Firefly Rain (25 page)

“Easy, tiger,” Jenna said. “What, did you think I was a telemarketer?”

“No, I…” My voice trailed off. “I just jabbed myself with some glass cleaning up something that broke, that’s all.”

“Whoops. You put Neosporin on it?”

“Not yet. It just happened five seconds ago, when the phone rang.”

Oblivious to my sarcasm, Jenna pressed on. “No time to lose, then. Go on and take care of it. I’ll wait.”

Knowing this was an argument I had no chance of winning, I put the phone down on the counter and walked around the kitchen for what I figured was an appropriate amount of time. I counted ten seconds past that, then picked up again.

“Is it taken care of?” she asked.

I nodded, then abruptly remembered I was talking on the phone. “All bandaged nicely, I promise. Now, what gives me the pleasure of your conversation?”

“Honestly,” she sounded a bit surprised herself, “I wanted to see how you were doing. You sounded a little freaky last time we talked.”

“I’m fine,” I reassured her. “Went into town today with a man who has a mean dog, then explored my childhood a bit further.”

“Do tell.” Jenna sounded relieved and amused, all at the same time. “Did you go to the soda fountain and put on a paper hat?”

“Hat, no. Fountain, yes. I’ll take you when you get here. You’ll love it.”

“Oh, good.” The words whooshed out of her. “I was afraid you were going to try to talk me out of it again.”

“I know better,” I said ruefully. “You’d show up anyway, and you’d be pissed off. So, do you want to hear about the rest of my day, or have your selfish purposes been realized?”

“Tell me all about it. The short version, though. The gory details can wait until Friday. Be warned, I’m going to interrogate you at length when I get there. You’re leaving stuff out. I can tell.”

“Oh can you, now?”

“Yes, I can,” she replied. “Remember, I’ve seen you try to talk about financials. I
know
when you’re lying.”

Despite myself, I laughed. “That’s why you got the job.”

“Which one?”

“All of them. Now, hush and let me tell you a story.”

Jenna snickered, a nasty sound. “You make it sound so dirty when you put it that way. But never mind, start talking.”

I sighed. “If you’re sure you’re done with the stand-up comedy routine.” There was heavy silence on the line for a minute, and a sense that those words had cut a bit deeper than I’d intended. “All right then. I hitched a ride into town with a friendly neighbor who turned out not to be so friendly. His dog got particularly unpleasant, and we parted ways when I got into town. I wandered around a bit and had a soda at the old pharmacy, then went to talk to the reverend at my old church about what’s been happening here. He was less surprised to hear about it than you’d think, and told me to come back to church. Then I went off to the library to look up this Officer Hanratty. I figured it was worth
finding out a little about her before I started claiming police sarcasm.”

“And what did you find out?” Jenna was all business now. That was one of the things I truly liked about her. When the time came to get down to brass tacks, she was as good as they got. The rest of the time, she was just brassy.

As opposed to, say, the sort of gentle courtesy you’d get out of a small-town librarian.

I forced that thought off to the side and made myself concentrate on Hanratty—the sort of exercise that could sprain a man’s brain permanently. “She’s an ex-Durham cop. Her husband, or ex-husband, was sheriff’s office and got nailed by Internal Affairs. He cut a deal and they moved out here to ‘revitalize’ the local police force. A couple of years later, he left. She stayed, and if my source can be believed, started mainlining sweet tea.”

“Interesting,” she said. “Who’s your local source?”

“The librarian,” I replied. “Very helpful.”

Jenna’s voice was pure deadpan. “I’m sure she was. Anything else going on in the haunted house or scary handyman department?”

I hemmed and hawed a moment. “Shotguns that move themselves, doors that lock and unlock on their own, and strange noises. Other than that, not too much.”

“That’s enough, I think.” She gave a low whistle. “Maybe you want to get that priest to take a look at that door, if not the shotgun?”

“Catholics have priests,” I corrected. “I grew up with a preacher. And it’s the door to Mother and Father’s room. I’m sure they just want their privacy.”

“You know, Logan,” Jenna started, and then trailed off. “… I have a question for you.”

“Ask,” I told her, and I shifted the paper towel on my thumb. It had developed a pretty impressive red stain as I’d been talking, and Jenna’s earlier recommendation that I take care of it didn’t sound half bad anymore.

“If I’m prying, I’m sorry, but did you ever notice that you never say ‘Mom’ or ‘my mother’ or ‘Mommy’ or anything like that? She’s always ‘Mother,’ and your dad is always ‘Father,’ and that’s all there is to it. Very formal, when you think about it. It’s like you’re keeping them at arm’s length, or under glass.”

“You are prying,” I said very softly. “But I’m not mad at you. I’d just rather not talk about that right now, okay?”

“Okay.” She sounded hurt. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.” I took a deep breath, counted to five, and let it out. “We can talk about it more soon, when you’re down here and you can see things firsthand. You might understand some of it a little better. Right now, though, well, we’re just going to miscommunicate and make each other mad, and I don’t want that.”

Jenna gave a sad little laugh. “In other words, get off the phone, woman.”

“Something like that,” I agreed. “But said with love.”

“You Southern charmer,” she said. “All right. I’ll call tomorrow night to check in, but no prying. I promise.”

“Scout’s honor?”

“I never got past Brownie, Logan. Don’t push your luck.”

“I won’t,” I said. “Good night, Jenna.”

“Good night, idiot,” she said affectionately.

I hung up, then stepped over the remaining glass and water to make my way to the bathroom. The thumb was really bleeding more than it ought, and smearing some kind of medicine on it was sounding smarter and smarter.

A quick rummage through the medicine cabinet, one hand
kept firmly on that swinging door, and I found what I was looking for. I pulled the paper towel off and did an awkward one-handed squirt of antibacterial goop onto my thumb, then wrestled a bandage onto it and pulled it tight.

“That ought to do it,” I said, and I replaced everything neatly. “Now, let me finish in the kitchen, and then I can go to pieces about the fireflies in the library.”

Nothing moved, opened, closed, or slammed in response, so I assumed that I was cleared to proceed with my plan. Indeed, cleaning up took remarkably little more time. I knotted up the bag with the glass and tucked it inside another one, then decided to chuck the whole thing into the bin outside. No sense having sharp objects around the house unnecessarily, after all.

As I stepped outside, I realized how late it was getting. We were coming into high summer, so the nights started late and ended early, but even with that, the sun was hurrying toward the horizon. Adrienne’s visit had been longer than I’d expected, it seemed. Night was coming on, a prospect I found I wasn’t entirely comfortable with.

I was tossing the bag into the bin with a jangle and tamping the lid back down when the sound of an approaching car made itself known. I looked up to see which direction the dust trail was coming from. Town, it seemed, headed out past me into the deeper hinterlands.

As the vehicle got closer, I recognized it. It was a truck, a white one.

Unless I was mistaken, it was Sam’s.

It was. He zoomed past, slowing down only slightly when he passed my place. In the back, I could see Asa, his ears pinned back and his teeth bared. He watched the house as the truck rumbled along, staring in the way dogs have that says there’s
wolf in their family tree, and it’s on a branch that hangs mighty low.

I stood there, not moving, and watched. The dust the truck raised rolled up and over me, then faded into the air. By the time it was gone, so was Sam, his truck melting off into the distance.

“That was mighty friendly,” I mumbled to myself and turned back toward the house. Something nagged at me, though, something more than Sam’s sudden turnaround.

It was only when I’d gone back inside that I realized what it was. I hadn’t seen anyone else in the cab, but Asa was still riding in the back.

For some reason that worried me.

Dinner was a joyless affair, consisting mainly of a grilled baloney sandwich with mustard. Carl had gone heavy on the Oscar Mayer this time, but I wasn’t feeling up to preparing anything more complicated. My thumb ached out of all proportion, and when I looked at the Band-Aid, it had a big red spot of blood in the middle of the pad.

I did the dishes, such as they were, and got myself a beer. Outside, the sun went down in a hurry. The sky sensed its mood and went dark right quick. Inside, I nursed my beer and waited for the sounds of the crickets and frogs to drift on up with the night.

I wanted to think about what had happened, but my brain was good and fogged. Mysterious shotgun movement? Fine. Doors that locked and unlocked themselves? Whatever. Officer Hanratty and her semi-mysterious past? Her own damn business.

The fireflies in the basement, though, were something else. The easiest explanation was that I had fallen asleep and dreamed the whole thing. Certainly Adrienne hadn’t made mention of
anything unusual when she’d brought me back to the real world. A hallucination brought on by my misadventures over the last few days was also a strong contender. You take enough knocks on the head, I figured, and disappearing staircases and magical lightning bugs really ought to manifest.

It hadn’t felt that way, though. My eyes, when I checked them in the mirror after taking out the trash, didn’t seem dilated. There was no strange taste in my mouth, nothing more than a little dull pain when I turned my head too fast. The lump from the fall I’d taken in the bathroom wasn’t even noticeable unless you got up real close.

The other alternative was that something flat-out weird had happened down there, the latest in a string of flat-out weird things that had followed me since I’d left Boston. At this point, there was almost more evidence for the weirdness than there was for anything a man of science might understand, and that was troubling. A concussion, a man could take bed rest for. A dream he could wake up from. Magical fireflies crawling under his skin, however, were a horse of a different color.

“Fuck,” I said, and I took another sip of beer. It went down smooth and cold, and I realized just how hot the house was getting. Might as well go outside and not watch the fireflies, I told myself. At least there would be a breeze.

I shoved the porch door open, a beer (one open, one not) in each hand, and strode out. The sky was already the deep shade of blue that jewelers use in velvet to make diamonds look good. Stars were out, plenty of them, and in the distance heat lightning flashed on and off. The rustle of the branches down in the Thicket was loud enough to hear, though the pine trees screened most of the wind off from the house.

It seemed peaceful enough. I settled into a chair and took
another swig of beer. My view mostly faced downhill, toward the trees. As I expected, the land was dark and getting darker. I could almost imagine the land was a vast ocean, rolling up toward the rock of my home.

Home. When had I started thinking of the house that way? It was a good question, and I still wasn’t sure the word fit. Mind you, I wasn’t sure whether it was the house or me it wasn’t right for, and that question bore some examination.

More beer followed, and soon it was time to crack the second one. There was an advantage to sitting out here, I decided. If there was one place on the planet where I wasn’t going to be pestered by the fireflies, I had surely found it.

Chuckling to myself, I tried to plan the next day. The information about Hanratty was interesting, but I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do with it. Asking about her ex-husband didn’t seem like a good idea. Maybe I could ask Carl. Invite him over for a beer or something, like Adrienne had suggested. Ask his advice, maybe poke him a bit more about that promise he kept hinting at.

Maybe I could even get back into town. Talk to Reverend Trotter again, maybe stop by the library for a little more research.

“Easy boy, you’re getting ahead of yourself,” I said. “No sense rushing things, if there are things to be rushed. Besides, you need to get the house clean for company.” I looked at the second bottle of beer, which had mysteriously emptied itself in a way that I suspected was connected to my current euphoria. “Right. Time to go in.”

I lurched to my feet, leaving the beer bottles behind, and shuffled my way inside. Locking the door behind me was habit now, but I still double-checked. No sense taking chances, not now.

Bed seemed like a good idea, so I brushed my teeth, drank a
couple of glasses of water, and stripped halfway down. Something gnawed at me as I did so, a fuzzy reminder that I’d forgotten something, but it was too late. Exhaustion and beer had taken over, and I could only plod my way to the bedroom and lay myself down, jeans and all.

I’ll figure it out in the morning
, I told myself, and I closed my eyes. Sleep pounced and carried me away.

The numbers on the clock told me it was three in the morning when I sat bolt upright in bed. I blinked, trying to figure out why the hell I’d woken up. The dreams I remembered weren’t bad, just not the sort of thing I’d share with Adrienne or Jenna anytime soon. A hand on my brow told me I wasn’t soaked in sweat, neither. Something had jerked me up out of deep sleep like a fish on a line, though.

Overhead, dull thunder rumbled. It seemed as if the heat lightning had given way to the real thing, and more rain was on the way. I sat and listened, wondering if that was the case, but all I heard was all distant drumrolls up above. Rain was coming, yes, but it was taking its own sweet time getting here. If that’s what had awakened me, I was a lighter sleeper than I thought.