Sublime Messages

Fourteen, B

Vanessa thought she remembered visiting her father in the hospital, the white, white hospital. She wasn't supposed to be there, hadn't checked in at the desk but had instead sneaked past, crouching low to avoid being seen, while Beau spoke with the nurses about some made-up situation. It'd been the one kindness he'd offered her, to take her to see her real father, who'd arrived long before Daddy had. Her father had wanted to take her back into his arms, to bring her to a new home with him, wherever that home was. He'd been a handsome man, somewhat short but overall attractive, with his jet hair and his kind, youthful face. He'd loved her, he'd said, left her with his friends because he'd had to return to his home country for a while, to get the proper documentation to return, and now that he had it, he'd come to snatch up his beautiful daughter and raise her the way she was meant to be raised, in love and freedom.

And they'd said goodbye to Aunt Bernie and Uncle Tony and moved out, into a charming two-bed, one-bath outside of Reno.

At least, that'd been the first version of her story. Somehow, it'd changed, and she'd ended up with Beau, aunt and uncle dead and father dying. And what her real father had said to her in the hospital, it haunted Vanessa still: "It's not your fault. I forgive you." She'd sneaked back out to the family waiting area, but Beau hadn't been there, instead arriving minutes later and pulling her along while a commotion ensued behind them, suspiciously near the room that'd held her father.

"What did you do?" she'd asked him, trying to look backward over her shoulder but unable to wrench free of Daddy's grip.

"And I said to you I was 'tying up loose ends,' if you recall," Beau told her, bringing Vanessa's attention back to the present. He'd had her moved (against her will, but what could she do with her knee so painfully out of order?) down into the near-empty pool, the deep diving-end of which the workers had filled with about two feet of vinegar. She sat up to her waist in the room-temperature liquid, knowing intimately the smell of it though unsure why, while Beau stood over her, feet bare and pants rolled up above his knees. She'd had little fight in her, partially because of her inability to walk but mostly because of the revelations expanding in her skull. The history of herself, the accusation of what sort of monster she was, the knowledge that it'd been she who'd taken the lives of Aunt Bernie and Uncle Tony and . . .

"Why would I hurt my own father?" she asked absently, her abject condition having taken hold in her brain as well as her body.

Beau leaned against the wall of the pool. Even now he maintained a jaunty playfulness about him, his curling hair and wiry frame, but as Vanessa looked up at him, she understood that playfulness had long ago transmuted to devilry. "Because I told you to," he answered her as dispassionately as ever.

Vanessa considered his words, couldn't think of a response. Her nostrils flared; her jaw trembled. She skewered the man with her eyes.

"Oh, now, don't be so upset about it," Beau smirked. "Needed to find lots of ways to test you, test the control I had of you. And he would've tried to come after us."

"You've made me kill for you."

"I suppose you can look at it that way, but I never had you end someone who hadn't earned it. That Nora Flanery, foul gossiping tramp. She was telling my Anabelle to leave me. And the Kirks? Well, they surely got what was coming to them, each one. Bill Taylor? The pedophile. Practice is all it was. I needed to see how you worked, and darlin', I do admit it's all been far more interesting than I'd anticipated. You don't seem to exist the same way the rest of us do, you understand?" Beau came away from the wall, didn't draw near but instead lowered himself to her level to better see her expressionless face as he spoke to her. "I tell you to take care of someone, and you will, but not only that—I can tell you when. I told you, see, to take out your real daddy when he came to get you, when he picked you up, just like I told you to go back and take care of that aunt and uncle of yours the day I come to get you, and girl . . . you went back and did it. I don't know how, but you move through the curtains of time that stay pulled shut for the rest of us. I'd never have believed in it if I myself hadn't had my own run-in with time traveling. I don't know if it's Lone Rock or them Hills or just coincidence you and I are affected, but I think—no, I know it was fate that we met all those years back, you on that porch swinging, just waiting for me to come along."