Useless Bay(20)

I wanted the beach bonfires and someone with a guitar playing “Kum Ba Yah” and to wrap myself around her in a blanket and have her lean against me in the firelight. Rides on the Seattle Great Wheel, walking down the street with my arm around her waist, all of that.

Too late.

Dad seemed to understand and dug my hand tight into his. The most he could do was stand with me as I watched Pixie’s senseless death, but he was there for me in this moment when there were all other kinds of things that needed his attention.

I loved him for it. “Clear!”

Whir-kerpow!

No change in Frank.

“I would roll this back for you if I could, Henry,” Dad said.

The man holding the paddles over Frank rocked back onto his heels, smeared the rain on his face, and looked at his stopwatch. After a few moments, he gently closed Frank’s eyes.

At the same time, whatever had worked its way through Pixie’s bloodstream had gotten to where it needed to go, and she jackknifed up, and with a wheeze and a gulp she screamed and didn’t stop.

Frank breathed, but he did not scream. He rolled over onto his side and started to shake. “Whoa,” he said. “What happened?”

Pixie wouldn’t stop screaming. Her scream was so awful it was as though she were being eaten alive. I shot away from Dad and crouched down on the beach next to her.

“Shh . . . easy, Pix. Easy. I’m here. You’re all right.”

“Oh my God,” she said, and she bawled, her face more inflated than mine. Her eyes were still swollen shut. Both of them. She reached out blindly for anything.

I grabbed her arm and dragged her to me. “I’m here.”

“I’m not ready,” she said. “Please tell her I’m not ready.”

“Shh . . .”

I rocked her.

She gulped air. “It’s too much,” she said, and gulped some more.

One of the first responders tried to pull me away. “It’s okay, sir. I’m going to ask you to let us do our job now.”

I told Pix once again that everything was going to be all right, but she kept crying, saying she “wasn’t ready,” until someone put something in her drip that calmed her down.

As they carried Pixie away on a backboard, Frank got unsteadily to his feet and said, “Whoa! That was freaky!” and the medics laughed. They didn’t try very hard to carry him away as well, even though he’d been just as dead as his sister was. He was a Gray, I guess. Since he was up and acting alert, they assumed he could take it.

But I wasn’t convinced that he was okay and that he didn’t need to be seen by a doctor.

I wanted to know more.

Pixie and Frank dropped at exactly the same time.

I wanted to know if Dean, Sammy, and Lawford had dropped, too.

That question would have to wait.

“Son,” Dad said. I’d forgotten he was there. “You can let Pixie go now.”

I couldn’t stop staring at Frank joking with the medics about blacking out and how, if Sammy ever found out about it, he’d never hear the end of jabs about fainting couches and smelling salts.

Who were these giants? Why did they play by different rules than the rest of us?

“Henry,” Dad tried again. “Come away now. Pixie’s got good people looking after her. Her long night is over. Ours is just beginning.”

I turned around reluctantly. Farther up the beach at our house, a different kind of crew was walking to and from a prone form in the sand, slowly and methodically. Meredith had retreated to the patio and out of the rain.

Now that the emergency with the Grays was over, Lyudmila’s death seemed to have hit my sister hard. Someone had thrown a scratchy blanket over her shoulder, and she alternately clutched it and blew her nose into it.

Behind her, the rest of our team had come out to witness the final progress of my stepmother.

Yuri wasn’t there, but Joyce was talking into a headset and tapping on an electronic tablet. Our cook Hannah was wiping her hands over and over on a clean apron, and Edgar, who was still for once, had taken the baseball cap off his head and held it over his heart as a sign of respect.

I’d always liked Edgar.

Dad was trying to give me a strong smile, but it wasn’t working. He hadn’t bothered to put the hood up on his raincoat, and his bald head was getting pelted. As the rain dripped off his nose and down his chin, it seemed as if it was taking pieces of his face with it. He was dissolving in front of my eyes.

He was going to need my help.

This wasn’t the first time we’d done this, the two men of the family protecting what was left.

I took his hand in mine. It was time to go.





nine


PIXIE


I am sitting on a log on a beach that is mine and not mine at the same time. It has all the features of Useless Bay but also possibilities that make it foreign.

A man sits next to me.

He has a long face, weather-beaten, and white hair pulled into a ponytail. He seems out of place. He wears a uniform I’m not familiar with, with a navy coat and white pants, worn but in decent repair.

Behind me, I can hear people barking orders I don’t understand. Timbers groan. Something massive is back there, but I can’t see it for the fog.

The keel hit bottom before the anchor did, the man sitting next to me says. He has a British accent. Upper-class.