Deja Who (Insighter #1)(28)

If only it didn’t hurt so much. That’s the only thing, really the only terrible thing. Not the smell or the mess or the weakness: the pain.

She hasn’t been able to leave the bed for two days; she messes the sheets again. She sees the blood in her mess; she calls her mother over. “It hurts,” she says. Not a complaint. More like an explanation. Here is my problem. I thought you would like to know. And it seems Mother does know. She nods and she bustles back to the kitchen and returns with another small plate of nasty treats: homemade donuts—the whole house smells like hot frying fat and cake dredged through lots of powdered sugar. Isabella’s favorite treat, once upon a time.

“These will make you feel better.”

Isabella knows this for a lie, she knows Leah and Jenny and David and Laura and the little ones were told the same lies. But what to do? Not obey? Unthinkable.

Like the rest of her dead family, she eats.





SEVENTEEN


“Aw, man.”

“Breathe. It will be all right.” Leah was on her knees beside Archer, who was clutching his head in both hands. Cat, unconcerned, had stretched out on the now-unoccupied park bench, lying on her side like a large pinup model in a yellow and black bumblebee sweater (with black sweatpants) and watching Leah soothe him while she munched the last carrot. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have just blurted it all out like—”

“Your mom killed you in another life? It fucking murdered you in another life?”

“Yes, but it’s not so bad.” Leah tried for humor, not sure if it would work. “In this life she only killed my stage career. So, improvement. Right?” Nope. No response. A poor time for a joke, as she had suspected. She briefly wished she were better at this sort of thing. “Listen, she’s slightly less terrible in each incarnation, does that help?”

“No!”

“Uh, did you hear the one about the mother who killed so many family members reporters actually caught on and tipped off the . . .” Why couldn’t she stop? She saw uncomfortable patients every day, people who couldn’t bear what they were telling her or what she was telling him, and she rarely blinked.

But poor Archer just looked so anguished . . . and nauseated . . . like he would vomit and then burst into tears. Or burst into tears and then vomit. She could appreciate the sentiment while hoping he did neither.

“I’m going to throw up on my stab wounds.” Right: vomit, then cry.

“Terrible idea,” Cat offered from the bench. “You’d be looking at a nasty infection at the least. A pain in the ass.”

“And you.” Archer’s head shot up. “You’re so relaxed you’re almost in a coma. Didn’t you hear what Leah said? Did you doze off and miss the horrible horrible ending? She died puking and shitting her own blood, for God’s sake, from arsenic-coated donuts! Darsenics! Or arnuts! Fed to her by her mother! This makes Flowers in the Attic look like SpongeBob SquarePants!”

“I don’t know what either of those are,” Cat replied.

“You read Flowers in the Attic?” Leah had, of course. She read everything she could find about terrible mothers, starting with Medea and ending with Kris Jenner’s latest biography.

“No, I saw the terrible movie. God, I’m gonna be sick.”

Astonished that he should care so much in such a short time about a dead preteen he had never met, Leah drew back. He was so aggravated he didn’t notice. And Cat, as was her way, was unmoved. It was why they were friends. “Bad shit happens. What have we been sayin’? There’s nothing to be done about it now. You’re just a kiddo. You’ll get it eventually.”

“Ugh, you’re awful, I hate you.” Archer was hiding his face again and out of nowhere Leah wondered how old he was. He seemed much younger than she was, and she hadn’t been paying attention when he was filling out forms in the ER (mostly because of all the shouting). Twenty-three, maybe? Not more than twenty-four, surely. “But it’s good you two are friends. You’re her only friend, did you know?”

“Yup.” Cat raised an eyebrow at Leah. “Better take your boy home. He’s had a tough week. Stabbed, exposed to your mom, exposed to you, stabbed . . .” The older woman got to her feet with a quick movement that made her seem smaller and younger. “Crazy Betty’s saving a bed for me.”

“Sister Beatrice’s name is not Cr—”

“See you tomorrow. Don’t have to bring lunch. You’re fun just for the company.” She poked a long finger at Archer, still on the ground. “You bring lunch.”

“It’s a date,” he replied dryly, but he managed to smile up at Leah as she extended a hand to help him to his feet. He got up much quicker than she would have expected; his wounds were healing quickly.

“Come along, then.” It was almost impossible not to smile back at him, but she managed. “I’ll take you home.”

And she did.





EIGHTEEN


She walked with Archer up the sidewalk to his three-story brick house, tucked away in the tony Gold Coast area, the neighborhood so crowded with large lush trees you couldn’t even see the house until you got close. She must have looked curious because he said, while digging for his keys, “I just rent the tower.”