Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(34)

14

The last time Charlotte slept this deeply, anesthesia was involved, and she’d woken up with her wisdom teeth removed. The shrill beeping that calls her out of slumber now is almost as unpleasant as regaining consciousness with bloody gauze in her mouth.

Almost.

The shades are drawn, but around their edges, she can see it’s almost dark outside. As Kayla walks toward the front door, she looks just as put together as she did that morning, which makes Charlotte feel like a drunk emerging from a blackout.

“Don’t be mad,” Kayla says, as if the prospect barely frightens her. An electronic peephole viewer is attached to the wall next to the door frame, about sixty bucks from an appliance store. Charlotte priced them out for her house before she found a system that came with cameras included.

Kayla studies the small monitor, sees whatever she’d hoped to see, and sends a text in response. Whoever this visitor is, she doesn’t want him to just walk up to the front door and ring the bell. Or she’s told him she won’t open the door for anyone who doesn’t also have her phone number.

A minute or two later, Kayla turns the knob.

Charlotte gets to her feet. She’s not sure whom she’s preparing herself for, but she’s sure she should be prepared.

When he steps inside the house, Charlotte’s breath leaves her with a startled grunt, the kind of sound you make when you almost knock over a water glass. Maybe it’s just the sight of him that does her in. Maybe it’s the smell of his Old Spice aftershave, familiar and nostalgic at the same time, wrapping her in a cocoon of such vivid, comforting memories she feels like it might keep her standing even if she let her knees go out from under her.

They’re fragmented, but her earliest memories of him are still vivid.

The memory of his face among the many others in that dull conference room where the psychiatrists brought her a few weeks after her rescue. The way he’d stood behind her grandmother’s chair with one hand resting firmly on her shoulder as Luanne cried softly into a Kleenex. They’d both tried to let her father lead the conversation, even though it was clear, even then, that her father was treating her like an alien being, a creature irreparably changed by her time on the Bannings’ farm.

The way he’d taken her hand and walked her down the stairs to the beach in Altamira during those first early visits to her grandmother’s after she was rescued.

Had there ever been a man in her life she could trust more than Martin Cahill, her grandmother’s on-again, off-again boyfriend? And what had she done? Turned her back on him because her love for him reminded her too much of her grandmother. Practically banished all thoughts of him because they summoned her grief. Now the sight of him, his snow-white hair brushed out over his back, his denim shirt perfectly pressed, his smile warm and welcoming and eager, it’s exactly what she needs to break the hard shell of shock that’s grown around her over the past twenty-four hours.

“Heya, Charley,” he says softly.

That he can manage to say her new name with such warmth, it makes her vision wobble.

At last her knees buckle. And when she tries to say, Hi, Uncle Marty in response, all that comes out is a deep, wrenching sob. With an arm around her waist, he guides her back to the sofa.

Kayla follows from a short distance. Before Charlotte collapses against Marty’s chest, she glimpses Kayla watching them from the doorway, her expression grave but relaxed, as if Charlotte’s breakdown is proof that calling Marty was the right choice.





15

“Arizona?” Marty asks. “What the hell’s in Arizona?”

“It’s beautiful,” Charlotte answers.

“Yeah, if you want to live on Mars.”

“Never been so I can’t compare.”

“Seriously, though. Arizona?”

Marty shakes his head, sips from the coffee Kayla just brought him before disappearing into the kitchen.

“I thought it’d be safe out there,” she says.

“From what? We took care of the Briffel kid the one time he showed up, didn’t we?”

Not well enough, she wants to say, but she knows that’s unfair. Jason never would have found her again without Dylan’s help. Marty and his buddies deserve credit for scaring him off her scent for a good long while.

“There are other Jasons out there. Message boards, websites about the Bannings. All kinds of stuff.”

“Tell me you’re not reading that crap.”

“How much did Kayla tell you?” Charlotte asks.

“That Jason paid you a visit. That it didn’t end well. That’s all.”

“I should have called you.”

“Well, it’s not like I would have been able to make it to Arizona in time.”

“No, sooner. I mean, in general. I should have . . .”

She’d managed to peel herself off his chest a few minutes before, but there’s only about a foot of distance between them on the sofa now. He reaches across it to smooth her bangs back from her forehead.

“You don’t owe me anything, kiddo. That’s not how it works.”

“How what works?”

“Family.”

Real family, is what he seems to be saying, unlike your father, who didn’t treat you like family.

“Maybe not, but I shouldn’t treat family that way.”