Don’t Let Me Go(41)

“Soon. As soon as she can. She’s just finishing up her second-last manicure, and then she says her last client of the day is a friend, so she can call the woman on her cell phone and reschedule her. And then she’ll be right home.”

The voice stopped their conversation — Grace’s mom’s voice, this time calling from the sidewalk out in front of the building.

“Grace! This isn’t funny any more! Come home!”

Billy tried to ignore it as best he could, but it wasn’t easy. In fact, it was nothing but an act. And Billy wasn’t nearly the actor he used to be. He glanced over at Grace to see if she appeared as unhappy as he felt. She looked as though she might be about to cry.

Another shout from Grace’s mom.

“Grace!”

Billy could feel the strain of the experience in his midsection, like Grace’s mom’s voice was pulling all the aliveness out of his belly and leaving only staticky tension in its place. Suddenly it felt as if nothing but staticky tension had ever lived in him. That voice seemed to completely erase any and all of the comfort of his past. Such as it was.

It’s official, he thought. We’re kidnappers.

He thought about wings. Wide, white-feathered, flapping wings. Anticipated them, really. Might as well get used to them, he thought to himself. Come nightfall they’ll be our only companions.

“So…what did you tell Rayleen?” Billy whispered, though Grace’s mom was ten times too far away to overhear.

“Just that my mom was…awake…very awake…and this might be a good time to have that talk with her.”

“Grace!”

This time her mom’s voice came through as even more shrill and shocking, though she was halfway down the block by then. It made them both jump.

“She’s getting scared now,” Billy said.

“It’s really weird to hear her and not answer. It feels weird. It feels…”

Billy waited, as patiently as it was in his nature to wait. Then he said, “Can’t find the word?”

“Wrong,” she said. “It feels wrong. But I didn’t want to say wrong, because we had a meeting and we decided this was right. But…are we sure this is right? I mean, what if we’re not doing the right thing?”

“Here’s all we really know for sure,” Billy said. “What we’ve been doing up until now is wrong. We pretty much all agree on that, even the late Mr. Lafferty, who didn’t agree with much of anybody on much of anything. So, if we make a change, at least we have a chance of getting to right. We’re just pretty sure we’re not going to get there without a big change.”

“Right,” Grace said. “Thanks for reminding me.”

But she still didn’t sound all that sure. And she was beginning to look genuinely stressed.

“You OK, baby girl?”

“It just feels different. You know. Now that we’re actually doing it.”

“Things always do,” Billy said.

? ? ?

Rayleen came striding down the sidewalk about twenty minutes later.

“Record time,” Billy said to Grace.

“Are you kidding? It’s been a century.”

They lay on their bellies on the living room rug, side by side, watching out the very bottom of the sliding-glass door.

“It’s like a fifteen-minute walk. You have no idea how fast she got here.”

“Felt like a year.”

“It was twenty minutes,” Billy said.

“Seriously? Twenty minutes? How do you know?”

“I can see the kitchen clock from here.”

“How come some twenty minutes are so much longer than others?”

“A question for the ages.”

“Does that mean you don’t know?”

“Pretty much.”

“Now I don’t even know where my mom went. Here Rayleen rushed all the way home to talk to her, and my mom’s off looking for me someplace around the corner or something, and who knows when she’ll be back.”

She said it as though she meant it to be a complaint, but a note of relief shone through in her voice.

Billy said, “Look again, baby girl.”

He hated to drop it on her like that, but it needed to be said. Besides, she’d see it for herself soon enough.

Grace’s mom was walking back down the sidewalk toward home, approaching from the opposite direction as Rayleen, and it looked as though they were destined to collide right about at the walkway to their building.

“Oh, shit,” Grace said, and then slapped a hand over her mouth.

“Special price today on swearing. It’s marked way down.”

“You’re so weird, Billy.”

Then they both fell silent and watched it happen.

On the outside of the situation, it didn’t look like much. Rayleen stood with her hands on her hips, looking relaxed, even though Billy knew she wasn’t. Grace’s mom was a good head shorter, and she puffed up her chest and did everything a person can do with body language to look big. She had long hair, Grace’s mom, and she brushed it back a lot as they talked. A nervous tic, maybe.

The two women stood just far enough away from Billy and Grace’s perch that it was impossible to see their facial expressions.

“She’s mad,” Grace whispered, reverently.