Part 39 (1/2)

She took another step and her foot sent a skateboard flying. Lucy watched it skid across the driveway and crash into a pole with a hanging citronella lantern. A voice crawled inside her head. Hey Hey, she heard. What do you think you're doing? What do you think you're doing?

Spirits always talked that way to her, like there were radio speakers in her brain. So when she spun around, her heart racing, Lucy already expected the white face floating in front of her. She swallowed hard. ”Are you a ghost?” she asked.

What the h.e.l.l kind of question was that? ”Not yet,” Ethan said, and he grabbed his skateboard from the little priss who had invaded his backyard. He proceeded to do the most b.i.t.c.hin' kickflip he could, just to knock her socks off. Ghost Ghost. Like he needed reminding.

He circled back to her, breathing hard. She was maybe a year younger than he was, with hair in braids and eyes so black with fear he couldn't see their real color. He could tell she was dying to touch him, to see if her hand would go right through. ”Who are you?”

”Lucy.”

”And what are you doing in my backyard, Lucy?”

She shook her head. ”Someone told me to come here.”

Ethan stepped on the back of his board, so that it flew up into his hand. Another totally cool trick. He didn't get to show off to new people, very much. ”You looking for ghosts? Because I know how to find them. My uncle showed me.”

If anything, that terrified her even more. She opened her mouth to say something, but a strangled sound came out of it. She tapped at her chest and gulped. ”Get . . . in . . .”

Ethan froze. ”Inside? You want to go inside?”

”In . . . haler . . .”

He ran off as if flames were spreading on the soles of his feet, and threw open the kitchen door. ”She can't breathe,” Ethan panted.

A woman moved past him so fast he didn't even get a chance to see her face. By the time he got into the backyard she was leaning over Lucy, holding a little tube to her mouth. ”Relax, Lucy,” the woman said, as Ethan's mother put her arm around him.

”Asthma,” she murmured.

Ethan looked at Lucy's blue skin. He figured she didn't appear all that different from one of those ghosts she'd mentioned. ”Could she . . . could she, like, die?”

”If she doesn't take her medicine in time. Or get to a doctor.”

Ethan was floored. Here was a kid, normal by any other standard, who could have croaked just like that. Like him. There were thousands-millions-of normal kids who could step off a curb and get run over by a bus, who could get caught in a river current and not come up again. You just never knew.

Lucy's mother fussed over her a little while longer. ”Come inside,” she said. ”The humidity isn't doing you any good out here.”

Lucy followed like a sheep, pa.s.sing by Ethan. ”They find me me,” she said, as if their conversation had never been interrupted at all.

Az couldn't take his eyes off her. He found himself gazing at Meredith Oliver as they sat side-by-side on a Windsor bench at the state lab in Montpelier, two strangers with cotton b.a.l.l.s in the crooks of their elbows, waiting endless hours for the results of a paternity test. ”I'm sorry,” Az said. ”It's rude of me.”

She opened her mouth like she was going to lace into him-but then shrugged. ”It must be as strange for you as it is for me.”

In many ways. First, she looked so much like Lia it was remarkable. Second, the private business of a paternity test was odd enough, but to be escorted into it by Ross Wakeman and Eli Rochert made it ever more bizarre.

Meredith seemed to know how he felt. She smiled to put him at ease-she had a dimple, but only in her left cheek, like him. ”So,” she joked. ”You come here often?”

”Once or twice a week.” Az grinned back at her, watched her eyes widen as they noticed his dimple, too. ”You can't beat the free juice and Oreos.” They settled back against the bench, a little more comfortable in their skins. ”You live in Maryland?” Az asked.

”Yes. With my daughter.”

”Daughter.” He spoke the t.i.tle with reverence; he had not known about yet another descendent.

”Lucy. She's eight.”

”Does she look like you?”

Meredith shook her head slowly. ”She looks like my mother did. Dark hair, dark eyes.”

Like me, Az thought; and as an invisible wall fell between Meredith and himself, he knew that she was thinking it too.

”Eli tells me that you're a doctor there.”

”Mr. Thompson.” She said his name kindly, but there was a steel in her that reminded him of his Lily's rebelliousness. ”With all due respect, there's a greater chance than not that we are going to leave here today strangers, just like we came in.”

”Ms. Oliver, I didn't know my daughter very well. And I never knew my daughter's daughter. I would like to hope that-if you turn out to be more than a stranger, after all- you might help me improve my track record.”

Suddenly Eli and Ross stepped out of the lab, holding a few sheets of paper out of the reach of the researcher who was spitting mad and a few paces behind them. ”I really need more than eight hours to do this properly,” he argued.

”Relax,” Eli said over his shoulder, and he handed the papers to Az.

For all Az knew, this might have been written in Navajo. The clumps of numbers, hooked together like the pairs on Noah's Ark, meant nothing to him. ”Maybe you better let him read it to us.”

But Meredith tugged it out of his grasp. ”Let me see.”

”You won't be able to-”

”She will, Az. She does this stuff for a living.”

”Does what?”

Meredith didn't look up from the column that her finger was tracing. ”Genetic diagnosis. I screen embryos so that clients can have healthier babies.”

Az remembered how, as a kid, he'd stood raw eggs on end during the autumn equinox, the one moment a year when day and night were of equal measure and time stood still. This felt the same; this was what happened when the past and the present collided. ”Just like your grandpa,” he murmured. He turned to Eli. ”Does Spencer Pike know?”

”How could he?” Meredith said. ”He's dead.”

Az laughed. ”I wish. Who told you that?”

He saw her turn, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng fever. Ross and Eli suddenly became fascinated by the pattern of the linoleum floor. And Az realized that the issue was not what Ross had told Meredith, but what he hadn't.

”I haven't thanked you,” Eli said, ”for bringing Meredith here.”

He and Ross were standing on the steps outside the State Lab, waiting for Meredith to come out of the bathroom, where she'd retreated after finding out the double whammy that Az Thompson was, scientifically, her biological great-grandfather, and that her biological grandfather was still alive. Az being Az, he'd told Ross and Eli to give her some s.p.a.ce, and he'd struck off in his old Pacer so that he wouldn't be late for work at the quarry.

”I didn't do it for you,” Ross answered.

”I know. But all the same.” Eli fanned himself with the DNA report. It was freaking hot out here; he hoped that Meredith Oliver, whoever she was, got her act together shortly.

He glanced at Ross, who was crouched on a step drawing a tic-tac-toe grid with a rock. His hair fell into his face, shading his eyes. ”I also didn't thank you for bringing yourself home,” Eli said.

Ross glanced up. ”Did Shelby get you started on that? She's a drama queen. I mean, there was none of this good-bye cruel world good-bye cruel world stuff she seemed to read into the note-” stuff she seemed to read into the note-”