Joseph fist-pumped, but turned to me before he left. “You’re coming to the carnival tonight, right?”
I raised an eyebrow. “What carnival?”
“There’s a fair out in Davie,” Mom said. “I thought it would be fun if we all went.”
“Be back soon,” Daniel said as he left the kitchen and left New Theories on the counter. Then popped his head back in for one final you owe me look.
I did owe him. Remembering the cat unsettled me, even though I knew John was outside, watching our house. Jude hadn’t appeared since John had been here and the missing animals could be a coincidence, but they made me nervous and—
And my mother was looking at me.
I smiled at her. Widely. “What can I do?” I asked, all enthusiasm and cheer.
“Would you mind setting the table?”
“Sure!” I began unloading the dishwasher while my mother started rummaging in the pantry.
“How’s everything going at Horizons?” she asked.
So this is why I was granted a reprieve. “It’s great!”
“What kinds of things are you doing there?”
Aside from making new enemies? “Um, in drama therapy yesterday we chose monologues from old books and then performed them.”
“Did you like it?”
I nodded seriously. “I did.”
“Really?”
“It’s fun pretending to be someone else.”
“What book did you pick?”
“Um, Jekyll and Hyde.”
“What part did you play?”
Hyde. “Jekyll.”
She put something in the oven, hiding her face. “How are things with Noah?”
Ah. That was what she really wanted to talk about. “They’re good.” I think. “The same, you know?”
“What do you guys do together?”
Aside from evading my stalker and burning dolls? “We talk.”
“About what?”
Genetic memory. “Books.” Possession. “Movies.” Jude. “People we don’t like.”
“Do you talk about what’s going on with you?”
I tried to remember the conversation I overheard between my parents, right after my psych ward stint. Mom said it was good for me to have someone who listened—
“He’s a good listener,” I said.
“Do you talk about what’s going on with him?”
What? “What do you mean?”
She turned to face me, her features neutral and her stare direct. She searched for something in my eyes, but whatever it was, she didn’t find it because she went on. “Noah’s parents are going out of town this weekend and they sent his sister to a friend’s house, so I said he could stay here.”
I nodded. “I know. . . .” I waited for the other shoe.
“I just want to make sure I don’t have to worry about you two.”
I shook my head emphatically. “Nope. No worries.”
She mixed something together in a bowl and then set it down on the counter. “How serious are you?”
“Not serious enough for you to worry,” I said with a light smile, scrambling for a way to distract her before the conversation got seriously awkward. “Hey, Mom,” I started, remembering my conversation with Daniel. “What do you know about Jungian archetypes?” Best segue ever.
She looked appropriately surprised. “Wow, I haven’t thought about that since college. . . . I could tell you more about Jacques Lacan than Carl Jung—he was more my speed, but let’s see,” she said, drawing out the word as her eyes flicked to the ceiling. “There’s the Self, I remember, and the Shadow,” she ticked them off on her fingers, “the Persona . . . I’m blanking on the other two main ones . . . There are other archetypal figures, though—the Great Mother, the Devil, the Hero . . .” Her voice trailed off for a second before her face lit up. “Oh! And the Sage and the Trickster, too—and I’m remembering something about Oedipus, but he could be creeping in from Freud? And Apollo, maybe—” she said before being interrupted by a knock on the door.
I was already on my way out of the kitchen when she asked me to see who it was.
I opened the door to find Noah standing there in a long-sleeve plaid shirt and dark jeans, with sunglasses on that masked his eyes. He looked perfectly disheveled and perfectly blank.
He only ever shows you what he wants you to see.
“Where is everyone?” he asked evenly.
I pushed Stephanie’s words away. “Mom’s in the kitchen,” I said. “And Daniel and Joseph went to go watch someone remove an alligator from a pool.”
Noah’s brows rose above the dark lenses.
“I know.”
He sighed. “I suppose I’m going to have to wait.”
“For?”
Noah glanced at the kitchen. Not a peep from my mother. He shook his head. “Fuck it.” He reached into his back pocket and handed me a piece of paper.
No. Not a piece of paper. A picture. A faded color photograph of two girls; one blond and vibrant, wearing Noah’s half-smile, and the other—
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
The other was my grandmother.
36
NOAH,” MY MOTHER SAID, EMERGING FROM THE kitchen and wiping her hands on a towel. “We missed you.”
I stuffed the picture in my back pocket as furtively as I could.
“Thank you for having me,” Noah said. “I have something for you, from my parents—”
Mom smiled and shook her head. “Totally unnecessary.”
“It’s just in the car, I’ll go get it,” Noah said. He left and I ran to my bedroom and hid the picture before my mother saw it or I spilled water on it or it spontaneously burst into flame.
When I came back, Noah and my mom were talking in the kitchen.
“So where in London did you used to visit?” he asked her as he stirred what I thought might be salad dressing.
“Oh, you know, the usual.” She shrugged from the sink. “Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, that sort of thing.”
“Your mother grew up there?”
A hundred points for Noah Shaw. I almost mimed a high five.
Mom nodded.
“What did she do?”
“She was a student,” she said, her voice clipped.
“That’s so interesting—what university?”