Hunting Daylight (9781101619032) (6 page)

Five days after Jude left, I tucked my laptop under my arm and led Vivi into the cool, vanilla-scented air of Café Companhia. I ordered fresh-squeezed pineapple juice and a granola muffin for her; a
galão
with extra milk for myself.

We found a table next to the window, and I plugged in the laptop. I scanned the messages in my inbox, searching through the e-mails. Nothing from Jude. He was in the bush, not the Athenaeum Hotel in London. I tried not to worry.

“Daddy send pictures?” Vivi asked, pushing against my elbow.

I chewed the edge of my lip. I’d been raised by my uncle Nigel, a loving old archaeologist who’d mixed half-truths
and falsehoods. He’d given me a nickname, Dame Doom, because I’d been such a fretful child. I hadn’t found out about my hybridism until I was a grown woman, and I’d been determined that my child would always hear the facts. But I hadn’t understood the complexities of motherhood or the fragile simplicity of a child’s question.

“Not yet, Meep,” I said, forcing myself to smile. “We’ll check back tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.” Vivi held out her muffin, offering me a bite.

When we got home, the cottage hummed with noon light. I had left the shutters open, and humid air pushed through the screens, carrying the bite of salt. Vivi stretched out on the sea grass rug with her Disney coloring book. I walked around the corner into the green-tiled kitchen and began chopping onions for bean soup.

I remembered the night Jude had left São Tomé, how the wind had stirred his hair as he’d climbed into the Al-Dîn jet, then turned back to wave good-bye. I’d almost raced over to him and begged him not to go. Then I reminded myself that he was trying to do the right thing, to provide for his family; I couldn’t take that away from him just because I’d dreamed about fanged fish. I’d held my breath as the jet had taxied down the runway, dust churning around the wheels, then the plane curved over the Atlantic and he was gone.

“Mommy, can we go to the ocean?” Vivi called.

I wiped my cheeks, then peeked around the corner. She held a pink crayon in her pudgy fingers. Her expression was so intense, she reminded me of Jude—he always got the same look when he put a slide under a microscope: eyebrows raised, mouth slightly open, head tilted.

I smiled. “Sure, Meep. After your nap.”

Vivi put down the crayon, scrambled onto the sofa, and closed her eyes. “I’m ready to sleep.”

After I made the soup, I tidied the kitchen—I liked everything just so. I folded a stack of tea towels, straightened the silverware drawer, then scrubbed the counters.

Vampires are prone to OCD. As a hybrid, I had a mild case. Jude’s was stronger. He made hundreds of to-do lists and even more Don’t-Do lists. Sometimes he felt the need to count the tiles in the kitchen floor—aloud, mind you. He checked and rechecked his stash of blood bags. He charted sunrises and sunsets, not that they varied much on the equator. When the compulsions took hold, I brought him a glass of blood-tinged scotch and rubbed his shoulders with coconut oil until the kinks loosened inside him.

I was feeling rather knotty myself as I walked out of the kitchen. I checked my cell phone. No one from Al-Dîn had called, but I had a message from Uncle Nigel. A few years earlier, he had been accidentally transformed into a vampire while digging for artifacts in Bulgaria. Now, as I listened to his voice message, I smiled. He’d arrived in Ecuador with two other archaeologists; all three vampires were heading to a dig site at Japotó. He sounded jovial, as always.

Which is more than I could say for myself. Jude’s absence was a solid thing. I couldn’t seem to pull enough oxygen into my lungs, as if I were pinned down by the weight of silence.

Like any mother, I worry. Sometimes I think I am making the same mistakes that my parents made, and if I have,
that doesn’t bode well. Because my family was murdered.

I know little about the events that drove my parents into hiding. Before I was born, a British pharmaceutical magnate had stalked my parents. Apparently my mother, Vivienne, purloined some historical artifacts from the magnate’s safe. She was only trying to return the objects to their rightful owner, a blond, curly-haired, thousand-year-old vampire named Philippe Grimaldi—her lover.

My mother wasn’t a thief. She was a soft-spoken British woman, a highly educated, law-abiding manuscript curator, and her grandfather had served in the House of Lords. My mother’s crime never made the news. If it had, the headline would have read, B
IG
-H
EARTED
W
OMAN
S
TEALS A
R
ICH
A
SSHOLE
’
S
T
OYS
. And the asshole was furious.

Philippe and Vivienne left Europe. They moved around the world and finally ended up in Crab Orchard, Tennessee, a small town ringed by the Appalachian Mountains. I was born a few months later.

We lived in a quaint, two-story white clapboard house, with sweeping views of the mountains. Our driveway sloped down to a solar-powered gate. My family seemed perfectly normal. On warm summer nights, Philippe and Vivienne drank wine on the front porch, wind chimes tinkling in the background.

I loved hearing their voices. My father spoke English with a French lilt, and my mother talked with a cut-glass British accent. Me, I sounded like a strummed hairpin, but it suited the harsh landscape, a raw, rocky place with copperheads and coal mines, and no doctor for miles.

One evening, I was playing in the yard, and I stepped
on a wasp’s nest. The ball of my foot swelled until it was as red and big as a pomegranate. My parents rushed me to a hospital in Knoxville. The doctors wrapped my foot in ice and stuck needles in my rear end. I was taken to the pediatric ward, and my mother read Beatrix Potter stories until her voice gave out. After she went to the cafeteria for hot tea, my father opened a copy of
Pride and Prejudice
.

He began to read, and his voice poured over me like warm syrup on a biscuit. At first, I was confused—I’d expected to hear a story about talking bunnies. But as my childish brain soaked up images of characters in the book, Elizabeth and Darcy, I forgot about my sore foot and fell asleep.

The next morning, my foot had almost healed, but my father was gone. Sunlight streamed through the window and fell across the bed. Out in the hall, I heard my mother arguing with the nurses. “Caro has always been a fast healer,” she told them.

I held back tears.
Fast healer
sounded bad. When I got home, my father was in the kitchen, a ruffled apron tied low on his waist, and he was cooking my favorite meal—pan-fried rainbow trout, garlic mashed potatoes, and cloverleaf rolls all slathered with butter. There was even chocolate cake for dessert.

I spent the rest of the summer trying to avoid wasps and rattlesnakes, but my vigilance turned out to be useless. One night thieves broke through the security gate at the bottom of the hill, then crept up the long gravel driveway and set our house on fire. My mother ran through the smoky dining room, shoving items into a
backpack. I held still while she hooked the straps over my shoulders.

“Hide behind the waterfall,” she said. “No matter what you hear, don’t come out until morning. I’ll find you later, I promise.”

She guided me out the back door. I raced into the shadowy woods, my backpack slamming between my shoulders. Then I started to worry about my parents, and I circled back to the house. Flames leaped behind the windows. Men were dragging my father up the porch steps. I waited till they got inside, then ran after them. There was so much smoke, it hurt to breathe. When I tried to open my parents’ bedroom door, the knob burned my hand.

The door opened, and a tall, pale man with black, bushy hair stepped out. I spun around and bolted through the haze, down the hall and out the door.

Hide behind the waterfall, Caro.

I skidded down an embankment and ran to the cave. The cool air felt good on my cheeks. I walked toward the sound of rushing water. Just a few more steps, I told myself. Almost there. I pulled off the backpack and crouched in a dry place, cradling my burned hand, waiting for my mother to fetch me.

Those bad men came instead, calling out to each other in strange, sharp voices, as if knives were trapped inside their words. I opened my mouth wide, struggling to pull in a breath, but I couldn’t get enough air.

I waited until the sky turned ashy and the men were gone. With my good hand, I lifted my backpack, crept out of the cave, and slogged toward the charred house. A
wall of heat pushed me back. I stumbled down the driveway, through the open gate, into the highway. I ended up in the same Knoxville hospital, but this time a gray-haired, barrel-chested man showed up, claiming he was my mother’s cousin.

“Just call me Uncle Nigel,” he said, and he brought me to a stone house in Oxford, England. I soon discovered that he was an archaeologist, skilled at piecing together broken things. Uncle Nigel put salve on my burns, fed me candy for breakfast, and brushed the knots from my incorrigible hair.

My backpack had disappeared, along with everything inside it, except for an old Byzantine icon that had belonged to my parents. It wasn’t the sort of art a child would hang on her wall, but I liked it. The images were mesmerizing: a female saint in a burgundy robe, an ostrich egg, a gilt-edged book, a castle, and a vineyard. A bleeding man lay on the ground, while a monk hovered in the distance.

Three mornings a week, Uncle Nigel taught a class at King’s College, and I went with him. He strode ahead of me, his black gown swirling around his shoes, chalk dust clinging to his sleeves. Every few minutes, he’d glance over his shoulder to make sure I was still there, and then he’d turn back to the throng of students that always followed him, and he’d begin quizzing them about Bronze Age artifacts.

I was still pretty much an emotional wreck. Despite my uncle’s kindness, my throat would clamp down, and I would be unable to breathe. When these spells hit, I locked myself in Uncle Nigel’s library and found his copy
of
Pride and Prejudice
. I stood in the middle of the room and faced the diamond-paned windows that overlooked the garden. Hands shaking, I opened the book and read out loud, forcing air in and out of my lungs.

My Appalachian twang always drew Dinah the cat, an elderly tabby with a distinct M on her forehead. I couldn’t decide if Dinah was fascinated or repelled by my odd American accent; whatever the reason, the cat would sit outside the library door and yowl. Part of me wanted to let her in, but another, bigger part was embarrassed to read aloud in front of a cat.

When the mewling reached a crescendo, I put down the book and squatted beside the door. “Please go away, Dinah. I can’t hear myself read.”

The cat let out an earsplitting bawl. I pressed my lips to the keyhole and shouted, “It’s a truth universally recognized that a cat in want of a girl will go to extremes. That’s you, Dinah.”

The cat screeched louder, as if to say,
Orphans in want of parents will hyperventilate
.

The human and feline caterwauling brought Uncle Nigel. He tapped against the door. “Sorry to interrupt you, Caro darling, but I just made an apple tart.”

I chewed my bottom lip, tempted to ignore him, but I’d already caught the scent of cinnamon and browning crust. I cracked open the door, and Dinah shot into the room, tail crooked. Uncle Nigel was right behind her.

“Do you like cream on your tart?” he asked.

I set down the Austen novel and followed him to the kitchen. It was a sunny room with floral dishes lined up in a Welsh cupboard. A teakettle simmered on the Aga.
Herbs grew in pots beside the sink. Uncle Nigel found a knife and a jar of cream. He cut the tart down the middle.

“Half for you,” he said, lifting a hunk and setting it onto my plate. He put the other piece onto his plate. “And half for me.”

In many ways, my troubles were cured by time and apple tarts. The broken places inside me solidified, streaking here and there like dark veins in a marble slab. But I wanted to learn more about my parents.

I already knew that my mother had been a manuscript curator, and her specialty was illustrated Psalters. My father knew every Cole Porter song, subscribed to
Cook’s Illustrated
(but never ate), and had a talent for winemaking. So I badgered Uncle Nigel for details.

“What was my mother’s favorite color?” I asked. “Was my dad a chef? Why did my parents choose to live in Appalachia? Why did thieves pick our farm? Did they know we weren’t wealthy? Why did they set our house on fire?”

“Vivienne’s favorite color was ochre,” Uncle Nigel said. He reached into a high kitchen cupboard, pulled out a yellow cat mug, and handed it to me. “This belonged to her.”

I held the mug with both hands, trying to imagine my mother’s long, delicate fingers gripping the curved handle.

“Your father had a way with sauces,” Uncle Nigel continued. “But he wasn’t a chef.”

I glanced away from the mug. “Why did my parents die?”

He folded his arms around me, taking care not to jostle
the mug, then he lifted a shaggy eyebrow. “I’ll try to explain. If you look at the Bible, you’ll notice that God uses one word more than others. Do you know that word?”