= Part Four =
"Good night, Holmes."
"Excellent!"
She crossed the room in hardly a heartbeat, perching again on the edge of the chair across from mine. She smiled at me, what was I think the first genuine smile I'd ever seen from her. It was amazing, the difference the change of expression made. Her gray eyes seemed almost golden, and it was like the highlights in her hair, a deep red, shone with some inner light. I smiled back involuntarily, and it was in that moment I realized, with an almost electric start, that she was beautiful in a sharp, clear way. I never saw her the same way again after that moment.
She started talking again. Though still serious, she seemed much relieved, as though by giving me the opportunity to back out, she had vested herself of some heavy weight. And when I thought about it later, it made sense -- if all the things she'd told me were true, then she really would feel responsible for bringing me into all of this. At the time, I could almost feel the tension easing out of the room, and I leaned forward, listening to Shannon's voice.
"The Amsterdam Holmes and Watson weren't the heads of their families at the time," she said, returning to the earlier strain of conversation without bothering to reintroduce the topic. "However, they're considered the patriarchs of their respective bloodlines by the most of their great-great-great-grandchildren and so on. Really, there would be too many greats to count; the families stretch back over centuries, as I said, and exact relations have been convoluted over time." She opened the brown accordion file she'd brought out with her and selected from it a large sheet of folded paper. Catching my questioning look, she quirked an eyebrow and started unfolding it. I moved the sandwiches and water to make room on the coffee-table. I started fishing in my pocket for my reading glasses.
"Really, Watson, those can't be necessary." Shannon looked up at me, pausing in unfolding the large sheet of paper, obviously amused. I settled the glasses over my nose.
"Mmm," I said, considering my answer. "I like wearing them," I said after a pause, taking them off to polish at the lenses with the hem of my t-shirt. I put them back on and flashed her my best smile. "I mean, come on -- Clark Kent was a thousand times sexier than Superman, right?"
Shannon smirked, and shook her head. "You don't need them," she said.
"How do you know?" I asked, a little irritated. She was always so smug, like she thought she knew everything... Almost before I'd finished my question, though, she'd pulled a manila folder out of the file and was holding it out to me.
"What's...?" I asked, taking it. Shannon gestured for me to open it, watching me with a Cheshire glint in her eyes. I sighed, recognizing that look; it was no use now but to follow orders, and...
I glanced down and my train of thought came to a roaring stand-still. The bold letters, printed in angry red ink, stood out clearly from the first page:
SARAH ANNE WATSON
Daughter of Patrick Watson
A little below that was a viciously short biography, dated illegibly at the end but not signed. It had been written by hand, and it had probably been done in a hurry, I decided, since some of the words were abbreviated. That, or whoever had written it -- and the handwriting looked a little like Shannon's -- had been writing carelessly. Reading it for a second time, I thought a little bitterly that carelessness was probably the more likely reason.
Born December 5th, OKC metro. hosp. Mother RIP; one sib. -- Austin Thomas, schitzo. Not interested in medicine. Abilities noted: none. Probability -- low to nonext. Not worth further examination.
I could feel Shannon's eyes on me but I didn't look up. Instead, I leafed through the rest of the folder. One page looked like a medical chart; another was a photocopy of a birth-certificate. There was a lot of information on my mother, and a very little on my father. A little of everything you could ever want to know about me. There were even a few report cards, and near the back, a photocopied page of a paper I'd written for class my freshman year with a handwriting analysis stapled to it. I glanced at it vaguely.
Creative, passionate, organized, it said. Intelligent and introspective. Right, I thought wryly. Me, organized. Sure.
Shannon muttered something I couldn't quite catch. I looked up at her quickly, and she gazed at me blandly in response. I sighed.
"Okay, I give up," I said. "This is eerie. Explain."
"It's like I told you," Shannon said matter-of-factly. "I came looking for you."
"You got all this information together to look for me?" I asked. Before she could answer, I tossed the folder back to her. "Even though I'm 'not worth further examination'?" I hadn't thought it cynically, but it came out sounding sarcastic.
Shannon let the bite in my tone roll over her, seeming unimpressed. "I don't know everything," she said simply. I blushed just a little and looked away, remembering my annoyance with her earlier. "And so," she resumed after a moment, "that's how I know you don't need glasses."
"Ah... right." The change of topics was a little dazing. Shannon had adopted the habit of carrying on three or four conversations with me at the same time, and I was still trying to get used to it.
"Then why do you wear them?" she asked, frowning at me thoughtfully. "If you just wanted them for looks, you'd have chosen a pair without prescription lenses. And the pair you're wearing now, if I'm right, would correct someone farsighted with thirty-thirty vision...?"
She seemed truly curious, and I smiled inwardly, wondering how long she'd been puzzling over this. It still surprised me, how much she did notice, and how important it was to her to have every detail sorted out.
"It's not a very interesting story," I said, shaking my head. I picked up my glass and swirled the water around in it, watching the lazy whirlpool. "A couple years ago, I started getting headaches when I read. For a while, it got pretty bad. I'd get sick whenever I'd try to read something, even just a page or two of a book or whatever. I missed school for a couple days because I couldn't do my work in class without giving myself a migraine."
"And so you started wearing glasses," Shannon finished for me. "I'm assuming they helped?"
I nodded. "Yeah, they did. My parents decided I'd just been reading too much. 'Straining my eyes,' my dad said. So I got myself a cheap pair of glasses from the Seven-Eleven down the block." I took a drink of water and set the glass back down, nearly empty. "And the headaches went away." I shrugged. "Like I said, not a very interesting story. I still wear glasses when I read."
"But you don't have to," Shannon said, musingly. "At least not all the time. And that makes me wonder..." She leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers as she thought. I took the opportunity to collect my thoughts some, at the same time eating one of Mrs. H's little sandwiches.
This wasn't at all how the conversation had started, I reflected. When had things had switched course...? We'd gone from talking seriously about witch-burnings and family histories to chatting idly about my glasses. We might've had this conversation about my vision any night this past week, or the week before. And in a strange way, I found it comforting. If Shannon and I could talk just like we had before I walked in and found blood on the floor and the world fell apart, then maybe things would be okay.
I realized, suddenly, that I'd been afraid. I'd seen the blood, and it was perfectly normal to be panicked then, yes -- but even after Shannon assured me that she was all right, I'd been scared. I'd been afraid that things would change between Shannon and me, that our friendship had been washed away as definitely as the bloodstains had been washed out of the carpet.
Still, though I was no longer worrying about my friendship, I hardly felt as though my mind were at ease. After an evening of talking with Shannon, I only had more questions! Instead, I now had a family legacy spanning hundreds of years hanging over my head -- and Shannon still wasn't talking about what had happened that afternoon. I felt worn out and tired. The nap I'd taken earlier had been short and involuntary, and apparently hadn't done much to keep me alert. My eyes closed without my telling them to, and I found myself nodding off.
* * *
I woke up again at the sound of Shannon's voice. "Watson. Watson! Ah, there. I was almost afraid you'd passed out again, you were so hard to wake."
My eyes flickered open blearily and I yawned, sitting up a little straighter in my chair. I pulled the glasses off my nose and stuck them back in a pocket, looking around. The desk lamp had been turned off, and only the standing lamp illuminated the room now, casting strange shadows across the room. The blinds were still drawn. Shannon sat perched on the edge of the coffee table in front of me, watching me in the half-light with a little smirk on her face.
"Oh, shove it," I grumbled, rubbing my eyes. I think I was too sleepy to blush, or I would have -- she was never going to let me live down the whole fainting thing, was she? "What time is it?"
"Nearly one in the morning, and past time for bed."
"Brilliant deduction, Holmes," I said wryly. Shannon raised her eyebrows.
"Hardly," she replied. "You were snoring, Watson."
"You lie! Haven't snored since the time I had bronchitis when I was eight." I yawned again.
"Go to bed, Watson," Shannon said, following me with her eyes as I stood up. I started to object but she cut me off. "I'll explain the rest tomorrow, I promise. You'd only fall asleep if I started talking again now," she added, sounding amused.
"Wouldn't," I argued a little fuzzily. She was right though; I was almost asleep again on my feet. I shuffled towards my bedroom, feeling Shannon's gaze on my back as I went. I opened the door.
"Good night, Watson," Shannon said from behind me.
"Good night, Holmes," I said.