Second Glance: A Novel Read online

  He thought of his sister, and folded his cards.

  "I'm hungry," Ethan said. He slipped away in shadow, fumbling around and causing a loud crash.

  "You all right?" Ross swung the beam of the flashlight toward the pack of junk food they'd brought, but that entire corner of the room was empty.

  Ethan spoke from behind him. "I'm here," he said, his voice shaking. "That, uh, that wasn't me."

  He plastered himself up against his uncle's back. "Let's just take a look," Ross murmured. Everything was quiet, now, and there was no evidence that anything had fallen. "It could have been a brick outside, or a rat." He slipped an arm around Ethan's shoulders. "It could have been anything, Ethan."

  "Right."

  "Why don't we sit down so that I can whip your butt this time around?"

  Ethan relaxed a little. "As if," he said, dredging up the courage to peel himself away and take a seat again.

  Ross dealt the cards, but his eyes kept scanning the dark. Nothing unusual, nothing that captured his attention. Except the lens cap of the video camera, hanging down on a black cord from the side of the apparatus, which had begun to swing back and forth.

  Although there was no breeze in the room.

  From outside came the sound of a hollow thud--a tree falling, or a person landing on all fours. "Did you hear that?" Ethan whispered shakily.

  "Yeah." Ross walked toward the broken window and peered out into the woods that edged the back of the property. A flash of white caught his eye--the tail of a deer, a shooting star, the eyes of a barn owl.

  There was a rustle of leaves, and two distinct footfalls. A hitched wail, like the cry of an infant.

  "We may just take a walk down there," Ross murmured.

  Ethan shook his head hard. "No way. I'm staying here."

  "It's probably just a raccoon."

  "And what if it's not?"

  Ross smiled slowly. "What if," he said.

  Shelby was not in the habit of allowing her son to do dangerous things; it was hazard enough for him to live in this world. But Ethan had a nine-year-old's sense of adventure and wanderlust. Believing he was part of Ross's mission--well, maybe it would be good for both of them.

  She walked into his room, picking up his Game Boy from the floor, as well as a few cartridges that had fallen beneath the bed. A Red Sox game schedule was on the wall, along with the textbooks Shelby used to home-school Ethan, and a haiku he'd written last year as part of a unit on Japan.

  Deep in the darkness

  I wake to make the night day.

  How does the sun feel?

  Shelby sank onto his bed. She wondered if Ross was keeping Ethan safe. She wondered if Ethan missed her, just a little.

  She stared uneasily at the computer. The last time she'd decided to check up on her son, she'd hacked into his e-mail account to discover that he'd acquired six pen pals--all kids around his own age, all from different parts of the world. At first, Shelby had found this encouraging. For Ethan to have found a way to make a connection to other children seemed healthy, if not downright inspiring. But then Shelby had started to read some of the mail, and realized that Ethan had not represented himself quite accurately. To Sonya in Denmark, he was a sixth-grade preppie on the math squad. To Tony in Indianapolis, he was a star batter for a little-league farm team. To Marco in Colorado, he was an avid mountain climber who trekked every weekend with his dad.

  In none of these letters did he mention his XP condition. In none of these letters did he seem any less than an average, athletic, normal American boy from a happy two-parent family.

  In short, Ethan had turned himself into everything he was not.

  With a sigh Shelby left Ethan's room and started down the hall. Passing Ross's door, she hesitated. She was eight years older than Ross; it seemed she had been taking care of him all her life--from diapering him as an infant to sitting by his side after his suicide attempt to worrying for his safety when he did not call her for months. Mothering had always come easily to her; when their parents had died years ago, she simply stepped into their shoes and took over.

  She believed that unadulterated devotion had its share of protective power, as if love were a steel girder the Fates could not snip through. She also believed that the moment you relaxed your guard, the moment you were anything less than ferocious in your keeping, that was the moment it all could be snatched away.

  Which brought her right back to wondering when Ross would bring Ethan home.

  She pushed open the door and began to clean in there, too. She made Ross's bed. She lined up his toothbrush and his hairbrush on the dresser. She put his shampoo, nail clippers, and toothpaste into his toiletry kit and zipped it shut.

  The chair was piled high with her brother's rumpled clothes. With a sigh she lifted one soft shirt and creased it neatly, set it on the edge of the bed. She balled together a pair of socks. She stacked boxers and tees and finally shook out a spare pair of jeans. As she began to fold them with military precision, something fell from the pocket. Shelby leaned down to pick up what had dropped: three pennies, dated 1932, which she set on the dresser where Ross would be sure to see them.

  Ross turned and waved up at Ethan in the window, then cautiously approached the spot in the woods where he'd last seen the flash of white. He had left Ethan with the Maglite, which meant Ross fully expected to plunge headfirst over an exposed root. Although he couldn't see more than a foot in front of him, he could still hear the sounds of someone--or something--scrabbling around.

  Ross shivered; it was colder out here than he'd expected it to be, and he wished he'd brought his sweatshirt. He could suddenly smell wild roses, as if there were a field of them underfoot, and he knew from Curtis that this, too, was a way a ghost might make its presence known. Show yourself, he thought.

  But any hopes he had of encountering his first apparition died as he came upon a young woman, crouching as she tried to dig into the frozen earth.

  She was wearing a flowered dress, and her pale hair was wild around her face. The white flash Ross had seen was a lace collar. She was feverishly busy, intent on her task. And she was as real as the ground beneath his feet.

  Clearly, she had not heard him approach, or she would have realized she'd been caught in the act of . . . well, whatever she'd been doing. Ross found himself tongue-tied--not only wasn't she the ghost he'd been hoping for, but she was young, and pretty, and uninvited. He seized on that, if only to have something to say. "What are you doing here?"

  She turned slowly, blinking, as if surprised to find herself in the middle of the forest. "I . . . I don't know." Glancing down at her hands, dirt caught beneath the nails, she frowned.

  "Did van Vleet send you?"

  "I don't know Van Fleet . . ."

  "Vleet." Ross frowned. Maybe it was only an unlikely coincidence that the night he began his investigation, an insomniac would come wandering onto the property. There were other homes in the vicinity, and stranger things had happened. He found himself wishing that he hadn't started this conversation on the defensive. He found himself wishing she'd glance up at him again. "What are you looking for?" he asked, nodding toward the hole she'd been digging.

  The woman blushed, which lit her from the inside. When she shook her head, he could smell that floral perfume again. "I have no idea. The last time I sleepwalked, I wound up in a neighbor's hayloft."

  "With or without the neighbor?" Ross heard himself ask, and the woman looked so mortified that he immediately wished he could call back the words. He dug his hands into his pockets instead, trying to make amends. "I'm Ross Wakeman," he said.

  She looked up, still discomfited. "I have to go."

  "No, see, where I come from, the appropriate response is: Hello, I'm Susan. Or: Hey, Hannah's the name. Or: Howdy, I'm Madonna."

  "Madonna?"

  Ross grinned. "Whatever."

  A tiny smile played at the corners of her mouth. "I'm Lia," she said.

  "Just Lia?"

  She hesitated. "Bea