Vampire Blood (8 page)

It was the simple wooden bookcase that Jeff had made for her with his own hands all those years ago, when she’d first begun writing. She smiled softly, thinking about the pleasure that’d glowed on his handsome face when he’d proudly presented it to her. He’d done an amazing job, adding unique touches to the glowing wood. Carving designs along the edges. The shelf was beautiful.

They hadn’t had much money, but, God, how she’d loved that man. Still loved. Would always love, she realized now, after all these years. Even after what he’d done to her.

She put her hand out and let it linger on the cover of
A Summer’s Night
. Maude’s words of praise floated back to her and the look on Joey’s face that morning.

Something long dead stirred.

She lifted the laptop off the shelf, took it into the kitchen and set it down carefully on the round kitchen table.

Picking up the damp washrag she kept hanging over the kitchen sink’s faucet, she scrubbed her computer clean as the pearly mist crowded in at her trailer windows, and the rain pirouetted on her roof.

Every once and a while, a loud startling thud against the outside of the trailer would disturb her concentration enough so that she’d glance up, her eyes searching the dark windows.

There was never anything there, only the rainy night.

Chapter Four

August 18

“Dad, maybe you ought to see a doctor? I mean it. You still look peaked to me,” Jenny coaxed him Monday morning, as she stood by the side of his bed, sunlight streaming around. It brightened up the gloomy room, but it made him look worse. The bruises and scratches on his face and his arm were healing, but he wasn’t. He’d hardly left his bed all weekend. She knew because she’d checked in on him a couple of times.

He’d refused over and over to go to the hospital, or to see a doctor.

“A few days’ rest is all I need, Jenny. Sprained something. That’s all,” he had told her. “Be good as rain by Monday.”

She’d believed him, yet, when she got to his house early Monday morning to pick him up for work, he was in bed, pretending that the onset of a summer’s cold had him still feeling under the weather. Not the accident on Friday.

“Just a little stuffed-up head, that’s all. Nothing more, so don’t go into a fit. Sleep is what I need.”

“Sick enough to stay in bed and skip another day of work?” she chided. “I’ve never known you to stay in bed for a case of the sniffles or a couple of bruises.” She shut up because she recognized the set of his jaw.

She meandered to the open window, pulled the curtains back. Dust sifted down around her. A layer of grime an inch thick on the window’s glass made her sneeze.

“I’m just gonna take one more day off, Jenny. That’s what I’m gonna do. It’s no crime. You take one, too. Maude’ll understand.”

“No, I’m going to go work anyway, Dad. I should be able to get some more of the scraping done. Get a jump on it.”

“If you want,” he replied lethargically as he played with the edge of the thin blanket on his bed. He looked more like a lost child than her father.

“Anything I can do for you, Dad, before I go?”

From his pillow, he smiled. “Yeah, make me a pot of coffee.”

“Sure.”

Jenny went into the kitchen. Her childhood home hadn’t changed a bit. Same painted metal cabinets, faded wallpaper; same worn and scuffed, holey, diamond-patterned linoleum on the floor; same Formica table and chair set she and her brothers had sat at thirty years ago to eat their meals and throw their food across at each other. Oatmeal for breakfast and pancakes for supper, or her mother’s tasty homemade potato soup, if money was tight.

She opened the far right cabinet where her dad usually kept the coffee canister. It wasn’t there. For the first time in weeks, she opened the other cabinets, her eyes sweeping through them, as her hands rummaged behind. They were pitifully bare.

A mouse couldn’t live on what’s in these cabinets,
she fretted.

He’s probably waiting for Mom to come back and shop ... or to starve, whichever comes first,
Jenny thought sourly.

“What do you eat around here, anyway? Air?” Jenny yelped over her shoulder. Her dad grumbled something unintelligible from the other room.

“When are you going to go to the grocery store, Dad?”

“Hate those new-fangled supermarkets,” her dad’s voice finally replied, weakly; she had to strain to hear him. He spoke louder, “All that frozen stuff. Whole suppers and even desserts. Stacks of frozen peas, meat pies and tatertots. Miles of glass cases so covered in ice you can barely see into ‘em. Open them up and all this cold vapor hits you right in the face. Brrrrr. Nothing’s sacred, anymore, Jenny,” he lamented. “Food looks like colored cardboard.”

“Tastes like cardboard, too.” Jenny chuckled, and shouted, “You know you got eight cans of corn in here?”

“I like corn,” her father’s retort came.

“I give up. Where
is
the coffee?”

“Bottom left shelf by the blender.”

As Jenny made the coffee in the old percolator, she found herself staring dreamily out the window above the kitchen sink. The white frilly curtains fluttered in the early morning breeze.

Woolgathering again; then she caught herself.

How many times when she was a child had she watched her mother do just the same thing? In this house. At this very window. A prisoner yearning for all the world outside had to offer and all she couldn’t have.

In this house, Jenny kept expecting her mom to come sauntering in any minute, humming in that absentminded way she had. She heard floors squeaking above her somewhere, she could have sworn a door closed upstairs in one of the other rooms, but no one else was here. A dripping faucet somewhere stopped as if a human hand had turned it off suddenly. Water.

For some strange reason, it reminded Jenny of her mother’s crystal bottle of holy water.

Mom, why do you have that bottle of holy water?
Jenny, the child, had asked a long time ago, staring up at the beautiful crystal bottle on her mother’s dresser.

Never know when you’re gonna need it, that’s why, child,
she’d responded patiently.
There’s so much evil in the world, and only God has the power to defeat it.

Her mother had always been a good Catholic. She’d believed in God. She’d gone to church every week and everything. Jenny wondered if she still went to church these days.

It was as if there was a ghost roaming the house, but her mother was alive, somewhere in town. Not dead. It felt strange with Mom gone. Even the smell of liquor had faded away.

Jenny stared out the window, her hands frozen over the coffee pot, haunted with memories: the heady summer morning breezes and the lilt of long-ago voices.

Outside the window, children frolicked. Two taller boys in patched jeans and a short girl with braids.

“Jenny Penny, can’t catch me!” one of the boys hollered.

“You wanna bet?” she cried back and took chase. The girl was laughing as she disappeared around the corner of the house and into the sunlight behind the boys.

A young pretty woman with a kerchief over her red hair stood by her wash line observing them go with a half-smile on her lips, wooden clothespins in one of her work-roughened hands. The soft breezes tugged at stray wisps of her hair. She looked tired to Jenny. Her face was sad, and her printed cotton housedress frayed. She shaded her eyes with her other hand, watching for a short while. Finally, she went back to her wash, shaking her head. Mom.

From a distant recess of her mind, Jenny recalled something her mother had said when Jenny had been a child.

When I was a girl, I dreamed of being a nurse one day in a big city hospital. Helping people and living in a fancy house with bay windows and one of those four season sun porches in the back,
a hesitant, melancholy nod and hopeless eyes,
I should have been. I really should have been. Now it’s too late.

That
had been mom’s dream.

A pity, she would have made a damn good nurse. Blood never bothered her, and she was always watching those doctor shows on TV.

Jenny finished making the coffee and collected the newspaper from the front yard. As she walked into her dad’s bedroom to say good-bye, she could hear the coffee perking cheerfully.

“Okay. Coffee’s making, Dad. Here’s the paper.” She laid the tightly rolled bundle on his bed. “Still have those bites on your neck,” she observed, surprised.

He gingerly touched them, as if they hurt, but all he said was, “Been having the darndest nightmares lately. Pain, too.”

“Nightmares?”

“Yeah.” Her father looked embarrassed mentioning it. “Awful nightmares. About this huge, ferocious panther. It jumps on me and,” he hesitated, “bites me over and over. The worse thing about it is that, I swear, it
hurts.”

Jenny frowned, feeling helpless. She’d never heard her father talk about dreams before. Only that he never dreamed. Never.

“They’re just dreams, that’s all, Dad.”

He looked up at her with a haunted glaze to his eyes.

“You rest then,” she said soothingly, touching his arm. “I’ll call you tonight to see if you need anything.”

“Sure, honey, if you want.” There was a feeble rustling as he rubbed his eyes. His face was so sunburned, it made hers ache just to look at it.

Maybe that was part of the reason he was feeling so poorly. A bad burn could drain a person. Give them fever. Uneasy sleep, maybe?

“Need some lotion on that face,” she told him. “Got a real bad burn there.” Darn, if she’d go and get the lotion for him, too, and put it on his face as if he were a child. Like Mom would have done.

“Got some around here someplace. In the medicine cabinet or maybe in the bathroom pantry,” her dad said, hinting, “but I don’t feel up to tearing the house apart to find it.”

Jenny ignored him. He had to start learning to take care of himself sooner or later.

“Ah, I’ll remember where I put it eventually.”

“I’m sure you will.” She flashed him an encouraging grin.

“Don’t push yourself too hard today, Jenny. Supposed to be another scorcher. Say hi to that no-account brother of yours with the ponytail, okay?”

“I will. See ya later.” Jenny left quietly, locking the door behind her like a good girl.

Outside, the sun was shining, and though it was hotter than when she’d arrived, it was a lovely day.

Except for her father’s mysterious lethargy, she found she was happier than she’d been in a long time. It was amazing. She took a deep breath, studying the grounds and the old farmhouse that she’d grown up in, and smiled wide. The smell of lush flowers perfumed the air. Mom’s roses.

Ah, no matter what, it was good to be home. She headed towards her car.

She drove into town, feeling strange without her dad chattering away beside her.

She wanted to keep busy, so she wouldn’t think about Samantha so far away, and how much she missed her and wanted to see her and the baby, but couldn’t.

In town, she ran her five-year-old silver and black Escort through the car wash first. Her car was a mud ball, and she couldn’t stand looking at it any longer. She shoved in the coins and sprayed the car down with soapy water. After the machine gobbled up more of her coins, she rinsed her car, and drove away content.

Sometimes little things could make a person happy.

She discovered she wasn’t really hungry, and went on to the Albers’ house to continue the paint scraping. Today she wore shorts and was glad of it.

She tore into her work and let her mind float free. As a gentle breeze cooled her face, she thought that maybe today, or tomorrow, something wonderful could happen. Would happen.

She found herself softly humming an old Beatles song.

She’d just finished the section in the back when Maude tapped her on the shoulder, a steaming mug of coffee clasped in her hands.

“Thought you might like some coffee before the sun gets too hot. Just made a fresh pot.” Maude handed Jenny a ceramic mug with cats all over it.

Maude’s eyes swept the mottled wall before them. “Your father hurt himself Friday more than he wanted to admit, huh?”

After shrugging noncommittally, Jenny took another long sip of her coffee. “You’ve known him longer than me, Maude. You should know how mule-headed he can be.”

“Don’t I, Jenny dear,” Maude sympathized. “How is he?”

“Who knows? He won’t see a doctor, and he looks awful. It isn’t just the fall. He’d been under the weather for days before that. All he wants to do is sleep. I’m worried about him, but he promises he’ll be back on the job tomorrow, bright and early.”

“Tell him not to dare come back over here until he’s as fit as a fiddle, you hear? A day or two won’t make any difference to George and me. Don’t want him having a stroke painting our
house.”

“Talking about us men, again, huh?” Her husband George, a neat but rotund man with a circled wisp of white hair on a nearly bald head, stood behind them. He had a newspaper in his left hand and a cup of coffee in his right as he beamed at them.