ash of something crumbled through deft fingers. Then a final item, and the old woman’s hands slowed and moved with care. Tweezered in her skeletal fingers, a few long hairs joined by a small patch of blood-crusted skin. In went the hair and skin.
Her lips moved again.
The fire rose.
Outside, a chill wind grew, as if to carry across the night treetops, along the empty streets, and into the slumbering suburb a dark gift, urgent and baleful.
Chapter 18
T he sunlight felt harsh and brittle. Nicholas squinted as he watched Suzette speak on her telephone. He was exhausted. Even the simple choice-whether to stand and close the greasy curtains or sit here squinting-was debilitating.
Suzette finished her call and looked at her brother. There were bags the color of soot under her eyes. She’d aged ten years in a night.
“Nelson has a fever,” she said.
They had talked about this possibility for a half-hour over tea this morning. She’d risen from her deep, unnatural sleep and her hand went to her raw patch of scalp. Nicholas had argued that she must have lost the clump of hair scrambling away from Garnock. She disagreed, and stated plainly that the dog-and she said the word “dog” the way most people said “cancer”-had wrenched it out right after it surprised her with the bite.
“It wasn’t sent to hurt me,” she explained with a smile. “It was sent for my hair. She’s going to hex me.”
And not a minute after she’d said those words, her mobile phone rang. Bryan was calling with news that their son was suddenly ill.
Nicholas and Suzette sat silent for a while.
“Bryan’s taking him to the twenty-four-hour clinic in Glebe,” said Suzette, finally. She licked her lips. There was more she wanted to say, but wouldn’t.
“You have to go home,” said Nicholas.
For a long while she stared at her hands, saying nothing.
“How sick is Nelson?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Is she…” Nicholas hesitated, but there was no easy way to phrase it. “Is she trying to kill him?”
Suzette thought about this, then shook her head. “I don’t think that’s her plan,” she said, and looked up at Nicholas. “She’s dividing us.”
He nodded.
“But you can look after him? Nelson?”
“If it came out of the blue, maybe not. But since I know this sickness is an attack, yes. I think so.” She couldn’t meet his eyes. “But I have to be there.”
“I know.”
“She’s afraid of us,” she said.
Nicholas snorted. “She has no need to be.”
He produced the telephone book and hunted for the airline’s listing.
“We know more about her than anyone else in a century and a half,” said Suzette, turning one hand over. The puncture marks were healing remarkably fast and already looked days old. She touched them uneasily.
Nicholas imagined little Nelson a thousand kilometers away, face slick with sweat and turning fitfully as he dreamed of Christ-knew-what. Nothing pleasant, he was sure of that.
“She’s halved us in one easy move, Suze. If you think she’s afraid, you’re an idiot. She’s just playing.” He slid the open phone book toward her.
Suzette stared at it a moment, then picked up her phone.
N icholas shut the cab door. His sister wound down the window. “Show me,” she said.
He unzipped the front of his hoodie, revealing the burnished brown of wood beads. Suzette nodded approvingly. She looked into his eyes.
“I don’t know, Nicky.”
He drove his hands into his pockets. “I’ll keep you posted.”
“Okay.”
She spoke to the driver and the cab pulled away into the bright street and soon became a winking spot of yellow too bright to watch.
K atharine nodded while Suzette rushed around the house collecting her suitcase, her makeup bag, her toiletries bag, her spare shoes. Outside, the cab horn tooted again. Katharine had swallowed not a word of the tripe Suzette had dished up about her and Nicholas having had a few too many Jagermeisters last night and forgetting to tell Katharine she was crashing there at the flat.
I may be getting long in the tooth, she thought, but I can still tell the difference between hangover and panic. The way Suzette was rushing around like a dervish, the only drug in her veins was adrenaline. All that rang true was that Nelson had come down with something.
“Okay. That’s everything,” said Suzette, pulling her hair back behind her ear.
“Great,” said Katharine. It was ridiculous. Nicholas was like his father-strange and handsome and flighty-but Suzette was supposed to be like her. Grounded. Sensible. She was tempted to march to the porch, throw the cabbie twenty bucks and dismiss him, sit her daughter down, and demand an explanation.
The cab horn beeped again, longer and more insistent. Suzette wheeled her suitcase out of the room and kissed Katharine on the cheek.
“Gotta go.”
Katharine nodded.
It seemed to take just a moment, and then an engine rumbled, an arm waved, and the house was quiet again.
Katharine went to the kitchen and filled the kettle.
She sat, determined not to think as she waited for the water to boil.
L aine taped the last box shut. That was it, then: all of Gavin’s belongings put away; some for charity, some for the dump, some to be saved for a happier “one day” that Laine felt, right now, was as distant as the stars.
She and Gavin had moved into the house fourteen months ago to look after his mother. Mrs. Boye’s husband, Gavin’s father, had passed on two years earlier, and the widow’s decline had accelerated in those twenty-four months. Three personal caregivers had quit, finding her manner too abrasive even for their seasoned experience.
Twelve months ago, the arrow on Laine’s marriage fire-danger sign had pointed to “moderate.” Over the subsequent six months it had escalated to “high.” She and Gavin had been trying for a child for more than a year and had finally started IVF treatment. The hormone injections gave her an immovable headache that soured every heartbeat. Waking up sick, commuting to her grinding job at a graphics company that seemed to tender only for redesigns of cereal boxes and fridge calendars, then returning home to Mrs. Boye’s increasingly nonsensical and voluble rants made it hard to unearth even minuscule moments of pleasure.
Gavin got a promotion: sales executive, Asia Pacific. He wasn’t the brightest man, but he was good-looking and seemed to get along well with everyone. He had a natural charm. He’d certainly charmed her. But he had also put her through the humiliation of two affairs. Both times Laine had caught him out, and both times he had collapsed at her feet in a ball of remorseful tears promising never, ever to be so stupid again, but then he landed another overseas job that would deliver him into temptation for weeks on end. The needle moved to “extreme.”
Then, the unforeseeable. A month ago, Gavin had given his employer four weeks’ notice. “I’ll get a job around here,” he’d told her. “Something low-stress, part-time, maybe. We’re not paying rent, and Dad’s left us plenty. You should quit too.” A year earlier, this news would have filled her with delicious, full-fat, chocolate-coated joy. But
