The Weird Part 147

'There are a lot of anti-anxiety drugs,' she agreed. 'Some of them may help. But only with the symptoms, not the problem. And the trauma, whatever it is...it may be something ongoing.'

'Christ.'

'She's graduating in a few weeks here. Next year's middle school, and I won't be able to see her any more. With CPS, you'll have a caseworker, someone who isn't going to change every time she switches schools. And who knows? Maybe the investigation will help. I'm sorry. About all of this. I really am. But it's the right thing.'

Now it was Ian's turn to go silent, to gather himself. Speaking the words was like standing at the edge of a cliff.

'You think I'm f.u.c.king my kid.'

'No,' Mrs. Birch said in the voice of a woman for whom this territory was not new. 'But I think somebody is.'

Diane waited for him in the outer office, looking smaller than she was, folded in on herself. He forced himself to look at her as she was, and not as he wanted her to be. She forced a smile and raised a hand, sarcastic and sad. Ian knelt at her feet and took her hand, but Diane would not meet his gaze. Mrs. Birch was a presence he felt behind him, but didn't see.

'Sweetie,' he said.

Diane didn't look up. He reached out to stroke her hair, but hesitated, pulled back. It was that fear that touching his child would be interpreted as s.e.x that brought home how much they had lost.

'It's going to be okay, sweetie,' he said, and Diane nodded, though she didn't believe it. When he stood, she scooped up her book bag and went out with him. In the hallway, with Mrs. Birch still haunting the door to the office, Diane reached up and put her hand in his. It was a thin victory, hardly any comfort at all.

The clouds were close, smelling of rain. He drove home slowly, the sense of disconnection, of unreality, growing as the familiar streets pa.s.sed by. Diane sat alert but silent until they were almost home.

'Are they going to make me live with Mom?'

A pang of fear so sharp it was hard to differentiate from nausea struck him, but he kept his voice calm. He couldn't let her think they might lose each other.

'Make you? No, sweet. There's going to be someone from the state who's going to want to talk to you, but that's all.'

'Okay.'

'They're going to ask you questions,' he continued, the words leaking from him like air from a p.r.i.c.ked balloon. 'You just need to tell them the truth. Even if you get embarra.s.sed or someone told you that you shouldn't tell them something, you should tell them the truth.'

'Okay.'

He pulled into the driveway, their house Christ, the mortgage payment was a week late already; he had to remember to mail the check tomorrow looming in the twilight. The lawn was the spare, pale green of spring.

'You should tell me the truth too,' he said, amazed by how sane he sounded, how reasonable. 'Sweetie? Is there anyone who's doing things to you? Things you don't like?'

'Like am I getting molested?'

Amazing too how old she had become. He killed the engine. There had to be some way to ask gently, some approach to this where he could still treat her like a child, still protect her innocence. He didn't know it, couldn't find it. The rich scent of spring was an insult.

'Are you?' he asked.

Diane's eyes focused on the middle distance, her face a mask of concentration. Slowly, she shook her head, but her hands plucked at the seat, popping the cloth upholstery in wordless distress.

'If something were happening, Di, you could tell me. There wouldn't be anything to be afraid of.'

'It's not so bad during the day,' she said. 'It's at night. It's like I know things...there's things I know and things I can almost remember. But they didn't happen.'

'You're sure they didn't?'

A hesitation, but a nod firm and certain.

'The doctor's going to want to examine you,' he said.

'I don't want him to.'

'Would it be better with a different doctor?'

'No.'

'What if it was a woman? Would that make it easier?'

Diane frowned out the window of the car.

'Maybe,' she said softly. Then, 'I don't want to be crazy.'

'You're not, sweet. You're not crazy. No more than I am.'

They ate dinner together, talking about other things, laughing even. A thin varnish of normalcy that Ian felt his daughter clinging to as desperately as he was. Afterwards, Kit called, and Diane retreated to gossip in privacy while Ian cleaned the dishes. He read her to sleep, watching her chest from the corner of his eye until her breath was steady and deep and calm. He left a night light glowing, a habit she'd returned to recently.

He sat in the kitchen and slowly, his hands shaking, laid out the pictures of Flat Diane the ones recently arrived, the ones he hadn't shown her. He shuffled them, rearranged them, spread them out like tarot.

It had been stupid, sending out their real address. Ian saw that now, and twisted the thought to better feel the pain of it. What if this mad f.u.c.ker had tracked down Diane because Ian had as good as sent out directions to her...?

But no, he didn't believe that. Or that Tohiro or one of her teachers or some evil pizza delivery man had targeted her. The photographs were too much a coincidence, the timing too precise.

He recalled vividly his art history teacher back at university, back at home in Scotland. The old man had told each of them to bring in a picture of a person they loved mother, father, brother, lover, pet. And then, he'd told them to gouge out the eyes. The shocked silence was the first moment of his lecture on the power of image, the power of art. These were dumb bits of paper, but each of them that touched pen-tip to a beloved eye knew did not believe, but knew that the pictures were connected with the people they represented.

Ian had sent his daughter's soul voyaging. He hadn't even considered the risks. It was worse than sending only their address; he might as well have delivered her, trussed and helpless. And now...

And now Flat Diane had gone astray.

With a boning knife, he cut out the blond man's blue eyes, but he felt the effort's emptiness. Nothing so poetic for him. Instead, he took the envelopes to his study, turned on his computer, and scanned in the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's face. When it was saved, he dropped it into email and then got on the phone.

'h.e.l.lo?' Candice said from a thousand miles away. Her voice was uncertain wondering, he supposed, who would be calling her so late at night.

'It's Ian. Check your email.'

The pause would have been strained if he'd cared more. If this had still been about the two of them and what they'd had and lost and why. Only it wasn't and the hesitation at the far end of the line only made him impatient.

'Ian, what's this about?'

'Flat Diane, actually. I've had a letter for her. Several. I need to know who the man is in the pictures.'

Another pause, but this one different. Ian could hear it in the way she breathed. Intimacy can lead to this, he supposed. Teach you how to read a woman by her breath on the far end of a phone line.

'You already know,' he said. 'Don't you.'

'My computer's in another room. I can call you back.'

'I'll wait,' he said.

She was back within five minutes, the hard plastic fumbling as she picked the handset back up giving way to her voice.

'I'm sorry, Ian,' she said. 'This is my fault. His name is Stan Leckey. He...he was a neighbor of mine when I came out here. A friend.'

'A lover?'

'No, Ian. Just a friend. But...he started saying things that made me...We had a falling out. I got a restraining order. He moved away eight or nine months ago.'

'He was the one who took the picture of you, wasn't he? The picture of you and Flat Diane.'

'Yes.'

Ian considered the envelope that had contained the latest atrocity. The postmark was from Seattle. Stan Lecky in Seattle. And a photo of him, no less. Certainly it couldn't be so hard with all that to find an address.

'She hasn't seen that, has she?' Candice asked. He didn't know how best to answer.

Ian slept in on Sat.u.r.day, pretending that the dead black sleep and the hung-over exhaustion of his body was related somehow to luxury. It had been years since he'd been able to sleep past six a.m. He had Diane to feed and dress and shuffle off to school. He had his commute. His body learned its rhythms, and then it held to them. But Sat.u.r.day, Ian rose at ten.

Diane was already on the couch, a bowl of cereal in her lap, her eyes clouded. Her skin seemed paler, framed by the darkness of her hair. Bags under her eyes like bruises. Ian recalled Victorian death pictures photographs of the dead kept as mementos, or perhaps to hold a bit of the soul that had fled. He made himself toast and tea, and sat beside his daughter.

On the TV, girls three or four years older than Diane were talking animatedly about their boyfriends. They wore tight jeans and midriff tops, and no one thought it odd. No one wondered whether this was the path of wisdom. He found himself wondering what Diane made of it, but didn't ask. There were more pressing issues.

'How'd you sleep?' he asked.

'Okay.'

'More nightmares?'

She shrugged, her gaze fixed on the screen. Ian nodded, accepting the tacit yes. He finished his toast, washed down the last of his tea, smacked his lips.

'I have to go out for a little while. Errands.'

'Want me to come too?'

'No, you stay here. I won't be long.'

Diane looked away and down. It made his heart ache to see it. Part of that was knowing that he'd once again failed to protect her from some little pain, and part a presentiment of the longer absence she would have to endure. He leaned over and kissed the crown of her head where the bones hadn't been closed the first time he'd held her.

'I'll be right back, kiddo,' he murmured, and she smiled wanly, accepting his half-apology. And yet, by the time he had his keys, she was lost again in the television, gone into her own world as if he had never been there.

Tohiro was sitting in his driveway, a lawnmower partially disa.s.sembled before him. He nodded as Ian came up the path, but neither rose nor turned back to his work. Ian squatted beside him.

'I don't know why I think I can do this,' Tohiro said. 'Every time I start, it's like I don't remember how poorly it went the time before. And by the time it comes back to me, it's too late, the thing's already in pieces.'

'Hard. I do the same thing myself.'

Tohiro nodded.

'I need a favor,' Ian said. 'I have to go away for a bit. Diane's mother and I...there are some things we need to discuss. I might be away for week, perhaps. Perhaps less. I was wondering if...'

It choked him. Asking for help had never been a strong suit, nor lying. The two together were almost more than he could manage. Tohiro frowned and leaned forward, picking up a small, grease-covered bit of machinery and dropping it thoughtfully into a can of gasoline.

'Are you sure that's wise?' Tohiro asked. 'The timing might look...'

He knew then. Diane had told Kit, and Kit her parents; nothing could be more natural.

'I don't have the option,' Ian said.

'This is about what's happening to Diane?'

'Yes.'

Ian's knees were starting to ache a bit, but he didn't move, nor did Tohiro. The moment stretched, then: 'It might be better if Kit invited her,' Tohiro said. 'If it were a treat a week-long slumber party it could mask the sting.'

'Do you think she would?'

'For Diane? Kit would learn to fly if Diane asked her. Girls.'

'I'd appreciate it. More than I can say.'

'You are putting a certain faith in me.'

Tohiro met his gaze, expression almost challenging.

'It isn't you,' Ian said, softly. 'I'm fairly sure I know who it is.'

'I see.'

Ian shrugged, aware as he did so that it was a mirror of his daughter's, and that Tohirio would understand its eloquence as Ian had understood Diane's.

'I'll let you know when it's going to happen,' Ian said. 'I can't go before the CPS home visit, but it won't be long after that. And if you ever need the same of me, only say so.'

The man shifted under Ian's words, uneased. Dark eyes looked up at him and then away. Tohiro stuck fingers into the gasoline, pulling out the shining metal that the fuel had cleaned.

'That brings up something. Ian...Anna and I would rather not have Kit stay over with Diane. I know it isn't you, that you wouldn't...but the stakes are high, and I can't afford being wrong.'

Ian rocked back. A too-wide rictus grin forced its way onto his face he could feel the skin pulling.

'I'm sorry, Ian, it's just...'

'It's the right thing,' he forced out, ignoring the anger and shock, pushing it down. 'If I thought for a minute that it was you...or even if I only weren't certain, then...'

Ian opened his hands, fingers spread; the gesture a suggestion of open possibility, a euphemism for violence. It was something they both understood. Men protected their children. Men like the two of them, at least.

Ian pulled himself up, his knees creaking. Kit, in the window, caught sight of him and waved. She was lighter than Diane, but not as pretty, Ian thought.