Hereafter (8 page)

I bent slightly forward to watch his face for a moment longer. He couldn’t seem to meet my gaze; and, for some reason, his discomfort made the little ache in my chest curl pleasantly outward. I took a quiet breath for courage and then asked, “Are you worried about
my
opinion of your family?”

“The other way around wouldn’t make much sense, would it?”

“No,” I said. “It wouldn’t. But are you afraid I’m—what?—not going to like them?”

“No, you don’t seem like the type. I’d still like to know your opinion, though. I . . . I have a feeling it’s going to matter.”

He said it like a confession, as if the words had some underlying meaning. He didn’t have to explain that meaning, though. I felt exactly the same way.

“Well,” I said, giving him a quick, bright smile. “Let’s go form my opinion then.”

Chapter
Ten

B
y the time Joshua pulled his car off the main road and onto a rough gravel path, the sun had finally set. The sky—at least the part I could see through the branches of the tall pines—had varied itself from a dark navy in the east to a pale, pinkish violet in the west.

I found myself suddenly grateful for the deepening of the shadows around us; they provided ideal cover for my growing discomfort. I felt as if I was about to take some kind of test. Not that I was afraid of seeing the Mayhews per se; even the witchy grandmother didn’t really worry me.

But Joshua would undoubtedly be watching me, gauging my reaction to everything I saw. More importantly, I knew he wouldn’t be able to communicate with me while his family was around. No sidelong glances, no whispers, no notes. He would have to deal with my presence very carefully, as if I wasn’t there at all.

So, ultimately, I would probably spend the next few hours in an intimate family scene, and I would basically do it alone.

Before I had time to feel truly sorry for myself, the car looped around a corner and a large house came into view. I’m not sure what I’d expected. Maybe some modest Oklahoman ranch house or one of the new brick-and-stone monstrosities that had begun to pop up all around this area. Whatever image I had in my mind, and whatever worries I’d been previously nursing, they all evaporated in the face of the lovely old home that rose before us.

The house was green clapboard, with white-railed porches that wrapped entirely around its first and second stories. At every gable and eave, between every free stretch of wood, were windows: huge bay windows framed by swoops of curtain; tiny, round windows promising only a tantalizing fraction of a view; stained glass windows exploding with color. From every window shone a warm glow that contrasted charmingly with the dusk that now settled over the house. Even in the pleasant violet gloom, I could make out the shape of the garden through which Joshua now drove—clusters of rosebushes, wisteria vines, and dogwood shrubs tangled in a gorgeous chaos around the house and the cottonwood trees surrounding it.

This was a fairy-tale home.

I didn’t even bother to shut my mouth while Joshua parked behind the house. After closing his own car door, he came around to open mine. When he offered me his hand, I took it, as much to steady myself as to feel his skin. Normally, my entire focus would have been centered on the contact of our hands. My attention, however, was elsewhere.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that the back of the Mayhew house would be even more marvelous than the entrance. Still, my mouth gaped farther when I took in the sight of the lawn stretching out before me.

The thickets of pine and cedar, so ever-present in southeastern Oklahoma, had been trimmed back to form a kind of wall around the Mayhews’ yard. Within the backyard, enormous maples and cottonwoods dotted the lawn, their branches lacing into a sort of dome overhead. Through the leaves I could just make out a few glimpses of the night sky.

Winding through the yard and around each of these trees was a stone walkway. But this wasn’t your average back patio. The stones, which were various shades of blues and grays in the dark, branched all around the lawn into twisting, almost labyrinthine paths. Some paths meandered around the yard and then back into each other, while others broke into sets of steps, leading to iron-railed platforms. In a few places, paths turned into covered bridges, canopied with heavy wisteria vines. Underneath the elevated portions, a thick sea of ivy and flowering plants swelled up from the ground.

At the far end of the yard stood a wooden gazebo, its walls enclosed by a ring of tall cypress trees. The entire scene was illuminated from above by huge white lanterns hung on sturdy electrical wires stretched between each of the trees. The lantern light nearly hid the flicker of hundreds of late-summer fireflies that hovered in the dark tree line surrounding the yard.

“Dear God,” I breathed aloud.

“Yeah.” Joshua nodded. “My mom owns a landscaping company. She really knows what she’s doing, doesn’t she?”

“You could say that.”

Joshua turned to me with a half smile but then frowned a little. Staring at me, he knitted his eyebrows together.

“What?” I asked sharply as a wave of self-consciousness washed over me. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Do you know you sort of glow in the dark?”

“Oh. That.” I looked down at my hand, still locked in his, and then back up at his face.

Light from the lanterns above us brightened some of Joshua’s features, while the darkness of the night shadowed others. My skin, however, looked exactly the same as it had during the day, unaffected by the change from daylight to darkness. It was something I was used to, and the reason I’d immediately recognized Eli as a ghost: the flat, unreflective nature of our skin against the dark. To me, Eli had looked like a black-and-white image against a three-dimensional one. To Joshua, I apparently looked like I glowed.

I shrugged. “I guess it’s a ghost thing. Creepy?”

“Little bit,” he confessed, but he did so with a smile. I sighed, once again grateful for his seemingly endless ability to accept all the strange things about me. I didn’t get the chance to express this gratitude, though, because the sound of a slamming door made us both jerk our heads toward Joshua’s house.

A small, darkened figure now stood on the highest platform of the patio. I could see from its silhouette that the figure was a woman. In the bright light from the house windows, she appeared backlit, her features obscured by shadows. I could tell from her stance—hands on hips, back rigidly straight—that, whoever she was, she wasn’t terribly happy.

Immediately, I dropped Joshua’s hand and hunched my shoulders, suddenly feeling like a child who’d been caught doing something bad by someone else’s mother. When the woman spoke, however, I knew I wasn’t the child about to be scolded.

“Joshua Christopher Mayhew.” The woman’s voice was high and delicate, but right now it sounded strained from worry. “Do I even need to ask if there’s some valid explanation for why you’re so late?”

“No, Mom,” Joshua groaned, looking down at his sneakers.

“And do I even need to tell you that we were this close to filing a missing person’s report on you?”

“I’m not
that
late,” Joshua mumbled, so quietly that the woman on the porch couldn’t hear him. More loudly, he said, “Yes, Mom. I’m sorry, Mom.”

Then he sighed and began to trudge forward. I followed him, ducking my head.

“Is she always like this?” I whispered, even though Joshua’s mother couldn’t hear me and Joshua couldn’t answer me.

He surprised me by whispering back through gritted teeth, “My grandmother’s worse—think pit bull. A really mean one.”

I gulped lightly and shook my head. As if I needed another reason to be afraid of Ruth Mayhew.

I’m not sure whether Joshua’s mother heard his unflattering description of his grandmother, because, without another word, she spun around on one heel and marched to the back door, opening the screen door and then letting it slam behind her with bouncing thuds.

Joshua gave me a sheepish glance before leaping up onto the porch and crossing to the door. I followed quickly, as if I too had been ordered inside. Joshua reached the screen door first. He caught it midbounce and held it open, turning back to me.

“My parents’ names are Rebecca and Jeremiah, by the way,” he whispered as I approached him.

I laughed, jittery. “Got it. So even though they’ll be too busy screaming at you, and they can’t hear me anyway, I’ll at least be able to address them properly?”

Joshua rolled his eyes but still gave me a quick grin. Then he stepped through the doorway and waved for me to follow suit. With a gulp, I crossed the threshold and let Joshua shut the door behind us.

Once inside, I walked several paces behind him, down an unlit hallway. Watching his darkened form ahead of me, I experienced a moment of almost overwhelming nervousness. I’d already opened my mouth to tell Joshua
Thanks, but maybe some other time
when we passed through an archway and into yet another fantastic scene.

The Mayhews’ kitchen sprawled before me, well lit and pleasantly cluttered. The entire room was paneled in a warm, red-colored wood; and jars and gadgets covered every inch of its seemingly endless counter space. In the center of the huge room sat a small wooden island over which various pots and pans hung from the low ceiling beams.

The room looked as though it stretched across the entire width of the house, running from the north-facing bay windows in front of us to the large window box on our left. Underneath that window, a man and a young girl stood at a sink full of dishes, laughing.

Jeremiah and Jillian Mayhew, I guessed.

Across from them, Joshua’s mother had just walked over to the center island, and she began sorting through the dishes stacked on it. For a moment her sleek black hair covered her face; but when she glanced up at the sound of the laughter, I could see her lovely features and bright hazel eyes. Her eyes sparkled happily for a moment before landing on Joshua. When they did so, they sharpened.

“So, prodigal son,” she said. “What’s a good punishment for skipping dinner and scaring the hell out of your mother less than a week after your car accident?”

Rebecca Mayhew’s voice stirred Jeremiah and Jillian, who both turned away from the dishes in the sink. In my peripheral vision, I could see Joshua wince from all the scrutiny. I gave him a quick, sympathetic smile and then directed my attention to his family.

Though Jeremiah had brown hair instead of black, his dark blues eyes matched Joshua’s perfectly. Despite the separation of at least twenty years, the two men could have been brothers; they shared the same high cheekbones and tan skin, the same broad grin. Jeremiah’s grin spoke clearly enough: whoever wanted to punish Joshua tonight, Jeremiah wasn’t on their side. At least not internally.

Judging from her expression, however, Jillian obviously shared her mother’s anger. With both hands, she pushed back her long, black hair and scowled.

She had her mother’s angular face. On Jillian, however, the features were sharper, less delicate. Not that Jillian wasn’t pretty—she was. But something about the way she held her mouth and tilted her head gave her an arch sort of look, as if she was always crafting some vicious comment.

“Yeah, Josh,” she sneered. “So thoughtful of you to join us in time to finish the dishes.”

Joshua opened his mouth to protest, but another, older voice cut him off.

“That might be a fitting punishment for him: cleaning this massive kitchen all by himself.”

Joshua and I simultaneously spun around toward the speaker. An elderly woman approached us from a dining table tucked into a back corner I’d missed upon my first inspection of the kitchen. The woman had her head down, focusing on a small stack of envelopes in her hands, so I couldn’t catch a glimpse of her face.

Still looking at her mail, she sighed heavily and shook her head. Her chin-length hair swung lightly with the movement. Its color—a bright, almost translucent white—seemed to shimmer under the kitchen lights.

Finally, after a few more steps, she looked up at Joshua. Immediately, I knew who had given Joshua and Jeremiah their unusual eyes. Ruth Mayhew’s midnight blue–
colored eyes looked out from her pale, oval face, which angled slightly at her sharp cheekbones and pointed chin. When she frowned, deep wrinkles creased around her mouth and across her forehead. Instead of making her look elderly and vulnerable, however, the expression made her seem unbreakable.

Halfway across the kitchen, Ruth’s strange-colored eyes flickered toward me, and she froze.

“Joshua?” she asked, her tone strained. “Who is that with—?”

She didn’t finish the question but instead leaned forward to peer at the space beside Joshua. The space in which I currently stood.

At that moment I froze, too.

I had the instant, disconcerting notion that Joshua’s grandmother was about to ask him who was standing beside him. But that was impossible. Only Joshua and Eli could see me. I’d proved it today in Joshua’s classroom. Nonetheless, I itched with the impulse to run; and before I could give it any rational thought, I whispered, “Joshua, maybe I should come by some other—”

The entire sentence hadn’t left my mouth when Ruth jerked upright, rigid-straight again. Her eyes riveted on mine. Her right hand, which had previously clutched the mail, dropped to her side, scattering paper in noisy flutters across the kitchen floor. Still facing me, she drew in one sharp breath.

And with that breath, she told me all I needed to know.

Ruth
heard
me. She
saw
me. There was no other explanation for her abrupt behavior. Ruth could hear and see me just as clearly as Joshua could. Realizing this, I couldn’t move. I was pretty sure I couldn’t even blink.

From the corner of my eye, I shot a regretful look at the dark hallway leading out of the kitchen. If only I’d had the foresight to hide outside, maybe even to crawl underneath Joshua’s car, before this woman had seen me.

I glanced at Joshua and saw him blanch. His eyes darted several times between his grandmother and me.

“Grandma,” he asked, his voice shaking, “what’s wrong?”

Joshua was speaking directly to her, so it stood to reason that Ruth should have looked at her grandson while she answered him. Yet her eyes remained locked onto mine. She held them as she spoke.

“Who is that?” She pronounced the words carefully, enunciating their consonants in a way that made me flinch with each sharp sound. I tried in vain to blend into the cabinetry while Joshua answered her.

“Who is who?” he said, and laughed. But he sounded too jumpy, too obviously aware of her odd behavior. His eyes flickered to mine for the briefest moment before refocusing on Ruth. “Are you sure you’re okay, Grandma?”

At the sound of her grandson’s nervous laughter, Ruth finally pulled her eyes away from me. She looked up at Joshua with nothing less than a furious glare.