Vampire Blood (13 page)

Jenny looked at him. Maybe he was right. She peeked into one more window.

“Come on, Jenny, time to go, I’m hungry,” her dad proclaimed and headed for the station wagon.

“Let’s go to Joey’s and get something to eat before we talk to those people at the theater,” he suggested over his moving shoulder.

“You’re not too tired?” she inquired, but was relieved her dad was more his old self.

“Nah. A good meal and a rest on a hard stool will get me through a couple more hours.” He smiled halfheartedly at her.

“If you say so, but I want to get cleaned up first and then
go to town. I’m tired of looking like a dirty bag lady every time we go into Joey’s.”

He grunted, but took one look at her grease-smeared, sunburned face, sweat-laced hair and grimy clothes, then nodded his head yes.

They got into the car, and he started it up. “I’ll drop you off, sweetie, and come back for you on the way to town.” He headed for her trailer. “I don’t need a
shower, myself. Slept all day,” he reminded her sarcastically, “but I’ll tidy up some anyway.”

Jenny turned and watched the empty house dwindling behind them above the dust clouds.

So the Albers hadn’t been home all day? So what? People weren’t home every minute of every day, now, were they?

She was being overly suspicious, she scolded herself. Still, the anxiety of their absence hung on her back like a monkey and wouldn’t be brushed off.

Perhaps she’d call Maude later tonight. To ease her mind.

Jenny slipped into the trailer, opening the windows as she went. It was cool enough so that she didn’t need to turn on the air conditioner for the first time in weeks.

She’d brought in the bundle from her mailbox and was about to toss the usual junk mail aside and go take her shower, when a small white envelope with familiar handwriting scrawled across the front caught her eye.

She let the other stuff drop to the kitchen table and collapsed onto one of the chairs. The hand holding the letter trembled as she turned it over gently. No return address, but she knew who it was from. A small sigh escaped her lips. A letter from Jeff after all these years?

The Jeff she’d loved even when she was a child. The Jeff she’d married at eighteen, fresh out of high school. They’d been so young. Jenny hadn’t heard from him for nearly ten years. He’d abandoned her and Samantha without a look back, breaking her heart. After a few years, the child support checks had stopped coming, and she’d lost track of him, but hadn’t cared. He’d never cared what had happened to her and Samantha before. Why was he writing to her now? How had he gotten her address?

She tore open the letter. A folded piece of paper fluttered to the table, and when Jenny picked it up, she realized it was a twenty dollar bill. She unfolded the paper still in her hand.

Dear Jenny,

Hi, it’s me.

It took me a long time to get up the nerve to write you. I’ve written so many letters and tore them up before I could send them, dialed your telephone number and then at the last second, hung up.

Maybe you won’t appreciate this letter, but I’m taking a chance that you’ll read it. I talked to your friend Maude a while back, and she gave me your new address. She told me about your divorce. I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you and that fancy lawyer. I purposely stayed away from you because I’d hoped you were happily married. When I found out differently, that’s when I finally wrote and sent this letter.

I never meant to lose touch with you and Samantha. Call it guilt, stupidity, insanity. Whatever. I’m looking back over the years. Long ago I realized that I made the worst mistake of my life by leaving you.

I just had to tell you this.

I had to beg your forgiveness, as there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of you and Samantha.

I’ve been divorced from Colleen for almost five years now. It’s a long story. Someday, if you let me, I’ll tell you about it.

I think I might be heading in your direction. If I get near Summer Haven, will you let me come see you? Please. Just to talk? That’s all. See my daughter.

If you say no, I’ll only keep writing until you say yes. Please, Jenny. Say yes.

I can’t stop thinking about you and my daughter. I miss both of you so much; I always have. How is she doing? She must be quite a young lady now. Her birthday is in a few days, and I’ve enclosed some money so she can buy herself something pretty. It’s not much, I’m sorry, but times have been hard lately for me. Tell her I love her.

Jenny, I’m sorry.

Jeff

Jenny’s face was wet with tears as she laid the letter down. She swayed as she got up and went into the bathroom. The woman staring at her in the mirror looked like a ghost. She didn’t know her.

She shed her clothes and took a long, hot shower, soaping up her hair and rinsing it until it was squeaky clean. Then she got dressed in blue jeans and a flowered blouse, put on some makeup and went into the living room to wait for her father.

The letter was on the table where she’d left it. She didn’t look at it again, but tossed it in the trash. She was afraid of it. What it meant.

It meant pain; it meant remembering. She didn’t want that. Their marriage had been over a long time ago. What the hell did he want from her?

When her father’s station wagon drove up, and he beeped the horn, she was out the door before the third beep.

“You look nice,” her dad said.

Which was more than Jenny could say about him. He still looked tired.

“Thanks,” Jenny responded, her thoughts turning inward again as soon as she had spoken, her eyes welling with tears against her will. She wiped them away angrily with the back of her hand, so her dad wouldn’t see.

“Jenny, I hope Joey’s got some of that roast beef that I’m so partial to. With that gravy, ya know?”

“I know,” Jenny said, staring out the window. Outside the night had taken over. She could hear the crickets singing. Fireflies blinked on and off in the dark twilight. Jeff and she used to stroll through the fields behind the farmhouse on long ago summer nights like this one. She’d run, trying not to giggle, and he’d chase her, always catching her. Then he’d steal a kiss before he’d let her go.

What had they been ... about sixteen or so? The memory made her sad.

That damned letter.

The fields were quiet tonight.

She experienced another moment of sadness as she remembered that Black Beauty and Lightning were dead. She’d never hear them neighing and galloping around through the bushes either. She’d never ride their bony old backs, or feel the softness of their warm hides. It made her want to cry again.

Joey’s place was crowded with older people sitting around, smiling, gossiping and eating.

They had dinner, chatted with Laurie and Joey for a while, and then Jenny took her dad over to meet the people who had bought the Rebel.

The night had turned cooler, full now of rising stars, mysterious nocturnal noises and the lonely sound of cars driving by in the night to other places.

The Rebel stood forlorn above the sidewalk with a soft light escaping from under its door. She knocked. Knocked again. No answer and no sign of life. Just the light.

“Strange. They said they would be here.” After a few more knocks, unsure, she opened the theater’s door. It’d been unlocked. Had it been left unlocked for her and her dad?

“Mister and Mrs. Michelson are you here?” she called into the murky theater. One lone candle flickered on the old dusty glass candy case; its wax, in sculpted globs, melted at its base. “Someone’s here.” The shadows echoed her words, and the air shifted like restless smoke somewhere in the back of the theater. She kept hearing voices, like someone whispering in another room.

“Anyone here?” she bellowed out louder. “Hello? Hello!” Her voice bounced back, creating an eerie echo. She peered over her shoulder at her dad, who was still standing silently behind her. “I wonder where they are? They expected us.”

“Dunno,” her dad muttered, rubbing his head and blinking at her in the semidarkness. “Maybe they stayed in town.”

Something skittered in the gloom. A sound like ... wings, lightly brushing against each other, hovered in the distance. She stepped into the entrance, listening. A musty smell permeated everything. Dampness. A cobweb tickled across her face.

“I could have sworn,” Jenny shook her head, slightly disturbed, “I just saw something.”

“Naw. Just dust bunnies blowing around. Looks like there’s nobody home. We best come by some other time.”

“We could leave a note for them with our telephone number. I should have given it to them last night,” she thought out loud.

Her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. Forms took elusive shape around her and then dissolved back into the blackness. She’d always had excellent night vision. Her eyes gleaned the darkness, sure she had seen something.

Suddenly, Jenny heard violin music wafting from somewhere, hauntingly beautiful. Gypsy songs. For a few seconds, in the doorway, she stood transfixed, entranced. She tried to pinpoint where it was coming from, but couldn’t really tell. Someone playing a stereo somewhere?

She’d reluctantly pivoted around to follow her dad, who was heading towards the car, when she saw the flickering point of light appear at the center of the darkness. It grew.

Someone carrying a candle down the balcony towards her.

“Coming, Jenny. I’m coming,” a velvety voice, breathless, came. A lady in white.

“Dad!” Jenny hissed out the door. “Dad come back! They’re here after all.”

Jenny stepped back into the theater.

The figure with the candle floated closer.

“Annie,” Jenny exhaled, relieved, as the fringe of the candle’s light touched her face. Annie was dressed in a long white silken gown with white slippers, her long hair loose and shimmering in waves down to her waist. Her eyes were large and black behind the candle. A single diamond hung glittering from her neck on a silver chain and diamond sprinkles shone in her hair.

Her delicate movements touched Jenny. Jenny wasn’t sure how, but she suspected that Annie had once been a dancer. Her outfit, like the night before, was unconventional. In it she reminded Jenny of something out of a horror movie, yet lovely in an unearthly way.

“Jenny, welcome.” Annie’s eyes searched the space behind her as if expecting someone to be there. “I was merely exploring. I so love this place already. That balcony.” Her face waxed mystical. I love all the ghosts. They talk to me, you know.” There was a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes, and she smiled down at Jenny, as if they shared a secret.

Jenny heard her father sarcastically clear his throat behind her, and he pinched her gently on the arm.

It was all she could do to keep from laughing. She knew what her father thought of ghosts and such, and what he thought of people foolish enough to believe in them, as well.

“This is my father, Ernest Lacey, Annie. Dad, this is Annie Michelson.”

Annie gave her father the strangest look.

“You’re Jenny’s father? Oh, my.” She was visibly startled and seemed to catch herself, but she walked up to him and took his hand, smiling warmly into his embarrassed face, her soft hair floating about her like a silver shawl.

Her father’s expression was priceless,
if she only had a camera,
Jenny thought. It was plain as the nose on his face that her father was totally bewitched by the ethereal creature before him.

“Nice to meet ya,” he offered shyly, staring at Annie like she was a spirit herself. “Jenny’s told me about you and your family. The theater. Hear you need some work done?”

“Yes,” she acknowledged the question with a slight lift of her delicate hand and tilted her lovely head downwards, “and I hope we can work something out with you, Mister Lacey. There’s a lot of work to do here, and we’re not very good at such things. We would be deeply appreciative if you would accept our offer. We’d pay any price you ask. We’re quite wealthy, you know.”

Jenny’s father couldn’t take his eyes off her. His one hand moved up to rest gingerly on his bitten neck.

“The rest of the family is below in the basement.” She glanced at Jenny as she said it.

“You’d never believe it, Jenny, but we discovered apartments down there. At one time someone must have lived in them. There’s room enough for our whole family.” Her expressive eyes widened. “We’re cleaning them up now and eventually we’ll move into them. Isn’t that wonderful? We can live right here.”

“Clever idea,” Jenny said. “The way rent is these days.”

“Oh, it’s not the money, child,” she explained, “it’s so we can be close to our investment and protect it.” A smugness settled on her face in the light’s glow.

“Still smart,” her dad said.

“Why, thank you.” Annie smiled again.

The woman lifted the candle up higher. “The electricity should be on by tomorrow, Jenny. Then the candles can go.”

“Oh, I like them,” Jenny piped up. “They create a romantic ambience.”

“Fire hazard,” her dad croaked.

Annie’s laugh was musically spontaneous. “Just like a man,” she crooned. She had pulled another candle, it seemed, from thin air and handed it to Jenny after she had lit it with hers.