Waking the Dead (4 page)

“Mostly, it is,” John agreed, smiling back. “Does that -- does it make it easier for you? It does for your brother, I think.”

They were going to have to talk about what Josh could do at some point and now, with both of them not quite awake and the world sleeping around them was as good a time as any.

“Less people? Definitely.” Josh handed his mug over to John. “I mean, don’t get me wrong -- I learned to shut stuff out, mostly, a long time ago. Otherwise there’d have been times I think it would have driven me crazy. People can be…well, loud.”

“And it’s not as if you can ask them to keep it down,” John observed.

“Not without them thinking I’m crazy.” At John’s glance, Josh amended, “I could prove to them that I’m not lying, but it wouldn’t go over well.”

“You say that like a man who’s learned from experience.” John finished pouring the coffee and handed the mug back.

Josh took the mug gratefully, wrapping both hands around it. “I told a kid once, just before junior high.” He went quiet then, and John waited to see if he’d continue. “First he thought I was kidding, then he said I was a liar. When I proved to him that I wasn’t, he got scared. I don’t know what he told his parents, but they didn’t let him hang out with me anymore after that.”

“I’m sorry,” John said, and meant it. “To be honest, I can see their point of view, too, but it doesn’t mean I don’t wish it’d turned out differently.”

“I can’t do as much as you think I can, you know,” Josh said. “I’m thinking, too, remember, and I don’t have
time
to read you and talk at the same time.” He raised his mug. “And do other stuff, too. You’re thinking that I know every last detail and I can rummage around in your head and get to all your secrets, but it’s not like that. Mostly, it’s not.”

John turned away, as if not meeting Josh’s eyes would be some kind of protection, even though he knew it wouldn’t, and got himself a mug of coffee. “It’s just the surface thoughts then, is it?”

“It’s like…” Josh frowned. “It’s like you’re talking at me in two ways and if I want to, I can just listen to what your mouth’s saying, and your body language, I guess, but I can tap into what you’re thinking, too, and that’s running alongside what you’re saying, like the drumbeat’s there in a song but mostly you’re hearing the singer.”

“I’m trying to picture it, but it’s not easy,” John admitted. “I’m thinking even when you don’t do it consciously, you’re still picking up more than most people. You’d make a hell of a card player.”

“Too good,” Josh said, with enough of a wry twist to his mouth that John guessed Josh had maybe won a few too many hands to be popular. “I don’t play many games like that, to be honest. If it’s something like chess, when it’s quiet and I’m concentrating, it’s really hard not to hear. Something like football, well, I get flashes now and then, but it’s all happening too fast and there’re so many distractions…” He shrugged. “And like I said, I’m getting pretty good at controlling it. It’s not like when you first met me; back then, I was wide open, and God, some of the things I found out, I just really didn’t want to know.”

“I can imagine,” John said. “Well, I’ve not got many secrets, but if you find yourself reading my thoughts, I’d appreciate it if you bear in mind I’m a wee bit uneasy about what you can do.” He met Josh’s gaze. “But I trust you, and I like you, and you’re welcome to see for yourself that I really mean that, because I do.”

“I know. I wouldn’t have come if I thought we were going to drive each other crazy while I was here -- it wouldn’t have been worth it. I try not to spend time with people who don’t mesh up -- you know, whose words and thoughts are opposites, when they don’t say what they really mean. I can’t handle it.” The boy sounded serious about it. “Sometimes I wish I couldn’t hear what I do. I think it might make life a lot easier.”

“It probably would,” Nick said from the doorway, and they both turned to look at him. He was wearing his sleep trousers, but not the T-shirt he’d had on the night before, and was leaning against the door frame sleepily. “Life would be easier if I couldn’t see what I can, too, but I wouldn’t be me. If that makes any sense this early in the morning.”

Josh looked at Nick like he was all-knowing, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise -- he was the only person the boy knew who had an ability like his, and the only sibling, even by half. “Yeah,” Josh said. “Yeah, that makes sense. Sometimes, though…”

“Sometimes the easy way out seems pretty appealing,” Nick finished for him. John got Nick a mug of coffee. He didn’t need to be able to read minds to know Nick wanted one.

“Want some food to go along with that coffee?” he asked them both.

Josh patted his stomach. “I feel like I’m running on empty here, so, yeah, that’d be great. Let me help, though.”

John opened his mouth to tell Josh there was no need and then reconsidered. No point in making him feel like a visitor. “Nick, show Josh where everything is, and I’ll fry up some rashers of bacon.”

“Bacon?”

“You’re not a vegetarian, are you?” John asked, pausing with his hand on the fridge door. “Because I can maybe just do eggs instead?”

“No,” Josh assured him. “If it’s not still mooing -- or oinking -- I’ll eat it. It’s just Mom’s on this health kick right now; she thinks she needs to lose weight. These days, I’m lucky if I get a bowl of granola with skim milk.”

John opened the fridge and got out bacon
and
sausages. Granola for a growing lad just didn’t bear thinking about.

It didn’t take too long to get breakfast on the table. Josh set it and then made the scrambled eggs, working with the same concentration Nick gave to even the smallest of tasks. By the time they were eating, the conversation had settled into a relaxed exchange of information, with John listening mostly, sipping his coffee, as the two brothers caught up on each others’ lives. John didn’t usually read Josh’s e-mails, unless Nick called him over to see a photograph or watch a short video Josh had attached, but Nick told him the gist of them, so some of the names of Josh’s friends were familiar.

He was just about to offer to make a fresh pot of coffee when he heard the sound of footsteps on the path outside. There was a knock at the door, then it opened an inch or two and Caitrin’s familiar voice called, “Please tell me I’m not interrupting anything?”

Apparently she was still remembering Nick’s sudden, unclothed appearance the same way Nick was.

“Everyone’s dressed,” Nick said with a hint of good humor in his voice even though his cheeks were slightly flushed. “Come on in.”

Caitrin stormed into the kitchen, her color high and eyes flashing. “Uncle John, you
have
to do something about my mam. She’s being completely unreasonable about this stupid essay for that
bloody
scholarship, and I swear if she doesn’t get off my back I’m going to say something I regret, I really am.” She caught sight of Josh at the table and her eyes widened, her expression more than a bit horrified. “Oh, God. I’d forgotten your Josh was here.”

“It’s okay.” Nick stood up and pulled out the empty chair. “Sit. Do you want some coffee? Tea? Have you had breakfast?”

Caitrin swallowed and pushed her hair back, revealing the rows of gleaming silver rings in her ears that had been the cause of more than one row with Janet. “A cup of tea would be nice, thank you.”

“This is my brother Joshua,” Nick said, moving to fill the electric kettle. “Josh, this is John’s niece Caitrin Gordon. I’m sure you remember her from your last visit.”

Josh stood up and offered Caitrin his hand, then drew it back to wipe it on his jeans before holding it out again. “Sorry. Butter.”

“Better than fish guts,” Caitrin said, shaking his hand a little awkwardly. John smothered a grin. “Wow, you have green eyes, just like Uncle Nick. Does it run in the family, then?”

“I guess,” Josh said. He kept standing there. “So. Um.”

“I forgot you’d be here,” Caitrin explained. “I mean, I didn’t
forget
, but I didn’t remember it was going to be now. Which is totally my fault, since Uncle John and Nick have been talking about it for ages.”

“Really?” Josh seemed pleased.

“Not to be rude, but do you think I could borrow Uncle John for a few minutes? I promise I’ll bring him back.” Caitrin gave John a look that said she desperately needed to talk with him, in private, about how completely absurd her mother was being. It was a look John was becoming a little more accustomed to than he liked, even if he knew it was normal for young people to rebel against their parents. At least she came to him and not one of her friends for advice.

He picked up his coffee mug and exchanged an amused, resigned eye roll with Nick when his back was to her. “Come on then, love. We’ll go into the living room and leave these two to start the washing up.”

“You don’t have a dishwasher?” Josh blurted out.

John paused in the doorway and held up his hands, careful not to slosh coffee everywhere. “Aye. Two of them.”

Josh blinked, then grinned. “Very funny.”

“Only if you’ve got a sense of humor,” John said. “Glad to know you have.”

Chapter Four

“Sorry about that,” Nick said when they’d gone. “She and her mother are having a hard time getting along right now. There’s this scholarship Janet wants Caitrin to try for and let’s just say Caitrin’s not making much progress on the essay that’s supposed to go in with the application.” Nick wasn’t sure Caitrin had even started it, actually, and the forms had all been filled in by Janet herself. Alistair, Janet’s husband, was a silent man who loved both wife and daughter -- and, as John pointed out, his own skin -- too much to get in the middle of the mother-daughter feud.

“I know what that’s like.” Josh sat back down and toyed with his last piece of bacon, then ate it. At Nick’s look, he added, “Oh, not me. My mom’s great. I mean, look at how she let me come all the way across the ocean to see you. And I only got a couple of lectures about how to be responsible and careful while I was here.”

“She knows I won’t let anything happen to you.” Nick and Stacy had talked more than a few times on the phone in preparation for Josh’s visit, and he’d assured her that he wouldn’t make the mistake of acting like Josh’s friend and not his much older half brother.

Josh nodded. “
I
won’t let anything happen to me. It’s not like I haven’t heard what kinds of things happened to people when they did stupid stuff.”

“They happen here, too,” Nick said. “One of Caitrin’s friends died just last year; her boyfriend got drunk, and I guess she wasn’t all that sober, either, not enough to stop him from driving or refuse to get in the car. They drove off the road and into a wall. He broke his arm; she broke her neck.”

As object lessons went, it had been a convincing one -- for a few weeks, at least. Then the teenagers had gone back to drinking and trusting to the quiet roads and their own ability to hold their ale to keep them safe. Nick thought that it lingered more for him than it had for Caitrin, what with his own memory of the accident that had killed Matthew, but appearances could be deceiving.

“God, that sucks.” Josh screwed his face up. “Did you -- did you see her? Afterwards, I mean?”

“No.” The kettle clicked itself off, and Nick poured water over Caitrin’s tea, hoping she’d be back before it had steeped for so long it was undrinkable. “I thought I might. It wouldn’t have been much of a surprise, considering, but I haven’t seen a sign of her.”

“Did you go to, you know, where she died?”

“There aren’t a lot of places on the island I
don’t
go, except some of the rockier beach areas. It’s not so big that you can avoid certain spots, really.” Nick sat down, wondering what Caitrin and John were talking about -- not that it was likely it wasn’t just more of the same. The girl was desperate to leave the island for a larger city, somewhere she imagined there’d be glitz and glamour of the sorts that she’d never experience on Traighshee, and her mother was determined to see Caitrin get a degree and a good job, preferably close by.

“I didn’t see much of it yesterday,” Josh said, “but it looks smaller than I remembered it.” He picked up his plate and the salt and pepper shakers and began to clear the table. Either he was anxious not to be a burden, or his mother had trained him well. “Or maybe I’m bigger.”

Nick snorted with amusement. “You are. I know you’ve sent me photographs, but seeing you in the flesh is something else again. I’m not used to you being taller than me.”

“I’ve stopped growing now,” Josh assured him. “I haven’t gotten any taller in the last six months or so.” He stacked the plates neatly by the sink and began to run the hot water. “So why aren’t Caitrin and her mother getting along? It can’t be just the school stuff.”

He tested the water temperature and then put the plug in. Nick reached over, picked up the bottle of dishwashing liquid, and squirted some in. They both watched as the sink filled with soapy water.

“She’s like a lot of the teenagers on the island,” Nick said. “She can’t see a future here, and I can’t say she’s entirely wrong. The trouble is she doesn’t have any idea what she’d do if she left, and that’s partly why her mother’s so against her going.”

“I guess it’d sound pretty hypocritical of me to say she shouldn’t go running off into the world,” Josh said.

Nick started bringing the rest of the plates and utensils to the sink. “Not really,” he said. “It’s different. You’re going with your mother’s approval, for one.”

“And I’m going back. Before college, anyway.” Josh washed a dish thoughtfully. “I don’t have a lot of girlfriends. Friends that are girls, I mean.”

“Yeah, I remember you telling me all about that girl you were dating last fall,” Nick said, daring to tease. “Emily, right?”

“Mm-hmm. She was nice, she just wasn’t a long-term partner.”

“You’re kind of young to be worrying about that.”

Josh shook his head. “Not really. I’ve known for a long time I wanted someone permanent. Something like you and John have. I don’t see the point of wasting time on people who aren’t the right fit.”

“You don’t always know if someone is, right away,” Nick pointed out.