Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(97)

Bruno fitted the clasp together and got a blinding smile for his trouble. Rachel was beautiful, yet he had a heavy feeling in his gut. Something about the necklace, her slender neck . . . he couldn’t put his finger on the feeling and wasn’t sure if he wanted to. It wasn’t good.

An old memory, heaving up out of the deeps. The bulk of it still hanging below the surface, like one of those deadly icebergs that brought down the Titanic. Aw, f*ck it. He’d have the bellyache anyway, might as well dredge up the memory that went with it. At least then he’d have a scrap of data, not just nausea. Sort of. Memory was so damn malleable and tricky. It couldn’t be trusted.

He sank into himself and followed the feeling back to its source. The pendant, the clasp, Rachel’s neck. That day that Mamma gave him her necklace. There, that was it. That was the source of the ache.

It was the same day she’d put him on that Greyhound bus bound for Portland. It had been late at night, and they’d been riding in a taxi all over town. He remembered watching the meter creep up. Wondering why she was burning money, like they had any to spare. Mamma kept looking behind them, like they were being followed, but they weren’t. No headlights on those wet streets. Just pools of streetlight.

At the bus station, she’d bought a ticket and hustled him to the gate before he knew what she’d planned, before he could put up a proper fight. She gave him the lecture, said her piece, about how she was leaving Rudy, that she’d get away, she swore to God, but he had to be good, she had to know he was safe first. She still had things to do.

What? he’d asked, blubbering so hard the snot ran down his face. What the f*ck do you still have to do here? Why not just come?

Watch that language, punk, she scolded, herding him toward the entrance of the bus. Then she unclasped her necklace, the antique pendant that she never took off. She put it around his neck. It was warm from her body heat. Keep this safe for me, she said and hugged him from behind until he thought his ribs would crack. The bus driver said something snotty about hurrying up. Mamma mouthed off to him, but without her usual spark. Then she shoved him up the steps—go, go, quick, quick! into the sweetish, stale stink of the bus. Row after row of strangers’ grotesque faces peering up, full of hostility, indifference.

The bus took off, swaying and lurching. He’d looked out at her face, staring up from outside. Stark and pale, dark eyes huge, receding into the distance. The last time he’d seen her in lif.

He’d worn the necklace from that minute on, like a talisman. When Mamma died, he’d become terrified to let it get cold. He’d gotten the notion somehow that as long as the gold pendant stayed warm, he could imagine that it was her warmth. The last of her warmth.

Even though all the rest of it was in the hard ground.

Then Rudy and his goons came to the diner that morning, eighteen long years ago. Rudy had recognized the necklace and ripped it off his neck.

And that was that. Gone. That warmth had gone cold.

“Did you see my locket?” Rachel was crowing to Val, lifting up her dark curls, twirling and preening for her father. He held out his arms and she climbed up onto his lap, getting her due of kisses.

Like a drumroll on the edge of his consciousness. A crescendo of anxious urgency. Something he was supposed to do, see, understand, but what? It swelled, louder, until it filled him up. No room for his lungs to expand. Feelings pounding on the door of his higher brain functions from below. Demanding to be translated into conscious thought.

He tried to relax, open up, fishing for it. Running over everything he’d seen, thought, remembered. Mamma. Rachel’s necklace. Mamma’s necklace, warm from her body. Rachel’s delicate neck, like the stem of some heavy-headed flower, so beautiful it could break your heart.

Did you see my locket?

He closed his eyes, trying again, following vaporous trails of emotion, of thought while the drumroll got louder, the knocking more desperate. The scent of his mother’s perfume, mixed with the tang of fear sweat. Her icy hands, fumbling in the dark, struggling with the clasp. Her hands had been trembling. She’d kissed the back of his neck.

Go, go, quick, quick.

“Zia,” he said. “Remember Mamma’s necklace?”

Zia Rosa turned from a tray of cupcakes that she was frosting. “Yeah, sure. The one Rudy took. Your great-grandmother’s from the old country. A courting gift to your bisnonna from your bisnonno .”

“That was a locket, right?” he asked. “One that opened?”

She frowned. “ ’Course. Magda kept a picture of you in there. Same one I got in my wallet. A lock of your hair, too, remember?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t know it could open at all,” he said. “It never opened for me. Maybe it was soldered shut.”

Lily touched his wrist, a worried line creasing her brow. She’d caught his vibe. It made her uneasy. “What is it?” she asked.

He seized her hand. “Tell me again, Lily. Exactly what your father said at the hospital when you saw him last.”

Lily sighed. “Bruno, please. I’ve been over it a thousand times. He told me that you had to lock something, but he didn’t say what, and I have no idea what he—”

“No.” He cut her off. “No, just repeat his actual words. Word for word. No paraphrasing. Verbatim. Please, Lily.”

And the drumroll crescendo was suddenly audible to her, too.