Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

“Fucking doctors,” I mumbled under my breath, and knew he’d heard when he cleared his throat loudly in the next room.

“Sorry?” Cher said, turning cornflower blue eyes upon me like question marks.

“Nothing,” I said. It was obviously not the answer I should have given. Her face dropped, but an overly bright expression popped up almost immediately. I looked away, which I was sure was a relief to us both. “What is this thing, anyway?”

“It’s your traveling suit, darlin’,” Cher said cheerily as I fingered the shiny cloth. “Just like Evel Knievel. Or Thelma and Louise. If you’re gonna go, you gotta go in style.”

Note to self, I thought later, catching a startling glimpse of the two of us in the lobby windows. Get. New. Best. Friend.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Livvy-girl?” Cher said as we sped across town in the low ’vette, breaking at least three major traffic laws that I counted. Cher drove the same way she walked and breathed and lived—like there was no one else who would dare take up her sprawling southern space. “You know you can always stay with me.”

“Yes,” I said, thinking No as she took a turn at thirty-five miles an hour. No, to doing any of this. No to an apartment that reminded me of the last time I’d seen my sister’s beautiful, stricken face; no to being a superhero; and—as I ate glass on the next curve—definitely no to Cher!

Maybe I could move north to Carson City. Or really north. Like Alaska. Yeah, I thought, that sounded good. What were the chances of running into evil igloo dwellers? I made a note to ask Micah about it later. Ice fishing sounded attractive right now.

We arrived at the high-rise and ascended to the ninth floor in silence. Exiting into a deserted hallway, the only sound was the jingle of the keys as Cher fumbled at the lock. I took a deep breath as the door opened. She shot me a worried look, I tried on a reassuring smile, and Cher immediately pulled the door shut again. Shit. I’d probably grimaced.

“Olivia, darlin’,” she said, her drawl even more pronounced with troubled sincerity. “Come on home with me. You know you’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like.”

“I know.” I didn’t meet her eye.

She tried again. “We can brunch every day, and get manicures and spray-on tans, and have that big guy you like, Trevor the Tank, rub très essential oils all over our bodies!”

It was enough to have me reaching for the door. “It’s okay. I can do this.”

I wanted to ignore the hurt that passed over Cher’s face. I wanted to push past her and just shut the door behind me, but something about it touched me. After all, I told myself, she’d lost Olivia too. She just didn’t know it.

“Look, Cher,” Cher-bear , Olivia would have said, but I’d cut out my tongue before allowing that to pass my lips. I faced her squarely and said, “I loved…love this apartment. You know I do. The doctors say I have to reclaim this space for myself, and the sooner I do that, the sooner things will be…”

What? I thought, searching for the right word. Normal? Better? Fixed?

“I know what you’re saying, darlin’,” she interrupted, with a shake of her head. “But I worry about you being here alone.”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” I assured her. “At all.”

“At least let me go through the apartment with you,” she said, and noting my hesitation, flushed with indignation. “Just this time, for goodness’ sake. I’ll leave as soon as we get you settled, I promise. Just let me come in and show you what I’ve done with the place.”

In truth, I was grateful for the company. Olivia may have had a plethora of pleasant memories to bind her to this apartment, but I had only a few, and the very last of these kept making guest appearances in my psyche. Cher kept up a solid monologue as we moved from room to room, a cheerful din that only added to the unreality of the neat and orderly apartment. It was bright, the January sun streaming in through the wide windows nothing like the black-skied storm I’d fled weeks earlier. It was clean too; freshly aired, and redolent with flowers that floated in crystal vases everywhere I turned.

Cher explained that after the police and the repairmen and cleaners had all finished their work, she’d come in herself and added the small touches she knew I loved. Irises in the vase by the entryway. Vanilla candles for the thick candelabra on the dining room table. A cluster of daisies in the living room. Things I didn’t even know Olivia had liked. She’d even bought a replacement cell phone for the one that’d ended up on the ground the night of Butch’s attack. This one was encrusted with Swarovski crystals—bloodred lips pursed against a shining diamond background—and Cher informed me she’d already programmed it with all the numbers of “my” various contacts, liaisons, and lovers.

I immediately turned the phone off, dropped it atop a chenille throw, and felt panic skirt through my veins. No wonder Cher kept looking at me like she didn’t know me. No wonder Xavier had been all too willing to let her drive me home, uncomfortable with the long silences that had never pooled between him and Olivia before.

I don’t even know what kind of flowers she liked, I thought desperately. How the hell was I to know what she’d say or do? What she ate? Who she’d call? It was with a dull stab to the chest that I suddenly realized I’d never really known my sister at all.

Then I spotted the package. Still aligned on the corner of the coffee table where Olivia had left it, it seemed to have been forgotten by everyone, until now. I reached for it and clutched it to my chest, eyes squeezed tight. My birthday present. The last Olivia would ever give me.

“I didn’t know what you wanted to do with it.” Cher’s voice made me jump. I turned to find her wringing her hands nervously, a wary expression on her face. “It didn’t seem right to open it, or throw it away.” She hesitated. “Was I right to keep it?”

Her uncertainty, as sweet and fragile as any of Olivia’s objects, was what broke me. I nodded, but couldn’t speak, my throat astonishingly thick with tears. I hadn’t realized I had any left to shed. My face crumpled.

“I don’t think I can do this,” I said, sitting heavily. “I don’t know how.”

“Why, of course you can.” Cher rushed to my side in an onslaught of concern and perfume. She finally had something useful to do, some way to help. “And I’m going to help you. You’re gonna reclaim this space you love so much and erase all the bad memories. Fill it with good ones again. New ones. Jo would want you to.”

I wondered about that. Would I? Would I want Olivia to get on with her life? To forget that anything evil had ever touched her inside these walls? “Yeah,” I sniffed, and glanced at the present in my hand. “Yeah, she would, wouldn’t she?”

“Sure she would,” Cher encouraged. “Why, I remember the first time I met Joanna. She kicked us outta her bedroom, and never let us back in. Remember? Never was one to look back, that Jo Archer.”

“You were making out with her four poster bed.” I stood, wiping away the tears with the back of my hand. “You were demonstrating how to French kiss on her headboard.”

“Well, she needed the lesson. Before Ben, she was useless when it came to boys.”

She was right, and that irked me enough to have my tears drying. I put the package down and stared out the window where cars and pedestrians passed below us in miniature. I felt like reaching down and picking one of those people up, then putting them down in an entirely new location. I felt like changing someone else’s fate forever. I felt mean and small, and I didn’t even have to wonder which side of me—Light or Shadow—was talking. I closed my eyes to the view.