Time Will Tell Page 7

  Before Marcus could speak, Antoine said, “I want my own room.”

  THE PRESENT: LIAM

  Liam was awakened by a crash, then a thud, then a string of muffled curses. He lay blinking up at the ceiling for a moment, orienting himself in space and time. The sleep had been deep. Dreamless. Rudely interrupted by a series of noises he knew all too well.

  Another slight thump. More curses. Liam couldn’t help it; he smiled in the darkness at the familiar routine.

  It happened at least once a month—Dad would get an emergency call in the middle of the night, something his deputies either couldn’t handle or didn’t feel comfortable handling. Every time, Dad would drop his gun belt while fumbling in the dark, then trip over it and collide with the nightstand. Then he would bang his head on the nightstand while bending down in the dark to pick up the belt.

  “Sweetheart,” Pop often said, “why don’t you just turn on the damn light?”

  “Because I don’t want to wake you up,” Dad would respond, and then look perplexed when Liam and Pop would laugh out loud at it.

  Liam waited for the plod of his dad’s feet down the hall past his bedroom. He glanced at his phone on its charging stand—it was a little after two in the morning. Which meant both dads would get up, with Pop insisting on brewing a thermos of coffee for Dad before he left. So, two sets of plodding feet. And then he could roll over and go back to sleep.

  As a kid, he hadn’t been able to do that. Awoken in the middle of the night, he’d leap out of bed, pull back his curtains, and stare out the window as Dad backed out of the driveway, his headlights cutting the night. Then, weeping, he’d run to his fathers’ bedroom and launch himself into their bed, snuggling close to Pop, who would kiss his forehead and stroke his hair and promise him that Dad would be okay, that he would come back to them, that everything would be all right.

  He still worried about his father. Canterstown was small, but it was the kind of town with a lot of guns, many of them bigger and more powerful than the service revolver Dad strapped to his hip. Anything could happen, especially in a town where employment was scarce while opiates and ammo were plentiful.

  But he was old enough now to know that he could do nothing about it. As a child, he’d thought that staying awake and hoping and worrying would somehow magically protect his father. That as long as he didn’t sleep, Dad would have no choice but to come home safely.

  He’d discarded that sort of magical thinking a long time ago. He worried about his father but didn’t obsess over it. There were jobs a lot more dangerous than being a cop. Twenty-five years in the sheriff’s department and his dad had drawn his weapon in the field exactly twice… and one time was just to put a bullet between the eyes of a rabid dog snarling and foaming its way across someone’s backyard.

  The second time had been to talk down a guy with a knife to his girlfriend’s throat at a local bar. As soon as Dad unholstered his weapon, the guy’s eyes had “popped like something from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon,” Dad reported, and he immediately dropped the knife and held his hands in plain sight. “I didn’t know you were serious!” the guy had complained.

  Liam listened, half-drowsy, practically back in dreamland as his dad’s feet clomped toward his door. Pop’s followed, lighter, unshod, creaking the old floorboards.

  But the footsteps didn’t march past his door. They stopped there. The next thing Liam knew, Dad threw open the door to his room and thrust out his hand, forcing an unwelcome glow into the room that made Liam groan and shield his eyes.

  “What the hell, Liam?” Dad yelled. “What the actual hell?”

  “Good… morning?” Liam asked, still hiding his eyes behind one hand. It was Dad’s cell phone, he realized. Who kept the brightness cranked up like that at night? Old people, he supposed.

  “Sweetheart…” There was Pop, coming up behind Dad, belting his bathrobe, his hair tousled and twisted up like licorice sticks. “Calm down. Let him wake up.”

  “He’s up,” Dad snarled. “He’s wide awake, aren’t you, Liam? What the hell are you and Elayah up to?”

  After a moment of blinking confusion, he lowered his hand, his eyes adjusted. “El? She’s not here.” More’s the pity.

  “Don’t screw with me, Liam.” Dad’s voice was tight, hoarse. Behind him, Pop put a hand on his shoulder, trying to calm him down.

  Liam sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Dad, seriously, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Wordless and fuming, Dad handed over the phone. Liam stifled a yawn—he could just picture Dad: Am I boring you, Liam?—and scanned it quickly. The Loco’s home page.

  Police Investigating Evidence Unearthed from Time Capsule!

  Uh-oh.

  “Do you have any idea what kind of trouble this is going to—”

  “Dad, I didn’t know. I swear.” He felt bad throwing Elayah under the bus, but it was the truth.

  Before Dad could retort, the phone vibrated in Liam’s hand, popping up a notification. “It’s the station,” he told Dad, handing the phone back.

  Dad swiped to answer and held the phone to his ear. His expression of anger melted into shock, and his rage-suffused face paled. “Are you sure?” he asked, then said, “Okay, on my way.”

  “What’s going on?” Liam asked.

  Dad hesitated on his way out the door as Pop stepped aside. “It’s Elayah,” he said after a moment. “It’s not good.”

  Liam figured he would fall asleep leaning against Pop in the waiting room at the hospital, but it never happened. His nerves hummed as though he’d mainlined cold brew for a week, and his stomach clenched as though he’d eaten nothing but five-alarm chili.

  Eventually Dad returned from wherever he’d gone to coordinate cop stuff and told them that El was out of surgery, awake, alert.

  “And believe it or not, she asked for you,” Dad told Liam, and gestured for him to follow.

  They wandered through a maze of hospital corridors, each one paler and more poorly lit than the last, until they arrived outside a room where Mr. Laird stood, waiting for them.

  They’d been closer, once. Once upon a time, Liam had spent after-school hours at El’s house, along with Marcie and Jorja. Before the separation in middle school, when their brains dictated their schedules. They were all still friends, but there’d been a disconnect. He still saw Jorja all the time because she lived next door, but even that tight relationship had its fissures—Jorja was almost as smart as El and had no reason to keep hanging out with a dummy like Liam.

  El’s dad nodded to him as they approached El’s room, as though it being almost sunrise and his daughter having nearly died, of course Liam would be here. Most natural thing in the world.

  “Uh, hello, sir.” Liam was surprised to find his voice coming out in a whisper.

  Mr. Laird offered a tight smile. His hands, Liam noticed, were shaking.

  Dad noticed, too. He touched Mr. Laird’s arm lightly, a gesture Liam had never witnessed before with a member of the public. Then again, they’d been friends in high school.

  “It’s all right, Marcus. We’re on it.”

  “No offense, but this isn’t exactly what you guys do all the time,” Mr. Laird said.

  Dad took it in stride. “True. But there’s something or other about detective work in one of the manuals back at the station. We’ll figure it out.”

  At that, Mr. Laird cracked a smile. Dad too. They clapped each other on the shoulder in the manner of men who’ve shared a past.

  “Liam,” Mr. Laird said. “She’ll be glad to see you.”

  “The only reason I’m letting you in here,” Dad said, his tone the same as when he used to tell Liam to finish his homework, “is because she’s asking for you. You’re going to keep it short, and don’t imagine for a minute that you two will be alone together.”

  Liam had never in his life spent less than a minute imagining himself and El together, but he nodded anyway.

  Dad opened the door and stood there for a momen
t, blocking Liam’s view. “Dinah, you okay?” he asked.

  Liam heard El’s mom say something he couldn’t quite make out, and then Dad stood aside to let Liam in as Mrs. Laird squeezed past. She favored Liam with a struggle of a smile on her way.

  Inside, El sat up in a hospital bed. Her hands clutched each other in her lap, her head inclined down. She didn’t move her head at all when Liam entered, but her eyes fluttered up in his direction. A bandage swaddled her throat, stark and white against her skin. Its existence enraged him in a way he hadn’t felt since second grade, when Billy Huntsman had pushed him on the playground and taunted him for not having a mother.

  “That bandage color’s all wrong for you,” he said, not quite sure where the words were coming from. “And cotton? Really? I’m thinking a tulle, maybe something in mauve, and my dads are both gay, so I know what I’m talking about.”

  From behind him, something strangled that was either a snort or a chortle from Dad.

  “And if you were trying to get attention, El, there are so many better ways. Haven’t you ever heard of using drugs? Suicide attempts? Getting pregnant? Come on. I know you’re an overachiever, but this is a little extreme, even for you.”

  The right corner of her mouth twitched ever so slightly. Not a smile. Just the promise of one to come.

  Job done.

  He approached her and opened his mouth to continue, but she spoke first.

  “Can I ask you a favor? For real?” Her voice was hoarse, strained, earned.

  “Sure.”

  “Can you just sit here and hold my hand and maybe not talk? Just for a little while?”

  Liam bit the inside of his cheek. Everything in his body—every organ, every blood vessel, every atom—cried out to quip something like, I can—the question is, will I?

  Instead, he sat down next to her and a series of neurons lit up with I am sitting on a bed! With her! and he stomped all over them like a man in flammable pajamas stamping out a speckling of red embers strewn by the wind. He took her hand, which was cool and dry.

  Dad crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorjamb, watching them without really watching them. El seemed not to realize he was even there. Her grip tightened on Liam’s hand. With every bit of strength in his body, he prevented himself from making a joke about her crushing his hand.

  After a moment, her breath hitched in her chest. She wasn’t crying. She was very specifically, very intentionally not crying.

  Her request had been very clear, so clear that even a dummy like him could understand and heed: Sit. Hold hand. Keep big fat yap shut.

  But that catch in her chest, her hand shaking so slightly.

  He disobeyed. He dropped her hand and put his arm around her shoulders. She stiffened, then leaned into him, eyes tightly shut, extruding two fat, glistening tears.

  “You’re gonna be okay,” he whispered, feeling the weight and heat of her against him.

  She nodded into him. When Liam looked up, Dad was staring at them, his expression a mingled chaos of anxiety and pride.

  ELAYAH

  Why had she asked for Liam? Because she knew his father was on the way? Because she’d heard her dad say the sheriff’s name and the first thing she’d thought of—as she emerged from the sleep-haze of anesthesia—was the boy she ached for? Because the thought of him here, when she was at her most vulnerable, was a more potent balm than the numbing gel the doctors had slathered on her throat?

  Maybe some of those. Maybe all of them.

  No one could figure out how to make the bed change position. With a gentleness she had not known he possessed, Liam helped her sit up and propped pillows behind her back. The sheriff stood nearby while her parents sat in the room’s two chairs, clutching each other’s hands.

  Liam held her hand, occasionally tightening his grip for no reason at all.

  Liam’s dad asked her if she felt like talking, and when she nodded, he told her was going to record their conversation and pressed a button on his phone’s screen.

  “Let’s start at the beginning, okay, Elayah?” The sheriff’s eyes, deep set and blue, ringed by crinkles she imagined had to be well earned, did not leave her as he spoke. And as she spoke, they never moved away.

  She told them everything she could remember: She’d texted Rachel at the Loco with the new quote. She’d watched for the update, then read the new article. She’d been surprised, but not overly so, that her name was used.

  “Of course she used—”

  “Marcus.” Mom cut Dad off before he could go any further. Dad settled into a grumbling quiet.

  Then she’d gone to bed, awakened sometime later when she felt something—

  —someone—

  Someone in her bed.

  Tears again. She didn’t want them. Didn’t know where they were coming from. Wiping at them with the heel of her hand, she sniffed back tears and then a fresh jolt of pain from her throat hit her and the tears doubled.

  With his free hand, Liam snatched a tissue from the box on the nightstand and held it out to her. She wasn’t sure yet what blowing her nose might do to her throat, which was, basically, held together with string and tape at this point, but she wiped her eyes and squeezed his hand in silent gratitude.

  “You woke up.…” Liam’s dad prodded.

  She told them how she’d felt the presence of a body behind her, and how—before she could move or react—the hand had come around her body, pressing the blade to her throat. Don’t scream.

  He’d kept his hand over her mouth. His breath in her ear, his voice lower than a whisper. His lips brushed her earlobe when he spoke again.

  Where is it? I know you.… I saw it. Where did you put it? A hush of desperation in his tone. A man seeking water in the desert. A man frantic for succor on a dead, lonely street at midnight.

  And then, just before he removed his hand, he reminded her not to scream.

  “What did you do next?” the sheriff asked.

  “I screamed,” she said very matter-of-factly.

  The sheriff grinned almost imperceptibly. Liam whispered, “Hells yeah,” under his breath.

  “I don’t think he meant to cut me,” she added. “I think he was startled when I screamed and he jerked away and the knife just…” She put a hand to her throat. Through the gauze, her numbed throat throbbed gently. The sensation of her skin parting, of the sudden spill of blood all over the front of her pajama top, all over her bed… in that instant, she’d flashed to her own death, imagining her windpipe savaged, her carotid severed. For seconds that lasted years, she’d lain on the bed, frozen in terror as the side of her neck spurted blood in syncopation to her horrified heartbeat.

  “Are you sure it was an accident?” the sheriff asked.

  Elayah shrugged. “He said something.… His voice when he said it—he sounded scared. Like he couldn’t believe he’d cut me.”

  “What did he say?”

  “It was swearing.” Her eyes flicked to the phone and the voice-recording app displayed on the screen.

  The sheriff nodded. “You don’t have to repeat it if you don’t want to. Would you recognize his voice if you heard it again?”

  “I think.”

  “What happened next?”

  Next? It had all happened simultaneously. That was how it had felt at the time, at least. Her scream. His movement. The abrupt, hot line of pain. A cry from down the hall, her dad, woken from sleep. The bed shaking, the mattress rising as the alien body clambered out…

  All of it happening in the same, single compressed instant, a nugget of hypercondensed time.

  “So he goes out the window,” the sheriff said. “Had the window been open when you went to sleep?”

  “It was a cool night,” Dad said a tad defensively. “There was no reason to have the air on.”

  “Thanks, Marcus.” Again, Liam’s dad never stopped watching Elayah, even as he spoke to Dad. “I want to be sure of something: You’re positive it was a man?”

  She n
odded. No mistaking the roughness of his hands. The timbre of his voice, even at a whisper.

  “Elayah, is there anything else you can remember? Was there a smell? Cologne? Something like that? I know you only saw his hand, but maybe he had a tattoo?”

  She shook her head. “It was too dark. I didn’t smell anything except…” She hesitated. Liam offered a supportive squeeze, and her parents gave her that go ahead look.

  “He was white. He, you know, white people smell a certain way.”

  “Elayah…” Mom groaned.

  “I’m sorry! It’s true!” It hurt her throat to speak at anything approaching normal volume, but she couldn’t help herself.

  Next to her, she imagined Liam lifting his arm to sniff his pits. Somehow, he wasn’t doing that. Maybe this was all a dream.

  If the sheriff was offended, he didn’t show it. “Anything else make you think he was white? Could you tell from his hand?”

  “I didn’t see his hand that well. It was too close to focus on. But his smell. And his voice…”

  She closed her eyes. The very last thing she wanted was to relive those stark moments, those clock ticks of trepidation, but there was something else, she thought. There was something she was missing. Something she was forget—

  “Whiskers.” It popped out, much to her own surprise. Her parents and Liam blinked at her as though she’d grown a unicorn horn.

  But Liam’s dad just clucked his tongue thoughtfully. “He had a beard.”

  “I felt it on my ear.”

  The sheriff took a moment, glancing around the room. She knew he could stay here for hours, interrogating her, but her parents were on edge. It had been hours since her emergency surgery, and the sun was already up.

  I can do this all day, she thought, channeling her inner Captain America. But she knew, at the same time, that she couldn’t. She was fading fast.

  “This is all good stuff, Elayah,” said Liam’s dad, tapping off the recording app. “Thank you. If you remember anything at all, no matter how small or insignificant it seems, tell your parents or call and tell me, okay?”