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Inothing but bushes and trees Finally I spun around The road behindmy skin sensitive But I knew better
I walked on, slowly,the intensity of ain Whatever had been watching ate, the dirt path to the house curved to the right, and Grace bounded down to meet me We came around the final curve and there stood the house, only its front limestone wall intact A savory s soups--garlic, cucuar and lashings of Sangfroid crystals and the tonic that kept us froe to drink blood I couldn’t tell you which appetite was stronger, which one propelled es I’d printed Only the two of us sat at the table Her friend Dashay, who co-owned the property, and Dashay’s boyfriend, Bennett, were in Jamaica to attend a funeral They’d be back in a week
"So much speculation," she said, after she’d read thericultural office a few e on their voice irls I’d met at the post office
"What are their last names?" she asked
I didn’t remember
"What do their parents do?"
"That never cas?
I was going to tell her about the man in the van when she pushed her chair back from the table Her shirt was stained (with tomato juice or tonic?), her auburn hair had fallen down completely, and her eyes had the worried cast that lowed as if it were made of pearl dust She was as beautiful as ever
She slad you found some friends," she said "It’s lonely without Dashay and the horses" And the bees And Raphael, she thought
Yes, I missed Dashay And I missed the bees, and the horses, too They’d stay at a friend’s farm in Kissimmee until our own stables were rebuilt
And yes, I missed Raphael I missed my father es Others hint of water gurgling down slow drains But most vampires’ speech is uess it’s because our sense of hearing is so acute We can hear our own voices, and most mortals don’t pay attention to their own
After lunch I’d taken a nap I must have been asleep for hours, because when I opened ray The wrinkled ceiling overhead reminded me of the underbelly of an ocean floor From outside, voices drifted in, fluid and fluent as music My mother’s voice counterpointed that of her best friend, Dashay
I pushed my hair away froh my open
They sat outside in what re flowers had filled the circular borders behind the benches But the hurricane left bare roots, broken steainst the house during the storm, noere set face to face The sun must have just slipped beneath the horizon, because the sky had turned indigo--not blue, not quite violet, but a color in between The color of secrets, I thought
My
Is it wrong to eavesdrop? Of course But if you’d seen the unhappiness on my mother’s face, you wouldn’t have been able to resist I did resist listening to their thoughts
Dashay’s words poured out in clusters so fast that they ran into each other, and she spoke with an accent and lilt I’d heard only hints of before
"Then I told thee, but they do not listen, they are all against o after hih the trees, but he’s not there, he’s not there" Her shoulders were shaking
I didn’t want to hear any ht He was a tall man with broad shoulders and a beautiful sarden, turning and dipping, their hands clasped, and I’d thought, Someday, I want to have what they have
I didn’t want to hear any more, but I couldn’t stay away From the house’s west side, still unfinished and open, I could see Dashay’s face
She was crying I’d read the expression that tears "well," but I’d never seen it happen before; tears continually reached the lower brims of her eyes and overflowed, strearay with tears And she said words I didn’t understand: "Duppy get the blame, but man feel the pain"
My mother left her bench and bent over Dashay, wrapped her arms around her, pulled her out of the chair They stood, holding each other in the ruined garden The sky turned froht blue to black
I turned away, surprised (but not for the first time) that I felt jealous of their friendship
The nextwas nor seemed to breathe with the wind, the air s of ha the radio played at least once every day
But when I looked outside, I noticed soarden, all around the chair where Dashay had sat, bloomed tiny white flowers Her tears had been their seeds