The Children and the Blood (2 page)

In short order, pinwheels filled the vegetable garden, each dutifully placed in locations approved by Lily. At the girl’s direction, Patrick and Ashley tackled the birdhouses next, and by the time Jonathan called them for dinner, the decorating was complete.

“It’ll do,” Lily stated, hands on her hips as she studied the yard.

Patrick glanced to Ashley. She smothered a laugh.

“Everything looks wonderful, Lilybud,” he told the girl. “Now come on. Sun’s setting; there’s not much more you can do today.”

Still frowning at her creations, Lily nevertheless allowed him to lead her toward the house. With a grin, Ashley followed.

Warm light filled the entryway and spilled into the room to their right where Jonathan and his wife Rose had slept till an unexpected freeze burst a pipe and drove them to stay at the farmhands’ house. At the end of the hall, pots clanked behind the kitchen door, providing arrhythmic accompaniment to the music of one of Rose’s classic rock albums.

“Hey, Patrick,” Jonathan said, rising from the living room sofa and setting aside his dog-eared copy of the almanac. “Quick question.”

“Go help Rose,” Patrick told Lily.

Immediately, the little girl glanced back at the front door.

Turning her gently, Patrick gave her a nudge toward the kitchen. “I mean it, kiddo. No more crafts tonight. I’ll join you in a minute.”

He cast a glance to Ashley and she nodded. Herding Lily before her, she drove the girl down the hall, leaving Jonathan to pull Patrick aside.

Pushing open the swinging door, Lily started into the kitchen, only to have a glass bowl of salad shoved into her arms.

“Put that on the table, would you, Ashley?” Rose asked distractedly, whirling back to the chaos of the kitchen. Pots bubbled on the stove, garlic bread lay half-cut on the chopping board, and a block of cheese waited beside the grater. Humidity from the boiling water turned the woman’s hair into a cloud of graying curls and made her face glisten the color of her namesake.

“Rose?” Ashley called, grabbing the bowl to help Lily balance as the door swung back to hit them both.

“What? I– oh, Lily!” She rushed over to steady the dish. “I’m so sorry, sweetie! From the corner of my eye, you just…” she looked between the sisters and then smiled at the little girl. “Sorry.”

Lily nodded with relief as Rose handed the salad to Ashley.

“Come on,” Rose said, ruffling Lily’s hair affectionately. “Help me with the bread.”

Ashley headed for the dining room. As she set the salad on the long table, she caught sight of Jonathan and her father coming down the hall, though they barely made it through the kitchen door before Rose assigned them tasks as well. Shoving dishes and silverware into their hands, Rose admonished them for leaving the girls all the work and, with chastened expressions sufficient to satisfy the woman, the two men made quick work of the remaining setup.

“So,” Patrick said after everyone sat down. “Cause for celebration soon, eh?”

Ashley glanced to him as she took a piece of garlic bread. “Huh?”

“Your birthday,” he supplied, a grin deepening the faint wrinkles around his dark eyes. “It’s still in three days, right? You didn’t move it?”

She faltered, and Lily laughed at her silence. “Silly, of course it is!” the girl cried. “And this one’s the best yet, because Daddy’s here.”

Ashley picked up her fork and looked to her plate, unsure what to say. Even without her dad, her birthday would be fine. It always was.

She just hadn’t expected him to actually bring it up.

Oblivious, Lily turned her smile on the rest of the table. “We’re gonna make a big cake like last year, right?”

Rose smiled. “Of course,” she said, the slight tension in her voice hinting that she knew Patrick would be leaving the next day.

“Chocolate,” Ashley volunteered tightly. Gratitude showed in Rose’s eyes.

“Well, how about we start the celebration tomorrow?” Patrick suggested. “No rule saying we have to wait, right?”

Ashley looked up. “Really? But what about–”

She cut off, remembering Lily. Blinking, she dropped her gaze to her plate again, but not before she saw his pleasure at her reaction.

“Yeah,” Lily agreed happily. “A whole week of parties, and then it’ll be Mom’s birthday too, and we can do it all over again.”

The clink of silverware echoed in the dining room.

“What?” the little girl asked, looking around the table at the silence.

Patrick swallowed. “I-I didn’t realize you celebrated that,” he said, his voice a rough semblance of normalcy. His eyes went to Rose and Jonathan, who both shifted awkwardly.

“Lily wanted to,” Ashley explained quietly.

“You said it was a good idea!” Lily protested. Confusion clouded her face as she turned to the others. “What’s wrong?”

Patrick cleared his throat. “Nothing, Lilybud,” he said, reaching over to squeeze her hand. “Just took me by surprise, that’s all.”

Looking unconvinced, Lily hesitated. “Is it okay?”

He smiled. “Of course.”

Brow still furrowed, Lily went back to her salad.

Ashley risked a glance in her father’s direction. His eyes closed briefly, and then he drove any trace of expression from his face and returned to his dinner as though nothing had happened.

She took a bite of her food as the joy of the moment before slunk from the room. It didn’t matter what he tried to pretend. She knew he was thinking about Rebecca and everyone else lost that night. They all were.

Snow had been falling the night their worlds changed. She remembered it so clearly, if only through the lens of all that followed. But Patrick said, as the white flakes drifted through the lights of the grocery store parking lot, that she’d told him they were inside a snow globe. And at the memory of her words, he always smiled.

It was Christmas Eve and eight-year-old Ashley had gone with her father on a run for soda from the local store. The family had been holding a party. Uncles, aunts and cousins had all gathered to celebrate the holiday at her grandparents’ house, and no one had wanted to leave. But Ashley adored the snow, and so when Patrick finally volunteered to pick up more drinks, he said she’d jumped at the chance to go.

One little moment. She couldn’t remember it, but she’d wondered at it as the years went by.

The firemen said it might’ve been a gas main, or someone pulling a prank that went horribly wrong. In Patrick’s recollection, a fireball lit the night sky as he pulled away from the grocery store, and he’d known – just known – that it was his parents’ home. He’d driven back at top speed, and screeched to a halt in the middle of a nightmare.

In all the years since, it was the only time she’d seen her father cry.

Doctors told Patrick that the trauma must have damaged her somehow. The shock of such tremendous loss must have overwhelmed her, causing her to pass out and retreat inside her own mind for protection. And later, whenever she tried to push beyond the moment of waking in the car that night, to recall anything prior to the sight of the house in flames and her father’s tears, not a single memory remained. Not her mother’s laugh or her favorite toys, the color of her bedroom or the name of a single friend. Everything was gone as though it had never been.

For Ashley, life began with fire.

Half the block had been destroyed. Beyond her grandparents’ house, other homes were burning, and shivering people crowded the sidewalks while hoses rained water on the flames. Christmas lights still dangled from porches and windows farther down the street, sparkling in surreal relief against the orange sky.

And overhead, ash drifted down, mingling with the snow.

Of her grandparents’ home, almost nothing was left. The blast had ripped through the building, gutting it and leaving the houses across the backyard visible through the hole. Only two walls remained, one on either side, though they were bowed and burning and beginning to crumble before her eyes. Emergency crews crawled through the wreckage, their forms little more than shifting apparitions in the smoke.

Patrick held her, crushing her to him as the police kept him from coming closer to the house. As the bodies began to be pulled from the debris, he’d buried her face in his side, trying to spare her the sight.

It hadn’t mattered. She’d known whenever they brought someone out; his hands clenched tighter around her every time.

Rebecca was the last. Furthest from the blast, she must’ve seen the disaster coming and known she wouldn’t survive. But in her final moments, she’d done what she could, and thrown herself over her baby girl, who was only one month old that day.

The EMTs found Lily buried beneath her mother and sobbing, her little body unscathed by the destruction. They’d called her a miracle baby, and when they carried her out, even the fire crews paused in disbelief.

Patrick had choked as they brought her to him. With shaking hands, he’d released Ashley and taken Lily, his gaze running over the child as though he’d never seen anything like her in his life. He’d crouched then, cradling the baby in one arm and wrapping the other around Ashley as he cried.

Other people came as time slid by. Friends to console and care, though each struggled to know what to say. Every face was like an image blurred by water for Ashley, and she could never remember any of their names. After a while, Patrick left to attend to the police, and to answer questions he said no child should ever have to hear. With her fingers clutching those of a tall black man in a trench coat smelling of vanilla and cedar, she’d sat on a park bench around the corner and held Lily, who had long since fallen asleep.

They’d moved in the days that followed.

She suspected another planet would’ve felt closer than Montana, because although she couldn’t remember much of the city, she’d still instantly felt every ounce of her unfamiliarity with farms. But Jonathan and Rose met them at the driveway of their new home, and embraced them as though they were long-lost friends come to stay. Routines and chores soon followed and, though she’d resented them at the time, when she looked back now, she realized the couple had just been trying to give the grieving children every shred of normalcy they could spare.

Patrick tried to settle into farm life for the sake of his daughters, for whom he’d felt the need to move away from anyone who might ever endanger them again. Vandals could’ve been responsible for the tragedy as easily as a broken gas main. The ambiguity was more than he could stand, and only by leaving his girls in rural obscurity could he let himself believe they might be safe. The isolation wore on him, though, and jobs constantly called. Any given day could find him pacing the house, one hand grasping the phone and the other raking through his hair as he tried to figure out how to live in two places at once. Finally, with no choice but bankruptcy or insanity, he returned to work and left his girls on the farm with the promise he’d come back soon.

They’d seen him barely a dozen times since, and as she picked at her dinner, Ashley tried not to think of the many things he’d missed over the years, beyond simple traditions like celebrating their mother’s birthday. Lily’s first steps. The girl’s first words. Missing teeth and the identity of the tooth fairy. He’d missed so much of their lives, and sometimes, when she let herself, she could feel the hurt of that fact simmering deep down inside.

Dinner ended in silence and, with worried eyes, Lily left the table before anyone else. Regret clouded Patrick’s face as he watched her go, but wordlessly, he just helped the others take the dishes away.

“Chocolate?” he asked Ashley as they walked into the kitchen. “I thought you liked carrot cake best?”

She slid the plates into the soapy water of the sink and then glanced to him, hiding her pity. Beneath his thinly veiled attempt at seeming casual, she could see he was struggling. “I do, Dad. Chocolate is Lily’s favorite.”

Taking a breath, he nodded. One memory was accurate, at least.

“Just give it a few minutes, then go upstairs and play with her,” Ashley advised quietly. “She’ll be fine.”

He looked at her, and she could see the thoughts warring behind his dark brown eyes. Accepting guidance from his teenage daughter clashed with the idea of being her parent, but after a moment, he settled on giving her a small nod and then headed for the living room to wait.

She returned to washing the dishes.

Rose came in and set the bowls by the sink. Wordlessly, the woman placed a hand on Ashley’s shoulder, squeezing briefly before returning to the dining room.

Ashley sighed.

A crash echoed up from the basement. Dropping a plate into the sink, she spun, heart pounding.

“What the hell–” Patrick said as he raced from the living room, his body tensed as though ready to grab the nearest heavy object within reach.

Jonathan strode around him and yanked open the basement door. “Damn cats,” he growled. Glancing back to Patrick, he held up a hand. “It’s fine.”

Muttering under his breath, the old man disappeared down the darkened stairway. Yowling was followed by a crash, and then another. Rose winced at every sound, and Ashley could see her imagining the objects breaking as the chase continued.

The basement went silent and then Jonathan emerged, scratches on his arms and a furious expression on his face. By the scruff of its neck, a flailing cat twisted in his fist.

At the sight of Rose, the cat renewed its struggles, catching its captor across the back of his arm with its claws. Jonathan yelped and released the animal, sending it plummeting to the floor. Paws scrambling on the hardwood, the cat propelled itself past Patrick and sped beneath a chair in the furthest corner of the living room.

Rose snatched a napkin from the table and rushed to Jonathan’s aid, covering his bleeding scratches. She glanced at Ashley.

“Got it,” Ashley said with a nod.

Patrick looked between them as she walked past.

“Thelma’s cats don’t like Rose or Jonathan much,” she told her father dryly.

One brow raised, he eyed the couple and then followed her into the living room.

In the shadows, the cat’s eyes flashed. Dark stripes like a tiger ran down its frantically heaving sides and, as she crouched in front of the chair, the creature hissed and batted at her.