Destruction: The December People, Book One (4 page)

“It was with her body.”

“This was the only piece of jewelry she was wearing?”

Shawna shrugged. “I suppose.”

Perhaps everything else melted in the heat. She always wore lots of jewelry, but mostly cheap bangles. He held up the bag and stared at the ring for a long time.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He couldn’t be further from “all right,” but he nodded and put the ring in the inside pocket of his jacket. He tucked the wooden box in too. The box, unnervingly small to contain a person, fit into the large pocket inside his jacket. Crystal lay against his chest where she could hear his heartbeat. He never wanted to take her out again.

“Are you ready to meet them?” she asked.

“Right now?”

“They’re ready. And we’re all settled here.” She pushed a folder toward him. “Here’s your copy of all the paperwork.”

“Okay.”

She smiled and patted him on the shoulder as she got up. “Wait here. I’ll go get them.”

He liked Crystal waiting with him, his little secret tucked into his pocket. But it didn’t stop him from feeling like he might pass out. He held his breath. He always did that when he felt nervous. He could hear the words, “Breathe, David,” in a voice which could have been Crystal’s or Amanda’s. They both said it in the same gentle but exasperated tone, as if they couldn’t believe they had to remind him to complete the basic functions of life yet also satisfied they needed to. They liked knowing that if they didn’t remind him to breathe, he might stop.

Then his children appeared.

A beautiful boy and girl looked at him with the same indiscernible expressions their mother had mastered. He thought,
these are my kids
. They looked so much like his children, as if they could have lived with him the whole time and now he was picking them up from a friend’s house. In some ways, they looked even more like his children than the ones he had raised. Jude looked like Amanda’s brother, tall and broad with blue eyes and blond hair. Patrick looked like David’s brother, lanky and dark-haired. Emmy looked like a carbon copy of Amanda.

But Evangeline looked like her mother. She had Crystal’s thick brown hair and pouty lips but had green eyes exactly like David’s mother’s. A little ghost of the women he had loved and lost. Evangeline had drawn an elaborate tree on her arm with roots extending on to her five fingers. David thought Evangeline meant to mimic her mother’s tattoos, and he appreciated that the shelter workers didn’t make her stop. And Xavier… Xavier was David. He had the same no-color gray eyes and brown hair, only slightly darker than David’s. But the eyebrows showed the most similarity. They both had striking, slanted eyebrows that Amanda said made David look like a movie villain. And there the eyebrows appeared again, on a ghost of David himself. A David with tick marks carved onto his back.

They looked like normal kids. He had expected… well, he didn’t know what he had expected. Only their silence seemed unusual. No, “Hello, nice to meet you,” or even a distant teenage, “Hey,” or probably the most appropriate, “I hate you, abandoner. Go to hell.” Nothing.

He already didn’t know what to do. Should he stand up? Or would that be aggressive? Was staying seated too rude? How should he introduce himself?
Hello, I am your father, the married man your mother had an affair with for seven years?

He stood. Slowly. “Hello,” he said. “I’m David. It’s really nice to meet you.”

They didn’t say anything right away, but Evangeline finally filled the expanse of silence with a quiet but confident, “Hello.”

And that was it. Several trees’ worth of paperwork, a discussion that lasted all of two minutes, and a five-page pamphlet for the foster or adopted parents of sexually abused children. They were his. He felt like he did the first time the nurses left Jude alone with him in the hospital.
That’s it? You’re just going to hand me a little bundle of life and hope for the best? What’s wrong with you?

David carried their bags to the car. His kids at home carried bags this big to soccer practice. These bags included everything they owned. Xavier ran a finger along the hood of David’s Mercedes, eyebrows slightly raised in apparent amazement, which pleased David. He asked them if they needed anything from their bags before he put them in the trunk. Xavier shook his head. Evangeline said she wanted to keep her bag. David opened the back door for them, and they climbed in. Before he closed the door, he noticed Xavier held his breath. Evangeline whispered something in his ear, and he took a breath.

hawna had suggested he give them the basics of what to expect, even if they didn’t ask.

“The drive is about eight hours long, but we’ll stop for lunch. I was going to stop every hour and a half or so for a bathroom break, and you can get a drink or snacks. Let me know if you need me to stop before that. It’s no problem. I was thinking pizza for lunch. I saw a pizza place along the way. Do you like pizza?”

“Sure,” Evangeline said.

Everyone liked pizza. Good.

“I could put on music. What kind of music do you like?”

“No, thank you,” she said.

They seemed most comfortable with silence. He would try to be too. He let the miles pass under them and considered his plan of action. He hesitated to tell them about their new home. He couldn’t be sure where it would be. If David didn’t keep them in his own home, as he had said, would the state take the kids back? One of the many pages he signed said something about following through with the plan they had agreed upon, which implied David’s wife would welcome them into their two extra rooms without issue.

The meal felt like a first date from hell. David had never met anyone who could stay quiet like that. He kept glancing at them to make sure they hadn’t disappeared into thin air, just spirits he’d imagined.

After pizza, back in the car, he figured they had enjoyed several hours of their preferred state of silence, and he would try again.

“Is there anything you want to know about me? Anything at all.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. They didn’t shake their heads right away this time, which seemed like progress. Evangeline looked as if she wanted to say something. He could tell because she looked the same way Emmy looked all the time; words jumping inside her like firecrackers, just waiting for a moment to release them. Evangeline glanced at Xavier, as if wanting his approval. David couldn’t tell if Xavier had given any sign either way, but he needed a microscope to read Xavier’s body language, even when looking right at him. David had no hope of reading his expression while driving eighty miles per hour down the highway.

“Go ahead. Ask me anything, really,” David said.

“Are you a wizard?” Evangeline asked.

He had expected an easy question such as, “Do you have a pool?”, or “When do we have to start school?” This question stumped him. Not that he didn’t know if he was a wizard or not, but how should he answer without crushing her magical narrative?

“What do you think?” David asked.

“I don’t know,” Evangeline said.

“Do you hope that I am a wizard, or would you prefer if I wasn’t?”

She opened her mouth and then closed it again. “Never mind.”

He completely deflected the only question she dared to ask.

“Are you a wizard… or a witch?” he asked.

He watched Xavier for hints, at least, the best he could without drifting into oncoming traffic. Her older brother would understand her narrative and know how to respond. Xavier had moved ever so slightly closer to his sister and looked at her. But that didn’t tell David much. Only that he cared more about this conversation than the endless empty hills out the window.

Evangeline paused and examined David with his mother’s green eyes.

“Yes. I am a witch,” she said.

He needed to respond without sounding patronizing or sarcastic. She was twelve. This wasn’t like playing princess games with Emmy when she was six. To her, this was real. He pretended she had told him something normal, like she knew how to play the piano, and responded accordingly.

“That’s very cool.”

“I shouldn’t tell you more if you’re not a wizard. I shouldn’t have even told you that.”

“That’s understandable. But if you want to tell me more, you can. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Magic runs in families,” she said.

Then maybe she
did
expect him to be a wizard? He didn’t have a problem with that as long as she didn’t ask him to prove it. He thought about Crystal pressed against his chest. He hadn’t taken off his jacket since he had put it on.
What am I supposed to say?

“As far as I know,” David said. “I am not a wizard. But I’ve never tried to do magic.”

He glanced in the mirror and saw her nod. She cast her eyes down.

“So if magic runs in families and I’m not a wizard, then that must mean your mother was a witch?” David regretted it as soon as he said it. Dangerous territory. For some reason, he regretted the word ‘was’ most of all. He wished he could see their reactions, because they didn’t say anything right away.

“Yes,” Evangeline said. “We all are. Our mother and stepfather are very powerful dark wizards.”

Discuss their dead mother and their abuser during your first casual family conversation
didn’t appear in the pamphlet. Of course, the pamphlet didn’t say anything about how to handle witchcraft-related questions either, so screw it.

“When I knew your mother, she was a
good
witch,” David said.

The phrase came out of his mouth fairly easily—the perfect description of her.

Silence. David’s stomach turned. He had finally crossed a line.

“Something bad happened to her while she was pregnant with me,” Evangeline said. “She was cursed.”

David’s back tensed. Something bad did happen during her pregnancy. The man she loved left her.

As they approached Houston, civilization broke out around them like a rash. The exits and stores became increasingly familiar.

Then,
his
exit.

He had officially reached the point where he could no longer stall and turned into the parking lot of a Pappadeaux restaurant. David parked by the dumpster and stared at the brick building.

“What are we doing?” Evangeline asked.