Shadow Falls After Dark: Eternal Part 33

Just when she'd decided how bad of an idea this was, the door swung open.

"Della? Oh, my G.o.d, Della Rose! You've come home." Her aunt stepped out and embraced her before she could find a way out of it. "Oh, my. You're freezing. Where's the rest of the family?" she asked and looked over Della's shoulder as if expecting to see her father, mother, and sister.

"It's just me." Della forced herself to speak. And those words echoed inside her. It had been "just her" for a long time.

"So, you're still at that school?"

That school. Della nodded and wondered what her aunt had been told. If, like Della's father, she thought Shadow Falls was a camp for troubled teens, or if he'd told her something else.

"Well, come in out of the cold."

Della stepped inside. She hadn't even realized that the day had turned cold until the heat in the house surrounded her. The air felt thick.

The gold-and-red decor of the home was exactly as it had been a year ago. It had always reminded Della of a Chinese restaurant, but a nice one. There was even a huge aquarium of salt.w.a.ter fish in the entryway.

Della watched a big yellow fish swim the length of his tank, and then inhaled hoping to calm her nerves. The breath smelled, and almost tasted, like soy sauce. Like her own home, when her dad took over the kitchen or when her mom cooked to please him.

"Look at you," her aunt Miao said, her gaze shifting up and down Della. "All grown up. What's it been, a year, since I saw you?"

"I think so," Della said.

Her aunt grinned, even though it didn't show in her eyes. Della remembered when her smiles always made it to her dark eyes and they regularly came with a light laugh. That was before Chan's death-the one he faked.

For some strange reason, Della recalled her aunt at the funeral saying she couldn't believe it, that Chan didn't feel dead, and a mother would know.

Did she feel it now? Did she sense that Chan was really gone? Della felt the air shutter in her lungs.

Just like that, Della felt guilty again. She'd lived and Chan had died. And the guy who made that choice was waiting in the car. She'd stopped blaming Chase, but perhaps she hadn't completely gotten over the guilt.

"You finally got some b.o.o.bs, young lady," her aunt said.

"It's a padded bra." Della tried to tease back, but the humor fell short when she realized how much she'd missed her aunt. How much she missed her old life.

"It can't all be padding," her aunt said. And then her smile faded. "Is something wrong? Everyone is okay, right?"

"Yes. I just..." She had to think fast. "I was ... my cla.s.s went to the Funeral Museum. You know, that crazy museum about caskets, embalming people, and all that c.r.a.p."

"Oh, my, that would make for a cheery afternoon," she said. "For what cla.s.s?"

"Science." She really should have come up with a better lie, but it was the only museum Della could remember around here.

"I wish Meiling was here to see you. She's at the library studying with her friends."

"I'm sorry, too," Della said, but she wasn't. She needed to talk to her aunt alone. "I realized how close we were to your house and I had one of my friends, who was driving, stop off so I could say hi."

"Well, bring her in."

Him. Then Della decided it was best to let her a.s.sume. "Uh, nah. She's totally attached at the hip to her phone. Facebook and stuff."

"Kids are like that nowadays. I refuse to allow Meiling to bring hers to the dinner table. Families need to talk." A touch of sadness filled her expression. Della knew she was thinking about Chan.

"Yes," Della agreed, but talking about things had been hard in this family-especially if it had anything to do with the past. She tried to figure out how to bring up the subject of Natasha.

"Let me fix you some tea," her aunt said.

I don't have time for tea. "I can't stay but for a few minutes." They moved deeper into the house.

"Just one cup." All of a sudden, her aunt looked up at the heating vent in the ceiling. "I swear my heater is on its last leg. Let me turn it up."

Della felt it then. The balminess in the room had vanished, an iciness filled the air, but it wasn't a normal kind of cold.

A dead cold. Don't make it snow. Don't make it snow!

Miao left to go adjust the heat. Della muttered under her breath, "So, you are my aunt, Bao Yu?" Saying her name made it somehow feel real.

No answer came. And that's when she saw it. Like a smear on a gla.s.s, something flickered a few feet in front of her. Slowly, the shimmer became visible and the ghost appeared. While she stood with her back to Della, staring in the direction Miao had gone, Della stared at her.

There was something familiar about the way the spirit's black hair rested on the shoulder. The shape of her head. The curve of her neck.

An emotional current shot through Della's veins.

"Natasha?" Della said. Tears formed in her eyes and her knees weakened. Holiday was right. Natasha was dead.

Chapter Thirty-four.

"Did you say something?" her aunt said, walking back, never glancing at the spirit, and with good reason. She obviously couldn't see her.

The spirit turned and looked at Della. The sharp edge of Della's panic faded when she saw her face. Della grabbed the edge of an overstuffed chair to steady herself. It wasn't Natasha.

It was her aunt. The face was the same one she's seen in her father's yearbook. The same face she'd seen in the vision covered in blood. But the similarities between her and Natasha were too strong to be a coincidence.

Right then, Della knew the lie Natasha had mentioned in her diary. She'd been adopted. And she also knew the tie between the ghost and Natasha. They were mother and daughter.

Natasha was her cousin.

But how could that be? Her aunt would have barely been a teen when the child would have been born. Della quickly did the math, guessing ages, and realized her aunt could have been fifteen or sixteen.

Show her. The ghost's words seemed to echo in the house, but Della figured only she could hear them.

Show her what? Then Della suddenly knew. She reached into her pocket for the photo. "I ... Chan gave this to me." It was a lie, but what else could she say? The truth certainly wouldn't suffice.

Her aunt's hand shook as she took the picture. Her breathing came quicker. When she looked up, her eyes shimmered with tears. "I have searched for this picture." She blinked several times and then swallowed.

"She's my cousin, isn't she?" Della asked.

Her aunt nodded then looked back down at the photo. Slowly, she ran her finger over the image of Chan and then Natasha. "Yes. I..." She blinked and a few tears slipped from her short black lashes. "She showed up on my doorstep, and I knew before she even spoke to me that she was my niece. She is so much like her mother." Her voice shook a little. "I had to tell her. Tell her the truth. She cried and I cried with her."

Bao Yu moved closer. What truth? Ask her for the truth.

"What did you tell her, Aunt Miao? What is the truth?"

"That her mother ... is gone. But Bao Yu loved her. She only gave her away because our parents couldn't accept it. They were old-school. And the father's parents would not even accept it was his child. She didn't have a choice. She had to give her away. She was told that the child would go to a family with some Asian heritage. That they would love her."

I wanted to keep her. The ghost's voice rang out in desperation. I cried so hard when they took her away from me. She was my baby. Mine!

Another question sat on the tip of Della's tongue. She needed to ask, needed to know. "How? How did Bao Yu die?"

Her aunt closed her eyes. "She was killed. And now Natasha is gone, too. Like Chan. Why does life give us something so precious and then take it away?"

Natasha's not dead, Della told herself, and fought to believe it.

"How? How did she die?"

"I'm told it was a car accident. It was only a month ago."

"No, not Natasha. How did Bao Yu die?" The temperature in the room grew colder. Even Della's skin p.r.i.c.kled with goose b.u.mps. Her aunt Miao folded her arms from the chill and, if her expression was any indication, from the memory.

Looking over her aunt's shoulder, Della saw Bao Yu standing so close and listening. Almost as if she needed the answer as much as Della.

"I don't know," Miao said.

But Della heard her heart reveal the words as a lie.

"I think you do," Della said. "Tell me. Please."

"No. It doesn't need to be repeated. There are some things that are just best forgotten." She looked at Della as if pleading for her to accept it.

Della recalled the pregnancy tests her parents had insisted she take. Had her father been thinking of his sister then? "That sounds like my dad, and I think he's wrong. Because you haven't really forgotten, and neither has he."

"Oh, my!" Her aunt pressed her fingers to her trembling lips. "Your father will be so angry at me for telling you any of this."

Della wanted to insist she hadn't told her nearly enough, but her gut said it would only upset her aunt and wouldn't lead to any information. "My father doesn't need to know," she said. "I won't even tell him I came here. It will be our secret."

Her aunt looked suspicious of Della's proposal, but she nodded.

"Tell me what happened?"

"No, I can't. I have told you too much already." She held up her hands. "No more talk about the past. No!"

Della felt the heat spewing out of the vent above. She glanced over Miao's shoulder and the ghost's image had evaporated, as did her chill.

"Let me get that tea," her aunt said, swatting at the tears still on her face. "We can still visit."

"I'm sorry, I don't have the time, I ... I should probably go."

Her aunt looked at the photograph in her hands. "Can I keep this?"

Della almost said no, but she got the distinct feeling that Chan would have wanted her to have it.

"Sure." Della started walking to the door, and her aunt moved with her. Certain her aunt would try to hug her again, Della quickly reached for the k.n.o.b and almost got out when a hand caught her arm.

"I miss you, Della."

A lump appeared in her throat. "I miss you, too."

"Then fix whatever is wrong with your life and hurry back home to your parents. You belong with them, not at that school. You are a good girl. I know this in my heart. So fix it."

It can't be fixed. Della stiffened her backbone and told one more lie. "I'm working on it."

"What did you get?" Chase asked as Della jumped in the car.

"Let's go," she said, her heart racing, and looking back to make sure her aunt hadn't followed her out. Which she would have heard, but she still had to check. Then she felt sweat pop up on her forehead. She couldn't remember the last time she'd sweated.

He started the car and pulled down the street. Then he glanced at her again as he revved the engine and put it in second gear. "What happened?"

The gears in her mind spun with what to tell him. Or how much to tell him. Didn't she trust him? "I know how Natasha is connected to me now."

"How?" He cut his green gaze toward her.

"She's my cousin."

His brow creased and he looked puzzled. "That's impossible. There's only four of you. You and Marla and Chan and Meiling."

There was something about how he named them off so easily. No, it wasn't how he named them, it was that he knew the names. How did he know Chan's sister's name?

It occurred to her that Chan could have told him. But had she told him her sister's name? She didn't think so.

She just stared at him. "How do you know that?"

"Know what?" he asked.

"Their names?"

His eyes widened as if the question put him in the hot seat. He looked back at the road. "It was in the file," he said. "So your aunt had another child?"

She ignored his inquiry to ask her own. "What file?"

He changed gears again. The car's engine purred. "The file I got on you and Chan. Just like the file I showed you on Natasha and Liam."

"That was the FRU's file," she said.