“Let me ask
you
something,” Ashley started, turning to face Heather in front of the sink and mirror. “What happened with you back in the car?”
“You know how I get…”
“No. That’s not what it was. You saw something on your phone. What was it?”
Heather stared at her, wanting desperately for all this to be a dream. Some irrational part of her even believed that it could be a dream so long as none of them actually put words to what was happening.
“Heather,” Ashley prodded.
She took a deep breath, and then told her sister about Snowy the cat.
After listening with unblinking interest, Ashley whispered, “Are you sure it was the same cat? I mean, it’s not really possible that…”
“I know.”
They stared at each other for a moment.
Ashley was smart—all honor classes and a degree in sports medicine—but, unfortunately, it was her athleticism and her stunning looks that most people acknowledged to the exclusion of the other. She’d gotten into college on a soccer scholarship and was on her way to making it pro but, to everyone’s surprise, wasn’t all that interested in a soccer career. There were too many other things she wanted to do. Like write. And she was writing—a novelization of the Ernie Davis story, actually. Not many people knew that, only seeing her as a pretty girl who cut hair for a living…someone who passed on a golden opportunity to play a professional sport. Heather was not one of those people, though, and now, as she looked into Heather’s deep, blue eyes, she could see the wealth of respect her older sister had for her. She was
begging
her for her insight, knowing that her opinion could either exonerate or condemn her.
Before Ashley could respond, though, her phone began to buzz.
“Could be Mom or Dad,” Heather said, glad for the sudden distraction.
Ashley checked the phone. “No. It’s my move in Scrabble…” But then the color drained from her face.
“What?” Heather stepped forward.
Ashley turned the phone around so that Heather could see it.
Taking in the digital field of blocked letters, she shook her head, not understanding.
Ashley chewed on her lip and pulled the phone back to her chest, daring to look again. It was, indeed, her turn in a game long underway…only, somehow, the game board had been reset. But that wasn’t what was disturbing. What was disturbing was that every letter on the board was either an E, R, P, or A.
She looked up into Heather’s eyes. “I have to tell you something.”
Marcus poured himself another cup of coffee, looked out the window, and then returned his gaze to the table. After taking a sip, he carefully asked Ian, “What was with that text message you got?”
Ian looked up from his complimentary soup, holding his friend in consideration for a while. Then dismissed his concern by casually waving the spoon around. “It was nothing.”
“Yeah? Well, I got a ‘nothing’ text, too.” He leaned forward onto the table and whispered the entirety of his first received message. “‘You are going to die out here, nigger.’ That’s what it said, man. And the second one I got, about the Iroquois…that ended with, ‘And I will drive you out of this land too, Blackman.’” Marcus looked around the diner. “So are you sure your text was really
nothing
?”
Ian swore, dropped the spoon back into the soup, and leaned onto the table himself. “I was engaged to this girl named Jessica about seven years ago.” He picked up a sugar packet and began playing with it, his eyes focused on the past. “Thought she was the one.” He scratched the back of his neck. “She
was
the one.”
When he didn’t continue on his own, Marcus prodded him. “What happened?”
“She got pregnant.” He tossed the packet into the center of the table as a mournful smile tugged the corner of his mouth. “
We
got pregnant.” His hands wouldn’t stop moving, as if they had to busy themselves in order for his mouth to work. They touched the handle of the coffee mug, tapped against the surface of the table, scratched at his jaw… “She decided she didn’t want the baby, though. Got an abortion.”
“Without telling you?”
He nodded. “Yeah. She never told me she was pregnant, but I found the test in the trash. I thought she was just waiting for the right time to tell me, to surprise me. After a month went by and she still hadn’t said anything, I brought it up.” His hands fell still. “What a scene that was.”
Marcus sat stunned. “Oh, man…”
Ian tried laughing it off, dismissing it as old news, but the sudden glimmer in his eyes betrayed his true feelings. “For a month I’d planned on being some little kid’s daddy, you know? I let my imagination run wild with it, all the things we’d do together…the things I’d teach him if he were a boy. How to throw a football, to fish, to field a ground ball…” He smiled a more genuine smile, raising his eyebrows as he went on. “And then all the anxieties if it were a girl. ‘Daddy’s little girl…’ Damn, you know how intimidated I was by that thought? The prospect of having to be responsible for an innocent girl in this world? I mean, here I was at night, lying beside Jessica, not able to sleep because I was worrying about first dates, proms, posters of boy bands, all the pressures of Madison Avenue… I was George friggin’ Banks in
Father of the Bride
for god sakes, my nightmare standing there at some altar and watching my baby walk away from me…” He swallowed and stared into his soup. “We were supposed to wait another year before getting married, but I figured we’d speed things up as soon as she told me the news. I had names and everything ready for her. Even got a couple parenting books from the library.”
Marcus just stared, not knowing what to say.
“When she told me she’d…” He bit his lower lip, shook his head.
Marcus reached a hand out across the table and grabbed Ian’s elbow. “It’s cool, man. Don’t…”
“I just hate thinking about it. Wondering whether it was a boy or a girl, what color eyes, their smile… Who they would’ve
been
, you know?” He paused. “It was all I ever wanted, and she threw it away without even telling me.”
Marcus had no words for his friend that wouldn’t sound cheap or cliché.
“It was more than the death of a life…” He poked the air with his finger, suddenly animated by another thought. “And it
was
a life. Don’t try feeding me this shit about ‘is a baby alive when’… It was
alive
. It was a biological life-form, growing, consuming energy. That’s called life. If you want to argue about when the soul comes into play, that whole ‘I think therefore I am’ philosophical stuff, fine. But don’t tell me the thing wasn’t
alive
. We search the universe for signs of so-called ‘life’ on other planets. If we found a human embryo on Mars, it would be the biggest discovery in history. Hell, if we found a
plant
, it would be the greatest discovery of our time! Life on Mars! So can you ‘kill’ a plant? Of course. Well, then you can damn-well kill a fetus, can’t you? Isn’t that what ‘abort’ means?” He sighed, his shoulders drooping. “Anyway, I slapped her. Called her a selfish bitch and told her I never wanted to see her again. The way I saw it then, she’d just gone behind my back and killed my child. And how could we go on from there? How was I supposed to get over
that
?” He began twirling a butter knife in circles on the table’s smooth surface. “I don’t know. I suppose it would’ve been different if I hadn’t found out. If I hadn’t spent a month anticipating it, letting myself get attached to the fantasy of it all.” He sent the knife spinning on its own and then slapped his hand over it, bringing it to an abrupt stop. “The thing is,” and now his eyes did swell, “boy or girl, we would’ve been great together.” He wiped an eye. “It’s kinda weird to miss someone who was never born, huh?”
“Not at all.”
“Thanks. Never really told anyone any of this.”
“Not even Heather?”
He shook his head.
“You think you should?”
“Probably.” He wiped his eyes and cleared his throat. “So that’s what the text said, ‘Why didn’t you marry Jessica?’ and ‘Does anyone else know your secret?’”
“Who else
does
know your secret, Ian?”
“Jessica. And I guess whoever she decided to tell. Though I can’t imagine it’s something she goes around broadcasting.”
Marcus brought a hand up to his chin, severity settling across his face. “So let me get this straight. You get a text from Heather’s phone, though her phone didn’t send it, about something that no one knows about?”
He nodded.
“Right after I get a racist text from a blocked number that knows where we are and threatens to kill me?”
“You just gave me the chills, man.” Ian turned his eyes to the storm outside.
“What’s going on here, Ian?”
“Here you go, guys.” George was back with an armful of sweatshirts. “I think I pegged your sizes right.” He nodded toward the soup as he placed the pile of clothes on the bench beside Marcus. “How is it?”
“It’s great,” Ian said.
“Good. You want anything else?”
“Yeah.”
They ordered dinner.
“Listen,” George said after committing the list to memory. He bent over and leaned against the table. “I only live about ten minutes from here, but there’s no way I’m getting home as long as this storm is blowing. I guess you can say we’re all in it together.”
They stared at him, unsure of where he was going.
George laughed. “What I’m sayin’ is, feel free to stay as long as you want. I ain’t gonna kick no one back out into the cold. I’ll be here all night, anyway, so…you just make yourselves comfortable, okay? And I’ll keep the coffee coming.”
“Wow, thanks. We really appreciate that.” Marcus did his best to return the smile, but it felt cheap on his lips. “God bless you for it.”
That seemed to startle George. “You a Christian man, my friend?”
“Yes, sir,” Marcus answered.
“Well, praise the Lord for that! Hallelujah!” He walked away once more.
Unsure of whether George was being sarcastic or not and caring even less, he turned in the booth and looked toward the girls’ room. “What the hell’s taking them so long?”
Ashley took her sister’s hands in her own and leaned against the tiled wall for support. “Five years ago…” She paused to suck air into her lungs, held her breath for a moment, and tried summoning the strength to share her dark secret.
“What?” Heather’s eyes filled with concern.
“I was raped.”
Heather’s mouth fell open, but nothing came out. The hum of the fluorescent bulbs overhead filled the silence. Then her shock melted into a string of tears. “Wh—what?” she stuttered softly.
Ashley squeezed Heather’s hands. “When I was in college.”
Heather tried to say something, but Ashley continued before she could get her thoughts together.
“I was walking back to my dorm one night. We’d gotten back late from a game…the bastard jumped out of the bushes, wrapped his arms around me from behind, and carried me into the woods.”
“How?”
“
How
?” She grunted. “The guy was like six four, two-hundred and thirty pounds. I wasn’t getting away from that. Believe me, I tried.”
Horror settled onto Heather’s face, and her hand went to her mouth, tears still streaming. “Was he a student?”
“I don’t think so. I never saw him before or after.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
She shrugged. “Lots of reasons.”
“Ash…” Heather threw her arms around her sister, squeezing her tight and sobbing as if her little sister had just been attacked mere moments ago. As far as Heather was concerned, hearing the news for the first time, she had.
“It’s okay,” Ashley was saying. But her eyes were full, too. She’d never told another person before and knew it was the coffee ghost and the Scrabble game pushing her into doing so now.
Heather pulled back. “Oh, kiddo…I would’ve been there for you. You know that, right?”
“I know.” Hot tears began gliding down her face.
“Do you want to talk about it? I mean…now?”
She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. “Now I’d just like to know what the hell is going on.” She held the Scrabble game up again. “Your special relationship with felines, my being forced upon by Goliath… I mean, just what the hell is happening to us, Heath? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, but…” Her eyes, still raining with sorrow, fell to her feet. “There’s something else I should tell you.”
“What?”
“I’m—”
A knock sounded at the door, and they both jumped.
“Heather? Ashley? You girls okay in there?”
It was Ian’s voice.
“Yeah. We’ll be right out,” Ashley answered. Then she looked back at Heather. “Well?”
“What?”
“You’re what?”
She bit her lip, hesitating, and looked at the door. “I’ll tell you later.”
Nine
George brought their food out and set it on the table. Three slices of tomato pie, a bacon cheeseburger, French toast, and chicken parmesan. He smiled when he noticed that they were all wearing the sweaters and sweatshirts he’d found for them, their coats piled up against the wall at the end of the bench.
“Looks like they fit okay. Guessed pretty good, didn’t I?” he asked.
Heather was now wearing a big striped sweater that smelled like an old woman’s perfume, Ashley a hooded Buffalo Bills sweatshirt, Marcus a black, zippered sweater with a high collar, and Ian was donning an old Malcolm X sweatshirt.
“Yeah, thank you again,” Ian responded.
“Least I can do for you folks. I have another box to look through, too. Maybe some gloves and scarves.”
“We can’t thank you enough, really,” Heather said.
Out of nowhere, the quiet diner erupted with a Christmas song echoing off its walls, startling everyone and making George snap his head in the direction of the jukebox.
“…Joy to the world, the Lord has come, let earth receive her king…
”
George frowned in puzzlement, his head swaying back and forth on a swivel. “Damndest thing.”