Chapter 2
Eli was smart, she thought dryly. Just the sound of her mom’s voice shaved the spiky edge from Avalon’s mood. She gave her mom a capsule version of today’s events and then drove like a responsible citizen into town the back way all the way to the Harwood House.
The family homestead, an unprepossessing farmhouse built around 1940, was painted a muted periwinkle blue, which meant that around twilight its edges tended to blur right into the sky, and thanks to a competent but no-frills addition a few decades ago it was shaped a bit like an L, or as her father liked to joke, a boomerang, because the grown kids did have a tendency to return. (Except for maybe Jesse. Who was off gallivanting God knows where. The Himalayas?) The front window threw a rectangle of warm light down onto the porch.
She parked her car on the verge, seized her gym bag from the back, climbed out, and sucked in a huge draught of startlingly brisk, woodsmoke-flavored country air. And paused. A million stars jostled each other in a black sky. You really couldn’t see them in San Francisco. Somewhere a dog barked, doing its job of warning off raccoons or deer, and the sound made her yearn. She’d had dogs, cats, mice, frogs, even once, for about three hours until her mom found out, a snake, and one darling squirrel, all of them rescued. But Corbin didn’t see the point of keeping a pet in their tiny apartment when they both worked all the time.
She’d lived without a lot of things a little too long.
The house was almost precisely between downtown and the hills, and Avalon knew that if she really craned her head in one direction, she could just about see the neon glow of the Misty Cat Tavern sign at the foot of Main Street. The restaurant and music venue had provided a comfortable living for her family for a few decades and a sort of heartbeat for the town.
And then... there was the other direction.
But even now her heart skipped with an echo of that old delicious agony of anticipation. It was a bit like when that pinky toe she broke when she was eighteen twinged now to signal approaching rain.
Long ago, beginning the first day of summer vacation, she’d begin looking in that direction for a light at Devil’s Leap that would signal Mac Coltrane was in town.
She didn’t look that way now. She resolutely headed up to the porch instead.
Of course it was dark up there at Devil’s Leap. It had been dark for eons.
“Here, honey.”
Her mother thrust a soft bundle into her arms. Avalon unfurled it to find a blue flannel nighty that could have sheltered a dozen Bedouins if propped on sticks.
Avalon held it to her nose and inhaled.
“Snuggle, white lavender scent,” her mom informed her.
While Avalon sniffed the nightgown, her mom had been watching her face as if it were a drive-in movie screen, and apparently what she saw there made her pull Avalon into a long squeeze which concluded with a kiss in the middle of her forehead, where Greta from the New Age Store in downtown Hellcat Canyon would say her third eye resided. Her mom had named her kids Jude, Jesse, Avalon, and Eden, all names inspired by a bygone time of peace and love.
“And turmoil. Let’s not forget the turmoil, Mom,” Avalon always wanted to say.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Her mom wasn’t known for her circumspection, but she knew Avalon was less comfortable with gushing than frankness.
“I...” Suddenly Avalon felt as though she needed an entirely new language to talk about what had just happened. It was utterly outside her realm of experience. “I don’t know. Not yet. I feel a lot of things. And nothing. I haven’t really run it through the Mass Spec yet.”
Her whole family enjoyed watchingBones.
“You might be a little numb,” her mom suggested cautiously. “It’s nature’s way of giving us a grace period before the annihilating rage sets in.”
This was interesting. Her mom was the cheeriest, most unflappably no-nonsense person she’d ever met.
“Wow, Mom, how often do you feel annihilating rage?”
“Oh, every five years or so. Lasts seconds. For example, remember when Jesse’s soccer coach called him an idiot and made him cry when he missed that goal when he was eleven? I wanted to disembowel him.”
Avalon mulled this. “Huh.”
“That wasn’t meant as a suggestion for how you should handle Corbin, by the way,” her mom added hurriedly. “Maybe leave that part to your dad or your brother Jude. He wields a mean scalpel.”
Avalon managed a smile at this. Her brother Jude was a surgeon in Black Oak.
“It might be best to be a little careful during this stage, Ava. Maybe... don’t give in to impulses.”
“Since when have I ever given in to impulses?” It was a wan joke.
“Mmm,” her mom said, one of those syllables that could mean anything at all. Four kids had taught her to pick her moments. “Oh, here’s your dad.”