Nicola Griffith - Stay

“And this one’s for you, Button.”

“Button.” Luz tapped him on the hand until he looked up from his mostly dismantled fire engine. “Another present.”

I fastened the stainless steel ID bracelet around his right wrist. He looked at it, took it off, put it back on again, then went back to his engine.

“That has his name and address and phone number on it,” I said, and Luz nodded. She had her eyes on the last box, the silver one. “And this is a special present. I hope you like it.”

It was heavy for a nine-year-old, but she didn’t ask for help so I didn’t offer it. After a bit of a struggle—she refused to tear the paper—she had it unwrapped. She folded the paper with great care: putting off disappointment as long as possible. Eventually she contemplated the hinged wooden box.

“There’s a latch at the side,” I said.

She looked at me, looked at the box. I nodded. She lifted the lid. It opened like a book. Nested on green velvet were seven volumes bound in brown leather, each stamped in gold on the spine with the name C. S. Lewis and the title.

“For when you have to take the others back to the library,” I said. She was hardly breathing. “Take one out.”

“Which one?”

“Your favorite.”

“But I haven’t read them all.”

“Then my favorite, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe .”

She lifted it reverently. Traced the lettering on the cover, turned it over. Opened it. Rubbed the maroon silk bookmark between her fingers, touched the gold-edged pages.

“There are illustrations,” I said.

She turned a few pages, studied the first picture. Turned another page and, two minutes later, another. She was reading.

I opened my phone quietly, dialed, and listened to Dornan’s message. “Aud? What’s happening? You said you’d call. Turn your bloody phone on! Call me.” He sounded angry and anxious, but not as though anything bad had happened. I closed the phone.

Luz read on, head bent. Her scalp gleamed at the part, very white, very vulnerable. So young. So much she didn’t know.

“Luz.” She looked up. The open inquiry in her toffee-colored eyes stopped me cold.

I cleared my throat. “When you’ve read them all, I want you to call me, tell me what you think. Which one’s your favorite. Will you do that?”

She nodded. Her eyes flicked back to the page for a moment. I leaned down so she had to focus on me.

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

They all stood in front of the house to wave me goodbye. Jud stood as though in church. Button moved restlessly, head turning this way and that. Adeline had one arm tight around his shoulders but her eyes rested on Luz. Mine, her gaze said, My girl. Lucky woman: to believe she’d lost her girl and to then get her back. She had never even said thank you.

Driving across the Mississippi, I was nearly blinded by the sun glinting off the buildings in downtown Memphis. Once on the other side, I hit drive-time traffic, so I found a strip mall with big parking lots, parked the rig, and went into a bar. It was small and long, just a dark oily bar down one side and a jukebox, currently silent, at the back, opposite the toilets. I took a seat on a stool with ripped red vinyl and asked the thin, balding bartender what they had in the way of imported beer on draft, which turned out to be Bass ale, chilled until flat and practically frozen when it should have been room temperature and aromatic.

At some point Luz would wonder who I was and why I paid for everything. I’d seen how stubborn she was; one day I might have to give her some answers.

I sipped my beer.

My mother had never given me any answers. Then again, I hadn’t asked her any questions, once I understood that the answers wouldn’t come from the place I wanted them to. Asking questions made you vulnerable. But I wasn’t Luz’s mother. I was a banker with the honorary title of aunt.

A woman with dyed black hair slid onto the stool next to me. “Fucking kids,” she said. “Fuckers took all my money, said they wanted some food for a change. Food my ass. Drugs. Only in seventh and eighth grade and already probably smoking and snorting and sticking it in their arm. Yo, Jim Beam here, Barney! Fuckers.” She turned to me. “You got kids?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What kind of answer is that? Do you got kids or don’t you?”

“Beats me.” My phone rang. “That’s probably her now.” But it was Dornan.

“Aud, where are you?”

“In a nasty little bar in Memphis drinking nasty beer.”

“Do you have Tammy with you?”

“No.”

“Only I’m here, in the clearing—”

“You were supposed to stay in Atlanta.”

“She didn’t call. You didn’t call. So I came out here, and the trailer’s gone, and there’s no sign of Tammy.”

“I see.”

“You see? What do you mean, you see? Where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

“Christ. So she’s done another disappearing act?”

“She was fine when I saw her a few days ago.”

“If that bloody Karp—”

“She was fine. And Geordie Karp isn’t in any position to do anything anymore. She might only be gone for a few hours.”

“When are you coming back?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“What are you doing in Memphis?” I didn’t respond. “I’ll see you up at the cabin day after tomorrow then?”

“Yes.” He hung up.

“Yours sounds bad,” the woman with the Jim Beam said. “Fuckers. Here’s to kids.” We clinked glasses, I drained my beer, and left.

I was forty miles outside of Memphis when my phone rang again. I answered it cautiously.

“Hello?”

“Aud? Eddie.” The muscles in my belly went rigid. “The story has taken an amusing turn. In just the last week, apparently, our twin avenging angels have been spotted in two other states outside—”

This is what happened when you walked away from your armor. All it took was one phone call.

“—sylvania. It seems—”

“Where?”

“Two incidents in West Virginia and one in Pennsylvania. Is this not a very good line? Should I call you back?”

“No. I’m sorry. Go on.”

“It seems that the credulous readers have taken our entirely imaginary twin angels to heart. Apparently they have stricken a wife beater with terminal cancer and terrified the life half out of three seventh-grade bullies in the schoolyard at Chester Junior High, both up near Clarksburg. And in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, they appeared in the middle of the road and made a truck run off the pavement, killing the driver and one passenger. Another passenger survived. The two victims, according to the surviving witness—who, incidentally, on seeing the terrible twins glowing with wrath, has changed his evil ways forever—ran a dogfighting ring that local authorities have been trying to shut—”

West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Not Arkansas. Not Tennessee.

“ —Post has substituted color paintings of the angel twins for last issue’s quick pencil sketches. Offhand I’d say that they intend to play this one for a while.”

“No police comment?”

“Oh, this story has moved way beyond the realm of such mundane concerns. Knowing of your interest, however, I did take the liberty of contacting the NYPD and asking for a quote on their progress with the Karp assault.”

“And?”

“ ‘No progress at this time.’ They made some noise about being happy to talk to any member of the public who wants to come forward with evidence, from any state, but they didn’t offer me an 800 number.”

“They’ve stopped looking, then.”

“I would agree. Unless, of course, a miracle happens.” He giggled at his own wit. “Oh, and Karp? They found some family. Cousins, I believe. The Post describes them as ‘estranged.’ They say, and I quote, ‘If his insurance won’t pay, turn him off. He’s not our problem.’ ”