All Fall Down Read online

  Sunny, sitting in a rocking chair that had been Christopher’s grandmother’s, looked up from nursing Bliss. She smiled, though it looked wary. “Hi.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “It’s your house.” The way she said it came out less like a sullen teenager and more like she was surprised Liesel would even ask such a thing. In her arms, Bliss gurgled and snuffled before latching on again.

  Liesel sat on the edge of the bed, too aware that she must look terrible and smell worse. “The kids seem to be having fun with Christopher.”

  “He’s been playing with them for a while,” Sunny said after a tiny hesitation. “We had dinner. I gave them baths. You were gone a long time.”

  “I went for a run, just a couple of hours. I like to run. Sunny…” It seemed they’d had the same conversation over and over; all at once Liesel didn’t have anything else to say.

  “My mother had cancer.”

  Liesel wasn’t sure she’d heard Sunny right. “What?”

  “I got a letter,” Sunny said in that placid, unaffected manner she was so very good at. “It came in the mail. From the coroner’s office. The results of her autopsy.”

  “Oh. God. Sunny, I’m sorry, your dad didn’t say anything to me—”

  “He didn’t see the letter,” Sunny interrupted. “I got the mail, and I found it, and it was addressed to me. It was mine. Was it wrong to read it? It had my name on it.”

  “No. It wasn’t wrong. I’m just sorry you had to find out that way…it must’ve been difficult.” Liesel struggled for something to say that didn’t sound lame and could only come up with, “I’m so sorry.”

  “The cancer didn’t kill her,” Sunny said. “The rainbow did. The drugs, I mean. She took them the way everyone else did, and that’s how she left. But they discovered a tumor in her brain that probably would have killed her in another few months.”

  Sunny paused to draw a hitching breath. “She had headaches.”

  Liesel thought she should put an arm around her, offer some comfort, but Sunny didn’t seem open to that, and Liesel wouldn’t have known how to, anyway.

  “She knew she had cancer, I think. She knew something was wrong. Looking back, I can see she must’ve known. But she didn’t say anything to me about it. I didn’t know.” Sunny cleared her throat. The baby had gone limp, slack mouth still suckling though she’d fallen away from the nipple. Sunny tucked her shirt closed.

  “I’m so sorry,” Liesel said again, thinking that if she knew she had a brain tumor that would kill her in a month or so, she might well have been persuaded to down a toxic cocktail of chemicals, too. For the first time, she felt a surge of sympathetic warmth toward her husband’s first wife. “At least she isn’t in any pain.”

  “I don’t know what she is,” Sunny said flatly. “Her vessel wasn’t pure. She didn’t die, she left. So, did she go through the gates? John Second said you could only go through the gates if your vessel was pure and you drank the rainbow, but Josiah said Papa was sick and died, just died. Not that he’d been taken in advance by special forces the way John Second told us. It’s why John Second made Josiah leave the family.”

  Again, Liesel wasn’t sure what to say. Her clothes were starting to stick to her, and her hair was stiff with sweat. She itched. “Are you worried your mother didn’t…go through the gates?”

  “How did she get cancer,” Sunny replied evenly like a statement, not a question, “if she lived a pure life, in superior bliss, the way Papa taught?”

  “I don’t know.” Simple answer, complicated question. “I think a lot of people wonder how they or someone they loved could get cancer.”

  Sunny shook her head slowly and looked down into her sleeping daughter’s face. “I don’t expect you to understand. It’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t.” Liesel stood, bone-weary, to look at the baby. She touched the soft hair.

  From downstairs came another trill of laughter that dug at her heart. She had the chance right here in front of her to have everything she’d wanted so much for such a long time. Not in the way she’d wanted it, but that wasn’t important.

  “Everything’s going to be okay, Sunshine,” Liesel said, the words familiar, repeated so often they’d become nonsensical.

  Sunny looked up at her with that implacable stare, so much like her father’s, unbroken even by the faintest hint of a smile. “I know.”

  STAYING

  Prologue Two

  Liesel looked out Sunny’s window to the backyard to check on the kids playing in the grass. April showers and higher-than-normal temperatures had made it grow in thick and green. Christopher would need to mow it soon. She smiled at their high-pitched squeals as they ran and jumped through the sprinkler. They’d be filthy and exhausted later, but for now they were having a blast.

  Farther down in the yard, close to the garden, she spotted Sunny walking with Bliss in her arms. She couldn’t hear what Sunny was singing, but if she squinted, Liesel could see Sunny’s lips moving a little bit and could imagine it was one of the tunes Sunny frequently hummed. “Simple Gifts,” maybe, or her new favorite, “The Sound of Silence.” Liesel had never been a huge fan of Simon & Garfunkel, but Christopher loved them. Like father, like daughter. As Liesel watched, Sunny settled on the curved stone bench next to the weeping angel statue that had been an anniversary gift from Christopher two years ago.

  Someday, instead of letting whatever wildflowers came up on their own overtake it every year, Liesel would really get out there and work in the garden she’d laid out when they moved into this house. Maybe put in a pond with some koi. She’d had fantasies of sitting down there on that bench or even in a pretty garden swing with a book, listening to the sound of running water with that angel there to keep her company. As it was, she hadn’t even been down there since last summer.

  Well, once she got this last load of laundry in the washer she could walk down there and sit with Sunny. Tickle Bliss’s fat chinny and make her giggle. They’d talk about what to make for dinner, maybe. Or maybe just sit and watch the kiddies play until Christopher got home and they could convince him to take them all to the Jigger Shop for burgers and ice cream.

  Sunny was careful about putting the dirty clothes in the hamper, but the kids hadn’t been so tidy in their excitement about putting on their bathing suits. Liesel bent to pick up a pair of Peace’s shorts and Happy’s T-shirt. The edge of a cardboard container caught her hand from just under the bed. She snagged it as she stood.

  Ritz Crackers, the box half-full. Two of the wax paper tubes were missing, with one full one left and another half-eaten with the wax paper carefully twisted shut. Frowning, she bent to look under the bed. A bag of chips, held shut with a plastic clip. Also an unopened container of soy milk.

  Huh.

  Straightening, she tossed the packages into the laundry basket and took it downstairs with her to put away. She loaded the washer and filled the soap dispenser, added some color-safe bleach and turned the machine on. The pounding of little feet on the deck outside caught her attention and she went to the French doors.

  “No running,” she warned. “You’ll slip and fall. And what happened to your bathing suit?”

  Peace, completely naked, giggled and danced, shaking her little tushy. Happy still wore his bathing trunks, thank goodness. He’d been a little easier to keep in clothes since it got warm outside, but not much. His sister, on the other hand, had been nearly impossible to keep clothed. Apparently, the Family of Superior Bliss had some weird ideas about modesty—clothes, particularly for women, had to be severely plain, but casual nudity was all right for both genders and all ages. It had taken a few embarrassed moments for Sunny to understand Liesel, and especially Christopher, required a knock on any closed door before entering, but as far as Peace was concerned, the second she c