nape as he continued. “Your sister started making these terrible sounds. I thought at first she was choking and I was about to go in and get her. I had just stepped through the door when I saw her skin change.”
My breath caught in my throat. I was terrified to ask him to finish, afraid that in the next moments he might divulge what I was to become. But on the other hand…I had to know. “Her skin? What do you mean?” My heart hammered against my ribs as I waited for him to finish.
“I swear I think it turned black. And shiny. The moonlight coming through the window made it glisten, almost like it was wet. I’ve never seen anything like it. Then she started shaking like she was having a seizure, but she was still making those noises. Unnatural noises.
“Wind started pouring through the windows and doors, howling through the house. I don’t know where it came from. Don’t think I wanted to, really. The gusts were so strong they knocked me against the doorjamb a couple of times. But I hung on, stayed right there. To watch, I guess. I don’t know. I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes away from what was going on.”
I waited for him to continue, but, once more, he was lost in time. “Then what happened?”
“Then your mother let her go, just dropped her,” he said simply.
I sucked in a gulp of air, literally waiting on baited breath for the finale. “What happened to her?”
“That’s the thing. She didn’t fall. She just…hovered there. It’s like the wind was holding her up in the air.” He paused then said softly, “And she didn’t even cry.”
CHAPTER FIVE
We sat quietly for several long minutes, him reliving the nightmare, me digesting my family’s horrible history. I knew I’d have questions. It only made sense after such an astonishing revelation. But, at that moment, I couldn’t think of one. I was too shocked to think much past the sinister portrait Dad had painted.
“The next morning, I waited until your mother was in the shower. I took you and left.” He paused then added under his breath, “And never went back.”
The jingling of the telephone forced me from my shocked shell. On wooden legs, I rose from the couch and made my way to the kitchen where the phone rested on the counter.
Leah’s voice brought me back to reality like a bucket of cold water to the face. “Mom wants you to come for dinner tonight. She fixed pineapple upside down cake.”
Dina Kirby had adopted me, figuratively speaking. From the first time we’d met, she’d been the mother I’d always wanted, but never had. She took me shopping with them, she took me to the movies with them, she took me swimming with them in the summer and skiing with them in the winter. And she always invited me over when she fixed my favorite dessert, pineapple upside down cake.
I could’ve cried. Never had the longing for a mother, a normal mother, been as poignant as it was right then. Wild horses couldn’t have kept me away. Plus it would give me a chance to apologize to Leah.
“What time?” I wasn’t even going to ask if I could go. I was going. Period.
“Six or so.”
“Okay. See you in a while.”
After I laid the phone back in its cradle, I walked back to the living room. Without so much as a pause or a glance in Dad’s direction, I continued on to my room. When I turned to close the door behind me, I saw Dad sitting on the couch. His head was cradled in his hands. From across the room I felt his grief and misery, an echo of the pain in my own chest. His shoulders shook with sobs too quiet for me to hear. For an instant, I thought to go to him, offer him some small comfort, but tonight, for the first time that I could remember, I had none to give.
********
At nearly seven that night, I sat with Leah and her parents around their oval dinner table, listening to their family chatter. Their normal family chatter. It was the soothing balm my bruised and tender soul needed.
“But I thought you liked Johnny Depp,” Dina was saying to Leah. “I wouldn’t have rented it if I’d known that.”
“I do, Mom. I just really wanted to watch something funny. And you know how much I love Adam Sandler.”
“What do you think, Carson?” Dina turned her cornflower