of oil paint and the expensive brushes Emily favored.

  "Melanie," he said sharply. "What are you doing?"

  She turned slowly, dreamily. "Oh," Melanie said. "Hi."

  Michael felt his jaw clench. "Did you bring these things?"

  "Of course," Melanie said, as if he were the crazy one. "Who else?"

  "Who ... who are they for?"

  She stared at him, then raised her brows. "Why, Emily," she said.

  Michael knelt down beside her. "Mel," he said softly, "Emily is dead."

  His wife's eyes filled immediately with tears. "I know," she said thickly. "But you see--"

  "I don't see."

  "It's just that it's her first Chanukah away from home," Melanie said. "And I wanted--I wanted--"

  Michael pulled her into his arms before he had to watch the tears streak down her face. "I know what you wanted," he said, "I want it too." He buried his face in her hair and closed his eyes. "Will you come with me?" He felt her nod against him, her breath warm in his collar. They walked down the path of the cemetery, leaving behind the paints and the brushes, the coffee maker and the sapphires, just in case.

  THE MANCHESTER AIRPORT WAS mobbed on Christmas Day, full of people carrying fruitcake tins and shopping bags ripping at the seams with their presents. Beside Jordan in the waiting lounge, Thomas bounced in his seat. He frowned as his son knocked the small folder with his tickets off his lap for the thousandth time. "You're sure you remember how to make a connection."

  "Yeah," Thomas said. "If the stewardess doesn't take me, I ask someone else at the gate."

  "You don't go yourself," Jordan reiterated.

  "Not in New York City," they said simultaneously.

  Thomas's feet danced impatiently, kicking at the metal rungs of the brace of seats. "Cut that out," Jordan said. "Everyone in this row can feel it."

  "Dad," Thomas asked, "do you think they have snow in Paris?"

  "No," Jordan said. "So you'd better come b