Back to Wando Passo, David Payne [little red riding hood ebook .TXT] 📗

hammer and I threw it. It disappeared into the steam and did not fall back to earth again, and others saw, and still, no one believed…. No one believed….”

“Captain DeLay?”

“The boat is here,” he says. He pulls her to him hard, hard. “Good-bye, good-bye.” And he is gone, leaving Addie with a pounding heart. Forgetful of herself, she glances down in the water now and sees a pool of lamplight undulating there, and in that pool, a coal-black silhouette, still, wholly still, upon the softly tossing waves.

“Who are you?”

The figure doesn’t answer, and in this moment Addie has a strong, sudden premonition of death. Is it Harlan’s? Taking it so, she turns and walks back along the glittering path that leads through desolation and goes she knows not where.

FORTY-EIGHT

A cool exhalation from the river further softened the soft light as the car moved up the potholed drive under heavy branches draped with Spanish moss where cicadas whirred. And there—as Ransom pulled the battered Odyssey into the turnaround in back—in gray flannel slacks with a soft drape and tasseled Italian loafers of some gleaming, welted skin, was Marcel Jones, pushing his children—Ransom’s children—on the swing.

“Hey, Doddy, hey!” At the zenith, Charlie launched himself into the blue. “To Fininity Amboyon!”

On reflex, Ran made an aborted lunge, like a receiver toward a Hail Mary pass he knew he’d never catch. Charlie, however, touched down without incident and ran on, unaware he’d skirted death. When Ran knelt to receive him, his son pressed the new Buzz Lightyear laser on his wrist instead, painting a red dot between his hapless father’s eyes. “Not today, Zurg!” he said, making his voice big and plangent, and his cheeks, Ran noticed, with a pang of helpless love, were strawberries and cream, as flushed and pretty as a girl’s. His blink—where was that? Ran had almost started to develop an affection for that blink, but bangzoom, it was outta here, and in a single night! Even a man of stronger psychic constitution than himself would have found it difficult to read these signs and conclude anything but that his absence had been beneficial to his son.

“Hi, Hope!”

She looked up at his hail, noting Shanté’s presence with mild curiosity.

“Hi, Daddy…” Her voice was both familiar and brand-new, disengaged in a way he’d never heard from Daddy’s Little Girl before. Otherwise unmoved by his return, she went on twisting in her swing alone, back and forth, and forth and back, like four-year-old Ophelia plaiting a sad crown of rue. Her lips moved silently as she took a saltless pretzel from her bag and offered it to the unseen creature she was talking to.

A single night, and Ran, once more, had fallen years behind the curve.

A weirding light had fallen in the park, and Claire was out the back door now, moving hurriedly to intercept. Drying her hands on a white cloth, she was wearing her cutoff overalls and a black Lycra tank, and she was barefoot and so beautiful he knew he stood no chance. He’d come prepared to throw himself upon the mercy of the court, but Claire’s frown—battle-hardened, weary, ready to march on, however far, however long—showed little sign of leniency, in fact, no leniency at all.

Why did you come home? said Nemo. He hadn’t spoken in a while.

Ransom shoved him back into the submarine and slammed the hatch. “Look who I brought.” He smiled, making an effort not to grind his teeth.

“I appreciate your doing this,” Claire said forthrightly to Shanté. “I wish I could say I’m happy to see you.”

“Well, I’ll be happy for us both.” Shanté spread her arms, and Claire stepped in.

Ransom gave Marcel a look. “Do you need a hug, too?”

Caught off guard, Cell laughed with an attractive, natural surprise. “I think I’ll pass, but thanks.”

“Don’t say I didn’t offer.”

With this, the conversational momentum ground to an apocalyptic halt.

“Hope,” Claire said, falling back upon the children as a social crutch, something she was deeply critical of in others, “come meet Mommy’s friend.”

“And Daddy’s friend,” Ran qualified.

“Come meet Shanté,” said Claire.

“Hi, Shanté,” Hope said. “I have a new dog.”

“What’s his name?”

“He doesn’t have one.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s imaginary,” Claire informed the group.

“No, Mommy,” Hope corrected in her parsing and emphatic way. “He’s not. You see him, don’t you, Daddy?” She held the leash in her left hand, and her right opened slightly wider, following the contour of the head, stroking backward from the snout across the crown.

Ran squatted on his hams. “Sure,” he said, “he’s white, with a black patch on one eye and ears that fold down at the tops. He’s attending to His Master’s Voice.”

“No,” Hope said, impatient with the joke, “he’s black, Daddy. All black. And he’s hungry.”

“Maybe we should feed him.”

“I don’t know what he wants.”

Ran stared into his daughter’s grave and slightly worried eyes and glimpsed the sunken anger there.

“Well, take him in the house,” Claire intervened as Daddy’s smile died on the vine. “We’re going to have an early bath.”

As Hope moved off, Ran looked at Claire as if to say, What’s this? But Claire, this time, did not look back.

“What’s that?” she asked instead, taking in the Odyssey.

“I bought you a new car,” Ran said.

Claire looked some more, then gazed around the group to see if someone might explain the joke. Her eyes arrived, at last, on him.

“It got a little beat-up in the accident,” he conceded, “but the body shop can fix that up. It has a DVD.”

“Did it come with a handful of magic beans as well?”

In the beat before he found his answer, a surge of rage and grief shot through him, wild and deep, like the first jolt of the electric chair. Never fucking good enough… “No,” he said, turning from the precipice, “but I did get five free movies.”

Claire’s expression turned perplexed.

“I sold my father’s Thunderbird to get you this,” he said, aware it sounded childish even as he spoke, but unable to resist. “But no