Teardrop (39 page)

He looked at Eureka’s hand on his arm, then at Ander, then back at Eureka.

“Please,” she whispered.

“Fine. But first we’re making coffee.”

They moved to the kitchen, where Dad lit the gas burner and put on a kettle of water. He spooned black coffee into an old French press. Eureka and Ander sat at the table, arguing with their eyes over who should speak first.

Dad kept glancing at Ander. A disturbed expression fixed on his face. “You look familiar, kid.”

Ander shifted. “We’ve never met.”

While the water heated, Dad stepped closer to the table. He tilted his head, narrowed his eyes at Ander. His voice sounded distant when he said, “How did you say you knew this boy, Reka?”

“He’s my friend.”

“You go to school together?”

“We just … met.” She gave Ander a nervous shrug.

“Your mother said—” Dad’s hands began to shake. He set them firmly on the table to quiet them. “She said someday …”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

The kettle whistled, so Eureka stood to turn off the burner. She poured water into the French press and gathered three mugs from the cupboard. “I think you should sit down, Dad. What we’re about to say might sound strange.”

A soft knock at the front door made all three of them jump. Eureka and Ander shared a glance, then she pushed back her chair and moved toward the door. Ander was right behind her.

“Don’t open the door,” he warned.

“I know who it is.” Eureka recognized the shape of the figure through the frosted glass. She yanked on the stuck doorknob, then unlocked the screen door.

Cat’s eyebrows arched at the sight of Ander standing over Eureka’s shoulder. “Would have gotten here earlier if I’d known there was going to be a sleepover.”

Behind Cat, wild wind shook the huge mossy bough of an oak tree as if it were a twig. A rough blast of water splattered the porch.

Eureka motioned Cat inside and offered to help her out of her raincoat. “We’re making coffee.”

“I can’t stay.” Cat wiped her feet on the mat. “We’re evacuating. My dad’s packing the car right now. We’re driving to stay with Mom’s cousins in Hot Springs. Are you evacuating, too?”

Eureka looked at Ander. “We’re not … We don’t … Maybe.”

“It’s not mandatory yet,” Cat explained, “but the TV said if the rain kept up, evacs might be required later on, and you know my parents—they always have to beat the traffic. Freaking storm came out of nowhere.”

Eureka swallowed a lump in her throat. “I know.”

“Anyway,” Cat said, “I saw your light on and wanted to drop this off before we left.” She held out the kind of wicker basket her mom was always packing for different fund-raisers and charity organizations. It was stuffed with rainbow confetti, the colors bleeding from the rain. “It’s my soul-mending kit: magazines, my mom’s meringues, and”—she lowered her voice and flashed a slender brown bottle at the bottom of the basket—“Maker’s Mark.”

Eureka took the basket, but what she really wanted to hold was Cat. She placed the soul-mending kit at their feet and wrapped her arms around her friend. “Thank you.”

She couldn’t bear to think how long it might be before she saw Cat again. Ander hadn’t mentioned when they’d be coming back.

“Stay for a cup of coffee?”

Eureka fixed Cat’s coffee the way she liked it, using most of Rhoda’s bottle of Irish Cream Coffee-mate. She poured a mug for herself and one for Dad and sprinkled cinnamon on top of both. Then she realized she didn’t know how Ander took his coffee, and it made her feel reckless, as if they’d run off and gotten engaged without knowing each other’s last name. She still didn’t know his last name.

“Black,” he said before she had to ask.

For a moment, they sipped quietly and Eureka knew that soon she had to do it: shatter this peace. Say goodbye to her best friend. Convince Dad of absurd, fantastic truths. Evacuate. She would take this small sip of false normalcy before things fell further apart.

Dad hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even looked up to say hello to Cat. His face was ashen. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Can I talk to you, Eureka?”

She followed him to the back of the kitchen. They stood in the doorway that elbowed off into the dining room, out of earshot of Ander and Cat. From the side of the stove hung the backyard landscapes the twins had painted in watercolor at their preschool. William’s was realistic: four green oak trees, a weathered swing set, the bayou twisting in the background. Claire’s was abstract, wholly purple, a glorious rendering of what their yard looked like when it stormed. Eureka could hardly look at the paintings, knowing that, in the best-case scenario, she had to rip the twins and their parents from the life they knew because she had put everyone in danger.

She didn’t want to tell Dad. She really didn’t want to tell him. But if she didn’t tell him, something worse might happen. “The thing is, Dad—” she started to say.

“Your mother said that someday something might happen,” Dad interrupted.

Eureka blinked.
“She warned you.”
She took his hand, which was cold and clammy, not strong and reassuring the
way she was used to it feeling. She tried to stay as calm as possible. Maybe this would be easier than she’d thought. Maybe Dad already had some sense of what to expect. “Tell me
exactly
what she said.”

He closed his eyes. His lids were creased and damp and he looked so frail it scared her. “Your mother was prone to delirium. She’d be out with you at the park or some store buying clothes. This was back when you were little, always when the two of you were alone. It never seemed to happen when I was there to see it. She’d come home and insist that impossible things had occurred.”

Eureka inched closer to him, attempting to inch closer to Diana. “Like what?”

“It was like she would fall into a fever. She’d repeat the same thing over and over. I thought she was ill, maybe schizophrenic. I’ve never forgotten what she said.” He looked at Eureka and shook his head. She knew he didn’t want to tell her.

“What did she say?”

That she came from a long line of Atlanteans? That she possessed a book prophesying a lost island’s second coming? That a cult of fanatics might someday seek to kill their daughter for her tears?

Dad wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. “She said: ‘Today I saw the boy who’s going to break Eureka’s heart.’ ”

A chill ran down Eureka’s spine. “What?”

“You were four years old. It was absurd. But she wouldn’t let it go. Finally, the third time it happened, I made her draw me a picture.”

“Mom was a good artist,” Eureka murmured.

“I kept that picture in my closet,” Dad said. “I don’t know why. She’d drawn this sweet-looking kid, six or seven years old, nothing disturbing in the face, but in all the years we lived in town, I never saw the boy. Until …” His lip trembled and he took Eureka’s hands again. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the breakfast table. “The likeness is unmistakable.”

Tension twisted through Eureka’s chest, crippling her breath like a bad cold. “Ander,” she whispered.

Dad nodded. “He’s the same as he was in the drawing, just grown up.”

Eureka shook her head, as if that would shake the sensation of nausea. She told herself an old drawing didn’t matter. Diana couldn’t have read this future. She couldn’t have known Eureka and Ander might someday truly care for one another. She thought of his lips, his hands, the unique protectiveness that came through everything Ander did. It made her skin tingle with pleasure. She had to trust in that instinct. Instinct was all she had left.

Maybe Ander had been raised to be her enemy, but he was different now. Everything was different now.

“I trust him,” she said. “We’re in danger, Dad. You and
me, Rhoda, the twins. We need to get out of here today, now, and Ander is the only one who can help us.”

Dad gazed at Eureka with profound pity and she knew it was the same look he must have given to Diana when she said things that sounded crazy. He tweaked her chin. He sighed. “You’ve had a real hard time of it, kid. All you need to do today is relax. Let me make you something for breakfast.”

“No, Dad. Please—”

“Trenton?” Rhoda appeared in the kitchen wearing a red silk robe. Her loose hair flowed down her back—a style Eureka wasn’t used to seeing on her. Her face was bare of makeup. Rhoda looked pretty. And frantic. “Where are the children?”

“They’re not in their room?” Eureka and Dad asked simultaneously.

Rhoda shook her head. “Their beds are made. The window was wide open.”

A terrific clap of thunder gave way to a faint rapping on the back door that Eureka almost didn’t hear. Rhoda and Dad sprinted to open it, but Ander got there first.

The door blew back with a sharp gust of wind. Rhoda, Dad, and Eureka halted at the sight of the Seedbearer standing in the doorway.

Eureka had seen him before at the police station and on the side of the road later that night. He looked sixty, with pale skin, slickly parted gray hair, and a pale gray tailored suit that
gave him the appearance of a door-to-door salesman. His eyes glowed the same bright turquoise as Ander’s.

The resemblance between them was undeniable—and alarming.

“Who are you?” Dad demanded.

“If you’re looking for your children,” the Seedbearer said as a strong odor of citronella wafted in from the backyard, “step outside. We’d be happy to arrange an exchange.”

30

R
hoda shoved past the Seedbearer, who glanced bitterly at Eureka, then spun around to cross the porch.

“William!” Rhoda shouted. “Claire!”

Ander rushed through the door after Rhoda. By the time Eureka, Dad, and Cat made it to the covered patio outside, the Seedbearer was at the bottom of the porch stairs. At the top, Ander had tackled Rhoda. He had her pinned against one of the colonettes of the balustrade. Her arms writhed at her sides. She kicked, but Ander held her body still as easily as if she were a child.

“Let go of my wife,” Dad snarled, and lunged toward Ander.

With a single hand Ander held him back, too. “
You
can’t
save them. That isn’t how this works. All you’ll do is get yourself hurt.”

“My children!” Rhoda wailed, keeling over in Ander’s arms.

The odor of citronella was overpowering. Eureka’s eyes traveled past the porch to the lawn. Standing among acid-green ferns and the mottled trunks of live oaks were the same four Seedbearers she’d encountered on the road. They formed a line facing the porch, steely gazes eyeing the scene Eureka and her family were making. The Seedbearer who had knocked on their door had rejoined his group. He stood half a foot ahead of the others, hands crossed over his chest, turquoise eyes challenging Eureka to do something.

And behind the Seedbearers—Eureka’s body seized and a wave of red spots swam before her eyes. Suddenly she knew why Ander was holding Rhoda back.

The twins were hog-tied to the swing set. One metal chain from each swing bound the wrists of each twin. Their arms stretched above their heads, linked by the knotted chain that had been looped over the long horizontal top bar of the swing set. The other two chains had been used to bind the twins’ ankles. Those chains were then secured in knots on the sides of the swing set’s A-frame bars. William and Claire hung at a slant.

The worst part was that the swings’ splintery wooden seats had been wedged into the twins’ mouths. Duct tape held
the seats in as gags. Tears streamed down the children’s faces. Their eyes bulged in pain and fear. Their bodies shook with whimpers the gags prevented Eureka from hearing.

How long had they been tied up like that? Had the Seedbearers broken into the twins’ bedroom in the night, while Ander was guarding Eureka? She felt sick with rage, consumed by guilt. She had to do something.

“I’m going out there,” Dad said.

“Stay here if you want your kids returned alive.” Ander’s command was quiet but authoritative. It stopped Dad at the top step of the porch. “This has to be handled exactly right—or we’re going to be very sorry.”

“What kind of sick jerks would do that to a couple of kids?” Cat whispered.

“They call themselves Seedbearers,” Ander said, “and they raised me. I know their sickness well.”