Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [121]
“Cathy and Stevie had been dating for almost two years. High school sweethearts, just like Steve and me.” She leaned forward as she said it, her lips half parted, her tongue moistened them as if she was having trouble keeping her mouth from drying out.
Her husband kept patting her hand and looked at me out of his fine dark eyes, which were so like his dead son’s. He told me with those eyes, and his so-tired face, that he was sorry. Sorry I had to see this, hear this, be here now.
I wasn’t up to the subtle eye message thing, the best I could do was nod sympathetically and give him more eye contact than I gave her. He gave a small nod where Barbara couldn’t see him. There, we’d had our moment, a very guy moment. I see you, I see you, too. I understand what you mean, I understand what you mean, too. If I’d been a better girl, I’d have said something out loud to be sure.
“He sounds like he was a wonderful person,” I said.
She leaned forward a little more, she had a small photo album in her hands, one of those thick ones that grandmothers carry in their purses. She fumbled it open, and I was staring at pictures of a dark-haired baby, toddler, grade-schooler.
I put my hand over hers, stopped her from turning the pages. “Mrs. Brown, Barbara . . .”
She wouldn’t look at me. Her eyes were getting shinier.
“Mrs. Brown, you don’t need to prove to me that your son was a good kid. I believe you.”
Mr. Brown stood up and tried to help her put the photo album back in her purse. She didn’t want to do it, and he wouldn’t fight her. He stood there, sort of helplessly, with his big hands hanging at his sides.
She leaned into the desk again and turned a page. “Here he is winning the fifth grade science fair.”
I didn’t know how to stop this without being cruel. I leaned back in my chair and stopped looking at the pictures. I made eye contact with Steve, and his eyes had grown shinier, too. If they both started crying I was going to leave. If I could have helped them, I would have, but I couldn’t. And truthfully, I didn’t think Barbara Brown had come to me to produce a zombie.
I looked back down at a picture of Stevie in eighth grade, his first year on the football team. That surprised me, I’d have thought his father would have put him in peewee league. It made me think better of Steve that he’d waited until his son wanted to play.
I covered her hands and the book with my hands. I pressed down enough that she had to finally look up at me. Her eyes were wild, as if tears were the least of our worries. There was something almost violent in that look.
I changed what I’d been going to say, because she wasn’t ready to hear me say, Leave, I can’t help you. “You told me that it happened on prom night, but you didn’t give me any details.” I didn’t really want details, but anything to stop the pictures and the desperate flow of memories. Murder I could handle. The trip down memory lane was getting on my nerves.
Her eyes flicked right, then left, and she leaned back, leaving the album in my hands. I left it open to his thirteenth birthday party. The smiling faces of him and his friends clustered around a cake.
Her breath came out in a long, slow rattle. Not a sound that you hear out of the living much. She swallowed convulsively and reached for her husband’s hand. He was still standing. His face relaxed a little just because she’d reached for him.
“They found Stevie’s car off the road, as if they’d been run into the ditch. The police think that they were picked up trying to hitchhike,” he said.
“Stevie wouldn’t have gotten into a car with strangers,” Barbara said firmly, “and neither would Cathy.” Her eyes were a little less wild. “They were good