Touched - By Cyn Balog Page 0,34

anything for sure. As usual.”

“Look, honey, I don’t know what’s true anymore. Your mother used to be a very free spirit. Funny to think that when she was your age, I had trouble keeping her home at night. The day she graduated from high school was the day she told me she was pregnant with you. She was so happy. She had such plans. She was going to marry your father and move inland and start a curio shop. And then, one day, in the summer, I remember it so clearly … you know all this, though.”

I nodded. “This thing couldn’t have just happened to us, though, right? There’s got to be a reason.”

She nodded sadly. “I wish I knew, honey bunny.”

I thought about it some more as my mind slowed to a dull thrumming. Some things did just happen. People developed weird diseases. Bridges crumbled. The good died young. Crap like that. And nothing, nobody caused it. All my life, I’d never dug too deep because I thought our curse was likely one of those things. And maybe it was.

But if there was a reason for it, I had to find out.

And I had a good idea where to start.

I’d wanted to seek Taryn out the minute I got home, but by the time Nan’s cast was set and we found someone willing to drive us back to Seaside, it was after ten. We didn’t have any money for a cab, so one of the orderlies who had just gotten off work offered to drive us. The guy had a shifty look to him, like a snake, and a vanity license plate that read LUVR. Plus his ancient Pinto smelled like pot, but Nan was so drugged up she kept beaming at him and calling him a “nice young man.”

She also wouldn’t stop muttering to me about how the tomatoes needed to come in. She was probably so out of it she didn’t realize how late it was. But I went outside with a bucket and a flashlight anyway and picked as many as I could from the little plot of earth by the side of the garage. I knew I’d have other things I wanted to do in the morning.

All night long, I had visions of Emma. With everything else going on, I’d managed to bury most of the thoughts of her that were lingering in my brain. But when the lights went down and I lay in bed, they surfaced like jellyfish. All I saw was a once beautiful face, bloated and misshapen. I could see those cold blue lips. In my vision, her lips opened and this eerie whisper came out: Why? Why? When the light of day finally streamed through my window, I saw these things: smiling potato, ugly blue dog, fingertip kiss, bad lemonade. The constant sound of clicking, like teeth chattering, felt buried as deep within me as my heartbeat, and when I shook my head it only seemed to get louder. I could smell something sweet in the air, like sugar doughnuts, so when I got downstairs I was confused to find Nan cooking eggs and bacon.

Two days had passed since Emma’s accident, and I knew those night visions were my subconscious, telling me I needed to go the Reeses’ house, to offer condolences. Even if they hated me. Whatever. It was the civil thing to do.

I remembered that Taryn had said the Reeses lived next door to her. So after breakfast, I rode my bike to Lafayette, where I found a bungalow near Taryn’s house. I saw a lady in a pink terry housecoat, absently watering a bunch of dying flowers in front of the bungalow. Her aim was totally off; most of the water was falling on the white pebbles and rushing down the driveway, into the gutter. I knew that had to be Mrs. Reese.

I stopped in front of her, not doing a very good job of ignoring that Taryn’s house was right next door. It was closed up and looked empty. I wondered where she was, what she was doing, when I saw the smiling potato again. I shook it from my head and concentrated on the frail lady who was now staring at me. “Um. Mrs. Reese?”

She nodded. She looked like she was my mom’s age, and her blond hair was in a tangle on her head, as if she hadn’t run a brush through it in days, which was like my mom, too. She still had