Part 10 (cont.)

“My father could never keep jobs because of his issues. He almost spent time in prison for beating up Uncle Nolan. I pieced together that he spent a lot of time in bars and even brought one of the dancers from a club home with him. Aunt Mercedes. When my mom and dad lived apart for a time she was actually the rock in my life. She would give me books to read. But having my parents apart just made it harder for me because I was the opponent in both places.”

Allison brushed at her eyes. I felt lousy. I felt like I’d ruined the whole trip. I hung my head but Allison bent her swing closer and urged me, “No. Please tell me. Please please. I’m fine. If you can live it then I can do the small thing of listening.”

Her eyes were so warm and kind as the wind picked up and fluttered the sand beneath us. I sighed and filled in a few gaps.

“Most days, it was things they said. Calm words with razors at the end, burning my pictures inside my head. When they got back together, it was like they made up for lost time. I had to be the adult. Which meant I tried to scream the loudest but I was always wrong. No matter what I tried. No matter what I did. And I tried to be clever. I tried to be what I thought was confident. I tried everything. I fought battles in my trembling mind. But I always lost. No matter how strong I was, I could never win. I could never gain anything. I could never emerge from them with anything but fear and sorrow as a deepening pit. They hated me and no words could change that.”

Softly, Allison took a breath and so did I. It was so much. I’d cried so many times that just recounting it didn’t draw up any new tears. That well was tapped out.

The main solace I took was in the quiet, in the stealth. I could slip through a room without being noticed. I could open and close things without so much as a squeak. I was the quietest child in class, always got high marks. But, even if I didn’t disturb anything, they still got me. They still hurt me.

I rocked on the seat and looked up. It wouldn’t be long before the later afternoon gave way to dusk, when the park closed. I told Allison this but she urged me instead to continue, asking, “What about the poison?”

I told her that it only continued until I was old enough to get wise to it. Still, I had terrible stomach problems for years after that. The verbal and emotional abuse filled in for the attempts to poison me. If anything could be said about my dad, at least he didn’t try to kill me. He dislocated my shoulder once but that was all.

The final act was a blur. It started years before. The car accident. My mom drove her car off the road into an area near a cliff. It spun and caught in the mud, otherwise we would’ve fallen off and died instantly. My mother screamed. I wasn’t sure if it was because she was hurt, angry we weren’t dead, or because she was angry at me. But I was quiet.

“I was so very quiet right then. I told myself if I was really quiet for my mom, if I didn’t say anything and I was calm then it would all be okay. I have no idea why I thought that but I did. Then, it got really quiet. I couldn’t even hear my mom yelling anymore. I just felt this deep and comforting serenity. And I had a picture in my head of a woman with a joyous smile next to me. It really felt like she was there. To me, thinking back, she looked like the Kinrae.”

Allison’s eyes widened and she scooted her swing as close as she could with the chains taut. She asked breathlessly, “What exactly did she look like?”

It was the obvious question. But I had no clear answer. It was years ago and I was a kid. I had a clear impression of her and I knew, when I first saw anime and then when I later first saw the Kinrae, how she generally looked. Anything else was a kaleidoscope of expectations and imagination with trying to pick over a memory that felt like it had shifted and changed so many times that, if not for a little journal I wrote to myself back then, I might doubt now that it happened at all.

My uncle pondered if I saw an angel. I still had no idea. I just knew that I lived and she was there. Days when I could think of her were the better days. In the final act, there was a second accident.

This time, it was obvious my mom was running us off the road and the police knew it as well. Things came out soon after that. My mom tried to grab an officer’s gun to either shove it down her mouth or point it at my head. My father’s attempted suicide soon followed which left him in the hospice where he remained to this day. In the rubble that followed, Uncle Nolan picked me up. I never knew before then the kind of deep and unconditional love he showed me could exist with family. I thought what I lived through was normal and I was stunned at how kind he was after so many years of my mother painting him as her demonic brother.

Things immediately got better after that, I told Allison.

“My mother faced criminal charges but ultimately was ruled mentally unfit with a long string of medical terms explaining why she was the way she was. She’s down at the Black Willow County facility and I told my uncle that I would sooner prefer to choke her until she stops breathing than ever see her again.”

At that, I took a long breath. One might expect that saying all that gave me some measure of solace or release but it just stirred everything up. It just made me feel all the old pains again. They weren’t as sharp as before though.

Allison absorbed everything with her head down. I leaned closer, afraid she was crying. But she turned and looked at me with those clear, gem-green eyes and said, “You’re even more awesome than I thought, Sean. And here I complain about my mom being a jerk. Wow…”

I frowned and told her, “Don’t make light of what you’ve been through. You’re amazing too…I’ve told you so many times.”

She giggled and rocked on the swing. “Thanks but really, you’re incredible. I would’ve turned into one of those emotionless, pale-haired girls from that one anime you showed me for life if I went through what you did. I totally want a time machine so I can go back and steal you away for a really weird kidnapping/adoption.”

We both chuckled and I rose from the swing.

“Come on, there’s a lot of park to see.”

I led Allison to another restroom with a soda machine out front. Naturally, all the selections were sold out except for the most repulsive flavors.

We hustled our way past an area with a persistent, implacable odor between what Allison called “rough duck sex and rotten eggs”. Allison balanced over a rocky outcropping and hopped along a little beach.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

Stopping by a locked jetty out into the water, I put my hand around Allison’s shoulder and teased her salmon-colored hair as a fish flicked a bit of green-tinted water at us. She leaned against my shoulder and shut her eyes. A goose passed by in shadow like a mini-Loch Ness Monster.

We continued along the back of the park, around an area blocked off by yellow tape like it was the remnant of some crime scene. At least we had a narrow area where we could enter the backside of the island if we wanted to cut across and out. We walked the long way around past a massive geodesic jungle gym. I used to be able to slip through the triangles and get underneath it.

Aside from it, I recognized the tower play area, still made of dark, rough wood. Allison raced me around it with squeals as I tried to catch up to her. We both sailed on the big slide to plop on the sand in a heap of giggles. I took a breath, looked down at her pastel face, and gave her a calm, soft kiss while brushing her cheek.

When I released her, she gave me a return peck but didn’t go further. She smiled faintly and held my hand the rest of the way around. Almost back at the parking lot and with the cement dancing area in sight, I lamented that an old memorial to dead astronauts had been stripped down to black rocks and scattered trash. Allison gave me a kiss on the cheek for comfort.

She hustled along to the last restroom on the path and flashed me a thumbs up to show that it wasn’t a horrifying mess. I chuckled and settled down on a bench.

“Hello again”, said a faintly familiar voice. Looking to my right, to the path we’d followed, I saw Tessa, dressed the same as before. I frowned. What was she doing here?

I asked her as much and she swiveled on her feet and said, “I have a fondness for plants. Shame they don’t have any flowers out here yet. I’m looking forward to when the poppies finally wake up from their winter nap, especially the blue ones. I love blue flowers. Mind if I sit?”

I scooted over and sighed. She laid her hands in her lap and glanced over at me. Odd of her to mention flowers. I persisted, “I get the feeling you’re following me. I just happen to run into you out here? Doesn’t seem like a coincidence.”

She raised her pastel hands as though in surrender and declared, “Guilty as charged!” This time I watched her palms as she fanned them. She had a watermark. I felt bewildered. Why would she have a watermark?

With an arched eyebrow, she glanced at her hands and pointed to one palm with a finger.

“Oh? Were you concerned about this? No biggie. Magic trick time!” She rippled her fingers, clutched her hands together, and then blew into them with a theatrical flourish. When she showed her palms a second time, they were completely free of watermarks. I could feel my mouth hanging open.

Tessa giggled to herself and noted, “Hardly my best trick but it has you impressed.”

I gawked and slowly shook my head. Possibilities swarmed in my thoughts. Someone who hacked a Kinrae device. Sleight of hand with some makeup (unlikely). And then…well. People sometimes wondered why the Kinrae had the devices in the first place.

I asked her the question suddenly foremost on my mind, my eyes locked on her smiling face, “Who or what are you?” I wanted to add, “And why do you have a name like my mother’s?”

She stood a little straighter and said, “Tessa Shortridge. Your professor may have told you I’m an advisor for the devices you’ve been using. But you probably guessed that anyway during our most recent meeting.”

As I finally felt myself swallowing how she’d made a watermark disappear, I had to chew on the strange way she’d phrased that. “Wait…so far as I know…I’ve only met you once before now.”

She dipped her head towards me and rose up from the bench, saying, “So far as you know…” She gave a little wink.

All words, all thoughts drifted away from me as she sighed and glanced towards the lake.

I had to ask her again, “Who are you?” This time, I felt like I was pleading and I managed to add the words, “And your name…”

Tessa glanced over her shoulder at me. “My name? There’s not that much to it. First name taken from my mom, Theresa, and shortened to avoid confusion. Now my last name, that’s something. Given by my partner, the one I love most dearly in all the worlds, Allison Shortridge. You may be able to guess the name I had before.”

She took a measured step towards the parking lot. I staggered from the bench with my arms out to grab her before she vanished away into the ether along with a thousand ripples of confusion and chaos sailing through my mind like the ever-shifting waves of the lake before us.

I managed to get in her way but she kept me at arm's length with a smirk, noting, “Careful. I wouldn’t want you to run into me again in that unpleasant sort of way you did outside the florist.”

My mouth dragged. I stepped backward, as though struck by her words. I wanted to ask her again who she was but an impossible picture was quickly forming before me.

An arm touched me on the shoulder. I turned around to Allison with a worried look on her face. She grimaced, clutched my arm, and asked me, “What’s wrong? Who’s that?”

I could only pant and stare. ‘Tessa’ bowed her head to us and said, “I’ll say it again, joyously….you two look lovely together. But I must bid you good day, for I’ve said just enough.”

I reached out and blurted, “WAIT!” but it was too late. She vanished before our eyes with barely a ripple made in the constant brush of wind at our backs.

My heart was finally settling. I had no idea where to begin. Allison blinked at me with pure confusion and asked again, “Who was that?”

Really, I had no words to offer her. Mine dried up like a sudden monsoon which would hit the desert and vanish into the soil as soon as it appeared. All I could offer her was, “Tessa Shortridge.” I glanced towards Allison.

Her expression made me hold my breath. She clutched her lips but I urged her, “What is it?”

She wiped away the expression and tried a faint smile, saying, “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing is ever nothing. Please tell me.”

I dropped down on the bench and Allison held onto me. She sighed and said, “Well…. everyone always joked it was the long and short wedding when my parents got married. Of course, our family name from my dad is Longbloom. But my mom’s maiden name…was Shortridge.”