Chapter Sixteen: Trauma
Heather showed me into her guest room. She placed my bag on the bed, put the glass of water on the night stand then turned and hugged me.
"Stay as long as you want. Forever if needs be." She smiled.
"Thanks." I said, trying to smile in return, but the muscles in my face didn't appear to be working. My head was fuzzy and my verbal output had been reduced to words that contained only one or two syllables. I seemed incapable of anything more right now. Heather had insisted that I stay at her house tonight and I was thankful of that.
I sat down on the bed, still too numb to take in all that had happened in the last few hours. There was nothing I could do and Charlie hadn't wanted me to look at what had been done to my house. The blood was repulsive, the words 'leech lover' were confusing at best; but that were not the source of my real distress. That had come when I'd discovered the source of the blood: Lyra. There was a stake through her heart, with another message written on a piece of paper stuck to it.
Mitchell does this.
How they, whoever 'they' were, could do that to a little cat, I could not even begin to comprehend. The thing about Daniel spilling blood I got, but Lyra? Of everything to go for in my life, my cat! How could they?
I'd spent the last hour and a half in Charlie's kitchen with Heather. She'd made Camomile tea, sat with me and listened to the few half-finished sentences that I'd managed to utter. The screech of tyres outside alerted us to someone's arrival and Jake and Ness bounded through the door. Gone were the happy, smiling faces of earlier. Ness looked almost panic-stricken. Both she and Jake had changed clothes, both of them had swapped their wedding attire for cut offs, t-shirts and tennis shoes. As Ness came into the kitchen her cell phone rang and seeing who it was she walked quickly back out of the kitchen and into the living room. Jake pulled out a chair, turned it around and sat down straddling it.
"I'm so sorry." He said. "I can't believe what they did to your cat."
"I don't think it's a good idea that you were over there, you could've contaminated the crime scene." Heather was sharp with him.
"We didn't go in," said Jake. "Charlie was in the hallway."
"How long does it take to arrange a clean up?" She continued, sounding exasperated.
"I don't know, it's Saturday night, I guess they're not exactly over-staffed."
"Stephanie's going to stay with me until it's done."
"That's very kind of you." He said.
"It's the least I can do. Why are you here anyway?" Heather was almost accusatory. "Why did you and Ness have to come all the way down here? You're not Police officers, what can you do?" Jake looked distinctly uncomfortable. "You know what I think?" Heather went on. "I think you know darn well what's going on here. Stephanie's house has been attacked twice. I may not have been here long, but I did my research before I came and that's unprecedented in this town. There's virtually no crime. Someone slashed her tyres, threw a rock through her window and now this? What next? I think you're here to make sure that the Police don't get involved with it."
"Heather, I…" I tailed off. This wasn't to do with Jake and what could I say about things with Daniel, without betraying him?
"Is this to do with the guy who was glaring at Stephanie at the wedding? What was his name?" Heather looked at me.
"Korvin." I replied.
"He was there?" Questioned Jake. "I didn't see him."
"Yes, he was there and glaring at Stephanie. He wants something he can't have. You're the leader of that tribe Mr Black, what is it? What is it that I see in your eyes and the eyes of so many of your people down there? Is that what he wants and can't have? Do you have some big secret that he's jealous of and for some reason, he's taking it out on Stephanie?"
"I don't know what you mean. There's no big secret."
"Don't give me that Jake; there is something, I can see it in your eyes and you owe it to Stephanie to tell her. You don't kill someone's cat and write on their walls in its blood for nothing." Heather was getting agitated.
"Jake?" Ness walked back into the kitchen.
"And what's your part in all this, Ness? It's gone midnight, who's phoning you at this hour? You're having a conversation so secret that you have to go to the other end of the house not to be heard?"
"Heather, don't…" I said weakly. "This is nothing to do with Ness and it's nothing to do with Jake."
"Sorry, but I don't buy that." Heather folded her arms and looked up at Ness. "Your eyes tell me many things Vanessa Masen. Last summer, they told me how physically and emotionally lost you were. These days, I usually see how much you're in love with Jake. But right now, I see eyes that want to kill."
"Well that's understandable; my friend's house had just been desecrated."
"But she's just your teacher, your next door neighbour. Your eyes tell me that this much more personal than those relationships. Is there family involved here?"
Ness was suddenly very serious. "Heather, you know Edward's my only family. He's miles away and he's not even from here; so how can this be any more personal than simply wanting to care for a friend?"
"Oh, it is Ness. That Edward is miles away and not from here is the truth. But he's not your only family, I can see it. The new picture Charlie was passing around of Renesmee earlier, proves to me that he's not. I don't know why you're parading Edward about as your only family, when your family is right here in Forks."
"I'm not parading Edward about!" Ness snapped.
"Well, maybe not, but that's the story isn't it? That you're an orphan and the authorities tracked Edward down when your parents died? True, you do have a striking resemblance to him, but perhaps you're missing what others can see in you? Jake can see it, but maybe Jake's in on it?" Heather's gaze was steady on Ness. "Bella has Charlie's eyes; unsurprisingly Renesmee has Charlie's eyes. But what's more surprising is that you have Charlie's eyes. Don't tell me that you're not in some way related to Charlie, because your eyes are a dead giveaway. Don't lie to me anymore Ness. There's enough being kept hidden here without us arguing over the proof of genetics." There was a very awkward silence. "I'm sure in time you'll tell me." She added.
"There's nothing to tell, shall I get my birth certificate for you?"
"Your birth certificate will only tell me what you want it to tell me. I know I've hit on the truth, but the rest will keep for another day. Right now we're here to support Stephanie. What's more important to me at this moment than who your parents are; is why, off the back of that phone call, you want to go out and kill people? What makes this all so personal to you? Do you know this Korvin?"
"Of course I do, he's in my grade; or was, before he bailed. It's no secret that I don't like him, there are few that do."
"He's not worth it, Ness." I whispered.
"OK." Accepted Heather. "So you want to kill this Korvin? Hmm… Odd."
"What?" Ness sounded indignant.
"Your eyes don't tell me that. Nice sidestep, Ness."
"I don't know what you mean? If Silversmith did this, then sure I want to kill him."
"So, perhaps the link isn't there. Perhaps the link is with Daniel."
"Are you going to tell me that I want to kill Daniel, or that my eyes are the same as his? Because I don't know how that can be possible." Ness's tone was sarcastic.
"I don't know," said Heather. "I haven't seen Daniel's eyes in their real state, so I can't tell for sure."
Ness scoffed. "Of course you have. What do you mean?" Even I looked at Heather.
"He wears contacts."
"Huh? Plenty of people wear contacts." Interjected Jake. My Dad does."
"Brown ones?"
"So he's wearing brown contacts, what's the big deal?" Jake shrugged.
"He's hiding something."
"He's hiding way more than the colour of his eyes." I said. "Please don't pry into Daniel's life!" I implored. "So much is at stake."
"So why's Ness taking all this so personally?" Heather continued and suddenly it was as if she was a dog that just would not let go of the bone.
"Stop it! I don't care! I don't care about anybody's secret life except Daniel's and now I've said too much in even admitting there's something to hide. All I care is about protecting him. He's not here to defend himself or tell us what the big secret is. The only questions I want answers to right now are to know who killed Lyra and who the leech is that I'm supposed to love. Daniel is many things but a leech is not one of them. He gives as much as he can!" I was up on my feet and pushing past Ness and Jake, out of the kitchen, out of the house and into the cool night air.
I woke to find bright sunshine streaming through the slats of the blinds. There was a brief moment of blankness, a vacuum, before the reality of yesterday rushed back in to fill the void. My head filled with a heady cocktail of marriage, death, secrecy and blood. The enormity of it made me wince and an ache set up within me. My cell was flashing and I grabbed it from the night stand, finding a cheery text message from Daniel. Madison was making good progress and he hoped to be back in a few days' time. I read the message twice, not to confirm what he'd said, but to confirm what I was feeling inside. The urge to run away was back and it was stronger now. Whoever these people were knew of my decision to choose Daniel over Mike and they were back trying to warn me off. They may have succeeded this time.
I went downstairs. I could hear Heather talking animatedly to someone. She was stood by the living room window and she was on the phone.
"OK, I'll see you after the service, then." She laughed girlishly. "I'll look forward to it. See you later, Bye!" She pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at it incredulously as she pushed the button to end the call. She turned to face me, her eyes shining as if she were lit from within by her own personal sun. "You'll never guess who that was."
I smiled. "No, probably not."
"That was Kael."
"Sorry…?" The name meant nothing to me.
"Oh, didn't I mention his name last night? The man I wanted to marry when I was eighteen!"
"Oh, him." I was still slightly sleepy.
"He's passing through and wants to stop by and say hello."
My brow furrowed. "Passing through? How do you pass through a peninsula?"
She shook her head. "I don't know; I don't really care for that matter. All I care about is the fact that I'm going to see him again, for the first time in… Oh my goodness, twenty five years. Where has the time gone?" He hand fluttered to her hair. "I'd better do something with this." She crossed the living room back into the hallway.
"Heather? What about Charlie?"
She turned back to face me. "I'm a realist. I know that he's not here for anything more than to say hello, but…" She sighed. "As I said last night, when I read his letters or his emails, I'm eighteen and back in love with him again."
"But I thought you loved Charlie?"
There was a flicker of uncertainty on her face. "It looks like Charlie and I have some talking to do. I do love him, but I don't think this is going anywhere until he can be a whole lot more honest with me."
"What do you think it is?"
"Worst case scenario? Charlie has another daughter that he finds it difficult to admit to having. I think Ness is the product of something between him and Edward's mother. His marriage fell apart very soon after Bella was born and it's not out of the bounds of possibility that there was someone after that."
"But Edward? Of all people? He ends up marrying his half-sister's half-sister? I know they say it's a small world, but that's ridiculous. It sounds like a plot line from one of those awful daytime shows."
"How do you explain Ness's eyes then? They're Charlie's, no doubt about that."
"But why wouldn't he admit to being Ness's father? Surely there's no shame in that these days?"
"This is a small town. Some people's attitudes are every bit as provincial as the place is. There could be a sizeable number of people who wouldn't take kindly to the Police Chief having a daughter out of marriage, even one as lovely as Ness." Heather sighed. "And whatever the heck all this is, I do like Ness very much. I love Charlie even more."
"I hope you can work it through, you guys seem perfect for each other." I noticed that Heather seemed worried. "What's wrong?"
"Kael always gets in touch just before something big happens in my life: My eighteenth birthday, Mom's death, becoming a Pastor, Dad's death. All the significant events of my life have happened with him showing up right before them."
"Perhaps Charlie's going to tell you everything and propose?"
"Or perhaps Charlie's going to tell me everything and it's all going to fall apart because I can't deal with it."
"But if it's what you fear the most, that Charlie has two daughters, then you're prepared for that already. And that's hardly going to be a deal-breaker, it's not like infidelity."
"No, but I'm worried why Kael's coming to see me. He usually writes or emails, he never stops by. I haven't seen him since Dad died, so whatever it is, I'm worried that it's big."
"Can you get much bigger than marriage?"
"Death? What if it's another death? What if it's Charlie?"
"I say we stick with the marriage thing." I tried to be reassuring, but she had voiced my own unspoken fear as soon as she'd mentioned the list of life events.
Heather went to the mirror. "Oh look at me; I'm even more of a mess now. I was excited before and now I'm just anxious. Pull it together Scott!" She chided. "I have a service to lead and oh! I'm late! Look, help yourself to whatever there is. I have something in the freezer we can have for lunch. I'll see you later. Possibly; if I can wing it, with Kael in tow. Actually, forget the anxious thing; I can't wait to see how he turned out." She grinned. "I hope there's hint of distinguished grey in there; I do like that in a man."
"Perhaps you should take Kleenex? You know drool is never attractive." I smirked.
She grabbed a couple from the box. "Good thinking! I'll see you later." And with that Heather swept out of the house to her morning service.
I breakfasted and returned Daniel's text with a brief note that I was glad to hear that Madison was coming along well. I said nothing of what had happened; mainly because I honestly didn't know where to start with it. Admitting to it was giving it more houseroom in my life than I wanted to have. Towards noon Charlie stopped by, to say that they'd done all the forensic work and that they were starting the clean-up. I didn't really have much else to say. He being potentially Ness's father was neither here nor there in life's great tapestry. Whatever was going on, it was most definitely not something for me to interfere with and certainly not before he and Heather had had chance to talk about it. Plus, there was Ness to consider as well. I hadn't been in any state to stop Heather last night, but unsettling Ness right before her finals, wasn't going to send her in to her last two weeks of school fully able to concentrate. I hoped she was OK this morning.
I thought about her and how easy her relationship had been with Charlie last night. If she was worried about her parentage, it'd never shown on her face or in her behaviour, although she did go off the rails last summer and ran off. But who wouldn't when your best friend got raped and it was also the anniversary of your parents' death – if they were her parents. Perhaps she did know that Charlie was her father, but kept up the charade to keep everyone in the town happy. Ness's world had been rocked enough by the death of Jess at Christmas. That was enough for anyone to have to deal with, without the rest of us poking our noses into things that were none of our concern.
I sensed that Charlie was waiting around for Heather to arrive back. I told him she was meeting someone after the service, an old friend who'd called that morning. I didn't mention who it was and Charlie didn't ask. He left a little while later but it was clear he had things to say. Maybe Heather confronting Ness had brought things to a head?
Noon came and went and so did the early afternoon. I went to the freezer and tried to guess what Heather had thought we'd have for lunch. There was a lasagne and I took a stab that that was it. I took it out, put it in the microwave and started to defrost it. The afternoon ticked by and at every moment I expected Heather to come bursting through the door with the handsome man from her youth. But she didn't. When she finally arrived back, it was not the Heather I was expecting.
She was terrified. She had wild eyes and had been crying. I met her in the hallway. "It didn't go well?" I asked. "Did he give you some bad news?" Perhaps he was the one that was dying? Heather didn't reply. "What is it?" I could see her trying to form words but nothing came out. "Come and sit down." I guided her over to her sofa and sat her down. I poured her some coffee and placed it on the table in front of her and sat down next to her. Her fingers were tightly clasped together and the bones of her knuckles stood out from the tension she was under. She said nothing for an age. Her eyes stared at the wall ahead or occasionally back at me. They were full of tears and fear.
"Well, that serves me right for poking about in other people's secrets." She finally whispered.
"What do you mean?"
Heather turned to face me. "I need to share this with somebody or else my head will explode. I don't like bottling things up, it causes damage and this one's going to tear me apart if I don't say something."
"Don't you think you should share this with Charlie?"
"No! It'll scare him away!" Tears started to cascade down her cheeks.
"Is it that bad?"
"It's off the scale of bad; it's beyond Neptune in magnitude."
"What is it, what did he say?" I was shaking now, this was clearly going to pale my own secrets into insignificance, Heather wasn't a person to overreact; she was Miss Level-Headed.
Heather fixed me with a look. "Can I trust you to keep this absolutely to yourself?"
"Yes."
"You can't tell another soul, absolutely no one."
"I promise."
"He looked the same."
That didn't compute. I was expecting at least the disclosure that he was an axe murderer come to confess his crimes. "What?" I asked, perplexed.
"He looked the same, he looked exactly the same."
"Wearing well?"
"No exactly the same; like, identical to when I was eighteen. I'm forty three, I have greying hair, I have wrinkles and I have a stomach that looks like a deflated balloon. He wasn't a day over nineteen."
"He's not aged?"
"Not a day."
"How?" I was all ears.
Heather blew out her cheeks. "OK, there are two more statements I'm going to make and then I might have to quit my job and leave town. I don't know if I can cope with this." She got up and went over to her bookshelf. From her books she selected a small paperback. "He'd tried to tell me years ago and was hoping I'd put together the clues. Well, I wasn't paying attention and I couldn't see all the dots of the picture, because I hadn't seen him." That statement resonated with me. She sat back down, flicked to the index, looked something up and went to the right page. She snickered, put her finger in the page and shut it again. Its title was away from me, I couldn't see what the book was. "You like history don't you?"
"Yes."
"Then it's fortunate that you're the one here today. Of all the people I know, you're the one best placed to appreciate the timescale involved in this."
"So he's not nineteen then?"
"No. He's many thousands of years old."
"Thousands? So, he's not human then?" She didn't reply verbally, she just shook her head. "What is he?"
"Guess. Somebody who turns up at the really important points in your life, the really stressful points? What kind of person might do that?"
"A guardian angel? He's an angel? You believe him?"
"He looks exactly like he did at nineteen; that alone kind of confirms he's telling the truth. But there's more proof, which I'll get to in a second. But he's no ordinary angel. Do you know much about the Bible?" I shook my head. "Well, back in Genesis and in a couple of other places, it mentions angels that fell from heaven. There was a rebellion against God and he's one of those who fell. He's a chief angel, perhaps you might say a captain and he's one of twenty one captains that fell. This is my pitiful human brain trying to explain it. Anyway, he's in this book which he gave me, along with some other books when I became a Pastor. I read it but I never gave it much thought. But this is him." She opened the book and handed it to me. At the top of the page the chapter heading was 'Kael'. "He was right there under my nose all the time. He was hoping I'd spot it, ask him about it and I never did."
"So, you have a guardian angel?"
"Oh." She sighed. "There's more."
"More?"
"Yes. As if an angel isn't going to mess with your head enough. Him handing you a note from your own mother is guaranteed to screw it right up. This is the part I'm struggling with the most." She pulled out of her pocket a yellowing envelope and placed it on her lap. I guessed at where this was going.
"Is this a letter from your Mom that tells you that you're the daughter of an angel?"
She nodded. "Thank you, I didn't think I could say it out loud." The pair of us were silent for the longest time. "It feels like everything I knew about my life has been shaken to its very foundations."
"But you're still you. You're still Heather Scott, whoever your parents are. Has he gone now or is he staying around?"
"He's staying around. I have his number to call him if I want to talk. Angels have cell phones now. Who knew?"
"Do you want to talk to him?"
"Not now, but in time I will. I already have questions that I didn't ask today. I do know that I'm his only child alive at the present time; but I have ancestral half-brothers and sisters going back to forever. That's something to ask about."
"Do you look like him?"
"Yes, I do. I have his eyes, how appropriate. I get my ability to know things about people from him, albeit watered down from what he can do. He knew what I was thinking and could answer my questions before I'd spoken them."
"That's quite freaky. And does he have wings?"
"I didn't get around to asking. After the revelation that he was my father, my head sort of, lost it. Oh no!"
"What?"
"The time! I have Susie Taylor coming around at five."
It was nearly that now. "Why don't you put her off for another day? I think you've had a big enough shock to be justified in cancelling an appointment. Do you want me to call and say you're not well?"
"No, Susie's coping with enough without me adding to her worries. She needs to talk about things to help her cope with them."
"And you need to talk about things too."
"We'll talk later, OK? Has there been any word on when your house will be ready?"
"No, Charlie stopped by earlier and said they were starting the clean-up. I can't think it'll be tonight."
Heather sighed heavily. "Oh Charlie…" She tailed off. "What a mess. And to think, there I was trying to pry some big secret out of Ness and all the time I have one of my own."
"Do you need to tell him? Would it make any difference if you didn't?"
"I have to tell him, I can't live in emotional turmoil. I see the damage it does in other people's lives. But I can't see Charlie easily getting his head around having an angel as a prospective father-in-law."
"He could be fine with it. He's a cop; perhaps he's good with weird?"
"Charlie likes his beer in cans, his baseball on the TV and pizza arriving in boxes from Donatello's. Angels are fiction. Angels are pretty little girls on Christmas tree. They're not guys wearing jeans and Vans."
"He was wearing jeans and Vans?"
"Yeah? What did you expect him to be wearing?"
"A… white loin cloth?" I smirked. "I'm sorry. It's just what you expect angels to wear."
Heather chuckled. "I guess we need to readjust our realities. It's good to lighten the mood. I suppose it would be like meeting a vampire and getting all put out because he wasn't wearing a black cloak and a red shirt."
"There'd be a lot more screaming and running away involved."
"Well, I never noticed I had an angel around me for twenty five years, so maybe there are vampires walking around incognito?"
"I think we'd know if someone was a vampire. Wouldn't they be nocturnal? Never coming out during the day and keeping their mouths closed, so you couldn't see their teeth?"
"Who knows? Anyway, Susie will be here in a minute. I'll just grab a sandwich and try not to spend the time freaking out about what I know."
Heather went into the kitchen and I followed her in there. "So Kael, your… Dad? He's still quite good-looking then?"
She looked at me quite surprised and a little embarrassed. "You know how I was feeling before I left this morning. I told you I wanted to marry him when I was eighteen. Obviously, now I know why that was never going to happen. But he's still nineteen and still devastatingly gorgeous; as you'd expect an angel to be."
"So what does he look like?"
"Tall, very slim. His hair's sort of mousey; I get my blonde hair from Mom. His is neither blonde nor brown; it's sort of in between. He has blue eyes, a flawless complexion and looks exactly like the kind of guy you see in clothing catalogues. He's very striking"
"So are you telling me that your Dad could pass for your son?"
"Yes. It's completely tragic." The pair of us laughed.
"You couldn't introduce me could you?"
"You are not going out with him." Heather's eyes were wide with amusement.
"I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking that he's more of a walking history book. I'd like to talk to him purely out of professional interest." I grinned.
"Yes, and that's the smile of a woman who knows how a guy's pants undo."
"I'm shocked Pastor! Ooh, does this mean you have a hotline to God? Aren't you his like granddaughter or something, then?"
"God does not have Granddaughters." Heather's expression was now serious "Kael's a fallen angel. He not part of that anymore. His lot is to wander the earth for eternity and he has his own baggage to deal with." Heather resumed her food preparation and quickly threw together a sandwich. A knock on the front door alerted us to Susie's arrival.
"I'll let her in." I said. "And I'll make myself scarce." I added.
I opened the door to the sad face of Susie Taylor. It had been five months since Jess's death and by the look of it; time was not easing her pain.
I went back upstairs and closed the bedroom door behind me. In the time I'd been downstairs there'd been two more text messages. One from Mike saying that he'd heard what had happened and asked if I needed his help at all. I replied that I was fine and that I'd see him tomorrow. There was another message from Daniel. Compared to what Heather was going through, whatever Daniel's revelation turned out to be was going to be minor in comparison. But still, nobody had ever tried to stop Kael from getting in touch with or visiting his daughter. Daniel wasn't going to turn out to be an angel, much as I'd thought that right at the beginning. Whatever Daniel was mixed up in, it was something horrible. Away from him I had clarity and could see that I didn't want any part of it. Why did I blow so hot and cold around him? One minute I wanted him and the next I wanted to be away from him. I couldn't make up my mind which way to turn.