Touch (18 page)

Allison’s single glance held a question; Emma smiled in response. It was the silent
version of “I’m fine,” and caused Ally to frown. More than that wasn’t possible. Michael
sat at the front of this class, in part to avoid the chatting that often went on in
the back. Emma wondered if he was absorbing anything the teacher said. She was having
a hard time concentrating herself.

Boredom was highly underrated. She couldn’t get Mark’s expression out of her head,
and when she tried, she was left with dinner, her mother, and her mother’s new boyfriend.
There was no resentment left in her, just a mouth-drying fear.

She’d accept the new boyfriend. She’d work hard to accept him. Just let everything
else be okay. Let the Necromancers ignore her mother. Let Mark change his mind. Let
her friends’ families be safe.

This is why Chase hates me
, Emma thought. She thought it without the usual sting. If it weren’t for her, no
one would be in any danger. She shook herself, took notes, and tried to find the discussion
about willpower and its finite qualities interesting.

* * *

“Mark?” Allison asked Emma as quietly as she could in a very crowded stretch of hallway
after the last class had ended.

Emma nodded. She headed straight for the front doors, without the usual social lingering.
Allison was right behind her, and Michael was already outside. He’d chosen to wait
in the usual place, but he watched the doors open and close with a twitchy nervousness.
No one wanted to accidentally bump into Merrick Longland, and the minute Allison and
Emma reached Michael, they began a hurried walk to put as much distance between Emery
Collegiate and themselves as they could without breaking into an out and out run.

“Amy wants to meet at her house tomorrow after school,” Allison said.

This surprised Emma. As a general rule, Allison and Amy didn’t talk much.

Michael nodded, but Emma touched his shoulder anyway. When Michael was stressed out—and
they were
all
stressed out at the moment—nodding came naturally; it didn’t mean he agreed or even
understood what had been said.

“I have track practice tomorrow,” Michael told them.

“I’ll talk to Amy. If it’s okay with you, we can pick you up when you’re finished.”
She steered him in the direction of his house. He was thinking, and sometimes Michael’s
thoughts became the whole of his geography; he could literally look up blocks from
now in confusion, because he had no memory of walking them.

Today, Emma understood why. Walking down streets she’d seen all her life felt unreal.
So much had changed in the past few months. She felt, on a visceral level, that the
rest of the world should reflect those changes. It didn’t.

And it made her question the life she’d lived up to now. It made every mundane street
and every mundane corner sharper and harsher. Necromancers and their Queen had existed
for longer than Emma had been alive, and until she herself had begun to see the dead,
she’d never heard a word about them. Necromancers in the various games Michael and
his friends played didn’t have a Queen, and the dead were usually confined to the
role of brain-eating, shuffling zombies.

The sun was low, but it wouldn’t be dark for a couple of hours, and the lawns were,
for the most part, buried under a pristine blanket of snow. Someone across the street
was walking a black Labrador that didn’t seem to be as deaf as Emma’s rottweiler.
Once, Petal had been that young.

She exhaled a cloud, shoving her hands deeper into her pockets. Maybe all of life
was a little like this: You saw the parts of it you knew, and if no one pointed you
in a different direction, that was the entire truth of your world. The different direction
she’d been turned to face hadn’t actually changed the world; it had just changed Emma’s
perception.

Her father had never been keen on ignorance; he felt that lack of knowledge was something
to be alleviated, as if it were the common cold. She paused at the foot of Michael’s
driveway. “Don’t forget to ask your mother about visiting Amy tomorrow,” she told
him, as she gave him a little nudge in the direction of his house.

* * *

“He wants to go home,” Allison said, when Michael’s front door had opened and closed
behind him.

“Mark?”

Allison nodded.

“Yes. I don’t want to take him,” she added, although it was obvious. “And I waffled.
I told him I couldn’t do it tonight because I had important guests, more or less.”

Allison winced on Emma’s behalf, and Emma felt guilty. “I know my mother. I do. If
Jon were a jerk, she wouldn’t like him. But no, I’m not really looking forward to
making nice at dinner. I don’t know if I’m expected to impress him; I certainly haven’t
managed that so far.”

“I think,” Allison said quietly, “it’s probably more important to your mom that Jon
impress you.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. I don’t want my mom’s new boyfriend sucking up to me.
I don’t know him. I don’t have much to say to him.” She held out a hand before Allison
could speak. “I’ll find something. I’ve always managed the small talk. I’m not even
angry about him anymore. If things go wrong, a new boyfriend doesn’t even register
on the possible disaster scales.

“But I swear, if I walk into the house and there are any PDAs, I’m going to be ill.”

* * *

The front hall was full of deaf rottweiler when Emma opened the door. Petal was happy
to see her, although she suspected at the moment she looked like a walking food dish.
Honestly, people who didn’t know better would assume the Hall household regularly
starved their poor, pathetic dog.

She wasn’t immune to puppy-induced guilt and headed to the kitchen to remedy it. Unlike
other forms of guilt in this house, food-related guilt was easily dealt with. When
Petal had eaten enough—a rare occurrence—he left the kitchen and returned with a scratched,
retractable leash in his mouth.

Emma shook her head. “Not tonight,” she said quietly. This produced predictable whining.
“I need to clean the kitchen and the dining room; we have guests coming for dinner.”

She wasn’t exactly lying; the kitchen and the dining room were in need of cleaning.
But she needed the space of a few hours in which to think and make decisions—and if
she took Petal out of the house, she was almost certain Nathan would appear.

Nathan.

She wasn’t ready to talk to him again. Her mind was full of Merrick Longland, her
mother, and the parents and siblings of her friends. It felt almost like betrayal,
but she knew that Nathan—if he could hear her thoughts—would understand. The dead
had time. Nathan had time.

And Emma had barely enough time to putter around the kitchen and the dining room in
a silence broken only by dog whining. She didn’t talk to herself as she worked because
she had Petal, and Petal knew she was worried about something. He had stayed by her
side during the long first month after Nathan’s death, often with the leash in his
mouth and his head in her lap.

He shuffled around her feet as she worked, and she let the work soothe her. It was
normal. Meeting her mother’s boyfriend, not so much. When the dining room was up to
Hall guest standards—occupants having much lower ones—she headed up to her room to
fix her hair and try to dress like a respectable daughter.

Her father did not show up, and given she was changing, that was a blessing.

* * *

When her mother arrived, Emma was in the television room, channel surfing in the hope
that something would catch her attention. She set the remote aside when she heard
her mother’s car hit the driveway and caught Petal’s collar before he charged up the
stairs.

“Guests, remember?” she said, without much hope. She opened the door to see her mother
fumbling with keys, a bag of groceries precariously cradled in her left arm. Jon was
standing to one side, two bags of groceries in similar positions. Emma offered him
her politest Hall smile, took the bag from her mother’s arm, and headed toward the
kitchen.

Jon followed, which wouldn’t have been her first choice. But he didn’t make himself
at home in Emma’s kitchen.

“Where did you want me to put these?”

“On the breakfast table,” Emma told him, pointing. “I’ll put them away.” She hesitated,
then added, “Can you reach the plates on the third shelf here?”

“With or without a chair?”

She smiled; it was less forced. She waited for him to say something stupid or awkward,
because her mother had not yet entered the kitchen. He didn’t. Instead, he got the
plates and set them on the counter just in front of Emma. Emma tried to guess what
exactly her mother intended to cook from the contents of the bags and came up with
four possibilities. “I don’t suppose she mentioned what was for dinner?”

“No. She bought desert, though.” He looked at his feet and then up; he smiled. “She
was nervous.”

“It’s a defining Hall trait,” Emma replied. “That and guilt.” She took a deep breath,
held out her right hand, and added, “I’m Emma.”

He took her hand as if he had never been introduced and said, “I’m Jon. Is your mother
trying to give us time alone?”

Since it was the same thought Emma had, but with less annoyance and more genuine curiosity,
Emma said, “Probably not. I know she’s an ace at work, but she spends all her organization
points in the office.”

“Leaving the organization of the house to you?”

“More or less. If it helps, my locker at school is a class-A disaster.”

“It helps a little. Look, I’m not great with small talk.”

“Not great?”

“I suck at it.”

Emma laughed.

Jon didn’t. “I mean it. I’m seriously bad at making small talk. If I ask about someone’s
husband, they’re in the middle of a divorce. If I ask about their family, their parents
have cancer. If I compliment their clothing, they’re wearing something their mother
bought and they hate it.” He held out both of his empty hands, palms up. “So mostly,
I don’t try.”

“My mother’s not bad at it.”

“She’s almost as bad at it as I am,” he replied. He glanced toward the hall, which
still contained Mercy, her coat, and, apparently, the family dog. “I’m not here to
be your best friend. I’m not here to be your friend—that’s presumptuous and probably
unwanted.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I care about your mother.”

“Was this your idea or hers?”

“Pass.”

“What?”

“I pass. I’ll take question number two.”

“Fine. Have you ever been married before?”

“How many passes do I get?”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “As many as you need. This isn’t an interrogation.”

“You’re sure?”

“Well, no, not really.”

His smile deepened. The lines around the corners of his mouth were etched there; it
made Emma realize that Jon smiled a lot. He wasn’t a handsome man. He wasn’t anywhere
near as good-looking as her father had been. But she liked his smile. There were no
edges in it.

“Teenage girls always make me nervous.”

“You don’t look particularly nervous.”

“No. I’m better at hiding it. When I was a teenager, I kept my mouth shut. It mostly
stopped the stupid from pouring out.”

“Mostly?”

“I fidgeted more.” He slid his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the
edge of the counter. “I also suck under stress.”

“You’re under stress? Try meeting your mother’s first boyfriend.” She reddened. “I
mean, first since . . .”

“You’re always going to be your mother’s daughter. If I screw up, I’m not guaranteed
to hold the same position.”

“You’d make a terrible daughter.”

“If she’s used to your caliber, probably. And I’m not willing to try—she’s already
got the only daughter she wants. So . . . what are our chances of eating dinner before
ten?”

Emma pretended to consider the question. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“If you want her in the kitchen right now, we could start shouting at each other.”

He laughed. “I’ll take dinner at ten, thanks.”

* * *

To Emma’s surprise, she wasn’t in need of rescue. Jon looked just as surprised, because
as it turned out, neither was he. When her mother entered the kitchen, she had the
wary smile of a worried Hall attached to her face. It was brittle, and it was mildly
annoying.

“I’m not bleeding,” Jon told her.

Her mother had the grace to redden.

“He’s not cowering in the corner either,” Emma pointed out, with a little less humor
than Jon.

Her mother winced. She didn’t apologize, which would have been awkward, not that it
wasn’t already awkward. But Jon grinned. “She’s your daughter. She’s not going to
wilt in the corner like a drama queen.”

“Which proves,” her mother said, in a more acerbic tone, “that you don’t know the
Halls well enough.” To Emma she added, “I’ve given him plenty of opportunity to back
out.”

“And he’s not bright enough to take any of them?”

“Apparently not.” Her mother’s smile was worn around the edges, but it was natural.
“Jon, don’t take this personally, but I need my kitchen.”

“And your daughter?”

“Every chef needs a sous chef.”

T
HE KITCHEN WITH HER MOTHER IN IT was more awkward than the kitchen without her, an
irony not lost on either of the Halls. “You don’t have to love him,” her mother began.

Emma, struggling with the theoretical sharp edge of a knife that clearly hadn’t been
sharpened in a decade, grimaced. “Good to know.”

“You just have to understand that I might.”

“Might? It’s not decided?”

“I’m a little too old to fall head over heels in love,” her mother replied. “It’s
been so long since I even considered being involved with anyone else at all.” She
set her knife down to one side of the cutting board and turned. “I didn’t plan this.
I wasn’t even aware that he was interested in me.”

Of all the conversations Emma could be having with her mother, this was the obvious
one—but obvious or not, it was completely unexpected. Emma, who could cut and listen
at the same time, nudged her mother away from the counter, but not before looking
at her.

Objectively, her mother wasn’t
old
. She wasn’t young but then again, she had a teenage daughter. She dressed—and looked—like
a middle-aged mother, to Emma. “You know,” she said, half to Mercy and half to herself,
“when I was four years old, I thought you were the most beautiful person alive.”

“Were?” her mother asked. “Have I changed so much?”

Had she? “Well, after that I met Amy.”

Her mother laughed. Hearing it, Emma wondered how long it had been since she’d heard
that laugh. Her mother had laughed a lot more when her father had been alive. Emma
finished slicing chicken and looked at her mother again. Her mother stood by the back
screen door, her hands behind her. She thought about what her dad had said—the parts
that didn’t make her angry. Parents didn’t
talk
to their kids; they wanted to give them a safe haven.

And safety was a myth.

“I know what I felt when I first got to know your father,” her mother said quietly,
looking out into the yard, her face reflected in the glass. She straightened her shoulders
and headed back to the counter and their neglected dinner preparations. “I know this
isn’t the same. I’m not sure what I feel, but I don’t want to overthink it.”

“Mom—that’s not the salt.”

“What?” Mercy Hall looked at the glass jar in her hand. “Right. Sugar would be more
interesting.”

“Interesting food probably isn’t the best choice for a first meal.”

“I don’t think Jon would mind too much. He’s the better cook.” That said, she put
the sugar down and picked up the salt. “But Jon makes me laugh. He makes me laugh
even when there’s nothing remotely funny. Sometimes when I’m with him, I don’t have
to think.” She turned to her daughter, who was silent.

“I know you miss your father. I miss him, too. I thought I’d spend the rest of my
life in mourning. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t had you.”

“You’d’ve had an easier life.”

“Easy and happy aren’t the same—they only look the same when things are both hard
and unhappy. I always thought your father was the better parent. He was more patient
and more consistent. But I tried. I tried to live up to him.”

“Tell her she did.”

Emma closed her eyes as a familiar chill descended on the kitchen. She couldn’t tell
if her mother felt it or not; her mother was focused on dinner. And on the strange
flow of words that Emma had never heard before. She turned to her father; her father
was watching his wife making dinner for another man. His expression made Emma want
to cry, but she was a Hall; she didn’t.

She also didn’t pass the words on.

“Tell her,” her father continued when Emma failed to speak, “that she did better.
I love her. I always have. And she’s been lonely for long enough. She’s not lying,
Em. This
is
the first time she’s ever been willing to risk opening up. To you,” he said, in case
this wasn’t clear. “And to the possibility of life with someone else.”

“I was too busy with you to be lonely,” her mother said. She couldn’t hear her husband’s
words, of course, but some instinct stopped their words from overlapping. “That’s
the truth. I knew we had to be a family, even if we were without a husband and a father.
We still needed to keep a roof over our heads. Your grandmother offered to let us
move in with her.”

Emma grimaced but politely said nothing.

“But I had to know that we could make it on our own. And we have.” She turned to the
stove, wiping up invisible dirt from around the stovetop elements. “I don’t know what
happened the night we took you to the hospital.”

Emma froze.

“I don’t know if I was so frenzied with worry that I—” She shook her head. “No. That’s
not it. You saw—what I saw. Michael saw him. Allison did. I don’t know if they remember.
I don’t know if they talk about it.”

Emma started to speak, but her mother held up one imploring hand. “I need to say this,
and if I don’t get it all out now, I never will. Can you—can you let me do that? I’m
asking for a lot, I know.”

“Mom—” Emma swallowed. “You’re not asking for much. You’re just asking for me to listen.”
Who listened to her mother? She had a few friends she saw maybe twice a year—old university
friends who now lived across the continent in different cities. Emma had Allison.
Who did her mother have?

Not Emma, not really. Parents didn’t talk to their children about anything important.
No, that wasn’t true. They listened and talked about things that were important to
their
children
. But they didn’t talk about their own lives. And it had never really occurred to
Emma to ask. Why not?

“I saw Brendan. I saw him. I heard him.” Her eyes were red, but—Hall. She didn’t shed
tears. They changed the timbre of her voice anyway. “He hadn’t aged a day. He didn’t
look—he didn’t look dead. But he looked the way he looked when you were a child and
Petal was a puppy. And his expression—” She swallowed. “He looked so worried. For
me
. He looked—”

“You are
not
a disappointment to Dad,” Emma said, with more force than she’d intended. She crossed
the small space that divided them, forgetting for a moment that they had roles they
were meant to inhabit. She slid her arms around her mother’s shoulders and felt a
shock as she realized how
small
her mother actually was.

“I’d just taken you to the hospital. I was terrified. If Dad were here—”

“Dad was alive when I broke my arm.”

“A broken arm can’t kill you.”

“I’m sure Michael could come up with exceptions.”

Mercy laughed. It was shaky. “When I came home that night, I felt so lonely. I haven’t
felt that way for so long. I felt as if the eight years and the work and the keeping
things going—it was empty.”

“Mercy,” her father whispered. He was standing so close to them, all Emma had to do
was reach out and touch him, and he’d be here too. But she didn’t.

“And you hated yourself for feeling that way,” Emma said softly.

Her mother blinked.

“I’m a Hall, remember? I know how this goes. You were
fine
. I was
fine
. There were probably days when you hated Dad for dying.”

“Did you hate Nathan for dying?” her mother asked softly.

“Some days, I still do. Or I hate that I fell in love with him, because if I hadn’t,
life without him wouldn’t be so bad.”

Her mother nodded. “He cared for you.”

“And Dad loved you.”

Her mother put her arms around Emma. They stood together for a long, silent moment.
“I don’t regret a minute of the last eight years.”

“The Candlewick project?” It had been one of Mercy’s few—but significant—failures.

“Funny girl,” her mother’s voice was soft and fond. “But after I saw your father in
the hospital, I couldn’t shake that loneliness. I don’t know if I love Jon, but when
I’m with him, the world seems a little brighter and little more vibrant. He’s so good
at being who he is. It doesn’t seem to matter if he’s talking to an eighty year old
or a toddler. He doesn’t ask for anything, and he doesn’t want a lot from me. He knows
about your father, of course. He knows how important you are. He was nervous,” she
added.

“I know. I was nervous, too.”

“I thought you were angry.”

“I was.” Emma tightened her arms. “I don’t know Jon. But sometimes,” she added, thinking
about the conversation with her father earlier in the day, “I think I didn’t really
know Dad, either. I’ll try, Mom. I will honestly try.”

“I couldn’t replace Nathan,” her mother said. It sounded like an odd thing to say,
but it mirrored what Emma couldn’t put into words herself. “But I never doubted that
you loved me.”

“And I couldn’t replace Dad.”

“No one could. Jon isn’t trying to be Brendan. He knows he’s not your father. You
only—and ever—have one.” Her mother exhaled. “I’m not trying to replace my husband,
either. He was my best friend and my pillar of support, and nothing Jon says or does
will change that. But nothing anyone says or does can change the past. If I can’t
open up a bit, if I can’t let go, the past is the only future I have.

“And you’re almost an adult now. You don’t need me anymore.”

“I do, Mom.”

“Not the way you used to. I miss it,” she added, since this was a night for unexpected
truth. “But no one gets to be a child forever—and no one should want to. You’ve grown.
You’ve become so much stronger. I want you to keep growing up. I want you to go out
into a world that doesn’t include me. I want you to meet—” she stopped, stiffening
at the words that had almost fallen out of her mouth, and the implication behind them.

At any other time, Emma would have been angry. But the anger wouldn’t come. In a quieter
voice she said, “I’m not ready to meet anyone new.”

“No, of course not—I’m sorry, Em, I was just—”

“You took eight years, Mom. Eight years. Give me at least that long.”

Her mother nodded and slowly disentangled herself. “We’re going to have dinner at
midnight at this rate,” she said, running her sleeve across her eyes. Emma couldn’t
remember the last time she’d seen her mother cry.

“Jon won’t care,” she said.

“No, he really won’t,” her mother replied, smiling.

* * *

Dinner was late, even for the Hall household, but it wasn’t midnight. It wasn’t—quite—nine
in the evening, although it only missed that mark by a few minutes. Allison texted
before they’d even sat down, and Emma texted back a brief “I don’t hate him.” She
avoided using the words “it’s fine” because they always made Ally worry.

And the truth was, she didn’t. She wasn’t certain she
liked
him, but she was certain her like or dislike was irrelevant. Or it should be. But
she lingered in the kitchen while her mother took the food out.

“Is this really okay?” she asked her father, who hadn’t left the kitchen once.

“It’s better than okay,” he replied. “Nathan’s death is too new to you. You can’t
see past it. You can’t see a world that doesn’t have him in it.”

She almost said,
And I don’t have to
. But she held her peace. She was in a strange state of mind; there was almost no
fight in her.

“Your mother has had eight years of a life without me,” he continued. “Sometimes she’d
tell you that she missed me. But, Em—the life the two of you have now doesn’t have
a place for me in it. She’s held that space empty, as if I might somehow return to
fill it.

“It’s not what I want for her. Maybe if I could come back—in the flesh, alive—I’d
hate everything about this evening. But I think she’s been in pain and been alone
for long enough. I don’t want you to compare Jon to me, because there’s no point.
Jon isn’t me. Your mother is right—nothing will change our past. But it
is
past.

“If you can do one thing for me, help her.”

“I’ve always tried—”

“Help her with Jon. He’s a decent guy. He does care for Mercy. Maybe he can give her
what I can’t.” He turned to his daughter, hands in ghostly pockets. “You were angry
that she didn’t ask about me. You were upset that she didn’t want to speak with me.
For you, speaking with Nathan is so much better than the silence and the absence.

“It’s different for your mother. What she’s seen of death is final; that door is closed.
If she
did
speak to me, if she asked, it wouldn’t make her life any easier because I can’t be
part of it.” He closed his eyes. “What will you do?”

“I’ll try to like Jon.”

“No, Em, what will you do about the Necromancers?”

“I don’t want to tell Mom. I think the worry would about kill her, if the Necromancers
didn’t do it first. But I don’t want to run away without telling her anything—I’m
afraid she’d blame Jon. Or worse, herself. This is the first boyfriend, and if I suddenly
disappear, it’ll probably be the last one. And . . . I don’t want to leave home. I
know she’s not perfect, but I’m not perfect either.” Exhaling, she said, “Tell me
I’m wrong. Tell me she won’t blame Jon or herself.”

“You know your mother as well as I do. You probably know her better, by this point.”

“Great. Sometimes I think life is just a way of accumulating guilt.”

He chuckled. “For the Halls, it probably is. You should head out. Your mother’s going
to worry if she walks in and finds you talking to yourself.”

* * *

Halfway through dinner, the doorbell rang.

Emma looked across the table at Jon. “Did you order pizza?”

He laughed as Emma rose. “I would never insult the collective cooking of the Halls;
I like my teeth where they are.” The smile faded slowly from his lips. “It’s a little
late for door to door salesmen.”

“And we’re not in the middle of election season. On the other hand, most people have
probably finished dinner by now. Sit down, Mom. You have a guest. I’ll get it.” The
last three words were said in a much louder voice, as Petal had set up barking.