The Spite House(73)

Not only was Stacy back, her life was back. All of her tomorrows. Only she didn’t have a future there at home. The conversation, as far as weighing their options, was over. Leaving was the only choice.

Once this became inarguable, Dess and her father tried to come up with a plan. He would pay off his car and buy another, cheaper one with cash. Something none of their relatives or friends would know about, and therefore something they couldn’t describe to authorities, if and when it came to that. Dad would leave word with his family that he and Dess just needed some time away, and would be back soon. No one would have reason to disbelieve this at first. Still, some family members were liable to text or call within a couple of days, just to check on them. When they received no response, or once they found out he and Dess had changed their numbers, they would get worried, and suspicious. They might wait another day or two after that, but soon they would try to file a missing persons report, and if they ran into any roadblocks regarding that, they might go as far as to hire a private detective to track them, or investigate on their own. One way or another, they would look for him and Dess, and that meant they needed to be careful. It might also mean staying on the move for a while.

They had advantages. Any authorities or detectives looking for them would be looking for just the two of them, not a third person. And they both knew that a missing persons report for two black adults—with no evidence of foul play, at that—wouldn’t gain national attention. They could make it work. Just to be safe, they would adopt new names. If anyone asked, Dess would now stand for “Odessa,” not Desirae. That way Stacy wouldn’t have to learn to call her something new. Stacy wouldn’t take a new name at all. She had enough questions about all of this as it was, they didn’t want her wondering why she couldn’t be herself anymore, and they didn’t want to call her anything that might even hint at her not being herself. Her father adopted the name Eric for no better reason than thinking it would be easy for him to remember, he said.

When Dess asked where they might end up, her father said they’d settle down at the nearest safe place, but suggested it would be hard to find one. There was one place he saw as a backup plan, though. The city where his grandparents once lived. Her new namesake. “It’s as far away as we can get where I’ll still kind of know my way around,” he’d said. “I think we should head in that direction. If something better doesn’t come along before we get there, that’ll be our last resort.”

“You don’t think anyone would know you there?” she said.

“No. I haven’t visited since I was a kid, and all the folks that knew your grandpa and his parents are either too old to remember me or dead themselves by now. Nobody will recognize me.”

“And nobody in the family is going to think to look for us there?”

“They might. That’s why it’s a last resort. Like I said, we only make it there if nothing better comes along. We play it by ear, see how things are going. Hell, with any luck at all, Odessa is one of the first places they think to look for us. We shouldn’t be anywhere near it for a while, which should give them more than enough time to come, see that we aren’t there, and then leave to look elsewhere.”

She didn’t trust him, but couldn’t pinpoint why. He wasn’t telling her something, she was sure of that. What could it be? What ulterior motive could he have for wanting to go to his grandparents’ house? She couldn’t think of one. God, she couldn’t start thinking this way. Bad enough she’d basically given her mother a vote of no confidence. She couldn’t start doing that to Dad, too.

Her father, by way of a trusted coworker at his cybersecurity firm, bought a few necessities, including a new car under his new name, and some ID cards that wouldn’t fool any cops, but would probably pass muster with anyone behind the counter at a motel that accepted cash or prepaid cards.

When all of the arrangements had been made, they left under cover of night and vowed to stay on the move and stay vigilant for as long as necessary, until they could be sure Stacy would be safe.





CHAPTER 34



Eric



Sixteen hundred miles northeast, in a cemetery close to the home he’d made with Tab and the girls, there was a quartzite tombstone with his daughter’s name etched into it. Beneath that stone, buried in the earth, was a small pink coffin. Since Stacy’s return, Eric had asked himself many questions. Seeing Masson’s grave answered one, but added another in its place: Was there still a body in her grave?

He tried telling himself that this didn’t matter, but he couldn’t suppress it or his other remaining questions. What exactly was she? A spirit that somehow gained a body? Was she completely herself, freed from her grave without having to disturb a blade of grass on her burial site? If so, why? How?

Peter Masson had two graves. One tombstone, topped with a marble angel that stood almost eye-to-eye with Eric, marked Masson’s death date as September 29, 1918. The other, a granite nub, said he died on October 7, 1963. The first grave had apparently never been disturbed, the body beneath it never disinterred. A monument to a mistake that hadn’t actually been made.

Were Masson’s war-torn remains still underground? Eric wondered. Or had his ghost reconstituted a healthy body from what had been buried, as well as the pieces left behind on the battlefield in France? If he could find that out, it would help him understand what Stacy was as well.