Destruction: The December People, Book One (24 page)

avid watched Amanda stare at her water glass with an odd urgency. She could have been watching Emmy’s surgery on the surface of the water.
Could she actually do that?
No. She would have let him watch, too.

David didn’t know what had woken him, at first. He turned over and listened, trying to figure out if the sound had come from a dream or not. Then he heard his oldest son’s voice. One word, dripping with more fear and alarm than a bomb warning: “Emmy.”

The fear in this son’s voice infected David. He stumbled into the dark hallway and found the source.

His sons knelt over something at the bottom of the stairs. Halfway down the stairs, he saw her. Emmy—unconscious, her arm twisted under her at the wrong angle. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. David made it down the stairs with the urgency reserved for a parent making their way to their hurt child and toppled his sons like bowling pins as he tried to get between them.

Then it all happened fast. They waited in the ER again. For Emmy, again. Wondering why they had freaked out so much about a little cut. This time she had a broken arm. Broken ribs. Dislocated knee. Internal bleeding. Head injury. Critical condition.

Jess had gone to the house to keep an eye on the other kids, but Jude and Patrick refused to leave the hospital. They hadn’t said much. Except for one conversation: “No, I didn’t push her. How can you even ask me that?”… “Then how did she fall?”… “She jumped.”… “Why?”… No answer… “
Why?”
… “Magic.”

Magic.

David guessed Amanda had no space left in her for anger. Worry filled her to capacity. Once Emmy got better… if she got better… no, she
would
get better… then there would be hell to pay.

The surgeon estimated an hour and a half. He took three hours. This was routine for him. Another night putting someone back together. Did he have any idea what it did to the people in the waiting room when he took twice as long as expected?

Then, finally, he came out to give the prognosis. “She’s stable… She’ll be admitted into intensive care for monitoring… Don’t worry… She’ll be fine… No spinal issues… Should recover… She’s a tough little girl, that one.”

David took the boys home the next day. Amanda stayed. They decided someone would stay with Emmy all the time. That evening, David returned to relieve Amanda. He would stay the night in Emmy’s room. They had moved her out of intensive care, which seemed encouraging and meant a much more comfortable room and fewer visits from the nurses.

David took one of the deepest breaths of his life when he saw Emmy’s blue eyes wide open. He hadn’t breathed right since she fell.

“I’m not sure I’m ready to go,” Amanda said.

“I want to be with her too,” David said. “And someone has to watch the kids at home.”

Amanda hovered by Emmy’s bed like a bodyguard, although he couldn’t imagine what she guarded her against now. The damage was done.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Emmy said in a scratchy voice. “Go home. You’re a mess.”

Amanda kissed Emmy and gushed enough
I love you
s for several weeks’ worth of life outside of a hospital room. Amanda nodded to David with the intimacy of a shift change as she gathered her things. David stood in her way and wrapped her into a hug before she had time to protest. He laid his hand on her head and held her to him.

“Are the boys okay?” she asked.

“It depends on what you mean by ‘okay,’” David said. “But… no… I mean, yes, they’re fine. Just worried about you,” he said to Emmy.

“It’s not his fault,” Emmy said.

“Do you have everything you need?” Amanda asked.

“I’m fine. Go home,” David said.

She kissed Emmy one more time, then left.

David sat in the chair Amanda had vacated. Casts and bandages held his daughter together, and she had an ugly purple bruise on the side of her face. She hated to be still. He couldn’t imagine Emmy bedridden. This would be hell for her.

He took her hand, and she didn’t pull it away this time. Too tired, perhaps.

“Mom told me a little bit about what happened,” he said. “Was she angry with you when you told her?”

“She tried not to be, but I know she is,” Emmy said. “Are you mad at me?”

“I’ve been too scared to be mad,” he said. “For what it’s worth, thank you for trying to do good magic.”

Emmy smiled stiffly.

“I really thought I could do it. And if I couldn’t, I just thought that
nothing
would happen.”

“What did happen?”

“It’s fuzzy. Mom asked me what was going through my mind, and there wasn’t really anything. I just felt so sad, and I wanted to do anything to stop the feeling. It was intense. I never want to feel like that again.”

“I’m sure you won’t.”

“I don’t know how the spell went wrong. It’s supposed to work by releasing the bad feelings from the person. Samantha thinks maybe I left myself too vulnerable to Jude’s depression, so it came off him and right into me. Does that mean Jude feels like that all the time?” Emmy asked.

“I hope not,” David whispered.

“I asked him,” Emmy said. “He said no. He said he wasn’t suicidal, but I don’t know if he would tell me the truth. But I guess if he did feel like that all the time, he would already have killed himself. It didn’t feel like a choice to me. I didn’t have to think about whether or not I wanted to die. It was like a reflex. Samantha said maybe it didn’t work because I’m a dark witch. What does that mean? Does that mean I can’t do good magic?”

“No, of course not.”

“Are you just saying that, or do you know? Because that’s not what Mom says.”

“I hope she’s wrong,” David said.

“Me, too.”

David barely slept that night, and neither could Emmy. How could anyone sleep in a hospital room when a nurse came in every hour to prod and poke and question? In this case, prod and poke his little girl. Amanda came back around seven in the morning, much earlier than she had planned. She said she couldn’t relax at home. David ate breakfast with Amanda in the hospital cafeteria, then he went home.

Amanda had pulled all the Christmas decorations out of the attic, either by her own hands or by the art of delegation. But, David guessed in this case, she had done it herself to busy her hands. Strings of lights lay in single rows on the living room floor where she had detangled them. The stockings sat on top of the mantel, but she hadn’t hung them yet. He imagined her standing there with the three stockings. Only three. He could see her starting to hang them and then realizing… panicking… not knowing whether or not she should buy two more.

They had decided not to tell the kids about their downswing in fortunes until after Christmas and would try to rein in their Christmas spending in subtle ways, such as putting up the Christmas lights themselves instead of hiring help.

David saw Evangeline sitting on the steps of the back porch. She wore the jacket he had bought her, huddled over her notepad. When he opened the patio door, she pressed her notepad against her chest so he couldn’t see it.

“Is she okay?” Evangeline asked.

“She’ll be okay,” David said.

“We didn’t teach her that,” Evangeline said.

“I know.”

“I’m glad she’s okay,” Evangeline said. “She looked so… broken… when I saw her on the floor.”

“You don’t want me to see what you’re drawing?”

She squirmed and leaned over the pad.

“You don’t have to show me if you don’t want to.”

“It’s for therapy.”

“That was smart of her to ask you to draw. I know you’re good at it.”

“Okay… here.”

She handed him her notepad. David’s breath caught in his throat. He saw a sketch of Crystal, as detailed and realistic as if she had handed him a photo. More so. Evangeline had captured a certain glow about her in the shading of her skin. The pride in her eyes. Evangeline drew her in a sleek, black evening gown. Instead of the angel wings tattoo on her back, she had two large, very real, black wings spread out behind her.

“It’s my mom,” she said unnecessarily.

“I know. I recognized the wings.” His voice cracked.

“You’re crying.”

“I’m just tired.”

“You did love her.”

“I told you I did.”

“Just not enough, I guess.”

David bit his lip and tried to keep himself together. He knew he couldn’t handle this right now, but as a parent, he had no choice. He sat down next to her and immediately wanted to lie on the porch and fall asleep.

“I tried to find you,” he said. “You weren’t in any records or in any computers. I tried really hard.”

“If you had used magic, you would have found us,” she said.

David had no response to that.

“I asked her about you,” Evangeline said. “All the time.”

“You did?”

“Of course. You’re my father.”

“Did she say why she hid from me?”

“She said she was destroying you.”

“She wasn’t.”

“Maybe your marriage, then. She told me you needed to be with your wife because she is your talisman.”

“Talisman? I thought those were like your rock and Xavier’s cross.”

“Those aren’t the real ones. Just objects. My mom was really into to object talismans. She created hundreds of them. Rocks. Jewelry. Trinkets. All sorts of things. Different ones for different purposes.”

Evangeline pulled her magic rock out of her jacket pocket and laid it on the porch. “This one is you.”

“What do you mean?”

“She told me to think about you when I held it. And if I did it enough times, my thoughts would stick to it, and it would really be you and your protection.”

David looked at the indentation in the rock.

“Did I turn out to be anything like what you pictured?”

“Not really.” She smiled. “In some ways, I guess. But I always thought you would be a wizard. A real one. A really good one.”

“I’m sorry I’m not.”

She shrugged. “It’s okay. I kept my object talisman for my mom. She wouldn’t want me to go anywhere without it, but it’s just a symbol. My stepfather told me that. He knew more about magic than my mom. He said they weren’t real talismans and they wouldn’t really do anything. He said only people can be talismans, and those talismans work. They are the most powerful kind of magic. I think he was right. My mom made talismans all the time, but nothing ever happened. She said it wasn’t always obvious, that talismans aren’t supposed to stop bad things from happening. They protect you on a deeper level. But it didn’t work for her. She’d been messed up for a long time. At the end, she wasn’t really my mom anymore.”