Starling House(37)
He inhales, straightening his back against the chair. “You should go. It’s getting late.” I think he’s trying for a cold brush-off, but he just sounds sad.
“Okay, be like that. Good night, Baast, Goddess of Dumpsters.” I bow to the hellcat and catch the white flash of Arthur’s teeth. I award myself a point, refusing to wonder what game we’re playing or why I would get points for making him smile. “Night, Arthur.”
The white glint vanishes, and he watches me leave in chilled silence. The floorboards moan an apology beneath my feet.
The evening air has a springtime hum to it, the silent sound of live things unfurling, emerging, surfacing, sprouting. I drive with the windows rolled down, letting the wild smell of it fill me up, pushing out the embarrassing ache in my chest. I don’t know why I thought things would be different now, after puking on his shoes and driving his dead dad’s truck and protecting his stupid secrets. Mom was always trying to turn frogs and beasts into handsome princes, but it never worked out for her. I should know better.
*
I don’t head straight back to the motel. Instead I take an abrupt right turn, and another, until my headlights are coasting over eerily smooth lawns and concrete birdbaths.
Logan’s an only child—adopted, his parents will tell you any chance they get, our little miracle!—but they live in a four-bedroom split-level on the curve of a cul-de-sac. The windows are muffled in lacy curtains, so that all you can see from the porch are the blurred squares of family portraits on the walls, the beige shapes of people around a table. The doormat reads Blessed in swirly cursive.
I knock, maybe a little too hard. There’s a pause before I hear the reproachful ding of silverware set down, the patter of footsteps down the hall.
Logan’s mom is a wholesome blond woman with the bluish-white smile of a Realtor or a toothpaste ad. “Opal! We weren’t expecting you!”
Eden etiquette demands a good seven minutes of seesawing pleasantries back and forth before either of us approaches the point, but I don’t feel up to it tonight. Maybe Arthur is rubbing off on me. “Hey, Ashley. Can you tell Jasper to grab his stuff?”
A very slight tightening of the muscles around her mouth. “Oh, but Dan made chili! Why don’t you join us?”
“No, thanks.”
“But the boys are having such a nice time! They were working on those little movies of his . . . Logan’s always so happy to have Jasper over.” I bet he is; if Logan graduates high school, it will be because my brother carried him through every grade like a tiny, stoned baby bird. “And so are we. You know he’s welcome to stay as long as he likes.”
Her eyes are wide and sincere. They’re always inviting Jasper on family vacation and posting pictures on Facebook (“you have such big hearts ” someone comments) or coincidentally stopping by church functions and parading him around with whatever kids they’re fostering lately, like items they won at a charity auction. Jasper says it’s worth it for the high-speed internet and the full-size candy bars in the freezer; he also says I should mind my business.
I shrug at Ashley.
I can tell by the slight drawing-up of her shoulders that she would like to go coldly imperious on me—nobody on earth can do cold imperium like the girls in the county clerk’s office—but she’s never been quite sure where I stand in her personal chain of command. I’m neither a kid nor a parent, an awkward grown-up orphan who exists outside the comforting hierarchies of church and town, annual fundraisers and Avon parties.
I slouch uncivilly against her doorframe, still not speaking. She breaks. “I’ll just—” She scurries off, calling for Jasper. Teenage moans rise in two-part harmony. Chairs scrape sullenly.
Ashley returns. “He’s just packing up. Can we send you home with leftovers?” She extends a Tupperware with an air of aggressive largesse.
“No, thanks.”
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
She steps out onto the porch, plucking at the gold cross of her necklace. She nods at the truck parked crookedly in the drive. “That yours?”
“Yep.”
“Oh, it’s so cute! Me and Dan just love vintage. You know—” Her voice settles from bubbling to merely burbling. “You know, it looks sort of familiar.”
“Does it.”
“One of the Starlings—the one before the boy up there now—he used to drive around in a blue Chevy just like that.”
And I know I should give her some vague nonanswer like that so or did he now but instead I let my eyes meet hers and say, “I know,” just to watch her go pale.
“Oh, honey, I hope you don’t have anything to do with that place. My uncle told me it’s some kind of secret society, like a cult. I mean, it can’t be a real family—he says back in his day a Chinese couple moved in!” 18
“So . . .” I drawl the word out. “I shouldn’t have anything to do with this house because your uncle said, quote, a Chinese couple, unquote, lived there. That right?”
Uneven patches of red bloom on her cheeks. “That’s not what I—you’ve heard the stories.” I blink big guileless blinks until she leans closer, her voice now a vicious whisper. “Listen. You might not believe everything people say, but my Dan saw something with his own two eyes.” She pauses, as if hoping I’ll ask her to continue. I don’t, but it doesn’t matter. “It was the night that turbine blew—eleven, twelve years ago now. Well, at the time Dan drove for Frito-Lay’s—this was before we were even going out—and he refilled the vending machines at the plant. So he finishes up, he’s crossing the parking lot when he sees that very same Chevy.” She shoots my truck a hostile look. “And then, boom. The turbine blows.”