Second Glance: A Novel Read online

  Tuck glanced at Eli's holster, lying on its side on one of the examination tables, and then down at his Polaroid camera. Shrugging, he took a few photos.

  As they rainbowed up, Eli came inside again, hauling a wooden crate. "So?"

  "So it looks like a puddle. What did you expect?"

  Eli took the photograph out of Tuck's hand and stared at it, then placed it beside the print Tuck had just enlarged. "Is it just me, or do those puddles not match?"

  They didn't. The darkened spot of wet sawdust in the new Polaroid was nearly twice as small as the one in the black-and-white enhancement. Before Tuck could respond, however, Eli cracked open the wooden crate and grunted as he hoisted out a two-foot by one-foot block of ice. He carried this to the sawdust, tipped it so that it was vertical, and shoved it into the center of the puddle, creating a long, familiar drag mark in the sawdust. Then he pulled up a stool beside Tuck's, and took a folded New York Times crossword puzzle out of his back pocket.

  "What are you doing?" Tuck asked.

  "Four across."

  "No." He waved at the setup in the middle of the room. "Over there."

  Eli followed his gaze. "I'm waiting," he replied.

  Ethan was tying his sneakers when he heard the scream. He ran down the hall, to the room where Lucy and her mother were staying, and pushed open the door.

  She was sitting up on the cot, shaking like crazy. "Lucy?" Ethan said, creeping closer. "You okay?" He looked around the room. Her mother was nowhere to be found. Well, it was only midnight. Maybe she hadn't gone to bed yet. "Can you breathe?"

  She nodded, and hands relaxed their death grip on the blanket. "Did I wake you?"

  "Nah, I was getting up anyway." Ethan scuffed his sneaker on the carpet. "Where's your mom?"

  She looked around, as if just noticing that her mother wasn't there. "I don't know. Your mother tucked me in."

  Ethan grinned. "You see one mother, you've seen them all."

  She smiled, but just a little. Ethan tried to remember what his mom did for him when he had nightmares. "Milk," he announced. "You want me to get you some?"

  "Why would I want milk?"

  "I don't know. If you stick it in the microwave it's supposed to make you go back to sleep. That's what my mother says if I freak out when I'm sleeping."

  "I bet you never freak out."

  "Sure I do. Everyone has nightmares."

  "What are yours about?"

  "Getting stuck in the sun," Ethan said flatly. "How about yours?"

  "Ghosts," Lucy whispered.

  They stood in the still of the house for a moment, which suddenly seemed cavernous. All in all, Ethan knew, it felt better just then to be standing there with someone. "Well, I'm not scared of ghosts."

  "I'm not scared of the sun," Lucy answered.

  He should have told her more. Ross beat himself up mentally once again, certain that he was responsible for Meredith's disappearance. She'd been gone now for hours, not even putting a call in to make sure Lucy was all right. Maybe she just needed time to think.

  Maybe she didn't want to think at all.

  He smacked his head lightly against the trunk of the tree on which he was leaning. What he would have liked, now, was five minutes in the past. Five minutes to talk to Meredith Oliver and make her see that he understood what it was like to wake up and realize your life had turned out different from the one you once imagined you'd be living.

  Regret hung from the hem of everyone's lives, a rip cord reminder that what you want is not always what you get. Look at himself, outliving Aimee. Or Az, trying to find his daughter, only to have her wind up dead. Look at Shelby, with a child who was dying by degrees. Ethan, born into a body nobody deserves. At some time or another, everyone was failed by this world. Disappointment was the one thing humans had in common.

  Taken this way, Ross didn't feel quite so alone. Trapped in the whirlpool of what might have been, you might not be able to drag yourself out--but you could be saved by someone else who reached in.

  Maybe that was why he'd gone to find Meredith in Maryland.

  Heroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.

  When Ross lifted his face, he was not surprised to find rose petals drifting down from the night sky. He closed his eyes, smiling, but became distracted by the cry of a baby. Maybe it was a bobcat in the hills, or an animal mating. But it came again: thin, wild, more human. Walking into the clearing, he found Meredith crouched down on the ground.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked, and when she stood--her hands and nails dark with dirt--Ross realized that it was not Meredith at all.

  Who's calling me? I look up, and around, worried that I have already been found out. But there is no one, only my own suspicion, which seems broad and barrel-armed as these old oaks. I bend down and pull aside more tangles and thicket, looking. Where has he hidden her; where can she be?

  I heard a cry, I know I did. Once, the Klifa Club held a lecture with an African jungle zoologist, someone who had come to meet Spencer. The zoologist said that in nature, mothers know the sounds of their offspring. Put a clot of hippos in a wading pool, and a mama and baby will find each other. Stick a giraffe across a savannah and it will find its way home. The fetus hears a voice in the womb, and comes out able to pick its mother from a host of others.

  My hands are bleeding. I have searched beneath every stone, behind every tree. Then I hear her again, silently calling to me.

  This time all my senses narrow, and I find myself standing, turning, walking toward the icehouse. I push open the door, shuffle through the sawdust. And see her.

  Her eyelashes are as long as my pinky nail. Her cheeks are milky blue.

  Lily. Lily Delacour Pike.

  Even after I put her back inside her crate, I can feel the still weight of her in my arms. There will always be something missing.

  He will never listen to me; he will never understand. The only way to show him what he's done is to do the same to him. To take away what he wants most in this world.

  There's one block of ice that's thinner than the others. I can tip it upright, I can drag it out. I tie the knot around my neck first. Then I balance on this makeshift stepstool, and I fix the other end to the beam. Wait for me, I think, and I jump after my baby.

  It hurts more than I thought, the heaviness of my own life pulling me down along with gravity. My lungs reach the bursting point, the world begins to go black.

  But then she cries. And cries. Through the window of the icehouse, as I turn on this rope like a crystal ornament, I see her tiny fist wave back and forth. She has come back to me, when I am already gone.

  Lily, I scream in my head, and I try to claw at the rope, to pull it free from the beam. But I have done too good a job. Lily. I kick with my feet at the posts, at anything. I scratch but only reach my chest; my arms can't seem to make it any higher.

  Oh, God, I cannot lose her twice.

  She will hear my voice, even though I cannot speak aloud. She will find me across a savannah; she will swim to me in the deepest pool.

  I make my baby the promise my own father made to me, before he had a chance to know me: I will find you.

  As she disappeared before his eyes again, Ross realized he had been holding his breath. He let it out in a long, silent rush. Curtis Warburton would have said that what he'd witnessed was a residual haunting, a repetition of a significant event played over and over like a video loop. Curtis would have said that the spirit wasn't even there, just the energy that it had left behind. However, Ross, who had watched firsthand, knew this was not the case. This had been no imprint, no impression made in time. Lia's ghost had come back again, trying to find something.