"Are you done packing?" Lyn called up the stairs.
"Yes." Cole did not bother peeking up from his cards. He, Kendra, and Spinner gathered in the guest room (after today, it would once more be the guest room.) Kendra and Cole spread the bed while Spinner sat in the desk chair, his braced and bandaged leg propped up on the corner of the bed.
"Doesn't distract easily," Spinner observed. He had tried several diversion tactics throughout repeated rounds of gin rummy and none of them had worked.
"Oh, hell no," Kendra agreed. She could not resist glancing up at Cole, seeing the kid riveted over his card combinations.
Spinner had finally forgiven Kendra for being a freak of nature. He barely even threw a scene when he found out Cole had the same ability. "Nobody tells me anything," he had moaned when the two of them visited him the morning after his surgery.
Kendra did not let them know she felt bad about Gray: that she was the last person Gray had plied for help and she would not do anything. And she missed Rick. That she did was no surprise, but it bore into her with a gnawing intensity. She kept expecting him to pop into the room at random times - but of course, he had been here for over a year.
Rick should be overseeing the game, peering at her over the magazine he read. No, Rick should be sleeping in at his own home or eating breakfast with his mother or plotting some project with Toby.
"Gin," Spinner announced, pumping his arm in the air. Cole sighed and dropped his cards on the bedspread. He was awfully close. As for Kendra, she had barely moved a card through this round. She had been too busy pining away.
Her phone bleeped, offering a much needed distraction. She pulled it off. "Start without me," she called as she roamed to the privacy of her room.
"Hey," Toby said shyly. "Is Cole leaving today?"
"Hi." Kendra flopped onto her bed and stretched out until her head pushed into her headboard. "Yeah. This afternoon."
"Oh. It's too bad he and Lyn can't stay longer."
"I know," Kendra said, resigned. "But Lyn has to get back to work. And Cole does have a life in Philadelphia."
More than she did, even after her celebrity status from the big abduction. People from school kept calling her, wanting to know what happened. Manny, Liberty, classmates from the poetry class that she and Emma had both dropped, as they would never be able to make up their work after all that trauma. Emma had called, once. "I don't know what happened back there, and I don't want to know," she added in a rush. "I just wanted to thank you for doing what you did to save me from that man." In Emma's reconstruction of events, there was only one captor and he was gone.
"Of course," Toby agreed. He paused. "Listen, Kendra, do you want to go to a movie on Friday night?"
Kendra trudged through his offer. A movie. Friday night. While she would like to hang out, the scheduling sounded more a date.
No. No. NO!
"I can't," she echoed, just as apologetic but just as unwilling to give in.
"Kendra?" Toby's voice heightened in concern.
"I'm sorry. I can't."
"If this is about the DPs" - the dead people. How like Toby to find a computer shortened term for them - "I don't care about that. You obviously know what you're doing."
Her inner critic chuckled at that. What a lie. If she knew what she was doing, she could have accepted Rick leaving so much better than she did.
"It's not about that." Kendra quashed one argument, only to open up another. Contrary to what Toby told himself, their fights on the eve of their breakup were not all about her hiding her secret. "It's . . . a lot of things."
"What things?" Toby interrogated.
"I'm not sure. It's kind of confusing. But I can't jump into a relationship like this right now."
"What jumping?" Toby asked, exasperated. The argument was mounting. "All I did was ask you to a movie."
"And I can't go."
"Jeez, Kendra, stop doing that secretive thing. I already know, so there's no reason-"
"No reason not to pick up where we left off?" Kendra finished sharply. "I'm sorry but it doesn't work like that."
"I don't see why not. It doesn't have to be complicated."
"Wait, is the only reason you've been hanging around lately is because you want us to get back together?" Kendra retorted.
"Nooo," Toby answered weirdly. "No, it's not."
"Well, you think about it. Talk to you later." She hung up, then rolled forward and buried her head in her arms for several minutes.
"Mind if I take a picture?" Lyn asked.
"Do you mind?" Cole asked Kendra, as if either of them had much of a choice. She shrugged. They headed up the stoop, Cole tagging Spinner on the way. "You too, gimpy."
"Taking orders from an eight-year-old," Spinner grumbled. He staggered up on his crutches.
"Cole," Lyn tried to scold, but a few laughs trickled out
"Don't worry, Lyn," Kendra spoke up. "After a few days away from us, he'll be back to his normal, polite self."
Lyn aimed the camera. The three relatives posed stiffly, like young people who are asked to appear in a photo for adults. Lyn snapped off a few pictures, then mercifully declared them done.
Just as she put away her camera, Joey arrived with Angie.
"Hey, so you're heading back?" he asked Cole. Joey and Lyn had been introduced the previous day. Angie had not come with, as Joey had not been sure Cole had been up for visitors.
"Hi," Cole nodded.
"Is that your mom, Cole?" Angie chirped. "Daddy said you fell out of the boat sailing. Did you see any squids in the water?"
"Sorry, no squids," Cole said patiently.
"Are there even any squids in English Bay?" Kendra pondered.
"You'll have to ask Atlas Boy." Atlas Boy and his father had been by earlier. The boys had each other's email and house addresses so they could exchange maps or other artifacts.
Cole stepped forward to introduce Lyn to Angie and Angie let out another barrage of questions.
"Sorry Craig couldn't make it." Joey said to Kendra and Spinner. "He's helping out at the garage today, and we're swamped with customers."
"No problem," Spinner said. Kendra pressed her lips together in disapproval. Coward, she silently called Craig.
"How's the leg?"
"It doesn't hurt too much." The doctor's said his leg would heal completely within a few weeks. It had been a bittersweet moment: part of him felt guilty for enjoying his exceedingly good luck that he escaped death or permanent injury.
While Joey was occupied talking to Spinner and Kendra, Cole leaned over and whispered, "Angie, that guy who pushed you over in the studio room? He said he was sorry and he didn't mean to hurt you. It was an accident."
Finn told him that part. It had not been part of Vincent Gray's grand scheme. Finn had seen Cole and Atlas Boy sneak into the prop room and decided to go in after them and mess with them. "I didn't see the girl. She just came out of nowhere," Finn explained, frazzled. "And she was pushing into my hiding spot and I reacted." Cole pointed that Angie might not have seen him, which had occurred to Finn later.
One part of this whole puzzle that eluded Cole was that Atlas Boy had seen and talked to Finn. Atlas Boy never gave any indication that he saw any other dead person. Kendra had mentioned that his mother sat by him in the hospital waiting room for several hours and he had never noticed. It could have been Finn using a trick he learned from Vincent Gray, but how Finn could manage to pull it off, and how Gray could have taught him, raised some questions. Finn could not, or would not, supply the answers.
Angie pouted as she deliberated over this new bit of information. "He'd better not do it again," she said finally.
Cole smiled wistfully. "He won't," he promised
The Jeremiahs left and Cole and Lyn were getting ready to depart as well. Lyn thanked Kendra and Spinner for being such wonderful hosts and they exchanged promises to stay in touch. Lyn knew she would firmly keep to that promise. Even though Cole had made great improvements over the last year, now he had someone who had gone through the same issues. Kendra and Spinner were great kids. It was a shame Abby did not appreciate them more.
Lyn thought Abby might have come around a little, after that scare the day she came out to the hospital. "I wish they had called me," Abby had said mournfully. Then in a rare reflective moment, she had sighed, "But I can see why they didn't." In the short intervals Abby had spent with the kids while they were recovering from their wounds, she had been more concerned about their well-being and less fraught about their successes and failures. Dave had been concerned too, in his own gruff way.
Finally she and Cole clambered to the rental car. "Bye, he said, hugging Kendra tightly. Kendra hugged back awkwardly. Finally Cole released her. "See you, Spinner." Spinner feared a hug, but Cole only offered a handshake, which Spinner also returned awkwardly, shifting his crutch under his elbow and dangling down his forearm.
Cole hopped into the car. As the car pulled out of the driveway, Kendra spotted Vincent Gray across the block. He donned his black hood again, though the hood was folded down, showing his gray blond hair and pasty skin. The gleam of the sun missed him, developing him like an old photograph.
Finn's father developed behind him. He placed his hand on Gray's shoulder, in case Gray decided to pursue the living humans again.
So the man did not abandon Gray.
Finn joined the specters. They posed together like that, Finn and his father concentrating on Gray, while Gray concentrated on Kendra with an inscrutable expression on his face.
It seemed Gray had gotten what he wanted.
A white van passed by, cutting between Kendra and the ghosts. Gray and his keepers disappeared.
Spinner noticed Kendra's gaze. "What is it?" he asked, squinting at the vacated spot down the street.
Kendra looked away. "It's nothing."
