Angel Fire - Lisa Unger [12]
“No. I’m not going to cause trouble like that. Shame on you, Lydia. You’re thirteen years old; you have no idea how complicated relationships are. In fact, though you think you’re a genius, you can’t imagine even a fraction of what goes on in the world. Claire and Taylor need to work out their problems on their own—without meddling neighbors.”
Her mother led her back up to her bedroom and closed the shades. Lydia fumed as Marion tucked her in for the second time. But she was tired and sick and fell asleep.
When she woke up that evening, she heard the sound of a woman crying. She walked quietly down the carpeted stairs and heard Claire’s voice from the kitchen. Claire had found another woman’s earring in her bed, the last straw in over a year of verbal abuse and suspected infidelity. Claire had packed a bag and was leaving that night to go to her mother’s home just a town away.
From her perch on the step, she saw her mother through the banister slats, though Claire had her back to Lydia. Her mother raised her eyes from Claire, sensing Lydia’s presence. Marion raised her eyebrows and shrugged sadly, as if to say, You were right. Too bad.
Lydia would remember this incident as the first of many that taught her a powerful lesson: an object out of place, a furtive gesture, something left unsaid could be indicators of a hidden truth. Most people, wrapped up in their own inner narratives, their own secrets, never noticed the subtleties of dishonesty. But very few things escaped Lydia’s notice.
She never acknowledged her peculiar ability with any gravity until the death of her mother years later. Until then, it was always a game. Life was a series of little mysteries and Lydia was a detective putting the clues together.
“Mom, I’m telling you, I’ve seen this guy before. He’s following us,” she told her mother urgently. She was imagining herself in an ABC Afterschool Special.
“Oh, Lydia, for Christ’s sake, he is not following us.”
“He was standing in the parking lot watching us and when we drove away, he pulled out after us.”
Her mother glanced uneasily in the rearview mirror. Lydia was making Marion nervous. She had seen the man and he looked very strange; Marion just thought he was some pervert leering at her daughter. And she had seen him pull out after them. She made a right turn suddenly without signaling. The red car went driving by without even slowing down.
“Wow, Mom. Good going, you lost him,” Lydia said dramatically.
Marion looked over at her daughter and they both started laughing. Lydia put the cap back on her blue eyeliner.
“I got the license-plate number,” she said.
“Good for you,” said Marion said, playing along. It was a game for her now, too. The threat, real or imagined, was gone.
But Lydia couldn’t drop it so easily. She was trying to remember where she had seen the man before. She knew she had. It was bothering her, making her feel uneasy.
She had the same feeling now, as she contemplated the clippings before her, the Santa Fe sun reaching into her window and heating the room like a greenhouse. It seemed like ever since the death of her mother she’d been hunting demons, trying to reveal their faces to the world so they couldn’t walk around masquerading as normal people, surprising innocent women in the night or little children as they slept.
She turned her mind to the Church of the Holy Name and how she had been there the night before and again in her dreams. What would it mean if all the pieces fit together as she imagined? She felt a tingling of the senses, as if she’d heard a scream in the night that had awakened her from sleep. As if she were lying, paralyzed in the dark, hearing the scream echo in the silence, hoping that it would come again so she could spring into action—but praying that it wouldn’t.
chapter five
Her study was the heart of the New Mexico house. It was a large room with a twelve-foot ceiling, decorated in warm browns and rusts, deep plum and evergreen, all the colors she found most soothing. The western