The Turning Season (34 page)

“Yes, ma'am. I am fully alive to all the disastrous consequences that might ensue if a shifter changes shapes in a public place.”

I put a hand to my head. Again, I'm having so much trouble thinking things through. I suppose I haven't quite registered the shock of Ryan's death, which is why I can stand here calmly having this surreal conversation. “But then you—you
wanted
him to be free. You
didn't
think he should be punished. All this time—I've been trying to figure out what I should do—and I couldn't decide. But you made that decision.”

“Well, now,” he says regretfully. “It's a little more complicated than that. I did let him go, that's a fact. But I kinda thought he'd pull a stupid stunt like this. So you could say I set him up for this very ending.”

Now I'm watching him with a cold and accusatory stare. “You murdered him,” I say in a hard voice. “Just like he murdered those others. Because you thought you had the right to decide who lives and who dies.”

His voice is as hard as mine. “I killed him in the line of duty as he was about to commit a capital offense. I'm paid to make those decisions as I carry out my responsibilities protecting the citizens of this state. If he'd never come here with the intent to commit murder, I never would have caught him. The choices your friend made are the ones that have seen him wind up dead.”

I'm too angry and too confused to tell if he's right or not, so I look away. Joe gives my shoulders a squeeze and asks, “What happens now? Gonna be kind of hard to explain away cause of death on this particular body.”

Wilkerson sighs and nods. “I know. I think I'm just going to have to say that Ryan Barnes got away and tell my staff to be on the lookout for him. Not a bad thing, maybe—I'll tell Terry he better leave Miss Celeste alone or Mr. Barnes will surely return to finish what he started. After today, I think he'll believe me. That'll be a way to help keep him in line.”

I gesture toward Ryan and Celeste. “So then what happens to the—to Ryan?”

“I've got some property over by Springfield—farmland, 'bout as isolated as this. I'll take the body there and bury it.”

“No,” I say instantly. “We'll bury him on my land. It's where he belongs. Plenty of other dead shape-shifters on those grounds.”

Wilkerson gives me a keen look. “Including Janet, I take it?”

“She wasn't a shape-shifter.”

“But she's dead, isn't she?” When I nod, he looks sad but unsurprised. “You'll have to tell me all about it someday.”

“Maybe,” I reply.
Probably not.

Wilkerson looks around, studies Celeste for a moment, glances back at Joe and me. “Well,” he says. “Not much else we can do here. I'll go talk to Terry, see how bad he's hurt, give him some story about what happened. You willing to put Mr. Barnes in your truck and take him back to Miss Karadel's place?”

“Yeah,” Joe says. “I've got some tarps in back. Help me carry him to the truck? I'm parked behind the barn there.”

“Will do.” Wilkerson claps Joe on the shoulder. “Damn, boy. Sure wish you'd reconsider being on the force. It would be right helpful to have someone who
knew
and could watch my back.”

Joe glances at me. “Yeah,” he says. “Well, maybe. We can talk later.”

*   *   *

T
he men wait while I go talk to Celeste. She's grown calmer but no less despairing. The look she gives me can only be described as heartrending. I bend over and put my hand on her shoulder.

“We're going to take Ryan back to my place,” I say gently. “You have to let him go now, so they can carry him to the truck.”

Her hands and her cheeks are streaked with blood. Given that she's still got bruises on her face and wrists, she looks ghastly. “I can't stop crying,” she whispers.

I change my grip, trying to urge her to her feet. “You don't have to.”

“How will I ever get over it? Ever,
ever
?”

“I don't know,” I say. “You hope to remember the good and try to forget the bad. But I don't know if that's even possible. Come on, baby, stand up. Put Ryan down and let them take him.”

In response, she clings tighter. “I can't—I'm not ready—”

I let go of her shoulder so I can use both hands to try to break her grip on Ryan. “We have to go. Before Terry and his family start getting curious. Before they come out of the house and look for us and try to figure out what happened. We've almost been discovered at every turn, but if we can just get out of here now without being seen—”

She fends me off with an elbow. “Maybe we
should
be seen,” she says angrily. “Maybe
none
of this would have happened if shape-shifters could come out of the shadows and just
be
. Maybe it's time for us to step forward and announce who we are and let the world just
deal
with it.”

“Maybe,” I say, successfully wrapping my fingers around her wrists and pulling her hands away from Ryan's body. “But we can talk about it later. When we're home. When you're calmer. When none of us are quite so sad.”

Abruptly, Celeste spins around on her knees to throw her arms around me. I sink to the ground next to her and pull her into an embrace, and feel her whole body shudder as she sobs into my shirt. I pat the wild curls, I whisper reassurance into her ear, I keep her face turned away as Joe and Sheriff Wilkerson slip up next to us and grab hold of Ryan's body and haul it away.

I don't know how to comfort her. I can't possibly make it better, any of it—what happened today, what led up to these disastrous events. All I can do is hold her in my arms and let her cry.

A
couple days later we have a sort of ceremony at my house. Joe's already dug a grave and buried the body; I know Helena and Juliet saw him, but they don't ask any questions. Well. They can figure out part of it on their own.
Shape-shifter dead as a consequence of his precarious life.
They know Juliet and Desi might come to such ignominious ends someday, and they can only hope someone takes care of them.

Celeste has stayed with me since the incident—not so much because she chooses to, but because we brought her back to my place on that awful day and refused to take her back to town and she doesn't have her own car and she hasn't bothered to steal the keys to mine. She's as quiet and defeated as I've ever seen her and I'm not sure how to help her, but I hope she'll eventually work her way through mourning to acceptance.

Which is where I am, I think. I want Ryan back—the Ryan I thought I knew—the dashing, unpredictable lover, the wayward but stubbornly loyal friend. But that Ryan had a shadow twin, an alter ego more dangerous than any of his wild shapes. And you cannot have one without the other. I miss him so much that there are moments I have to stop whatever I'm doing and wait out a spasm of dizzying grief. But there are moments a small whispering voice in my head expresses relief that Ryan is gone.

Bonnie and Aurelia and Alonzo come out for the memorial service. We've told them everything, of course. I'm guessing Sheriff Wilkerson would prefer that we didn't disclose the truth about him to anybody else, but he's not the only one in this particular drama who doesn't get everything he wants. And if there's anybody I trust with a shape-shifter's secret, it's Aurelia and Bonnie.

“I'm saving this up for someday when I really need leverage against him,” Aurelia says. I think she's joking, but with Aurelia, you never know.

The day we've planned for the service is as bright and warm as the day Ryan died. Joe seems to realize that his presence would be awkward, so he stays back at the house making a meal while the five of us tramp out to the freshly dug grave. Celeste immediately sinks down and rests her hands on the churned earth, but the rest of us stand there, looking down, solemn and briefly silent.

Bonnie is the first one to speak. “He was a good man and a terrible man. Like all of us—flawed and striving. Generous and careless. Loving and cruel. Our lives are richer and stranger and sadder for him having passed through.” She drops a red rose on the grave.

Aurelia tosses a white rose on top of Bonnie's. “He challenged me, he made me think, he never let me take the easy way or the first answer,” she says. “I will have to look a long time before I meet someone like Ryan again.”

I've brought a bouquet of five yellow roses, since that's what Ryan gave me on our first date. “I loved him,” I say. “Even when I stopped loving him.”

Alonzo stoops over and slips something between the flowers. I think it's a rock or a marble—something that has significance for him, but I don't know what it is. “He saved my life,” is all he says.

Celeste places a wreath on top of the flowers, something she's woven herself from branches and ivy she's collected from my property over the past few days. “He was my first friend—my best friend—the person who understood me the most,” she whispers. “I don't know who I am without him. I will carry him in my heart until I die.”

*   *   *

A
urelia falls in beside me as we walk slowly back from the gravesite to the house. Odd—of the two of them, I've always felt closer to Bonnie, but in these past few days it's Aurelia I've relied on more heavily for strength and guidance. Maybe because this whole situation has come close to breaking Bonnie, but nothing could ever break Aurelia, and I've needed to lean against something that wouldn't give way.

“There's been one small bit of good to come out of this tragedy,” she says in a low voice.

“Oh, do tell me what. I need to hear something good.”

She nods to where Alonzo is ambling alongside Celeste and putting some effort into making conversation with her. Attempting, in his own way, to comfort her. I can tell she realizes how hard he's trying and so she's putting equal effort into responding. Smiling, even. I think they're talking football, but it hardly matters.

“He told us everything. About his dad. About Ryan coming to take him away. About Ryan killing his father. He said he was never sure if we knew and if we approved. So he never said anything before.”

I feel my eyes widen. “That's huge. He's never even talked about his dad before, has he?”

She shakes her head. For a moment, I think I see tears in her big gray eyes. “I think he finally trusts us. I think he finally believes that we're never going to hurt him or let him down.”

I see Celeste put a hand on Alonzo's shoulder, then lean in to kiss his cheek. He makes a
yuck!
sound and tries to pull away from the kiss, but he doesn't shrug off her hand. They continue on like that for the rest of the way to the house.

“Never going to let him go,” I say softly. “None of us are ever going to let
any
of the others go.”

*   *   *

T
he meal starts out somber, but slowly, insensibly, we begin to cheer up. There are other things to talk about besides murder and betrayal, after all. The world blunders on whether you want it to or not, and sometimes it's a relief to feel it dragging you in its orbital wake. Joe starts joshing Alonzo about something that happened at basketball practice, Aurelia tells Celeste about a case she's working on, and I give Bonnie the skimpy information I have about Helena and her daughters. Now and then I see people smile. Twice I hear someone laugh.

It might take longer than we'd like. But we'll all recover.

Aurelia is the one to push away from the table and say, “I have to go. I've got a client to meet later this afternoon and some paperwork to finish beforehand.”

Celeste grabs her arm. “
Please
, for the love of
God
, take me back with you. They've kept me
prisoner
here for the past few days, and I swear to everybody that I'll be fine. Just let me go
home
.”

We laugh at her dramatics, but I realize that, between the assault and the calamity, it's been more than a week since Celeste was at her own apartment. No wonder she's going nuts.

“All right, you can go,” I say. “But you have to check in with me twice a day, or I'm coming to town and moving in with you.”

“Horrors!” she exclaims. “I'll check in every
hour
if that's what it takes to keep you away.”

Aurelia snaps her fingers impatiently. “Okay, but you have to go
now
. Come on. Pack up your stuff. We're leaving.”

Celeste races upstairs to the guest room to gather her things. I walk the others out to Aurelia's BMW while Joe stays behind to clean up the kitchen. “I know you're in a hurry, but drive carefully,” I say as I hug Aurelia good-bye.

She laughs. “I'm the best driver on the road.”

I turn to Bonnie and take her in a hard embrace. She feels more fragile to me, as if her bony body has endured more blows this week than she can easily withstand. “You take care of yourself,” I whisper in her ear. “You let me know if you need anything.”

She doesn't even ask me what I mean. Trust Bonnie not to indulge in pretense. “I'll be fine,” she says. “Eventually.”

I turn to Alonzo. “You, too,” I say. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“I will.”

“And call Celeste now and then. You know.”

“I will,” he says again.

I hug him, and for the first time in his life he hugs me back.

I'm still recovering from the shock of that when Celeste comes running out of the house, waving wildly and shouting, “Wait for me! Wait for me!” It's all for show, and it makes me laugh, and I laugh harder when she slams into me. She squeezes me tight, lets me go, and lunges for the car. “Love you!” she calls, waving from the window. Then she points to the house. “Marry him!”

There's a general chorus of assent from the other occupants of the BMW. Aurelia even rolls her window down to say, “Couldn't agree more!” Then she backs up and takes off down W with barely a spit of gravel.

I trudge back to the house feeling simultaneously lighter and heavier now that all of them are gone.

In the kitchen, Joe has just finished loading the dishwasher and wiping the table. “Are you the
perfect
man?” I inquire.

He smiles and comes over to take me in a loose embrace. I lean against him and feel, for a moment, content and free of worry.

“I am,” he says. “'Bout time you noticed.”

“My friends love you.”

“Better if
you
loved me.”

His voice is so casual that it's a moment before what he says has registered. Then I feel my veins prickle with heat and my breath grow shallow in my chest. I lift my head to meet his eyes.

“I
do
love you,” I say firmly.

He kisses me swiftly. “See how easy that was? I love you, too.”

“You haven't even seen me change yet,” I remind him.

“Change? But I like you just the way you are!”

I free a hand to swat him on the shoulder. “You know what I mean.”

He grins. “I know what you mean. But I'm not worried about it. After what I've seen and what I know—” He shrugs. “I think I'll take it in stride. I don't think it'll faze me at all.”

“And you won't even see it happen very often,” I say, “unless you're out here all the time. I mean, like, maybe, if you were living here.”

“Living here,” he repeats. “Now that's an idea with a lot of merit.”

“The dogs like it here.”

“They do.”

“And you're very handy to have around.”

“I'm glad you think so.”

“And think of all the money you could save on rent!”

“The primary reason I would consider such an idea.”

I look up at him a little anxiously. I can tell he's teasing, but sometimes he uses humor to cover his real feelings. “I mean, no pressure,” I add. “It might be too soon to even talk about.”

He drops another kiss on my mouth. “I've been trying to figure out how to bring it up,” he says. “I didn't want to seem too pushy. Didn't want to overstep my bounds.”

I wrap both arms around his neck. “No bounds at all,” I whisper. “Let's do this up right.”

*   *   *

I
t's around midnight that night when I think to check e-mail for the first time in days. Joe's sound asleep, but I'm restless, so I prowl through the house double-checking all the doors and windows before I settle in the kitchen and make myself some tea. I've brought in my laptop, so now I set it on the kitchen table and log in to my account. Among the inquiries from clients and the junk mail from advertisers, I find a new message from Janet's mom:

I don't want to alarm you, dear, but it turns out I've been diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctors seem confident that they can treat it with surgery and no radiation, but I have to say it's made me start thinking hard about all the unfinished business in my life. And my daughter is the most unfinished business I have.

I know you're not Janet. I've known for a long time. But it comforted me so much to hear from someone who knew her that I've just let the charade go on. I suppose you could be some kind of shyster, lying to me for no good reason, but I've always thought you must be somebody kind. Somebody who understood how hard it is to maintain relationships with the people we love and who thought it was worth trying anyway.

And now I just thought I'd ask—will you tell me the truth? Will you let me know what happened to Janet, and who you are, and what you're really like? I just want to know. The older I get, the less I care for secrets. And the closer I get to death, the less patience I have for lying.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Love,
Nina Kassebaum

I read this extraordinary letter three times before I take another sip of tea. And then I sit there for another half hour trying to decide how to answer her. How much do I tell her about Cooper? Because Cooper is the heart of Janet's story. Nina might be tired of secrets, but this one has never been up to me to reveal.

I can't tell her the biggest part, the most unbelievable part, I finally decide, but I can give her a version of the truth. I can tell her that Cooper was an artist—I can send her one of his original paintings of Janet, which I think she'll cherish very much. I can tell her that he had a medical condition that kept him mostly confined to the house and took his life too young, and that Janet had let grief send her, too, into an early grave.

I can let her know that despite her short, isolated, eccentric life, Janet experienced deep passion and fierce joy. She had figured out how to wrest happiness from her unconventional existence—she knew what it looked like to her and what she had to do to keep it.