Dying for a Living (A Jesse Sullivan Novel) (21 page)

I shook his hand. “Eddie wasn’t my father.”

“I didn’t mean, Mr. Phelps,” Mr. Reeves said with a smile. “I know your father, Eric Sullivan. And that you’re beautiful like your mother,” he said.

I found this compliment hard to digest, but I still managed a thank you.

“Except in some of your facial features, which are more like Eric’s.”

“How did you know my parents?” I asked.

“You couldn’t know Danica and not know Eric. They were inseparable, once upon a time.” His voice trailed away almost wistfully. “Pity that I can’t remember a thing about him. I do love to reminisce. But it’s been over fifteen years.”

I really didn’t want to talk to him if he had nothing useful to say, but I was sort of pinned between the wall and my mother’s coffin.

“I can see I’ve made you uncomfortable.” He smiled slowly. “I’m sorry to stare, but the last time I saw you, you were still a little girl. You’re all grown up now and it’s a bit overwhelming for me. Time flies, as they say.”

“Sorry, but I don’t remember you.”

“I don’t suspect so,” he said. His eyes seemed to burn, making me writhe uncomfortably. “Like I said, you were very young.”

He leaned forward again, exuding charm. I caught a whiff of his cologne as he whispered into my ear as if sharing a dirty secret. “May I ask you a personal question?”

“Depends.”

“Were you a Jack-in-the-box?”

Jack-in-the-box is what we call NRD positives who were buried and wake up in their coffins. Recently, they’d reinstated the practice of bell-ringing, where strings run from the coffins to a bell on the surface. It’s an old custom where a person rings the bell if they were buried alive and the caretaker digs them out.

I searched the room again, praying for Danny to pop up anytime or soon I would just have to get rude. Kyra had lingered near the car in order to give me some privacy, but now I wished I’d made her come in. She’d know how to get me out of this conversation. Would anyone in this room come to my aid if I screamed?

Mr. Reeves intentionally overlooked my discomfort.

“I’ve even heard Necronites can move things with their minds, alter reality around them, fold space and time, and even teleport. Anything you can think of—a Necronite can do it,” he said.

I thought I might have heard that one thing in a movie. “Like jump from one place to another?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Some can even resurrect corpses from their graves and control them like an army. They can freeze time with their willpower alone.”

I blinked at him in utter disbelief. I burst out laughing, more out of nervousness than anything else. More than a few heads turned my way. Good to know I could draw attention if needed.

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” I warned Reeves.

“Just some of it?” he asked with an arched eyebrow.

“Jesse!” a small voice cried out and as I turned, two thin arms wrapped themselves around me. The top of a head bumped my chin and the smell of boy and home cooked food overwhelmed me. Once I peeled my captor off of me, the very first thing I noticed were big hazel eyes, exactly like my own.

“Daniel,” I said and squeezed him hard against me so that his toes came up off the floor. My God, he was so small when I saw him last and now he was as tall as me.

Daniel. Daniel.

I turned to say something to Mr. Reeves but he was gone. Thank God. Still, I gave the room a once over. In his absence, I felt better. The room cooled and it was easier to breathe. I also felt more steady and the nauseous, dizzy, and sick feelings slowly left my cramped body. I squeezed Danny in relief.

“You came,” he said in the same desperate tone he’d used when he first called me. He refused to let me go. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“Of course, I came.” My breath scattered a few chestnut curls of the top of his head. He’d grown up to have the same unruly waves and freckles as me. “How are you? Are you okay?”

He pulled away from me finally but still held my hand. I felt strange about it, but I didn’t pull away from him. I was willing to give this kid anything he needed right now.

“I miss her,” he said. “But I understand that God needs her now.”

It sounded like something my mom would have taught him to believe. “Are you okay though? Where are you going to live now? Who’s going to take care of you?”

“Uncle Paul and Aunt Jody,” he said. Aunt Jody was Eddie’s sister—one of the few names I recalled, but no real memory of her existed.

“Are they nice?” I asked him, fearing the worst. I knew I was in no shape to take custody of a child right now, but I’d be damned if I was going to let this kid end up with anyone depraved.

“Uncle Paul and I fish a lot and he lets me drive his truck through the fields. Aunt Jody can be a little OCD about keeping the house clean, but she’s a real good cook and she’s helping me catch up on my homework. They don’t live too far away so I won’t have to change schools or nothing.”

“Anything,” I corrected. When his description didn’t scream molesters or child abusers, my shoulders relaxed. “It sounds like you’ll be happy with them, Danny. I’m really glad.”

I spoke too soon. He teared up and his little lip quivered. “I wish she didn’t die though.”

“Me, too, buddy,” I told him, even though I wasn’t really feeling too sad about her death. There was nothing of the woman I knew in this box and nothing of this house that I felt any emotion for except the barn and that was burned to the ground. Maybe it was the room full of people. Maybe it was not talking to her for seven years, I’m not sure. I just know that whatever I expected to feel about this—I didn’t. My pain was completely unrelated to the corpse. My regrets came from somewhere else.

“I want her to wake up,” he whispered. “Like you did.”

I saw this orphaned kid staring at his mother with tears in his eyes and it broke my heart. “Oh, honey. It doesn’t work that way. I wish it did, but it doesn’t.” Because I inherited my NRD from my father.

“Why didn’t you come home?” he asked. “You could have saved her.”

I should’ve seen this coming. I looked him straight in the eye so he’d know I meant what I was about to say. “It wasn’t because of you, Danny. Okay? I promise it wasn’t because of you. Mom and I just didn’t get along.”

“But we missed you.”

No way in hell mom missed me.

“Did you think I wouldn’t love you anymore because you’re a zombie?” he asked.

I bit my lip and swallowed a laugh. Anytime anyone uses the word “zombie,” a hot rush of angers fills me head to toe. However, hearing it come out of my little brother’s mouth, when his voice was still sweet and pre-pubescent, it just made me smile.

And he was old enough to handle at least some of the truth. “Mom told me not to come back. I guess she was worried I’d hurt you.”

“That’s not what Mom told me,” he said. “She said you got a job and moved away. She says that’s what grownups do.”

“She talked about me?”

“All the time,” he said.

“No way,” I blurted. And she couldn’t tell me this shit? “What did she say?”

“She was proud of you,” he said.

I kissed the top of his head and squeezed him again. I used the little guy to hold my shaking body in place. I didn’t know what else to do.

I saw Kyra coming through the back kitchen door and she gave a little wave. I was out of time.

Danny must’ve sensed the change. “Please don’t go. I promise it’s okay. Aunt Jody doesn’t like zombies, but Uncle Paul doesn’t care. He says God has a plan for everything.”

“I can’t stay,” I told him. “Let me get some things in order and I promise to visit.”

He squeezed me tighter.

“I promise I’ll call more, write more, email, whatever you kids do these days. Do you text?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “I don’t have a cellphone.”

Christmas present, check.

“Tell your uncle that I have money and if you need anything, he should call me,” I said, handing him one of my crumpled business cards. Then I shoved the wad of cash Ally had given me into his hands. “Take this too and put it away for just in case.”

His eyes were huge. I’m guessing he’d never seen so much money at one time. “In case of what?”

“Anything,” I said. “If you need me, you call me okay? Hey, how did you get my number the first time?”

“It was in Mom’s address book.”

Jesus, Mom. Really? You kept tabs on me for seven years, told people how proud you were, but you couldn’t even manage a phone call?

I gave him one last hug, still amazed at how easy it was to coddle him. What had I expected, him to be aloof? Distant, maybe, now that he was an orphan.

But the fact remained, it really was time to go. I’d seen the corpse. I’d checked on the boy. If I stayed any longer, I ran the risk of getting caught or having one of those dramatic family member blowouts that I’d been worried about to begin with.

So I turned my back on my mother’s house, knowing I’d never see it again.

Chapter 17

I
sobbed like a baby all the way back to Nashville. I’m sure Herwin would just call it years of repressed anger and depression working its way to the surface. Worse, I was drowning in all that Rachel and Brinkley had said, seeing my little brother all grown up, the fact that I half-orphaned him, and my Mom might have loved me after all.

It was too much.

I told Kyra what I’d remembered in the woods, leaving out the part about Gabriel. “When I hired Ally, she said we were friends in high school. I recognized her, but not as my best friend for like years. I hadn’t forgotten about what a douchebag Eddie was, yet I’d forgotten her. That doesn’t make any sense!”

“You know you have brain damage,” Kyra said. “How many years had you been dying before you saw Ally again?”

“Five.”

Kyra made a there you go gesture. “Five years of dying. Of course, you’d forget.”

“But why didn’t Ally tell me we were best friends?”

Kyra shrugged. “She probably knew it’d be weird to bring it up if you didn’t remember.”

Somehow Ally had found me in Nashville, applied for my assistant position and then she pretended like nothing had ever happened.

I fell against the seat. “God, I feel like such an asshole. Why couldn’t she tell me?”

“I’m sure she has a good explanation,” Kyra said. “Just talk to her when you get back. Apologize if you feel you have to. Tell her you were brain dead from all that death-replacing but you’re good now.”

“I just want to sleep and when I wake up, poof. All better.”

Kyra pulled a pillow from her backseat and offered it to me, without swerving once. We lapsed into silence as I delved deeper into my own thoughts. Rachel, Brinkley, Gabriel, Ally, Danny, Eddie, my mother, my father—they each played on a loop in my head until I dozed off, exhausted from sleep deprivation.

Then Kyra thrashed me. “Jesse, wake up. Wake up!”

My eyes focused first on the dashboard clock. Hours had passed and ahead the outline of Nashville’s Centennial Park came into view—then the cop car behind us, flashing its swirling lights.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

I gestured toward my ragged complexion in the visor mirror. “When have I ever had a good plan?”

“Good point,” she muttered.

Kyra pulled over and turned on her emergency flashers. “Damn. We were so close.”

“I think we should just go with it. I’m too tired to make up a story.”

“You can’t lie for shit anyway,” she said. “If they take you, I’ll call Ally and tell her where you are. She can ask her brother what to do.”

Kyra fell silent just before a tap-tap-tap sounded against her window. She rolled it down with a push of a button, and a waft of chilly air rushed in. Agent Garrison leaned down into the window, wearing his usual half-neutral, half-pained expression.

“Dare I ask where you ladies are heading?” he inquired.

“Breakfast,” Kyra said. I guess that could’ve worked since it was noon and we still wore the clothes we’d worn the night before. Certainly we looked like we’d just rolled off someone’s couch, starved.

“Yes, can I please have breakfast before you interrogate me?” I asked. It was a sincere request. I’d only had gas station food—an orange juice and sugar-laden snack cake since we left.

His eyes narrowed as if inspecting me more closely—my disheveled hair, smeared makeup and puffy eyes. “We won’t keep you long.”

“I guess that means no.” I gathered up my bag.

After a little wave to Kyra, I slid into the back of the cop car with minimal grace, but managed to keep my skirt down so that Agent Garrison’s partner didn’t get a free peep show. Also, I tried not to let the overwhelming smell of leather and the fact that my doors didn’t open from the inside freak me out. God, Eve had scarred me for life.

“So, am I finally being arrested?”

“That depends,” Garrison said. He ran a hand through his hair. “On how well our discussion at the station goes.”

“For the record, I maintain that I’m the victim here.”