“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Because I could, maybe. Sometimes it’s fun being a demon, Sandra.”
“Will she be the same?”
“No,” he said. “That isn’t his daughter, but he won’t care. It will be enough for him. You’d be surprised at the illusions we sell ourselves.”
Sandra remembered him telling Juliet that once about her own father. There was something bitter in Luke’s voice, something she was missing.
She sat down next to him, took the cigarette from his hand, and took a drag. There was something about what they’d done that had excited her and made her feel connected to Luke again in a way that she hadn’t felt before in this lifetime. She took another deep drag of the cigarette before putting it out with her boot. She put her hand out and, after a few seconds, he took it. Sighing and seeing her breathe in the air, she stood and pulled him up, the warmth of his body when it touched hers enveloping her. Then she led him upstairs to her room and closed the door.
A week later, Sandra found the mailman putting a letter in the mailbox early in the morning. He nodded to her as he started the Jeep. They never got letters. Seeing the postmark from Los Angeles, Sandra assumed it was something from her mother, but the writing was off. Looking closer, she’d seen the scribble on countless patient charts. It was from Hugh.
March 2, 1971
Dear Sandra:
I can’t believe it’s been three months since we saw each other. I miss the four of us. Being the one left behind is the hardest—the ghosts of Ezra and you are everywhere here in Los Angeles.
There’s no easy way to say this. Rick was killed in Vietnam a week ago. I’m not getting a lot of details on what happened. Kim thought you’d want to know.
She’s been waiting for reports from the army division he was traveling with, but I understand they took heavy casualties. The lack of detail gives us all hope that someday he’ll walk through the door, but I know, deep in my heart, that my sister won’t get a third chance with him. Kim said he wasn’t the same man after the car accident, but I think you knew that.
I’m going to graduate school in Berkeley in the fall. I don’t have another band in me after what we experienced in the last year. I don’t think we’ll ever get closer than those tracks and those months together. Lil and I talk about you quite a bit. We miss you.
I hope that New Mexico is treating you well. Tell Luke, Paul, and Marie we think of them often.
I hope to see you again sometime!
Hugh
Sandra closed her eyes and steadied herself against the railing on the front porch. After collecting herself, she found Luke in his study.
“Rick is dead,” she said.
He nodded.
“You knew?”
“I always know when something happens with the two of you. You’re both my responsibility.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What would I have said?”
“‘Rick is dead’ for a start…”
“Hugh should have been the one to tell you. Not me.”
Sandra walked over to him and put her hands on the desk. “I loved him.”
“I know. It’s always that way—”
“No,” Sandra cut in. “He was different to me, like Nora was different to you. He was a better version of himself, like Nora was a better version of me.”
“I didn’t say that…”
“You don’t have to, Luke. It’s written all over your face every time you look at me.”
He sat back on the chair, and it tilted a little. His eyes met hers. “I never got over her.”
“I understand completely,” said Sandra as she turned to leave. She spent two days in her own bedroom, mostly lying in bed thinking of Rick dying. The loss of him again, unbearable.
On the third day, she finally got up the nerve to take a shower and make her way to the kitchen. Luke was making breakfast. He ignored her, busily moving around whipping things in bowls and putting them in pans. The tension between them was noticeable. Marie had given up trying to help and she and Paul were now reading the newspaper, like the good supporting actors they were in all her
lives.
Luke handed Marie an omelet first, followed quickly by one for Paul and then Sandra. Thin and crispy potatoes and toast were placed in the center of the table. All three ate their eggs in silence, waiting for Luke to speak.
He set his own plate down heavily at the head of the table and grabbed the section of the newspaper that Paul had just finished. “That girl… the one in the body bag.”
“What about her?” Sandra looked up, relieved he had finally said something. Everyone around the table appeared to breathe.
“You should go and see her. Make sure she’s okay. I mean… as okay as she’s going to be.”
Sandra found herself wanting him to make eye contact, actually lowering her face to try to catch his eye as he read the paper, but he stayed fixed on whatever he was reading. “You don’t want to go with me?”
“No.” He turned the page on the paper. “I don’t.”
Luke’s behavior around the girl was odd, and it piqued Sandra’s interest enough to go looking for the address. The post office told her where she’d find the house and indicated it had a green mailbox. She drove Marie’s old GMC pickup truck deep into the desert and had to drive slowly, looking for non-numbered mailboxes that seemed identified by names and colors. Pulling up the truck in front of the house, it seemed silent, like an Old West ghost town. There were no cars in front of the simple adobe ranch. From the looks of it, this family wasn’t poor. The house was well maintained. Pulling her hair into a ponytail, Sandra slid her sunglasses onto her head so she could get a better look. A three-legged barn cat hobbled near the porch and crouched down observing her like the locals do before a big shootout in films. She stepped on the porch loudly enough that she’d be announced and rapped firmly on the door. The feeling that something was wrong here was overpowering.
A woman opened the door and gasped. She began speaking Spanish and Sandra shook her head, saying, “No hablo Español…” The woman paid no attention and seemed to be telling a lavish story involving something down the hall as she pointed. Finally, Sandra understood that she was to go down the hall. As she moved through the long hall, she could smell the medicinal odor of sage and knew that a smudge stick was burning. Knowing that someone had likely purchased one to ward off evil spirits, she crept hesitantly. These superstitious things didn’t work—didn’t ward off evil spirits or keep her out. She and Luke were as much the embodiments of evil spirits as anything she’d ever seen. In this case, the family would have been more likely to keep her out if they’d filled the place with cloves. Photos lined the walls, and Sandra recognized the woman, the father with the hat, a young man, and the girl who had been in the body bag. From the living room, the woman nodded when Sandra arrived at the correct door. She knocked, but there was no answer. The woman motioned for her to go in anyway.
Sandra opened the door slowly to find not a decaying body—as she had feared—but the girl sitting on the windowsill, smoking a cigarette. “Oh, I’m sorry… I didn’t know…”