The Lucky Ones(46)
“See, doll?” Dr. Capello said. “That used to be my line. Never get old, Allison. Never get old.”
“I won’t, I promise,” she said, watching as Roland followed Dr. Capello up the stairs.
“Did she let you skinny-dip?” she heard Roland ask his father.
“She didn’t, damn her,” Dr. Capello said.
“Good. If you get arrested for indecent exposure, we’re leaving you in jail,” Roland said. “I love you, but nobody needs to see that.”
“You go skinny-dip,” Dr. Capello said to him. “Since I can’t.”
“I’m trying to impress Allison,” Roland said. “Cold water is no man’s friend.”
“Youth is wasted on the young.”
“And wisdom is wasted on the old since you’re clearly not using yours.”
The back-and-forth continued all the way up to the third floor. Allison’s eyes burned with unshed tears as she listened to the gruff and tender bickering between father and son. She was in danger in this house, but not from violence—unless it was the violence of her own feelings. This was a family, the one she’d wanted all her life. This was love in the rough—the coal, not the diamond. There was nothing pretty about a dying man leaning on a son who can’t save him though he’d give his right arm to do so. Allison felt warmth all the way to her core. This moment was everything she ever wanted from McQueen but never got because she’d never asked. Allison hastily wiped a tear from her cheek but it was too late. She’d been caught in the act.
“Pathetic,” said Deacon. Allison turned and saw him standing in the kitchen doorway shaking his head.
“I know,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “But they’re so cute.”
“They’re terrified,” Deacon said. “And they’re hiding it from each other.”
That brought Allison back down to earth.
“It’s so hard to believe,” she said. “He’s thin. He’s old. But he seems okay.”
“Dad’s doctor told us kidney failure was a ‘gentle’ death. That’s the word she used. Gentle. Gentle for who? The doctors? We don’t want him in pain. But if he were suffering, at least we could tell ourselves dying would be a relief for him. A release from the pain, I guess. This way it feels like he’s being stolen from us.” Deacon looked past her as if he was too raw to make eye contact. “Remind me to die fast. I don’t want anyone knowing it’s coming. Not even me. Basically I want to be murdered. And I want it to make the news. National news. Postmortem dismemberment is a bonus.”
“Which member?” Allison asked.
“Lady’s choice. I assume it’s a woman killing me. Thora, most likely.”
It seemed it wasn’t just Roland and Dr. Capello hiding their fears behind jokes.
“Well,” Allison said, “best of luck with that.”
“Thanks, sis. Ready?”
“Not quite.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the key chain can of spray he’d given her. She knew who’d hurt her. She didn’t need it anymore. That she and Deacon could joke around like old times was proof she trusted him.
He raised his eyebrow but didn’t take the spray out of her hand.
“Keep it,” he said. “A welcome home gift.”
“You’re weird, you know that, right?”
“Stop hitting on me, Allison.”
Allison and Deacon drove separately into town—he on his motorcycle and she in her rental car. She didn’t blame him for wanting to take out his bike on these last good days before the rain started up. Once it got going, it might be next summer before they saw anything but steel-gray clouds again.
Allison followed Deacon all the way north to Clark Beach, the quaint little tourist town where Dr. Capello had taken them every Saturday to visit the library, get ice cream and look through the telescopes on the beach. Though it was October and the summer tourists were long gone, the streets were still lively with locals taking advantage of one of the last good days of the year to come to the coast, walk on the white sand and watch the puffins and terns playing on the enormous rock stacks at the edge of the water. So little had changed since Allison was last there she almost expected to see a bearded man in khakis and a cardigan walking down the sidewalk with four or five or six or seven kids behind him doing impressive damage to their ice-cream cones.
Deacon turned into a tiny parking lot next to a gray-shingled, two-story house. Over the glass front door hung a painted sign that read The Glass Dragon.
“This is my baby,” Deacon said as she joined him on the sidewalk. The front window of the shop was filled entirely with one glass sculpture—a green-and-gold Chinese dragon, four feet high, five feet long and grinning with manic amphibious joy. The face was astonishingly expressive and the detail on the claws and the scales and the individual dots of color on its dappled skin took Allison’s breath away.
“You did this?” she asked Deacon.
“You like it?”
“It’s amazing.”
“You want one?”
“Might not fit in my suitcase,” she said.
“Get a bigger suitcase,” Deacon said, leading her through the front door. Before Allison could look around the shop, she heard a sound—almost a gasp, almost a squeak.