Afterparty (33 page)

“It’s true. But she is also
fine
.” He leaned forward. “She’s so smart, and funny, and gifted.”

“She’s not speaking, Edo. Do these
specialists
know why that is?”

He shook his head. “Her vocal cords work—I’ve heard her make sounds in her sleep. And it’s obviously not comprehension—look at how she writes! But the MRIs show that her visual centers are hyperactive, firing all the time, as if she’s constantly being bombarded with images.”

“So something deep in the wiring,” I said. “Something Numinous did to her.”

Edo shook his head again. “You don’t know that.”

“Oh come on, Edo. Do you think that stuff is harmless?”

“I’m not saying that, but there may be … other reasons.”

“Like what?” I said testily.

“I think there was a trauma at the foster home, before we adopted her.”

He didn’t speak for a moment. “What happened at the foster home, Edo?” My voice was flat.

“There was an accident,” he said. “A houseparent fell down the stairs, ended up with a fractured disk. He blamed Sasha.”

“A six-year-old girl,” I said.

“She tripped him, he said.”

“What did he do to her?”

He seemed not to understand me.

“She must have had a reason. Did he abuse her?”

His eyes widened. “No one suggested anything like that.”

“It’s a pretty common profile. A man—and they’re almost all men—gets himself access to vulnerable children. Grooms them with gifts. Makes them dependent on him. He may even adopt them.”

Edo looked at Rovil, then back to me, blinking hard. “That’s not—you can’t think—”

“What the fuck are you doing with my daughter, Edo?”

His eyes filled with tears. “No,” I said. “No fucking tears.”

Dr. Gloria said, “Keep your voice down.”

I leaned across the table. “Why did you take her? What the fuck are you up to?”

Oh the tears, the tears, they were a-rolling down the motherfucker’s face.

“I made a mistake,” he said. “I thought she was
safe
, Lyda! The foster home was one of the best, very high-rated.” He wiped tears from his cheeks. “Sasha had not yet been adopted, but that wasn’t their fault. I swear that I thought she was in the best possible place.”

“Except you were wrong.”

“After the accident with that volunteer I realized that it would be better to get her out of there,” Edo said. “I didn’t think I would be approved as a parent, so…”

“You got Eduard and his wife to sign the papers.”

“I was very insistent. I told him I would go to the press, even wreck the company if he didn’t do this for me. I had to help her. He knew I was serious in this.”

“So you hid her out here, away from the world, away from any other kids.”

“That’s because I live here, not because I’m hiding her. I told you, I made sure that she saw specialists—”

“She told me she has ‘friends,’ Edo.”

He blinked. “Oh.” He nodded. “You noticed the pictures in her room.”

“Those are her gods?”

“Many of them,” he said. “She has a whole pantheon.”

“How many?” Rovil asked.

“We don’t know,” Edo said. “About a dozen. But she’s stopped talking about them with the therapists.”

“She’s practically Hindu,” Rovil said.

I silenced him with a look, then turned back to Edo. “Tell me what you did to her.”

“I haven’t done anything!” he cried.

“
Lyda
,” Dr. Gloria said. “Not now.”

I became aware of Sasha’s quick footsteps, coming toward us. The girl popped into the room, a worried look on her face. She looked at me, then at Edo. She saw my anger, Edo’s tears. Then she walked to Edo and leaned against him.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “You know how I get.”

And I thought, She chose him.

*   *   *

Sasha pleaded with “Grandpop” to let us stay for supper, and if we were staying for supper, then to stay overnight. I was tempted to leave and come back in the morning, but I wasn’t done with Edo yet. I didn’t want to return to find the gate code changed and a cop waiting to hand me a restraining order.

We retrieved our bags from the car, and the maid led Dr. Gloria and me to a room done up in Mandatory Southwestern: wall-mounted cow skull, turquoise lamps, Navajo blankets. The doctor fell back onto the queen-size bed. “Authentic’s the wrong word,” she said. “Authent
ish
?”

“Authentique,” I said.

“Made in China,” she said in a TV voice. “But with real American smallpox.”

I unzipped my bag, looking for clothes fresh enough to change into. The doctor raised her head and said, “Ahem.”

I turned. The maid still stood in the doorway. “I would like to know your intentions,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Mr. Vik is a good man,” she said. Her voice was clipped. “He loves the girl and has never done any harm to her. I am sure of it.”

“Esperanza, don’t get me wrong, but—”

She bristled. “I’ve taken care of Sasha since she entered this house. If you try to take her from here, you will destroy her.”

“Notice she said ‘from here’ instead of ‘from him,’” Dr. Gloria said.

“Okay then,” I said to the maid. “I will be sure to keep that in mind.”

Esperanza stood in the frame of the door, studying me coldly. Finally she turned and left.

I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Woof.”

“She doesn’t just take care
of
Sasha,” Dr. Gloria said. “She cares
for
her.”

“I know, I know,” I said.

Dr. Gloria exhaled sleepily. After a while she said, “She’s so pretty.”

“I know.”

I could see so much Mikala in her. Those cheekbones, those long limbs.

“But she has your nose,” Dr. G said. “Your way of laughing.”

“She doesn’t make a noise,” I said.

“You know what I mean,” the angel said. “The way you throw your head back.”

“I do no such thing.” I looked around at the walls. Aloud, I said, “So where are the paintings?”

“Hmmm?” Dr. Gloria’s eyes were closed.

“The paintings from Gil. Big paintings with bright orange colors, the ones that looked like plants. And machines. Ollie said they’d be in the house. We’ve been in all the
public rooms
, but we haven’t seen them.”

Dr. Gloria sat up on her elbows. “What are you doing? Why are you talking to me like that?”

“Just wondering aloud,” I said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Who owns a house? The banks have one answer, the mortgage payers another. It’s the houses, though, who decide who they’re loyal to. Sometimes it’s the carpenter who hoisted the walls and laid the beams, forever marking the house as his no matter who moves in after. Sometimes the house pledges fealty to the cleaning lady who each week carefully mops the floors and wipes the banisters. Some houses realize, not unhappily, that they belong to the termites who burrow into the walls and carry out their enthusiastic renovations. A house, after all, wants nothing more than to be lived in.

The big house in the desert had its own answer.

Sasha was seven years old when she began to talk to her house and teach it tricks. At first they were small stunts, like turning on lights when she flicked her fingers. But soon, after she discovered the network that controlled the wall screens and their built-in cameras and microphones and motion sensors, she taught it to wake up for her, and listen for her, and speak for her. Once she mastered the entertainment system, it was one small step to the thermostats and appliances and door locks, which greatly expanded the number of tricks the house could play
on
the people who lived with her.

But most of all, the house spied for her.

At bedtime on the night that Lyda Rose and Rovil Gupta came to visit, the house alerted her that Grandpop was heading toward her room. Sasha quickly hid the IF Deck beneath the bedcovers and picked up a book. Bucko the Pirate Bear sat beside her, mouthing the words.

Grandpop knocked and pushed open the door. “Ready for bed?”

She pretended to be engrossed in the book. Grandpop sat beside her, squashing Bucko between them, and peeked over her shoulder. “Ah,
The Phantom Tollbooth
. I should have guessed.”

She read much more difficult books than this now, but it was
Tollbooth
that she kept always by her bed. It was one of the rare books that got funnier the more she read it.

“So,” Grandpop said. “How long have you known about your mother?”

Sasha threw her words onto the wall:
Not long.
Then:
Are you angry with me?

He laughed. “You should be angry at
me
. I planned to tell you. I didn’t know when you’d be old enough to—no, that’s not true.”

Sasha flipped one palm. The wall said,
What?

“I was going to say that I was waiting for you to be old enough to understand, but I think you’ve been ready for a long time.”

But YOU weren’t ready.

He laughed again. “So smart.” She leaned against him. Bucko swore and made a strangled noise.

Grandpop said, “I suppose you know how your other mother died.”

She nodded.
Looked it up.

Grandpop’s eyes turned shiny with new tears. Oops! She quickly fingertyped,
It’s not a big deal!

That was a lie. It was a very big deal. She’d found hundreds of articles about Little Sprout and what had happened in Chicago before she was born. Bucko thought it was the greatest story ever. Murder! Money! Madness! An R-rated thriller, with special appearance by Sasha Vik as the Fetus.

Grandpop was weeping openly now. “You must have lots of questions.”

A couple.

Thousands, actually, but which ones could she ask? Most of what she knew she’d learned by eavesdropping and snooping. Why didn’t Grandpop tell Lyda about adopting her? Why didn’t Eduard want Grandpop talking to Lyda and Rovil? What was Eduard hiding in his study? And why was the man who murdered her mother sending friendly emails to Grandpop?

I need some time to think,
the wall said.

“You know you can talk to me any time,” he said.

He tucked her in, then told her not to read too late, and carefully closed the door.

“
Finally,
” Bucko said. “That man’s gotta lose some weight.” Sasha fluffed up the bear and straightened him. He said, “Now?”

“Wait,” she said. She pretended to read for exactly four minutes, then threw back the covers and slid into the nook between bed and wall, Bucko right behind her. With her finger she drew a circle on the wall and—abracadabra!—a magic mirror appeared there. She swiped and poked until she’d called up one of the views into the guest bedrooms.

Rovil Gupta, the Indian man, sat on his bed, still wearing all his clothes and even his shoes. He tapped at a slate whose screen Sasha could not quite make out from this angle. He was using the house’s network to communicate, but all the data traffic was encrypted, so she had no idea what he was doing. After a minute he stood up, looked out the window, then sat down again.

“Booooring,” Bucko said. “Let’s see some boobies.”

“That’s my mother you’re talking about,” Sasha said. “Show some respect.”

“Bio mom,” Bucko said dismissively.

Sasha flipped the mirror to show the other guest room. Lyda Rose lay in the bed, the covers up to her neck, staring at the ceiling. The room was dark except for a bedside lamp that turned half her face to shadow. On her stomach was a page of white paper. Something was written on it in big block letters.

“Ooh, zoom in!” Bucko said.

The wall’s cameras were pretty clumsy, and the light was not good, but she got a view of the page. On it were written the words, “WHERE ARE THE PAINTINGS FROM GILBERT KAPERNICKE?”

“What the fuck?” Bucko said.

Sasha quickly wiped away the mirror. “She knows we’re spying! That message was to me!”

The bear burst into laughter. “Serves you right.”

Sasha opened the mirror again, but only a few inches. Lyda Rose still lay on the bed, and the page hadn’t moved. Could she see Sasha, too? No, if she’d hacked the house network, she wouldn’t have needed a paper; she would have just sent the message to Sasha’s room.

“She’s talking about the paintings in Eduard’s office,” Sasha said.

“I figured that out, yeah,” Bucko said. “I suppose this means…”

“That’s right,” Sasha said. “Emergency council meeting!”

*   *   *

A little bit after three in the morning, the wall in the guest bedroom began to glow. When that failed to wake the woman in the bed, the house sounded a gentle
boop boop boop.
Too loud and others would hear; too soft and she’d sleep right through it.

Lyda Rose sat up suddenly. She looked first at a spot beside the bed and said, “What?” Then she noticed the wall and the flashing neon-green arrow pointing at the door. She laughed, a low chuckle.

“All righty then,” she said, and moved to the door.

Back in her room, Sasha and Bucko exchanged a high five.

The rest of the IFs murmured or cheered or dinged according to their nature. Sasha had allowed nearly everyone out for the occasion: Mother Maybelle, Tinker, and Zebo, HalfnHalf and Elk Heart, the Snoring Man and MothCatcher and the rest, all of them huddled around the bed, while Squidly floated above them all, bobbing against the ceiling like a balloon. Only the Wander Man remained in the deck. He was buffered top and bottom by mundane cards, but Sasha could still feel his lean black presence, monitoring the proceedings, waiting for her to mess up.

“She’s into the hallway,” Bucko said.

Sasha lit up the next arrow, about five feet down the corridor.
This way, this way!
Lyda Rose shook her head in what looked like amusement or exasperation, but she followed the flashing symbols down the hallway, then to the great room. It was surprisingly well lit there. Moonlight poured through the big two-story windows, with extra illumination provided by the neon arrow prompting her to continue up the stairs. Lyda Rose looked down the hallway that led to Sasha’s room, and for a tense moment Sasha thought she was going to march down that way … but then Lyda turned toward the arrow and went up the steps to the second-floor balcony.