Chapter 28
The next two days passed in a blur. Allison helped make the necessary phone calls. She cooked, she cleaned, she brewed pot after pot of coffee while Roland, Deacon and Thora walked around the house numb with shock, acting almost normal, which always seemed the most abnormal thing people did after a death. Every night Roland slept with her in her bed, holding her and sometimes kissing her but that was it. They didn’t make love or talk about their future together, if there was one. Nero might have fiddled while Rome burned, but not even he played in the ashes.
And there were ashes. Four glass urns that contained Dr. Capello’s last remains were delivered to the house on the morning of the third day after he’d passed away. There would be no funeral, no visitation. Dr. Capello wanted none of that. He found it maudlin and strange and religious, which he wasn’t. So the urns sat side by side by side by side on the floor of the sunroom next to the windows, waiting to be scattered. Allison caught Deacon staring at them. He stared so long and hard, Allison finally took a blanket off the couch and draped it over the urns.
“Thank you,” Deacon said, and swallowed.
“Not a problem.”
“I made them, you know.”
“Did you?” she asked.
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to make urns for your own father while he’s still alive?” Deacon asked.
“I can’t imagine.”
“I don’t recommend it.”
“You made four of them.”
“One for each of us,” he said. “But if you don’t want to—”
He smiled at her, a pained smile.
She took him in her arms and held him. He didn’t cry but that was no surprise. They were all cried out by the third day.
“You’re going to stay, aren’t you?” Deacon asked.
“You want me to?” she asked.
“Roland needs you. Sexually, I mean,” Deacon said, pulling away.
“Deacon.”
“It’s part of the healing process,” he said. “It’s cleansing. Gotta get all the fluids out.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“It’s true. At least, that’s what I keep telling Thora. She’s not buying it, either.”
Allison playfully shoved him and they laughed, the first laugh she remembered laughing in days.
“I have something for you,” Deacon said. “It’s up in my room.”
“I’m scared.”
“You should be,” he said with a wink.
He took her upstairs to his bedroom and showed her a large box sitting on the floor tied up with twine.
“For you,” he said. “Open it.”
Allison gave him a look before untying the string and opening the lid. And there nestled inside the packing peanuts she found a glass dragon. Not one glass dragon but two. Not two but three. Not three but four. She pulled all four of them one by one out of the box. They were exquisitely sculpted, with detail so intricate her eyes could barely see it all. They were all different—one was black and laughing; one was golden and pensive; one was red, chin high, proud and smiling; one was jade green and held a book in its talons. Allison recognized them at once—a dragon for each of them. And even better, they weren’t just dragons but bookends. Each one of them was situated on a heavy glass pedestal with a heavy glass back. Deacon had done this for her, made these with his own hands. She loved them in an instant.
“They’re beautiful,” she breathed, barely able to speak aloud.
“I like to make animals,” Deacon said, and she glanced up at him. He looked a little sad, a little embarrassed. “You know when I was a kid—”
“I know,” she said. “When I was a kid I stepped on every ant I saw because I thought they’d swarm and eat me. I think I had them confused with piranhas. Kids are dumb sometimes.”
Deacon gave her a grateful smile.
“You can sell the dragons in your bookstore,” Deacon said, his eyes bright and eager again. “I can make more, I mean, so you can keep these ones.”
The bookstore. Of course. What a perfect idea. So much for Pandora’s Books. She would call it the Bookstore at the End of the World. And the window would have a dragon painted on it and it would say under the name Here there be dragon books... She’d have a whole section on sea monster books, mythology and lore. And maps, too. Beautiful old maps with dragons at the edges of the known world. She’d work there all day and come home to Roland every night. What would he do? Start a children’s charity with his father’s money? They’d live at The Dragon, all four of them. Plenty of room, beautiful house, happy memories. No reason not to. And she and Roland would get married on the beach and maybe Thora and Deacon would have a private sort of ceremony so they could feel married at last, if that’s what they wanted. And they’d all be happy together and Allison would never, ever be alone again.
A nice dream.
“They’re so perfect,” she said. “I can’t even believe they’re mine.”
“I hope you don’t mind I made them without you. I was afraid you’d try to pet them when they were still a thousand degrees.”
“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”
“Reminding people of their stupid mistakes is what family’s for,” Deacon said.
Allison carefully put the dragons back in the box and carelessly threw her arms around Deacon.
“Hey, yo,” he said. “Calm down. I’m already sleeping with one sister.”
Allison laughed. “God, you’re terrible. I love you so much.”
Deacon’s arms tightened around her. She felt his chest heave with a breath.
“Dad would never hurt anybody, you know,” Deacon said. “Not on purpose. Never hurt anyone in his life. His entire life all he did was help people, help kids.”
“I know he did,” Allison said, forcing a smile. “He was a very sick man. That’s all. But thank you for the pepper spray. I didn’t think I’d have to use it.”
“I’m just glad you’re okay, sis.”
“You and me both.”
Before Allison could say anything else, Thora stuck her head in the room.
“Hey,” Thora said.
Deacon stepped back, far back, away from Allison.
“I wasn’t doing nothing,” Deacon said.
“Likely story,” Thora said. “I need Allison for a minute.”
“Girl talk?” Deacon asked.
“Yes,” Thora said. She grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, kissed him good and hard and finished with a firm, “Out.”
Deacon left smiling.
“Good to see him smiling,” Allison said.
“He’s trying to be okay,” Thora said. “He’s having a rough time with all this.”
“I’m sure he is,” Allison said, nodding.
“But we’ll get there.” Thora went and sat down on Deacon’s messy bed. The whole room was a hurricane of clothes and computers and sketchbooks and dirty dishes. Just like when he was a kid. Minus the conspicuous box of condoms on the cluttered night table. Thora caught her looking at them and smiled sadly.
“We can’t have kids,” Thora said.
“Because legally you’re siblings?” Allison asked although she knew already that wasn’t why.
Thora was wearing faded jeans and an oversize Oregon State Beavers sweatshirt that Allison guessed she’d stolen from Deacon. She looked tired and small, but not as sad as Roland, and not nearly as sad as Deacon.
“Because psychopathy has a genetic component,” Thora said. “Not that Deacon knows that’s what he is—was. I just told him I don’t want kids.”
“So you know then?” Allison asked.
Thora lifted her empty hands. “I learned a lot when I broke in and read Dad’s files. I learned what we were before Dad. I figured the rest out on my own.”
“Are you sure? I mean, about what you are?” Allison asked, finding it impossible to imagine Thora as a psychopath. And yet...
“Can’t take the risk,” Thora said. “Deacon’s biological father is as horrible as it gets. He killed Deacon’s mom.”
“I knew he’d killed someone but not Deacon’s mother.”
“Deac’s scared he’ll turn into his father one day.”
Allison thought of the pepper spray Deacon had given her. Her and Thora. He needed to protect the two women in the house. From who? From himself.
“I did some research after I found out what we were,” Thora said. “They don’t even diagnose children with psychopathy anymore. They wait until you’re eighteen. You know why?”
Allison waited for the answer.
“All adults diagnosed as psychopaths showed symptoms of it as kids,” Thora said. “But not all the kids who show those same traits turned out to be psychopaths. Basically...some kids grow out of it. We might have grown out of it. But maybe not.”
“I’m so sorry,” Allison said. And she was truly sorry. The word sorry seemed far too small here, like giving a penny to a man who’d just lost a million dollars. Thora, Deacon and Roland had been subjected to an unethical, unlawful, untried and untested surgery on their brains that had completely and inalterably changed their personalities. And it had been their father who’d done it to them.
“You do want kids, don’t you?” Allison could tell from the aching in her eyes.
Thora whispered a tortured, “Yes.”
“There’s always adoption,” Allison said.
Thora smiled. “True. I’d like that. Maybe someday. But in case you were planning on kids with Roland, you should know—”
“I know,” Allison said. “He told me.”
“Good.” Thora rubbed her face and pushed her hair back off her forehead. She looked exhausted. Allison wanted to send her to bed right that second but it seemed Thora was intent on getting everything off her chest.
“Deacon started having nightmares when he was twelve,” Thora said. “Not nightmares, night terrors. He’d dream about animals attacking him, and he’d wake up crying.”
Allison shuddered in sympathy.
“He didn’t want to tell anyone but I got him to tell me. You know, since I’m his ‘twin.’ After everyone went to bed, I’d go to his room to sleep with him. He slept better when I was with him. If he woke up crying, I’d comfort him. One night he told me he was scared it wasn’t the slug that did it.”
“The slug?”
Thora smiled. “That’s what Deacon called the brain tumor Dad told him he had. Apparently Dad said that the tumor looked kind of like a slug. Deacon blamed it for all the horrible things he’d done. But he was scared that maybe it wasn’t the slug, he said. That’s why I...why eventually I wanted to figure out if there was something wrong with him I didn’t know about.”
“That’s why you broke into Dad’s medical files?” Allison asked.
“That’s why,” Thora said. “And that’s when I found this big file called the Ragdoll Project. I read it front to back. Didn’t understand a tenth of it, but I understood enough to figure out that none of us ever had anything wrong with us. Not nothing. But you know what I mean. No tumors, no lesions, no cysts.”
Allison said nothing.
“Dad told me, and I’d told myself, that all the bad things I’d done, the lies I’d told, that it wasn’t really my fault, that it was this thing in my brain,” Thora said. “It was my one comfort. But it wasn’t a thing. It was all me.”
“You were a kid, Thora. A little kid.”
“I know,” she said. “But it’s still...” She shook her head. “Imagine being smart and being proud you’re smart, and then finding out you’re only smart because a doctor put a microchip in your brain when you were seven. Imagine thinking you’re a decent person and then finding out the only reason you’re not a monster is because a doctor screwed with the wiring in your head?”
“I can’t imagine,” Allison said.
“Pretend you just found out that the only reason Ro loves you is because someone rewired his brain. It is, you know. If he really was as bad as that file said, then he would never have been capable of real love. How does that feel?”
“Not great,” Allison admitted. “But it wasn’t his fault he was born...” What did she even call it? Born evil? Born wrong? Born broken? Born sick? She left it at that. It wasn’t Roland’s fault he was born, the end.
“Maybe your father was right,” Allison said. “Maybe what we call evil is just a disease. Someone had to try to cure it, right?”
“Maybe,” Thora said, but it didn’t sound as if she believed that. “I never told Deac what I found in the file. I never told Ro. I think they both still believe what Dad told them. They need to believe it. I know how horrible it was for me to find out I wasn’t who I thought I was.”
“It must be hard keeping that secret,” Allison said.
“It’s not easy being the only kid in the family who knows there’s no Santa Claus,” Thora said.
“Am I supposed to lie to his face if he asks me what I know?”
Thora turned away and gazed out the window at the long winding driveway that had brought each of them here once long ago.
“Sometimes,” Thora began, “on clear nights, Roland will stand on the beach and look at the stars, and it’s like he’s looking to see if God’s up there. When he does that, I love him so hard it hurts. I’m scared one day he’s going to look up and see that nobody’s looking back.” Thora met Allison’s eyes. “If you knew no one was looking back, would you tell him? Or would you let him keep looking?”
“Isn’t it a waste of time to keep looking if no one is up there?” Allison asked.
“The stars are up there,” Thora said.
“Tell me one thing,” Allison said. “Did Dad do the right thing with you all?”
“Oh...who knows? He made us good,” Thora said. “He didn’t make us wise. I have no idea if it was right or wrong, good or evil. I know it would be considered unethical, the way he went about it. But I ask myself this—would I want to undo what he did?”
“No?”
“Never in a million years. I don’t remember much about my life before Dad, but I do remember...” Her voice trailed off. She looked away out the window. A tear escaped her eye and all the way down her face where it fell off and landed on her thigh. “I remember enough.”
Allison didn’t ask for details. Thora deserved some privacy, even some secrets.
“I know there were others,” Thora said. “I know he hurt them when he was trying to help them. But I know Dad loved us. To take the risks he took to help us, that’s love, right?”
“It’s a kind of love,” Allison said. “Or an attempt at it, anyway.”
“When you love someone, you sometimes make choices you don’t want to make. You do things to help them that you wish you didn’t have to do,” Thora said. She had been looking at the floor but she lifted her head and met Allison’s eyes.
Allison knew then who it was who’d called her aunt that day.
“I had a feeling it was you,” Allison said. “Though I could never guess why.”
“I saw you lying there unconscious,” Thora said with a shaking voice. “I saw Dad over you, panicking. And I watched the ambulance take you away. You looked so helpless. You looked so little. I knew what Dad had done to us and I thought... I was scared.”
“You were scared he was going to do it to me, too?” Allison asked. “The operation?”
“He lied to people so he could do it to us. What if he was lying about you falling down the stairs so he could experiment on you? When Deacon ran to find Kendra and tell her what had happened, I called your aunt. I pretended I was you. I didn’t know what else to do. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Allison said. “Sisters protect each other.”
“They do.” Thora nodded, her face contorting as if she was forcing herself not to collapse into her grief. “But I was wrong to make you scared of Roland. I was so wrong about him. I love him so much. And you, I loved you and I still do. Can you love me?”
“Yes, I can love you. I can love you forever,” Allison said. She took Thora into her arms and they wept together, held each other, shook and cried together.
Oh, yes, Allison could love Thora. Thora who had called her aunt to protect her all those years ago. Deacon who had given her the pepper spray to protect herself. And Roland who’d taken an ax to the attic door when he’d heard her scream. Dr. Capello, their “savior,” had tried to kill her and the killers had saved her. Dr. Capello hadn’t just made his children good. He’d made them even better than him.
“Thank you,” Thora said, pulling away to wipe her face.
“No problem.” Allison ran her fingers through Thora’s wild hair, taming it. Like sisters do.
“I’ll have to tell them,” she said, shrugging. “Deac and Ro. They need to know it was me who called your aunt.”
“I called my aunt,” Allison said. “It was me. I called her because I was freaked out after Roland and I fooled around on the beach. I’d forgotten it was me because of my head injury. I was so upset about Roland, crying so hard that I tripped. That’s what we tell them.”
“Is that what happened that day? You were crying and you tripped? Or did Dad do something to you?”
Thora knew her father had lied to them about what they were. She knew he lied about the operations he’d performed on them. She even knew he’d harmed other children with his experiment. But Thora didn’t know what he’d done to her sister up in that attic.
And Allison wasn’t going to tell her.
“He caught me going through his files. I got scared and ran off. I fell down the stairs. But he didn’t push me. No one pushed me. If your dad acted cagey about it, though, that’s why. Because I’d run from him, and he knew I knew about you all.”
“So he didn’t...he didn’t do anything to you?”
“No,” Allison said. “Except catch me in his files.”
Thora took a shuddering breath and, once again, she seemed ready to weep. This time, however, it was tears of relief. It hadn’t been easy to lie to Thora, but she was glad she did it.
“I was worried,” Thora said in a hollow voice. “I was... I don’t think I could forgive him if he’d done something to you.”
“Don’t be worried. Not about that.”
Thora took another long shuddering breath. A few seconds passed and she pasted on a smile. Thora gently tapped the large cardboard box on the floor with her bare toes.
“So...you liked your dragons Deacon made you?” Thora asked.
“Loved them. They’re perfect.”
“He worked so hard on them. I’m glad you love them. He told me he was trying to make up for all the Christmases and birthdays you missed here.”
“Deacon’s so sweet,” Allison said. “My own personal dragons.”
“You know, in China, dragons are considered lucky, not scary,” Thora said. “And they bring rain. You’re either going to have a ton of luck in your life or a ton of rain now.”
“I’ll be happy with either,” Allison said.
“You won’t tell them, will you?” Thora asked suddenly, panic in her eyes. “Everything I mean? About what they really are? About the other kids?”
It was a hard thing Thora asked of her. Dr. Capello had asked her the very same thing. To keep the secret would break her heart, Allison knew. To lie and lie to the man she loved... And yet to tell him the truth about his father, what he’d done to them, what he’d done to Kendra and Antonio and Oliver, and what he’d done to her, would hurt even more. It wasn’t fair. As a kid she’d thought evil people had glowing red eyes and sinister smiles. She didn’t want to believe that evil could look like a kindly old man with soft brown eyes and a snowy white beard who gave the best hugs in the world.
Allison started to answer, “I don’t know,” but before she could say it, a soft knock sounded on the door.
“Come in,” Thora said. It was Roland. He stood, as he usually did, right on the threshold, not quite in, not quite out. His jaw was set and his lips were tight.
“What’s up?” Thora said.
“It’s time,” Roland said. “If we’re going to do it today, we need to go now. Sun’s almost gone and weather says the temperature is dropping tomorrow.”
Thora climbed off the bed.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll get Deacon. You’re with us, right?” Thora said to Allison.
“For what?” Allison asked.
“The ashes,” Roland said. “You’ll come with us to spread them?”
The man had tried to kill her and now his mortal remains sat in jars in the sunroom. Time to empty the jars. Time to let it all go for good.
“Yes,” Allison said. “I’m coming.”