Wonders of the Invisible World (13 page)

“I will,” I said, and Libby winked at me as she walked away to take care of people.

“I will,”
Jarrod mimicked after his mom was far enough away. I rolled my eyes at him. “Seriously,” he said. “What my mom just told you? That's nothing like how she described it a month ago when I moved home.”

“How did she describe it then?”

“She said your mom saved her life right when she was about to give up hope. She said your mom took her hand in hers and showed her a future my mom could continue to hope for. It sounded like what you do when you…”

“Reach across?” I said.

Jarrod looked down at my hand, which lay on the counter near his.

“Yeah,” he said, looking up again, blinking out a small spark of his own nearly extinguished hope. “When you reach across.”

“When did she change her story, then?” I asked.

“That's the thing,” said Jarrod. “Just a week or so ago. After your mom stopped in here to pay her a visit.”

When we pulled down my driveway twenty minutes later, my mom was already on the front porch, waving as if she'd been there since I called, waiting to welcome home a war-ravaged soldier. I hadn't seen her so enthusiastic in a long time. Usually she kept to herself, stayed at home as much as possible, only went out for groceries and to run important errands, made rare expeditions to visit old friends like Jarrod's mom every now and then. When Toby and I were younger, she'd been more outgoing. Never missed a parent-teacher conference, never missed a chance to help out at a bake sale, and took us once a week to the library. Now here she was, a virtual hermit, coming out to greet Jarrod with a big hug and an “Oh my goodness, you have grown so tall, young man! I can't believe it!”

Seriously, it was cringe-worthy. It was like she was…
performing
or something.

It was not only unbelievable because she was usually reserved, but also because not three nights ago she'd seen my spirit outside of my body, returning home after riding a white stag during a war where I'd witnessed my great-grandfather die. Now, suddenly, she wanted to pretend everything was warm, homespun happiness.

Once we got the pleasantries over with and went inside, she had us sit at the kitchen table so we could continue talking as she cooked. It was the time of the day when I usually found her there with her tablet, absorbed in the news of the world filtered through her online portal. But today, she'd already started to prepare a meal. The house smelled of lemon chicken, my favorite, and she'd pulled out a bottle of white wine. It was already uncorked and breathing on the dining room table in an ice bucket.

“So tell me what's up,” she said. Before we could answer, though, she opened the oven door to peek at the pecan pie and added, “It's so good to have you back home again, Jarrod.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Lockwood,” Jarrod said. He dipped his head in her direction politely, even though her back was turned to him. “It's good to be back.”

“I'm sure it is.” She closed the oven and came over to sit with us at the table then, where she put her hand on Jarrod's forearm and said, “I'm so glad you're home with your mom now. She's missed you something awful.”

“We're doing good again.” Jarrod nodded briefly, then moved the arm my mother had been patting to scratch his chin. When he lowered his hand again, he said, “I always thought I'd find myself back here someday anyhow.”

“Really?” My mom raised her eyebrows a little. “What made you think that? I would think that most young people who leave this place don't ever look back.”

Jarrod didn't say anything for a second. He just met my mom's waiting stare. I could see him trying to figure out an answer. He knew she was more than an ordinary mother making dinner. He knew she'd done something to change the way his mom remembered things recently, same as she'd messed with the memories of her own family. And he knew what my mom had told me about harbingers of death and the world's shadow. So there my mom sat, lifting a cup of coffee to her lips, sipping it while keeping her eyes locked with Jarrod's.

“I guess,” he finally said, “that living in a city didn't really take with me.”

“Interesting,” said my mom. Then she stood and went to pull plates down from a cupboard. Looking over her shoulder as she reached up to the shelves, she said, “I've always felt I wouldn't want to live anywhere but Temperance. We must be kindred spirits that way, you and me.”

Jarrod gave her a friendly grin. But when she turned back to the cupboard, he looked at me and made a face that said
Your mom is a total alien.

Twenty minutes later, my dad and Toby came through the back door, knocking their work boots off in the mudroom, hanging up their coats. When they stepped up into the kitchen and saw Jarrod at the table between my mom and me, my dad got a big smile on his face and said, “Why, Mr. Doyle! It's been a while!” and held his hand out for Jarrod to shake.

My brother followed suit, and before long they were all sitting around the dining room table as my mom and I brought out the food. Toby had already caught Jarrod up on the local high school baseball scene, which Toby still followed. He said he'd heard Jarrod was pitching some mean games up in Cleveland, and Jarrod said, “Well, I've got a good fastball, but I need to work on my curve.”

“Everything straight down the center, no looking back, just like your father,” said my dad, grunting afterward. Jarrod was the kind of son he could have easily been proud of, like Toby. “Josh was always a straight shooter,” he said, “in life and in baseball. How's he doing, by the way?”

Jarrod sort of flinched at the mention of his dad, or maybe he flinched at the mention of being
straight down the center
when in reality he wasn't straight at all. But I guess you wouldn't notice a flinch that slight if you didn't know his dad had thrown him out because he'd been caught making out with a guy in his bedroom. I felt bad, sitting there, knowing his secret. It seemed to gather behind him now, like a dark cloud he hoped no one would notice. But I did. I noticed. Every day I saw his secret follow him around, like some mangy mutt he'd been too nice to.

Jarrod glanced my way, as if he was worried I'd tell everyone, but I looked down at my plate, where my mom's chicken and rice waited, and let him recover. I knew the truth about why he'd come back, but I also knew something else: that he wanted me. That he wanted me to want him back in a way I wasn't sure I could. It was almost as if I
had
to not look at him now, knowing all that, so he could go on being normal with my family.

He told my dad that his father was doing fine—still working at the car factory, still going to Indians games, despite record losses—and when he was finally back in a good rhythm of talking about all things baseball, I looked up again, slowly, to watch him when he wouldn't notice me looking.

He was so animated, not hesitant, like he'd been initially. I found myself watching the curve of his jaw as he spoke, the line sharp as a sickle. And the way he kept brushing his hair from his eyes. How he waved his fork around to illustrate whatever he was talking about. He was…I didn't know. I wasn't sure how to express in words about what I felt right then. Especially about another guy. For as long as I could remember, I'd assumed that one day I'd run into some girl who jarred me out of my haze—maybe on one of those after-school drives down the back roads of Temperance, or maybe once I'd discovered my true destination during one of those drives, the home I was looking for—and everything for the rest of my life would just fall into place, like it does for most people.

But here I was, feeling something else, a vague and possibly dangerous emotion. I wasn't on one of my back road drives, though, and there was no girl waking me up from the spell of confusion I'd been under. There was this guy instead, this guy who had called my name in the hallway, this guy who had made me look up and realize that nothing around me was what I thought it was. Not even myself.

It was while I was staring at Jarrod, trying to sort through those unexpected and confusing feelings, that I noticed something other than me was out of place in that room: a shadow, a real shadow, that didn't belong to anyone in our house.

At first it seemed like the light in the room dimmed, as if the flow of electricity through the house was about to wink out. And then the shadow suddenly slipped out of a corner of the room to come and stand behind Jarrod's chair. At first it was just this dark, vaguely human shape, but as I continued to watch, the shadow took on full definition, a hazy layer of color, developing like an old-fashioned photograph, antique and blurry, until I could make out the figure of a woman.

I opened my mouth, but I couldn't manage to say anything as the shadow put her hands on Jarrod's shoulders and leaned down to whisper in his ear. He just sat there, talking with my father and brother as if he didn't feel her behind him, as if he couldn't hear her spinning her voice inside him, the voice she sometimes spun inside me.

Who was she? And what was she telling him? If she had her way, would Jarrod eventually wake to find himself standing under the Living Death Tree in the orchard?

“What are you doing to him?” I finally managed to say.

And everyone at the table turned to look at me.

“Aidan?” my dad said, his face a mess of confusion. “What are you talking about?”

The woman's shadow disappeared in an instant, like smoke clearing after a magic trick, and my mom, looking more startled than anyone else in the room, said, “Yes, just what are you talking about, Aidan?”

Toby held a forkful of chicken in midair and looked at me like I was a crazy person. But when I turned to Jarrod, he only looked at me with his dark steady eyes, undisturbed by my outburst, waiting to hear what I'd say next. And I knew right then that whatever I said, he'd be on my side.

“It's just,” I said, trying to think of an alternate explanation for my outburst, since the truth would not have gone over well with anyone but my mom, and not even her, really, since it would have brought up the sort of things she'd asked me not to mention to my dad and brother. “It's just that you guys are talking Jarrod's ears off. Give him some breathing room, or he probably won't come back to visit.”

Jarrod laughed at this answer, and the tension in the room evaporated. “Oh, don't worry,” he said. “I'll be back, as long as your mom promises to make dinner again. This is delicious, by the way, Mrs. Lockwood.”

My dad laughed too, now that he'd been prompted to find my outburst humorous. And with that, I knew I'd escaped what could have been an explosive moment.

My mom turned her attention to Jarrod now, saying that he was quite the charmer and that she'd make him a meal whenever he wanted. “As long as you can guarantee that my son won't bite everyone's heads off in the middle of dinner,” she added, turning to raise her eyebrows at me, as if she couldn't believe my behavior. Then she speared a piece of broccoli with her fork, fast and sharp, like a hunter going in for the kill.

I let the comment go. And I waited. Waited to get through the rest of dinner. Waited to get through dessert. Waited to be excused from chores that night, since I had a guest over, so Jarrod and I could go up to my room to hang out like we were completely normal seventeen-year-olds, away from everyone else for the evening.