Tumble & Fall (17 page)

Dwayne throws the car into reverse and ducks down a side street as the crowd continues to file in behind them. They are people of all ages and races, some holding their hands to the sky, their eyes closed as they shuffle slowly forward. Others seem to be there just for the spectacle; a few younger kids are laughing and joking around. Zan thinks of the handful of times she’s been inside a temple—her mother’s family was Jewish and there were a few times when Miranda had dragged Joni and Zan to the Hebrew Center on the island—how the congregation always seemed to be divided between those who truly
believed
, and those who, like her, were there for the free doughnuts. She’s surprised to find that it doesn’t seem to be any different now. As the pastor’s voice fades out behind them, she realizes she hasn’t heard a single thing that he’s said.

Dwayne Robert shakes his head thoughtfully. “I just can’t believe it,” he says. “You know? First, they say this thing is coming, and now there’s a rocket, going to blow it up. What are we supposed to believe? How are we supposed to know the truth?”

Nick clears his throat in the backseat. The questions are clearly rhetorical and Zan feels a sense of panic that Nick is going to try to answer them anyway. “What about your friend?” she asks, quickly changing the subject. “Your mother said you were picking somebody up, last night.”

Dwayne Robert purses his lips and Zan fears she may have stumbled onto a sensitive subject. “I try everything with that girl, man,” he says. “I told her come back with me, the kids, too, you know? I love those boys like my own. But she says they need to be with their daddy now. They going to be a family now, because who knows what could happen.”

His voice gets soft and sad and he’s still shaking his head, as if it’s all too much to make sense of at once. “He never do nothing for them, but now, he’s family.” Dwayne Robert blows air through his teeth.

“I’m sorry,” Zan says, because she can’t imagine saying anything else.

Dwayne Robert shrugs. “You learn about people, you know?” He smiles, halfheartedly. “What about you two? Your families know where you are?”

Zan catches Nick’s eyes in the wide rearview mirror. “Sort of,” he says.

Dwayne lifts an eyebrow, not convinced. “This some kind of Romeo and Juliet thing?” he asks. “You running away or something?”

Zan shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “No,” she says quickly. It feels urgently important to clarify that she and Nick are not a couple. “No, we’re just, we’re not…”

“We’re looking for someone.” Nick saves her. “She lives here, at this address.”

Dwayne Robert turns onto a smaller side street, lined with nearly identical two-family houses. He takes the receipt from Zan and holds it up to a brown, vinyl-sided house with a small, neglected garden out front. “Well,” he says. “I hope you find her. Before it’s too late.”

Zan closes the heavy station wagon door as Nick unpacks the back. Dwayne Robert waves as he pulls slowly away, and Nick crosses the street first, pulling open a low, iron gate. They start up the shallow stoop to a small, covered porch. Between the two doors is an intercom, and Nick scans the faded yellow tabs. “V. Kent. You think that’s her?”

Zan swallows hard. She hears the last thing Dwayne Robert said to them:
Before it’s too late,
and she feels a new sense of purpose. It’s simple, really. They might not have much time. And no matter what they’re going to find out, no matter what it means, or doesn’t mean, they have to do it now or they may never get the chance.

She closes her eyes and waits. This time, he’s there. Leo, on the trail to the beach, his towel dragging behind him. She searches his face, his eyes, bright blue and convincing. Whatever it is, he wants her to know. He’s brought them here for a reason.

Zan pushes the button with her thumb. The bell, sharp and clear, cuts into the quiet.

CADEN

Arthur looks ridiculous in an apron.

Caden stands in the doorway to the lodge kitchen, looking out through the open porch doors. The sky is lit up over the mountain, orange and spooky gray. He’s groggy from his nap and it takes him a minute to decide if the sun should be coming or going.

“What are you doing?” he mutters sleepily, stretching his neck. He’s still not used to so many pillows.

Arthur hovers near the stove, moving quickly back and forth between a bubbling pot on a burner and the yellowing pages of a cookbook, propped open on top of a wooden butcher’s block. “What does it look like I’m doing?” he asks, distracted by a frenzied search for some type of utensil.

“It looks like you’re wearing an apron,” Caden replies. The apron is dirty white and tied with a delicate lace string around Arthur’s waist.

“It was all I could find.” Arthur stirs the pot with a chipped wooden spoon. “It probably belonged to one of my great-aunts. Must be ancient.”

From the other side of the counter a timer beeps and Arthur’s eyes go wide. He rushes to the oven and pulls the door open, as a cloud of bitter smoke engulfs his upper half. “God damn it!” Arthur panics, scanning the nearby surfaces for a potholder or cloth. He settles for the sleeve of his button-down shirt. “Shit. Ouch. Shit!” He slides out a steaming tray of singed dinner rolls and all but throws it on the table. A few of the blackened rolls tumble off the edge and skid like hockey pucks across the floor to Caden’s feet.

“Yum,” Caden says, a short laugh escaping before he can help it.

Arthur runs the faucet and sticks his hand beneath it. After a brief interlude of incoherent mumbling, he turns back to the pot on the stove. “Russell left.”

“Russell?” Caden asks, before remembering the disgruntled butler-type who served him breakfast in the den. “Where did he go?”

Arthur shrugs. “He says he met a lady at the Info Center near the peak. They’re going camping.”

Caden smirks. “Go, Russell.”

Arthur shakes his head in exasperated silence. A wet steam rises from the pot and the thick smell of stock and sautéed vegetables fills the air. Caden’s stomach grumbles. He’s hungrier than he thought.

“What? You expected him to keep sulking around here, baking you muffins and wiping your ass, when the world is about to explode?” The words are out of him, sharp and fast, but he can hear a shift in his voice. It’s teasing, and light, like he’s back on the docks, messing with one of his friends.

“I wipe my own ass, thank you,” Arthur says with a sly grin. He clinks the spoon against the side of the pot and flips off the burner. “Hand me a few of those bowls?”

Caden spies a few stacks of ceramic dishware on a high open shelf. He moves carefully around his father, suddenly aware of how close they are standing. Arthur serves up two hearty portions of stew and sets them on the counter. “I thought we’d eat in the dining room.”

The dining room table is an imposing slab of mahogany, comically enormous. Caden finds it already set for two, with a white tablecloth and red gingham napkins, goblets for wine and water, antique silverware, and a—now unnecessary—woven basket for bread. He pulls out a chair and feels a twinge between his lower ribs. He can’t remember the last time he ate dinner at an actual table, let alone one that was so carefully set.

Arthur appears without his apron and places the bowls on the table. Caden peers into the brownish slosh. It looks like the result of some kind of industrial sewage overflow, but he has to admit, it doesn’t smell half bad.

Outside, the wind has picked up and wheezes through the nearby pines, knocking the wooden shutters against the side of the house. Caden’s spoon clinks heavily in his bowl. The stew is surprisingly delicious, rich and savory with tender chunks of braised rabbit meat.

“What do you think?” Arthur asks between bites.

Caden feels a trickle of broth running down his chin, and is ready to wipe it away with his sleeve when he remembers the napkin. “It’s okay,” he says. “I’ve never had rabbit before.”

Arthur smiles. They continue eating in silence. There’s something almost peaceful about eating this way, Caden thinks, especially when what you’re eating was once, and so very recently, witlessly bounding across an open field. He remembers, in a quick flash, the way the rabbit froze beneath the blueberry bush, almost as if he knew what was coming, and accepted it. There was no panic or frenzied scamper. Death was a certainty, and there was no use trying to pretend otherwise.

In an unguarded moment, he lets his mind wander. How long can he keep this up? Pretending not to care that his life, the lives of everyone he knows and doesn’t know, hang on the fate of a single event. Something he is powerless to control. What will he be like, in those final minutes, should it come to that? Calm, like the rabbit, or a total, inconsolable mess?

Arthur clears his throat, resting his spoon against the side of his bowl. “I feel uncomfortable about what I said,” he says. “What I told you, about your sister.”

Caden swallows and reaches for his wine. There was a brief, confused moment when he woke up from his nap. Had it all been a dream? But, no. Carly is his half sister. Half of her came from somebody else. Half of her has nothing to do with him.

“Does she know?” Caden asks, though he’s already sure of the answer. Every Christmas, over a special breakfast of banana pancakes and vegan sausage, Carly abruptly announced what she’d bought that year, before Caden or Ramona had even considered unwrapping their gifts. When she got her first period, she’d complained to Caden about cramps and tampons as they waited on the road for the bus. Carly doesn’t believe in secrets.

“I hope not,” Arthur says.

Caden looks up from his stew. “Why’s that?”

Arthur tilts his bowl and scrapes around the corners with his spoon. “I’m an easy target.” He shrugs. “Why add another villain to the mix?”

Caden considers this. Carly will always be his sister, no matter what. But Ramona. It was hardly the first time she’d lied, and he’d spent most of his life wishing she were somebody else, somebody capable and strong. But this felt like a different breed of betrayal. Who knows how Caden would have felt about Arthur all these years, if he’d known the truth? Maybe not much would have changed. But she hadn’t allowed him to decide for himself. She’d wanted him to be by her side, an ally in the invisible war against the bad guy who’d left them alone.

It shouldn’t have been up to her.

Caden takes a long sip of wine. He feels Arthur’s eyes on him. He wishes he could ask what Arthur thinks about how his son turned out. Is he proud? Surprised? Had he been hoping for somebody more like him? Does he regret all the time that he’s missed?

A cascade of ringing bells echoes throughout the lodge. Arthur looks up with an almost mischievous gleam in his green eyes. “There she is,” he says, wiping at the corners of his mouth with his napkin and folding it carefully on the table.

Caden watches as his father stands. “Who?”

Arthur lays a hand on Caden’s shoulder as he passes. “Wait here,” he says.

Arthur leaves him through the wide double doors. Caden feels a tingling in the spot on his shoulder where his father’s hand had been. It was a small gesture, but to Caden, it felt full of meaning. Full of all of the hundreds of thousands of times a hand might have rested there before, in a different life, where they’d been a real family, or he’d at least known the truth about what family he had left.

SIENNA

“It looks exactly the same.”

Sienna and Owen stand at the bottom of her driveway, hidden behind the thick trunk of an oak tree. Their shadows fall long on the grass beside them. They’d packed a picnic at Owen’s house and spent the day on a quiet section of the beach, talking until the sun started to set. Sienna couldn’t believe how late it had gotten, so fast.

Now, she looks up at her house and sees it, for a moment, as it was when she was little. Mom’s blue hydrangea bushes crowding the deck, the ones she lovingly tended to like extra, flowering children.

“Almost,” Sienna says sadly. There’s only one bush left out front, the blossoms now fading gray.

“So.” Owen puts a hand on her head. “Jeremy said he’ll pick us up around nine. Want to meet at the bus stop?”

Sienna swallows. This morning, when they’d woken up on the docks, cozy and cuddled in the blankets Owen had brought, everything had seemed so simple. He wanted to work on the boat with his friends, and he wanted her to be there, too. She felt her heart swelling inside her. She didn’t care what they did, as long as they did it together.

But now, standing in front of her house, she doesn’t know how it’s possible. Dad will never allow it, and even if he did, is it really what she wants? There’s a part of her that feels like she should stay home, even if it means pretending. A part of her that thinks Dad deserves his Happy Family, for once.

“Sienna,” Owen says, looking deep into her eyes. “I know it’s asking a lot. But think about it. This is so much bigger than anything that’s ever happened before. It’s being a part of something huge. Something that might save us.”

She feels the weight of his hands on her shoulders, the intensity in his brown eyes. She can’t possibly let him down.

“See you at the bus stop,” she says, and stretches to give him a kiss.

She avoids the gravel driveway and instead pads softly over the grass, hoping to make it back to her room unseen. But something catches her eye in the living room—the quick shifting of horizontal blinds. Her stomach twists into a knot.

Dad is standing just inside the door when she opens it. “Where were you?” he asks. His eyes are red-rimmed and his hair is choppy and disheveled.

Sienna takes a shaky breath. “Dad,” she starts.

“I asked you a question, Sienna,” he says, his voice clipped and strange. There’s a stiffness in his posture, like it’s taking a lot of extra effort to stand upright.

“I … I lost track of time. I went into town last night with some friends,” she says. “You were already asleep. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

Dad stares at her as if he’s having trouble remembering who she is. “I was asleep because it was late,” he says flatly. “You’ve been gone all day. You didn’t think I would worry?”