Matters of Circumstance Page 9

  “I told you, I’ve never had them meet anybody before. I didn’t know how they would be,” she said, shifting to start going forward. “They love you, too, if you hadn’t already noticed. Even my mom, and she never likes anybody.”

  There was a small pause before he asked, “Are you okay?”

  Farrah slowed at a stop sign and turned left. “I guess I was expecting some movie-like scene or something, because I’m just shocked at how easy this was, even though I knew there was no reason for anything to go wrong. Does that make any sense?”

  He laughed softly and balanced an ankle on his knee. “Strangely enough, I know exactly what you’re saying. I was only pretending to be calm for you. It wouldn’t have done any good for us both to be wigging out.”

  “I probably would have done the same thing—but looking back? I think it would have made me feel better if I knew I wasn’t the only one freaking out.”

  “Sorry.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about.” And she meant that. “I was just… saying it to say it, I guess.”

  She came to another stop sign and he said, “Yeah, me too.” Things got quiet, and just as she was going to bring something up he said, “Farrah, what was that thing you were going to say before we got on the bus? It’s been bugging me all day.”

  “Oh, that.” She hadn’t thought about it since, but the second he brought it up Farrah knew exactly what she had wanted to tell him. “I—and it sounds really stupid, I know—but I apparently have a doctor’s appointment in two weeks. A check up.”

  Neal was quiet, and at first she didn’t think he would have anything to say. He did speak, though, voice low and empathetic, “I can see why you’d be worried about that.”

  “Yeah.” She let out a breath, feeling something like fear uncoil in her gut. “I-I don’t know what I’m going to do about that.”

  “Me neither.”

  She pulled into his driveway feeling her face heat up in self-deprecation. This had been a good day, and she had just ruined it. “But it won’t be a big deal, when the time comes. I’ll get out of it,” she said, not sure if she was saying that for him or herself.

  “You could tell your parents why you can’t go,” Neal said softly. “That’s the only thing I can think of.”

  “Well, that’s still a ways away,” she said, desperate to change the subject at this point. “I had a lot of fun today, and I don’t want it to end on a bad note.”

  “I did, too.” He said it, but his voice was distant. She saw his ankle leave his knee and heard him unbuckle himself, but he was moving in a way that she didn’t like.

  “I’m sorry, I totally ruined this, didn’t I? I should have waited or something. I mean, a lot of things have already happened, and—”

  “Farrah.”

  She immediately stopped ranting. “Sorry.”

  Neal cracked his door open, but before he stood up he leaned over the center console and put his hand on her cheek, kissed her softly. He waited just long enough for her lips to push back before he drew away. “I’ve wanted to do that all day,” he said in something like a whisper. “We need to go on a real date sometime.”

  At this point her face was practically smoldering, it was so hot. “Thanks for totally changing the subject?” she said, not sure what else she could say.

  “You looked like you needed it,” he said simply, sliding out of the car. “See you tomorrow?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice was not loud, so she nodded in case he didn’t hear it, her eyes fixed upon the steering wheel. “And thanks for today. For everything. I don’t say that to you enough.”

  She didn’t dare look, but she could have sworn there was a smile in Neal’s voice as he murmured, “Don’t worry about it” and shut the door.

  Chapter 9

  Since that day they had come to Joe’s Joe, Farrah had not seen that suspicious couple again. It had been several days, actually, nearly a week.

  Maybe Neal had been right, and she had just overreacted to them. At this point she was close to admitting that. If that couple really was anything like she suspected them to be, they would have come around the shop more often. They would not have shown up once and then faded away.

  Neal wasn’t wrong about much except simple mathematical equations, she was discovering. She really needed to trust his instincts more.

  Farrah was preparing the drinks at Joe’s again today, and Shellie was working the register. Absolutely nothing abnormal had happened at all, and Farrah for one hadn’t expected anything less.

  This was before Nancy, owner/founder of Joe’s Joe and their boss, came into the shop with a rolled-up newspaper. “You girls have got to see this,” she said to Farrah and Shellie.

  Of course, Nancy said this while they were both busy with various orders, and so neither of them really heard her. She had to wait until there was a big enough lull in orders to repeat herself and show them the newspaper article.

  Farrah stuck her head out over the service counter. “What is it?” She had heard that something interesting was in the newspaper today, but had never actually looked into it.

  “Shellie got there before you,” said Nancy. “Go to her.”

  “Sure thing.” She retreated and stuck her head over Shellie’s shoulder to read like that. “Where am I supposed to look?” she asked.

  Shellie pointed at the middle left on the page. “That.”

  Farrah read the article’s headline: ‘39-year-old drops dead in local grocery store. Experts believe shoulder tumors to blame.’ It was like looking at a train wreck: she was horrified, but she couldn’t stop herself from continuing to read.

  ‘ “He said he had been feeling out of sorts,” says Melinda, wife of 39-year-old Harvey Mill. “But then we were picking up some pasta for dinner and he just keeled over. I didn’t know what to do.” ’ Farrah looked over at the accompanying picture and saw something very familiar, indeed.

  The man had had the same granulomas she did before her wings hatched.

  Involuntarily, she felt her eyes widen and her jaw drop, her blood running very cold in her veins. She was so mortified she couldn’t even speak.

  “Oh god,” said Shellie in something that could have been revulsion. She had apparently seen the picture, too. “What are those?”

  “That’s the whole mystery about it, nobody knows,” Nancy said with poorly concealed delight. She was an energetic, hardworking woman, but a total sucker for any form of gossip. It didn’t matter what it implied or who it hurt, she loved to talk about what was going on. “And the wife is too scared to permit a proper autopsy, so nobody will know!”

  “Um, excuse me?” said a girl so petite she could not have been five feet tall. She had pretty green eyes, but she was wearing too much eyeliner. “Can I get a cappuccino?”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Nancy exclaimed, pointing at her employees with one hand and swiping the newspaper back with the other. “Get back to work, you two! What am I paying you for, anyway?”

  Farrah immediately backed away. “Yeah, Shell, why aren’t you taking orders?” she said conspiratorially.

  “You’re the one who told us to read the article, boss,” said Shellie in her usual monotone. Then, when Nancy merely waved her off and flounced away in her long, layered skirt she turned to the petite, eyeliner-wearing girl. “What kind of cappuccino would that be?”

  “White chocolate,” she said with surprising decisiveness, slapping a five down on the counter. “Large.”

  Maybe that was why she was so short. Farrah imagined that she was the sort of person who had been drinking coffee since middle school, who knew the locations and menus of every café within a two mile radius of her house and had memorized exactly what she loved and why she loved it.

  Shellie rang her up, but as she was handing the girl her change she said, “So you just heard about the dude with the tumors? I thought everybody had heard about it by now. Nasty, isn’t it?”

  Inwardly, Farrah winced as those words stung her.r />
  “Probably wouldn’t be if we knew what they were supposed to be, because it’s apparently nothing our doctors have seen before,” said Shellie. “Farrah should have your drink down the counter in a few.” She point to make sure she was being clear, but while Farrah was feeling a sudden surge of affection for her co-worker the girl wasn’t paying her last statement any attention.

  “But what if it was his Siamese twin or something?” she said. “Wouldn’t that be so nasty?”

  Shellie tilted her head in a half-assed shrug as she looked at the guy who was next in line. “Hey Justin. What do you want?”

  The petite girl finally got the hint and moved over to Farrah’s section of counter. “Don’t you agree with me?” she asked as she got her coffee.

  At hearing this the warmth she had felt towards Shellie’s reaction dampened somewhat. “I think we need to be a little less vicious towards that guy,” she said, working to keep her voice level. “I mean, he’s not even here to defend himself.”

  The girl scoffed. “Doesn’t make him any less of a freak, does it?”

  “You wouldn’t be saying that if it was cancer,” said Farrah evenly, though inwardly she was hurting and angry. “What if it was, and it was just so rare that a doctor wouldn’t recognize it on sight?”

  The girl just stared her down for a moment. Then she gave a slight roll of her eyes and smiled. “What am I doing?” she said. “You’re Farrah O’Brien, you’re way too nice to think like that.” She took a sip of her cappuccino. “Ooh! And this is really good! Thanks, I’ll see you around.” She waved and tromped out of the shop in heavy-looking platform boots that Farrah had not noticed before.

  For her part, Farrah was at once bewildered by the girl’s sudden change of attitude and aching from her derisive comments. Ouch did not even begin to cover it. She knew she was a freak, but somehow she hadn’t thought that other people’s reactions to conditions like hers would wound her so deeply.

  Then again, if she were in their position she would have probably done the same thing.

  About half an hour later Farrah had managed to get herself completely under control again. She wasn’t so bothered by the eyeliner-girl’s comments, and she was able to think about the dead man and his granulomas with a mostly clear head.

  Just when she was starting to breathe easier her calm was demolished by none other than that couple. The man and woman entered the shop like they did in the movies, moving quickly and with authority, like they had a mission and only one hour in which to complete it. It was nothing like the way they had entered the last time, and to say that Farrah was perturbed and bewildered would be something of a lie. She was beyond either of those things.

  These feelings doubled—no, tripled—when the pair made a beeline for her. They didn’t even bother with the pleasantries or the coffee-buying this time.

  “So did you see the newspaper today?” the woman asked with an urgency that Farrah didn’t think she had ever heard before.

  “Um, I’m sorry, but I need to make this customer his—”

  “You can make it and talk with us,” said the man. “We won’t mind.”

  Farrah looked over her shoulder at Shellie, desperate for a rescue, but Shellie was too busy taking orders to notice. Farrah was on her own.

  She pretended to be too wrapped up in preparing coffee to answer, but this did not last long before the woman was leaning over the counter and pinning her down with her eyes. “Girl, we know about you. You don’t have to act stupid.”

  “I’m sorry, I really have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said frigidly, capping the drink and thrusting it over the counter to its purchaser with a brisk, “Excuse me.” She was channeling her mother at this point. Tracy O’Brien had a way of putting people off before they even thought of trying; if Farrah could emulate just a little of that, then this conversation would go her way.

  “If you’d like to buy a coffee,” she added. “Shellie will take your orders over there.” And she gestured towards the register, just to make herself plain.

  “Don’t worry, we will. We support local businesses,” the woman assured her, completely unfazed. “All we want to know is your opinion of the death in the paper.”

  “You know, its impact on you in your life and such,” the man added.

  “Farrah, espresso Americano, extra shot of espresso,” Shellie called.

  “Sure thing,” she called back. And then, after she had ground the beans for this, she said to the couple in a hushed voice, “Why don’t you ask any of the other people in this shop about this? What makes me so special?”

  “We told you,” the woman said in kind, either pitching her voice low for effect or because she was aware that nobody else should be hearing this conversation. “We know what’s going on in this town, and we know you and that dead man are a part of it. You can’t feign innocence about that.”

  When she heard that her stomach plummeted, and she had to work to keep herself from outwardly panicking. “I do not know what you’re talking about,” Farrah insisted. “And if you continue harassing me I’m going to call the police.”

  The couple exchanged a look, and then laughed. They laughed as if Farrah had just told them the funniest joke in the world.

  “Okay,” said the woman cheerily, and her complete change of mood was like a slap in the face. “We’ll get our coffees and let you get back to work now. It was great talking to you again, Farrah.” And, as promised, they got in the line to purchase something.

  She watched, but they were as friendly as they had ever been with the other people in the shop, striking up happy conversation with anyone and everyone in their immediate vicinity. The contrast to their interaction with her was positively astounding. For the life of her, Farrah could not tell if their behavior now was the act, or if the way they spoke to her was. They couldn’t be serious about it all, could they?

  But why would they do something like this as a joke? It wasn’t like they were familiar enough with her to know how to prank her. Farrah had never seen them in her life until they had come to the shop for the first time.

  No, she didn’t like the feelings they gave her at all. There was a black air about them, suspended like those rainclouds in cartoons, and the more she interacted with them the more prominent it became. She did not know what their motives really were, but it felt like they were trying to draw her close enough to strike her with their lightning.

  Neal was right about a lot of things, but this was certainly not one of them.

  “We’ll talk again,” the man told her conversationally as he and his partner grabbed their coffees from her station.

  “Yes, maybe we can make an appointment or do lunch or something,” said the woman.

  Farrah said nothing, but this did not seem to bother them in the least. They left the shop with a friendly-looking wave that made bile rise in her throat. It had all happened so fast that she was still reeling from it, but even now she knew that the last thing she wanted was for them to make another visit.

  “Farrah,” Shellie said once they were gone. “Do you know them now?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. I’m just as weirded out as you.”

  Shellie did not reply to this, but then again what else was there to say? Weird pretty much covered everything.

  Chapter 10

  Farrah, pacing furiously in her bedroom, felt like she was at the end of her rope.

  “I-I don’t know anymore,” she said for the umpteenth time. “It’s just me, probably. I’m just blowing this up bigger than it should be. I mean, what else could it be?”

  “Um, seriously suspicious behavior?” suggested Neal. He had been lying on her bed, flexing his exposed wings and watching her rant, for the last fifteen minutes. “Look, I’ve already taken back everything I’ve ever said in their defense, I completely agree with what you think they’re around for, and I’m willing to bet that if you told anyone else about this they would agree with you, too. You can stop second-guessi
ng yourself now, Farrah. It’s not getting you anywhere.”

  He was sitting up at this point, and when she passed by he grabbed her arm and pulled her down to sit next to him. “You’ve had your time to vent, now it’s time to stop freaking out,” he said, looking her in the eye hard. “And start thinking of a productive way to handle the situation.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know where they go when they leave,” she said. “I don’t know when they’ll be back, and even if I did how am I supposed to deal with them? You haven’t met them, Neal, you haven’t seen how I get when they’re around.” She was shaking her head, and while she knew she should stop she just kept shaking and shaking and shaking… “I don’t like them—”

  “Yeah, I got that much,” he said with the slightest quirk of the lips. Gentle but strong, he reached out and held her face still. “You haven’t dealt with anything like this before, have you?”

  “No,” she said, hardly daring to move her lips. “Before I got wings I was boring and had no stress and never got like this at all. The—” only good thing about this is you, she had wanted to say, but the words crumpled in her throat and stuck to the walls, refusing to exit. “Erm. Sorry I’m always freaking out and running to you,” she said, looking down without moving her head (since he was still holding it). “You’re probably sick of it by now.”

  “I’d rather you run to me instead of bottling it up.” His hands left her face to grip her shoulders. Then his face broke into a warm smile. “And, you know, it’s pretty cool that you depend on me, too,” he said a little bashfully.

  Farrah shut her eyes and hugged him hard, loving that he returned the gesture without question. His wings were closed, but instead of making it uncomfortable it seemed as if they were keeping her arms in place, telling her it was okay to keep holding on.

  However, “You don’t even know the half of it, Neal” was the only thing she could say.

  Neal, being Neal, didn’t pry any further into that as he kept hugging her, and they stayed like that for a while. That is, they stayed like that until her wings started shifting beneath her hoodie.