Chapter 15
A name. She finally had a name, and it was such a relief. Oliver. And now that she thought about it, really thought about it, it did make a little bit of sense. She and Oliver had never been close, not the way she was close with Roland or Thora or Kendra. Even she and Deacon played together. But Oliver... He’d come here right after Christmas her last year at The Dragon, and they’d never bonded. While sweet, he was a solitary sort. He’d sit in the same room with her and Roland as they worked on homework or watched TV, but he never interacted much with her, never joked around. When she remembered him, what she remembered was his silence, his self-imposed solitude. Lonesome even in a house full of children. At the time she thought he was merely homesick, but depression often masked itself as anger and vice versa. Was he sad when he watched her and Roland talking? Or was he seething? Oliver had been smart, very smart, always bringing home A’s from school. She could believe he was capable of planning a prank as elaborate as calling her aunt and faking her voice. It wouldn’t be hard. Cry a lot, pant and scream. Make the call quick and hang up without answering questions.
So Allison had her answer.
Mystery solved. And now she had one very good reason to stay here—she wanted to—and no reason at all to leave. She had nothing to be afraid of anymore.
So why was she still scared?
Roland, of course. She wasn’t close to being ready for another relationship. She’d been dumped all of three days ago. Staying here was a mistake. She knew it was a mistake. But it was an honest mistake because she honestly wanted to stay, especially now that she knew she was safe at her old home. At least her body was safe. When Roland smiled at her when she came back into the house on Dr. Capello’s arm, she knew her heart was in mortal peril.
For lunch Roland served comfort food—tomato soup and grilled cheese—and she let herself enjoy every bite. She was a kid again for a few minutes, safe at home with her family with nothing to worry about. Deacon skipped lunch because of work, he said. Thora, he said, desperately needed him at the glass shop.
“Can I go with you?” Allison asked him as he made a quick pass through the kitchen to steal the sandwich crust off his father’s plate.
“You want to see the shop?” Deacon asked, downing the toast in one bite.
“If no one minds,” Allison said.
“Go,” Roland said. “It’s Dad’s nap time, anyway.” He was already steering Dr. Capello out of the kitchen, his large hand on his father’s too-thin shoulder.
“See, doll?” Dr. Capello said. “That used to be my line. Never get old, Allison. Never get old.”
“I won’t, I promise,” she said, watching as Roland followed Dr. Capello up the stairs.
“Did she let you skinny-dip?” she heard Roland ask his father.
“She didn’t, damn her,” Dr. Capello said.
“Good. If you get arrested for indecent exposure, we’re leaving you in jail,” Roland said. “I love you, but nobody needs to see that.”
“You go skinny-dip,” Dr. Capello said to him. “Since I can’t.”
“I’m trying to impress Allison,” Roland said. “Cold water is no man’s friend.”
“Youth is wasted on the young.”
“And wisdom is wasted on the old since you’re clearly not using yours.”
The back-and-forth continued all the way up to the third floor. Allison’s eyes burned with unshed tears as she listened to the gruff and tender bickering between father and son. She was in danger in this house, but not from violence—unless it was the violence of her own feelings. This was a family, the one she’d wanted all her life. This was love in the rough—the coal, not the diamond. There was nothing pretty about a dying man leaning on a son who can’t save him though he’d give his right arm to do so. Allison felt warmth all the way to her core. This moment was everything she ever wanted from McQueen but never got because she’d never asked. Allison hastily wiped a tear from her cheek but it was too late. She’d been caught in the act.
“Pathetic,” said Deacon. Allison turned and saw him standing in the kitchen doorway shaking his head.
“I know,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “But they’re so cute.”
“They’re terrified,” Deacon said. “And they’re hiding it from each other.”
That brought Allison back down to earth.
“It’s so hard to believe,” she said. “He’s thin. He’s old. But he seems okay.”
“Dad’s doctor told us kidney failure was a ‘gentle’ death. That’s the word she used. Gentle. Gentle for who? The doctors? We don’t want him in pain. But if he were suffering, at least we could tell ourselves dying would be a relief for him. A release from the pain, I guess. This way it feels like he’s being stolen from us.” Deacon looked past her as if he was too raw to make eye contact. “Remind me to die fast. I don’t want anyone knowing it’s coming. Not even me. Basically I want to be murdered. And I want it to make the news. National news. Postmortem dismemberment is a bonus.”
“Which member?” Allison asked.
“Lady’s choice. I assume it’s a woman killing me. Thora, most likely.”
It seemed it wasn’t just Roland and Dr. Capello hiding their fears behind jokes.
“Well,” Allison said, “best of luck with that.”
“Thanks, sis. Ready?”
“Not quite.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the key chain can of spray he’d given her. She knew who’d hurt her. She didn’t need it anymore. That she and Deacon could joke around like old times was proof she trusted him.
He raised his eyebrow but didn’t take the spray out of her hand.
“Keep it,” he said. “A welcome home gift.”
“You’re weird, you know that, right?”
“Stop hitting on me, Allison.”
Allison and Deacon drove separately into town—he on his motorcycle and she in her rental car. She didn’t blame him for wanting to take out his bike on these last good days before the rain started up. Once it got going, it might be next summer before they saw anything but steel-gray clouds again.
Allison followed Deacon all the way north to Clark Beach, the quaint little tourist town where Dr. Capello had taken them every Saturday to visit the library, get ice cream and look through the telescopes on the beach. Though it was October and the summer tourists were long gone, the streets were still lively with locals taking advantage of one of the last good days of the year to come to the coast, walk on the white sand and watch the puffins and terns playing on the enormous rock stacks at the edge of the water. So little had changed since Allison was last there she almost expected to see a bearded man in khakis and a cardigan walking down the sidewalk with four or five or six or seven kids behind him doing impressive damage to their ice-cream cones.
Deacon turned into a tiny parking lot next to a gray-shingled, two-story house. Over the glass front door hung a painted sign that read The Glass Dragon.
“This is my baby,” Deacon said as she joined him on the sidewalk. The front window of the shop was filled entirely with one glass sculpture—a green-and-gold Chinese dragon, four feet high, five feet long and grinning with manic amphibious joy. The face was astonishingly expressive and the detail on the claws and the scales and the individual dots of color on its dappled skin took Allison’s breath away.
“You did this?” she asked Deacon.
“You like it?”
“It’s amazing.”
“You want one?”
“Might not fit in my suitcase,” she said.
“Get a bigger suitcase,” Deacon said, leading her through the front door. Before Allison could look around the shop, she heard a sound—almost a gasp, almost a squeak.
Allison saw a woman walking toward her—fiery red hair, tall and fiercely lovely. She grabbed Allison in a rough embrace that almost knocked the wind out of her.
“Good to see you again, too,” Allison said to Thora, and though the words were slightly sarcastic, Allison was surprised by how deeply she meant them. Until she’d seen Thora again, she’d forgotten how much she’d missed her sister. While Allison had worshipped Roland and adored Deacon, she’d simply loved Thora. Her silly big sister. And Thora had been silly—a quirky, kooky kid through and through. She’d called Allison by a different pet name every day—Rascal and Rainmaker, Pilgrim and Tenderfoot. “Blow on my homework, High Roller. Luck be a straight A tonight,” Thora would say as Allison dutifully blew on her assignments like they were dice. Thora did Allison’s hair for her, helped her pick out her clothes for school, helped her buy her first bra, taught her how to shave her legs but told her she never had to if she didn’t want to. Georgia O’Keeffe had been Thora’s patron saint. Allison’s first taste of feminism had come from Thora, and Allison was forever grateful she’d had someone so sweet to help her through those first harrowing days of puberty. Thora had been both a sister and a substitute mother to Allison, a crazy, wonderful woman who apparently still wore her hair in pigtails at the age of twenty-eight, and as she rocked Allison in her arms, both of them wept.
“Why are you back?” Thora whispered. “I never thought you’d come back.”
It wasn’t quite the greeting Allison expected, more stunned than happy.
“Roland asked me to,” Allison said. Thora pulled back and held her by the upper arms. Thora’s eyes were red-rimmed with tears as they searched Allison’s face.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Thora said. “When they told me you showed up last night, I just... I couldn’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” Deacon said. “That’s her. I checked.”
“You really thought you’d never see me again?” Allison asked.
Thora glanced over at Deacon and then met Allison’s eyes again.
“You know, after all that happened,” Thora said.
“All in the past,” Allison said. Dr. Capello had hinted he’d prefer she not discuss Oliver with anyone. Even Thora.
“Good,” Thora said and hugged her again.
“Come on, Al. Enough hugging. I want to show you the hot shop,” Deacon said. He waved her through the small front room and then through an industrial-looking metal door. The second she stepped through the door, Allison was hit with a blast of heat.
“Wow, that’s hot,” she said, blinking. “I think my face melted.”
“You get used to it,” Deacon said as he stripped out of his leather jacket down to his sleeveless T-shirt.
“I thought the no-sleeves thing was because you like to show off your tattoos,” Allison said. “I see now it has a practical benefit.”
“No,” Thora said, coming in behind them. “It’s to show off the tattoos.”
Allison took off her own jacket. She’d already started sweating.
“Truth,” Deacon said, and Thora rolled her eyes. “This is the hot shop. Named because it is really hot.”
“How hot?” Allison asked.
“Ninety,” Thora said, glancing at a thermometer on the wall. “Ninety in the room. About a thousand in there.”
She pointed at a large round floor-to-ceiling oven.
“A thousand degrees?” Allison repeated.
“Fahrenheit,” Deacon said. “This is the crucible.” He opened the door to the oven and Allison saw an orange glow emanating from inside. “It’s the reason our electric bill is four thousand dollars a month.”
“You’re kidding,” Allison said.
“Good thing I make bank doing this,” Deacon said as he grabbed a long metal pole and twirled it in his hands.
“What are you doing with that pole?” Allison asked, suspicious.
“This is the pipe,” he said. “Not a pole. A pipe.”
“Pipe. Got it.”
“This—” he pointed at something that looked kind of like an open flame gas grill “—is the pipe warmer. The pipe is room temperature now, and we have to get it hot so the molten glass will stick to it.”
He put the end of the pipe in the pipe warmer and turned it rapidly.
“How heavy is that thing?”
“Oh...twenty pounds or so?”
“So this is how you got the Popeye forearms,” Allison said.
“You turn a twenty-pound steel pipe for hours every day for five years and you’ll get pretty good arms, too.”
“Don’t stroke his ego,” Thora said to her. “He’s already impossible to live with. Artists. Can’t live with them. Can’t stuff their bodies in the crucible.”
Allison laughed. The Twins were still the Twins, through and through.
“So, you run the shop?” Allison asked Thora as she took a seat far away from the action. The hot shop looked more like a mad scientist’s laboratory to her than an artist’s studio. Everywhere she looked, she saw large and dangerous equipment—steel pipes and blazing ovens, blowtorches and jars upon jars of color chips in every hue of the rainbow and then some.
“Yep,” Thora said. “I do all the bookkeeping, the accounting, pay the bills, set up museum showings, arrange payment for the pieces he sells. Honestly, dealing with shipping his monsters is the hardest part of the job.”
“Does he sell a lot?” Allison asked as Thora pulled a metal chair next to her.
“A lot,” she said, nodding. “Last week we sold a pair of dragons like the one in the window to a hotel in Seattle. Sixty K.”
Allison blinked. She had to sleep with McQueen for six years to get fifty out of him.
“Holy... Guess that pays the electric bill,” Allison said.
“He pretends to be arrogant,” Thora whispered, “but it’s a cover-up for his modesty. He’s becoming very well-known as one of the foremost glass artists in the world.”
“That’s fantastic,” Allison said. “Our brother is a famous artist.”
“No autographs, please,” Deacon said, and winked at her.
Deacon finally pulled the pipe out of the warmer. “Come here, Al. I’ll show you how to sculpt glass.”
“Me?” Allison said, pointing at herself and looking around.
“You,” Deacon said. “Come on. I taught Dad, I taught Thor, I taught Ro. I can teach you.”
“Are you sure this is safe?” Allison asked as she crept from her chair over to the giant round furnace near the wall.
“Safe enough,” he said. “Long as you don’t do something actively stupid, we’ll be fine.”
“Okay, I’ll stick to passively stupid. What now?”
“Gathering glass,” he said, opening the small round hole to the crucible. As soon as that door opened, Allison felt her mascara melt and congeal. She stepped back, watching from a safe distance as Deacon inserted the pipe into the crucible and started to rotate it again. Standing up on her tiptoes she peeked in and saw a round blob of orange goo taking shape at the end of Deacon’s pipe.
“What are we making?” Allison asked him.
“You wanted a dragon, didn’t you?”
“It’ll have to be a baby dragon,” she said. “My rental car’s a compact.”
“I can make a baby dragon,” Deacon said. “Go to the jars over there and pick out a color.”
Allison eyed the jars and picked a blue halfway between sea and sky.
“Now what?” she asked.
Thora came over and took the jar from Allison’s hand, opened it and spread color chips the size of Legos on a metal table.
“Step back a little,” Deacon said as he brought the spinning orange blob of glass to the table. He dipped the ball into the color chips and they instantly melted into the blazing-hot glass.
“I’m going to do the hard part now,” Deacon said. “But you’re going to twist the tail. Ready?”
“For what?” Allison asked.
“To be impressed,” Deacon said, grinning again.
“Ready,” she said.
Deacon carried the blue blob on his pipe to a wooden stand. He grabbed giant metal tongs, dipped them into a bucket of water and before Allison could wrap her mind around his movements, he’d begun to spin the pipe and pinch the molten glass with his tongs. In seconds it seemed, the little ball turned into a vague lizard shape and then into a dragon with ears like a puppy and a scaly spine.
“That’s so bizarre,” Allison breathed. “You’re pulling glass like taffy.”
“Fun fact,” Deacon said. “Glass isn’t quite a solid or a liquid. It’s its own weird thing.”
“It doesn’t seem right that you can do that. It looks so solid,” Allison said.
“It’s already solidifying,” Deacon said. “Better make this quick.”
He dipped his tongs back into the water bucket and then passed them to her.
“What do I do?” she asked.
“Pull and twist, twist and pull,” Deacon said. “I’m talking about the glass, by the way.”
Allison grabbed the dragon’s tail with the tip of the tongs and did as Deacon asked, wincing as the glass stretched and turned and twisted.
“It’s like a piggy tail,” Thora said, kneeling at the stand to eye the creature. “He’s very cute.”
“He’s supposed to be scary,” Deacon said as he put on a large oven mitt. Using a wooden block he knocked the dragon off the end of the pipe and onto his gloved hand. “Maybe I can put some big teeth in his mouth.”
“No, I like him cute,” Allison said. And it was cute, this blue-green little beast with scales and claws and small enough to fit into the palms of her two hands. It was so cute she instinctively reached out to touch it. Thora immediately shoved Deacon so hard the dragon dropped out of his glove. When it landed on the floor, it didn’t break, but merely splatted like blue pancake batter.
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” Allison said.
“You okay?” Deacon asked, eyes wide.
“Fine, fine. Just...forgot it was still warm.”
“Warm?” Deacon said. “It’s nine-hundred degrees. You would have burned your hand off.”
“So much for not doing anything actively stupid,” Allison said, on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to break it.”
“I can make another one in five minutes,” Deacon said. “Can’t make another Allison. Good reflexes, Thor.”
Allison laughed that sort of relieved, terrified laugh of someone who’d dodged a bullet. But Thora wasn’t laughing. She grabbed Allison and hugged her tight again.
“You okay?” Thora asked.
“I’m fine. Except I feel like an idiot,” she said. “You saved me from a dragon. You should be knighted.”
“Sisters protect each other,” Thora said. “Right?”
“Right,” Allison said, trying to smile through her shaking. Thora had shoved Deacon so hard he probably had a bruise on his arm.
After the almost-tragedy, none of them were in the mood to keep playing in the hot shop. Deacon and Thora quickly finished up their paperwork while Allison poked around the front of the shop where Deacon’s premade items were for sale. Glass wind chimes, glass Christmas ornaments and her favorite—hourglasses filled with sand from Clark Beach.
She paused and studied one particularly strange glass sculpture sitting on a shelf—a skull with a large hole in the top.
“What’s this?” she asked. “You make a boo-boo, Deacon?” Allison pointed to the hole the head.
Deacon stood up and turned her way, his hand resting on Thora’s shoulder.
“Don’t ask what that is,” Deacon said. “Ask who.”
“Okay,” Allison said, happy to bite. “Who is this?”
“That’s Phineas Gage,” Deacon said. “He’s the guy who got the iron rod shot through his head in the 1800s. I think he was a railroad worker.”
“Oh, yeah,” Allison said, eyeing the quarter-sized hole in the glass skull. “I remember reading about him in high school. He survived, right?”
“Sort of,” Thora said. “He had a completely different personality after the accident. He was nice and polite and hard-working before. After the injury, he swore all the time, couldn’t hold a job very well. Dad said Phineas is the reason the science of neuroscience exists. People realized the personality is partly in the frontal lobe because of him. But don’t be impressed by Deacon’s nerdy art. He was trying to make a skeleton for Halloween. He popped a hole in that skull like a balloon, and then he pretended it was supposed to be Phineas Gage.”
“Hush, wench,” Deacon said. “I totally meant to do that.”
Allison rolled her eyes and let them get back to work.
What a picture-perfect life they led—a successful art gallery and studio in a quaint and scenic coastal town steps from the beach and half a mile from dense old-growth forest. More than that, however, Allison simply envied Deacon and Thora because of Deacon and Thora. Thora sat at her desk, Deacon hovering behind her chair as they quietly planned the weeks and months ahead—a gallery showing in Vancouver, a seminar Deacon would teach at a local college in summer. They were a brother-sister dream team, good partners making a successful business together. Even after Dr. Capello passed away and Roland returned to the monastery, Deacon and Thora would still have this shop and each other.
“Done,” Deacon said as he came out from behind Thora’s desk. “Sorry that took so long.”
“It’s fine. I love your store,” Allison said. “This place is like my dream come true.”
“You want to own a glass studio?” he asked.
“Bookstore, but close enough.”
“Why don’t you head home and check on Dad,” Thora said to Deacon as she switched off her computer. “I want to catch up with Allison.”
Deacon gave Thora a quick questioning look but then it was gone again in a flash.
“Sure,” he said. “See you two at home.” He headed out the door. A few seconds later, Allison heard his motorcycle rev up and disappear down the road. Thora locked up and they walked to Allison’s car together.
“I am sorry about almost, you know, burning my hand off,” Allison said once they were inside her car.
“We have liability insurance,” Thora said with a wave of her hand.
“Should I head straight home?” Allison asked. “Or do you need me to take some detours so you can drill me longer about Roland?”
“Ah,” Thora said, wrinkling her nose. “Busted. Well, you better take a detour.”
Allison headed south to Cape Arrow but didn’t rush.
“There’s not much to talk about,” Allison said.
“You two did sleep together, right?”
“We’re adults, and he’s already told me he plans on going back to the monastery. I know what I’m doing.” She hoped she did, anyway.
Thora nodded and stared out the car window as Allison drove.
“Was it weird to see him again?” Thora asked.
“It was,” Allison said. “Good weird. I was pretty in love with him when I was a kid.”
“Yeah, you were,” Thora said. “Made me nervous.”
“Nervous? Why?”
Thora shrugged. “You were both kids, but he was almost five years older than you. I didn’t want you getting your heart broken.”
“Not twelve anymore,” Allison said.
“True,” Thora said. “Thirteen years is a long time ago and you were what, twelve? Do you even remember us?”
“I remember the good stuff,” Allison said. “Roland reading to us and letting me turn the pages. All of us playing Mario Kart and Deacon beating the pants off us every time. And you taught me to ride a bike.”
“Right. In the school parking lot,” Thora said. “You and me and Dad. We made the boys all stay home because they made you so nervous.”
“They were too competitive,” Allison said. “I wasn’t trying to win the Tour de France.”
“What else do you remember?”
“Oh, lots of things,” Allison said. “What I don’t remember is my fall and the days before it happened.”
“You don’t remember what happened before?”
“All gone,” Allison said. “Nothing after the day, ah...you all went to the park and Roland and I stayed home. Why?” Dr. Capello had asked her the same thing, what she remembered before her fall. Same answer. Nothing.
“Just curious.”
“Do you remember the day I fell?” Allison asked, trying to keep her eye on the winding highway and watch Thora’s face at the same time.
“I remember hearing Dad scream. I ran out of the bedroom and saw Dad kneeling over you on the floor. It was terrifying.”
“You ran out of the bedroom?” Allison asked.
“Yeah, I was in there...reading. Or something.”
“You weren’t outside?”
“No, why?”
“Deacon thought he remembered you were outside with him when it happened.”
“Oh,” Thora said. She smiled but it was a brittle smile, like it was made of thin glass. “Yeah, that’s right. We were outside together.”
Allison smiled, though her stomach tightened.
“Long time ago,” Allison said. “Easy to forget things.”
They drove on a little longer and Allison stayed quiet. She wanted Thora to do the talking. Thora hated silence, always had. Eventually she’d open up again and say something.
“I’m worried about you staying with us,” Thora said.
“What? Why?” That wasn’t what Allison had been expecting, not at all.
“Dad’s dying. You don’t want to be around for that, do you? I’ve lived with him all my life and I don’t want to be around for it.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“I’m...I’m very happy to see you again,” Thora said. “I could cry I’m so happy. I thought... I was scared you were gone forever. But for your own sake, not mine, I think you’d be better off going. It’s not going to be pretty.”
“I won’t overstay my welcome, I promise.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“Then what are you worried about?” Allison asked.
“Oh,” Thora said. “The usual. Everything. Roland especially. I’m my brother’s keeper.”
“And sister’s?”
“Maybe,” Thora said. She reached over and squeezed Allison’s knee. “If you stay, I’ll want to keep you.”
“You wouldn’t be the first person to keep me.”
Thora looked at her out of the corner of her eye. “You have dirt to tell your big sissy?” Thora batted her eyelashes.
“If you want dirt, I got dirt.”
“Good dirt?”
“Sex with a horny billionaire dirt.”
Thora raised both hands and shook them in frenzied excitement.
“That’s the best kind of dirt. Head south. I don’t care if we end up in Big Sur, I gotta hear this,” Thora said as she took off her cardigan to get comfortable. It was then that Allison noticed something hanging off the belt loop of her jeans.
A little can of pepper spray.