“Hon, you’d better speak up if you want to be heard over our actual voices and all the voices in our heads.”
“She said—shut up—she said she—shut up, you guys, let me talk! She said it was nice to meet you!” Angela made a visible effort to calm herself. “Which is a lie, obviously, but she’s being a good guest.”
“I’ve been called many things,” Leah said, and found a smile, “but never once ‘a good guest.’” Possibly because she was rarely invited anywhere. Who’d want to be around someone who could see all your sins from all your lives? Answer: no one who didn’t need something.
“Aw, Angela.” Archer was grinning at his cousin, who looked capable of murder, or at least assault. Leah didn’t blame her; she couldn’t imagine growing up in such a din. “I missed how you shriek us into submission.”
She let out a snort. “Sure you did.”
“But listen, can I get a ginger ale or something for Leah? It was a long drive and she—”
“Long drive?” a cousin (or brother) asked. “From where? We all live in Chicago.”
“Yeah, but they’re suburban, we’re city.”
“Which suburb, though?”
“Unless the suburb is five hundred miles away, it’s not a long drive.”
“A suburb five hundred miles away isn’t a suburb, you deeply pathetic idiot.”
Then the ghost drifted by, and Leah—who hated clichés—nearly jumped out of her skin. At least, that’s what it felt like. She did a double-take and realized that this woman—whoever she was—was just a shell. A living breathing shell, a walking talking ghost. “You need something to drink?” the ghost asked vaguely. “Nice flight?”
“They drove, Mom,” Angela put in before Archer could say anything. Leah noted that he shot his cousin a sympathetic grimace. “They don’t live very far away.”
“Actually, they live in a suburb five hundred miles away.”
“Shut up, Jack.”
“Oh, well, you’ll be visiting lots of times, then,” the spirit predicted as she began to drift away. She followed that with a non sequitur: “I picked up the mail.”
“Thanks, Mom. We know that’s your thing.” To Leah: “It’s her thing. She’s in charge of the mail, everyone else is in charge of everything else.”
Curious, Leah broke her own rule
(don’t touch people just to peek at their lives. it’s only okay to invade people’s privacy when you’re on the job, but holy God what is up with this woman? is she here? are we?)
and extended a hand. “It was kind of you to invite us.”
“Oh, well,” came the vague reply. “I didn’t, really. Angela did.”
“I’m Leah Nazir. It’s nice to meet you.”
Mrs. Emma Drake gave Leah her limp pale paw and Leah saw nothing
nobody
alone
always
alone
(but . . . on purpose?)
always
alonealonealone
(should have stuck to the rules)
FOUR
It could be worse, Angela reassured herself. It could be a lot worse. The boys are behaving. Mom is being . . . Mom, but I never expected anything else. Archer seems fine, he’s even teasing me a little. Ms. Nazir seems . . . er . . . hard to tell, actually . . .
And that’s when Leah Nazir’s big brown eyes rolled back and she pitched toward the floor. She would have face-planted if Archer hadn’t been so quick.
Her mother blinked, her way of showing extreme alarm. “Oh. Huh. I think she needs to rest. I’ll go check the . . .” And she drifted away, probably to check the guest room, which Angela already knew was perfectly appointed.
Coward. The thought rose in her brain like a bad-tasting bubble and, for once, Angela didn’t try to squash it. Her mother had been through a lot. Her sister-in-law succumbed to cancer a year before the murder, leaving her to raise all those kids on her own . . . (she’d taken the cousins, too, as they were virtual orphans). It had been tough, no question. But it hadn’t exactly been a laugh-fest for the rest of them, either, and Angela became a de facto parent at age thirteen, the minute the hearse pulled into Graceland Cemetery.
Still a coward, though. And Dad would have hated what she turned into. He wouldn’t appreciate her abandoning his brother, either.
Angela shoved all that away. “You got her? C’mon, let’s stretch her out on the couch. Should we take her to the ER? I can call 911.”
“I’ll do it!” From Paul.
“Bullshit!” From Mitchell, predictably, since he lived to keep track of everyone’s turn. “You got to call 911 when Jack fell out of the tree house. It’s my turn.”
“No, the last time we called 911 was when the neighbors called the cops on us—”
“Why are we always surrounded by tight-ass neighbors?”
“I’m already dialing, it’s done, I’m doing it,” Paul announced. “See? Niiiiiiine . . .”
“Hang that up unless you want to be on the stretcher next to me,” Leah managed from Archer’s arms.
“Okay,” Jordan said. “That’s pretty cool. I’ll hold Paul down for you, Leah, and you can work the body. I suggest starting with the lower ribs. Or his upper lip.”
“I’m fine,” she continued, waving away Jordan’s offer to help her assault his brother. “Temporary setback. I’ll be okay once I get off my feet.”
“You are off your feet,” Angela pointed out. She followed them, fretting the length of the hallway to the guest room. “Are you sure you don’t need a doctor?”
“I’m fine.”
“Do you often faint?”
“I did not faint. Silly ingénues in bad movies faint.”
“Silly what now?”
“I temporarily blacked out. Very temporarily. For barely a second. Half a second. Thank you,” she said as Archer deposited her on the bed with a flourish. “I was already a little under the weather, but I don’t need 911 or a doctor or an exorcism or anything of the sort and also, stop fussing.”
“Okaaaaaaay.”
“I’m pregnant,” Leah added, and grimaced.
“You’re—really?” Angela felt a huge grin break over her face. Why the grimace? Is she not happy? No, stop reading into it—she fainted in front of the in-laws. She’s a little embarrassed—because she doesn’t know how many people have swooned in our family room over the years.
“Yes, really,” Archer replied, smiling and puffing out his chest a bit, probably because he got to have sex.
“Well, that’s great! You’re gonna be a dad!” Angela was impressed, and not for the first time. Archer had been the first to
(flee)
leave home, hold down a number of odd jobs,
(Jordan kept a chart of them, and the thing was eye-popping)
fall in love, foil a murder, get engaged, and now to have a baby on the way. (In that exact order, too, she realized.) He, unlike the rest of them, had moved on. And not just on . . . forward. He was a grown-up, and not just chronologically. “That’s really great.”
“No, it’s not,” Leah said dully.
(??????????)
Angela managed to tactfully say nothing, or even raise an eyebrow, and when Archer didn’t scowl, or burst into tears, she realized that whatever was upsetting Leah about being pregnant, he knew all about it. Which in its own way was kind of cool.
Leah broke the short silence. “I’ll explain.”
“You don’t have to,” Angela replied at once, not meaning a word of it. Please, please explain! Explain until you’re blue in the face! But not really!
“I know I don’t have to,” Leah snapped. Her lips thinned and she added, “I’m sorry. I’m in a foul mood. It’s like this: I had a terrible mom.”
“Okay.” Angela knew Leah’s mom; everyone did. A B-list actress from the nineties, a gorgeous redhead in the style of fifties pinup queens, never as famous as her daughter, and went to her grave trying to change that.
“So I don’t know how to do it. I’ll be bad at it.” She met Angela’s gaze dead on. “I’m afraid. That’s what this is. That’s all this is: pure fear.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“It’s absolutely true: I am scared shitless.”
“No, no, I meant about your mom.”