she appeared to be a completely different person. With her surprisingly smooth skin and the change in how she carried herself, she seemed much younger now. An older version of Mackenzie. Just as striking. Just as beautiful.
“That must have been quite an experience. Did you hear the explosion when the mountain blew?” Even though Dom was working out of the Perdido Bay Region at the time, it had been all over the news.
“Didn’t hear a damned thing. We were in what they called the quiet zone. The sound waves passed right over us, I guess.”
Again he tried to hide his smile. It was humorous hearing an old woman swear. She was tougher than she looked. He asked question after question about the eruption and she answered each one with such detail he had a hard time believing she had Alzheimer’s disease.
“Mrs. Shaw, if you don’t mind my asking, why did you worry if you didn’t travel north in the summer?”
“Because of the Shaw Curse, of course. Hasn’t Mackenzie Marie told you anything? As her husband, you need to know these things. How long have you two been married?”
“Ah, well…” She was slipping back into the same place where she’d been when they arrived.
“I didn’t get an invitation and I’d think my own daughter would’ve invited me to her wedding.”
“She wouldn’t dream of not including you, Mrs. Shaw.”
“As I was saying, Foster’s relatives disappeared during the warm months mostly. It’s been documented, you know. I cataloged and charted every detail I learned about every disappearance. Dates, locations, weather conditions, things like that. They went missing mostly from the big cities, but not always. You can never be too careful. We lived in small towns, up here, mostly on the coast, where the temperature didn’t get much above 70 degrees in the summer. But it’s best to not stay put for long, no matter where you are. Better to move around a lot. I fear we’ve become too complacent lately.”
“Why is that, ma’am?” My God, she knew. She’d figured it out on her own.
She shrugged. “Don’t know why. We just did. It’s somehow safer. Foster said I worried too much, but when I finally let my guard down and we moved to San Diego, look what happened.”
“When your husband went missing?”
“Of course. Do you not know anything?”
Mrs. Shaw leaned forward, reaching for his hands, and he set them in her upturned palms. He willed himself not to take in any of her energy, but it was difficult with the palm to palm contact. She gripped with the strength of a much younger woman and stared at him with eyes that reminded him of an eagle. Sharp, observant and extremely intelligent.
“You are her protector, are you not? A guardian? Someone who will look after her?”
“Yes, I am.” Good Lord. How perceptive was this woman?
“Well, then, there are some things you need to know.”
When she loosened her hold, he quickly pulled his hands away and she recounted many of the same details Mackenzie had told him the other night.
“And when her cousin, Stacy, disappeared last year, well, that’s when things really changed for Mackenzie. I’m not sure she took it seriously until then. And Corey still doesn’t.”
“What do you think is going on?” Dom didn’t want to ask a question to which he knew the horrible answer, but he had to.
“We don’t know. It’s hard to convince doctors that something’s going on when you don’t have a body to test. They just think the family has a higher than normal count of crazies. And that doesn’t even include me.” She tapped her temple with a forefinger. “My niece who disappeared last year was convinced it had something to do with alien abductions. Maybe she’s right. Who knows?” She played with her bangle bracelets, four or five on each wrist, clanking them up and down her forearms.
“But how can they say it’s mental illness? Have they done any sort of testing—genetic, DNA—to pinpoint any odd commonalities?” The strangeness of discussing genetics with a woman who only minutes ago couldn’t remember her name hadn’t quite escaped him.
“Can’t find a thing. So it’s easiest for them to say the Shaws have a tendency to walk away from their lives when things get rough. Can you imagine? Desertion as a character trait?”
Dom said nothing, just stared at the pages of the open journal on his lap, twisting one of his thumb rings with his forefinger. What could he say when he knew the answer?