Book of Night(93)

A long-haul trucker had brought in a cuckoo clock of his grandmother’s that turned out to be a real antique, from the Edwardian period. When it struck midnight, a man appeared, running from his own shadow. “This was a time of great spirituality,” said the elderly appraiser, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “Gloamists performed elaborate shadowplays against the walls of ballrooms. Magic was right in front of people, and yet few looked closely enough to discover it.”

“Don’t let the front desk know you’ve got a cat in here,” Mom told Posey. “There’s a hundred-and-fifty-dollar cleaning fee for bringing a pet into the room.”

“I wasn’t going to tell anyone,” Posey complained, an adolescent whine creeping into her voice. “And I don’t know where I am supposed to talk to clients. It’s so loud in here.”

“Try the bathtub,” Mom said unhelpfully.

An hour later, they ate goulash sitting on folding chairs around a café table that couldn’t hold all their plates at once. They drank Posey’s wine. They were following the Hall family tradition of pretending everything was okay, and Charlie was glad. Nothing was okay and she had no idea what to do about it.

“Posey tells me that Vincent moved out. I’m so sorry,” Mom said.

Charlie nodded. The less said about that, the better. One more thing that was definitely not okay. “Yeah, well. You know my luck.” She didn’t say our luck, because she liked Bob. Of course, it was possible that she would have liked anyone who’d brought her ibuprofen. If he’d brought her coffee too, she might have married him herself.

Her mother waited, as though hoping she might say more. Might share. When Charlie didn’t, her mother deflated a little. Charlie felt guilty all over again, in a new way.

After dinner, Mom turned to Bob. “I want to show them where we sit outside.”

“Outside?” Charlie asked. “It’s cold.”

“Under the stars. You get the blankets and I’ll get the folding chairs.”

A few minutes later, they were in the parking lot, looking at the lights of Springfield in the distance and the stars above.

“Not bad, right?” Mom said. “Like a porch.”

Bob stood by the car and looked up obligingly. “Rain cleared out the clouds.”

“I am not staying out here, freezing,” Posey said. “I have a chat with some friends. We’re revising plans.”

Hopefully, that meant ayahuasca was off the table.

“Be careful,” Charlie reminded her.

Posey gave her a sharp look and went inside.

After a while, Bob left too, saying something about making himself some tea. Charlie stayed wrapped up in her blanket. She didn’t want to go back to that claustrophobic room, air thick with her own mistakes. And she worried that Posey was desperate enough to be a gloamist that she’d allow herself to be tricked, and that all the promised sweetness would be there to drown in.

“I’m glad you came to us,” Mom said.

“Me too,” Charlie replied automatically, alert to the dangers of this conversation.

“I’ve got a lot of regrets about decisions I made as your mother. When I was younger, I wasn’t always paying attention to the right things. I wish you felt like you could come to me when you were in trouble years ago.”

Charlie had a sinking feeling that this was about Rand, that Posey had said something during their daily tarot chats. “When was I in trouble?”

“I know you don’t like talking about it—”

“There’s obviously something you think you know, so go ahead and say it.” Charlie needed to stop talking. Instead of splitting her tongue into two parts, she needed to bite the whole thing off. She should be trying to avoid this conversation, not indulging it.

“I saw you take your old medical file out of the car,” she said. “And I’ll never forget how I felt when I got that call from the police. And then, when they found Rand’s body, with that dead girl in the trunk. That girl could have been you.”

That was true, but not for any of the reasons that her mother was imagining. “It wasn’t me, though. I’m fine.”

“Are you?” her mother asked. “I know you were with him that night you wound up in the hospital. If you never deal with what happened, you’ll never heal from it. You’ll stay in that hurt, angry place.”

Charlie Hall, with a furnace inside her that was always burning.

Of course she was angry.

She wanted her mother to have believed her when Travis smacked them around, to have loved her better than Alonso, who wasn’t even real.

She wanted her mother to have protected her from Rand, who was bad enough, and still so much better than he could have been.

She wanted her mother to believe her now, even though Charlie had lied before.

“I’m fine. Sound as a bell,” Charlie said. “Right as rain.”

“I wanted you and your sister to have the freedom to express yourselves, to make mistakes, to discover yourselves. I didn’t want to hold you back.” Mom was playing with one of her chunky silver rings, rolling it around her first finger. “I didn’t have that as a kid. And you had a gift. I thought Rand would show you how to use it.”

Guilt came over Charlie in a swell. She had to change the subject. She couldn’t stand feeling this way anymore, torn between a desire to scream and a desire to confess. “Maybe when I stopped using it, the gift moved on to Posey.”