“Honey, I—”
“He’s lying about something, and you know it!” She burst into tears and ran from the kitchen. The porch door slammed, and I started after her, but Sal stopped me.
“She is safe.” Moving quickly, he covered the rest of my stupid wounds, then rushed after her.
Only a half-second behind him, I was surprised to find them sitting on the weathered planks, legs folded and facing each other as if immersed in a silent dialogue.
Okay then . . . I settled between them, the third point in a triangle, my right knee touching Eileen’s left. Maybe Sal knew what he was doing. I sure didn’t.
It was late afternoon, the sun arcing over the river in a warm bath of amber-tinted mist—while in the east, the sky was darkening with gray and indigo storm clouds. Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. This was the first time I’d stepped outside since Sal had reappeared yesterday, but I didn’t need a sailor’s rhyme to know that going out on the ocean tonight would be dangerous. And thrilling.
I stifled my non-maternal yearning by studying my daughter’s profile. Her tears had dried as quickly as they’d welled, leaving only one fat, salty trail across her left cheekbone. In the lengthening silence, she kept her chin lifted and considered the stoic alien before her as if judging whether it was worthy of an attempt at communication.
God, I loved my child. Even the bratty bits. No one would ever convince her that she should hide.
“Why was Mom mad at you?” Chin still up, her tone was haughty.
“Because she mistakenly believed that your modulators were programmed like mine.”
“Why would that matter? Aren’t yours the best kind?”
“They are not meant for humans. They would cause you physical discomfort.”
“But you have more powers?”
Sal’s white teeth flashed and then were hidden once more behind his rosy lips. “I daresay you will be quite pleased with your abilities . . . if you allow me to teach you how to access them.”
“I’m young, not stupid. What can you do that I can’t?”
“Why should I tell you if you aren’t willing to learn?”
Eileen wasn’t stumped by the turnabout. “What are you hiding?”
“Nothing that would benefit you to know at this time.”
“Who made you God?” At his wince, her chin dropped slightly. “Who are you to decide what we need to know?”
“Only you, young one. I will tell your mother anything she asks.”
Eileen’s eyes narrowed. “But if she doesn’t know the right questions to ask . . . ?”
“She does.”
“Oh, right . . . you think you know her.”
“I do.”
“How long have you been stalking us?”
Another flash of teeth.
“Your great-grandmother stalked me.”
Eileen seemed rattled by that, and I patted her knee. My turn.
“Mimi recognized that you were different, didn’t she . . . ?”
Sal nodded slowly, his posture still erect, but relaxed. He looked . . . relieved.
“That day I spotted you at the parade—when I was seven,” I added for Eileen’s benefit, “Was that the first time she saw you, too?”
“No.”
Mindful of my daughter, I chose my next words carefully. “Was she expecting you to be there?”
“No.”
“Had she . . . suggested that you might want to come?”
His eyes scanned my face before responding. “I had not seen her in many years.”
Slowly, I released a stale breath from my lungs. It wasn’t her fault that Sal had found that woman. That woman. She needed a name, even if in my own head. Elise. What had he done to Elise?
“So . . . my grandmother was a spy for aliens?” Eileen tried to sound nonchalant, but I knew better.
“Honey, I’m sure—”
“Yes.”
The awful word hung in the air until Sal had the decency to blush.
“You don’t mean . . . not really . . . ” I prompted.
“She was a child. She asked if I was an angel.”
“You lied to a child?”
“It was better than the truth.” He looked from me to my daughter in confusion, “Her local culture accepted Judeo-Christian religions, but not the existence of interstellar lifeforms. Insane asylums were filled with people who saw things differently. Would you have wanted me to risk her psychological development? She was a child!”
“But . . . you used her!”
“What did she see?”
As always, my daughter got to the quick of things ahead of me. Mimi had possessed a gift, too, and I’d never noticed.
“She described it as a feeling, that some people and objects—even animals—felt ‘sick.’ The day she approached me, I had been observing a group of children playing in a schoolyard—”
“Creeper,” Eileen muttered.
“—and she asked if I was an angel sent by God to help the lost ones.”
“Lost ones?”
“I told her that I was. She frowned at me, much like you do,” he grinned at Eileen, “and said I was lying.”
“Why’d she think you were an angel?”
“She was six years old. What else could she think? In other parts of the world, she might have considered me to be a spirit or monster; but her beliefs were shaped by her quiet, southern American town and a mild-mannered Protestant Sunday school teacher. To her, I could only be an angel. What she wanted to know, was whether I was a fallen one.”
My grandmother was a brave little kid.
“How did you convince her?”
“I told her as much truth as she could comprehend. That I, and others like me, were responsible for things being wrong in the world—but that some of us wanted to correct what we had wrought.”
A fallen angel afflicted with remorse. That story hadn’t stood the test of time, though.
“She was terrified to see you at the parade.”
“She was.”
“I thought she was just angry with me . . . but . . . ”
“What parade?” Eileen interjected.
“Your grandmother and I used to go to the Azalea Festival parade every year, but one year I saw Sal . . . ” the edited version was best, “ . . . and caused a scene. She was mad—at me, I thought—and we left. I never wanted to go again.”
Eileen absorbed this in silence, but Sal spoke. “She was protecting you.”
A stray chill shivered down my spine.
“But that doesn’t
