Beautiful Dead 02 - Arizona (17 page)

never to do that again. And now I want you to promise me the same 116

thing.'

'What exactly?' I didn't see that Arizona was in a position to lay down conditions.

'To leave Sable out of it, and Kyle.'

'Even though he was one of the last people you saw before you ended up in Hartmann?'

She shook her head fiercely. I don't know that for sure. The last thing I remember was driving to the mal . I have no idea if I made it to Mike's Motors, or if Kyle was even there.'

I gave up on the questions, knowing we could never get beyond Arizona's memory block. 'So you're OK with me going over to your family's house?'

'To do what?'

Honestly, you'd have thought I was sleeping with the enemy, the way she reacted. 'To talk with whoever's there - with Peter. Or maybe Frank wil give me some new details to work on.'

'Or maybe not.' She laughed the old Arizona laugh - scoffing and humourless. 'Getting information from my father is a blood-from-a-stone activity.'

'I noticed.' I didn't get time to ask how come that was true before a window above our heads opened and a woman leaned out.

'Quit that yakkety-yakking at this time in the morning,' she yel ed

down.

Arizona and I reacted as if we'd been stung by a swarm of hornets. We got out of that al eyway and back on the street.

'So go ahead - talk to my grandfather again,' she told me, getting

ready to dematerialize.

'Where wil you be?' I asked.

'Around,' she told me. 'You won't see me, but I'l definitely be there.'

I went straight to Logan's house and knocked on his door. Though it was only 8.00 a.m. he appeared, ful y dressed and alert. 'Hey, Darina, what's up?'

'My car got wrecked,' I said feebly. 'And before you ask - no, it wasn't down to me. A rock flew up and smashed the hood.'

'So you want a ride to school?'

'Not this morning, thanks. But can you drive me over to Westra?' To stop him asking more questions, I put in what sounded like a genuine reason. 'You remember the woman who fel off her horse? Her husband 117

is Peter Hal - he works out there.'

'And you want to ask how she's doing?' Quickly Logan grabbed his keys. 'Sure, I'l swing by there for you.' I smiled and sat beside him. We drove without a lot of conversation, just easy and relaxed as far as he knew. At the end of North 22 Street, I asked for him to set me down.

'You want me to wait?' he asked.

'No - I'l walk back.' I gave him a grateful smile and watched him colour up. How come I don't fal in love with the easy-to-read nice guys of this world? I asked myself, not for the first time.

As Logan turned his car in the direction of El erton High and I walked

the half-mile to number 2850, I couldn't help glancing over my shoulder to look for the invisible Arizona. How weird - she was coming back to visit her house a year after she died and only I knew.

I turned in the drive and headed towards the gardener's annexe, but

before I'd gone far I saw Raven sitting in his usual spot in the summer

house. He looked up from his sketch pad then quickly down again. For a few seconds, I heard Arizona's startled, helpless reaction in a little gust of wind, like a sigh through the redwood trees by the gate.

Soon Peter Hal walked out of his potting-shed and cut across the lawn to meet me.

'How come Raven's home from school?' I asked. 'The last I heard, he was back at the Institute.'

'Thanks to you, I hear.' The old man steered me away from Raven towards his annexe. 'The principal gave Frank a description of the girl who found him - tal , skinny, with short, dark hair - we figured it might be you.'

'You know me - I like to drive in the mountains,' I shrugged. 'So have they taken him out of school?'

'Final y,' Peter sighed. 'I guess he ran away one too many times. Rebecca Davis and Al yson talked it through - everyone decided he should take a break from the Institute.'

There was more agitation among the branches of the fir trees -

Arizona finding it real hard to see her kid brother and hear this latest

piece of news yet not be able to walk up to him, put her arm around his 118

shoulders, go through a few Warhol prints with him and make his blank eyes light up.

'You know something else?' Peter went on. 'Frank final y left home

last night.'

'They're going ahead with the divorce?'

'For sure. He moved into Jenna's and my place.' 'Wow, that's big,' I realized.

Peter nodded. 'Like a house of cards col apsing. Raven comes home.

Frank leaves. And today for the first time in her life, Al yson cuts work.'

'She's home?' I looked in alarm at the big house with its open front door and a dozen blank windows glinting in the cold sun. 'And what about you, Peter? Where do you and Jenna stand now?'

'We're stil history,' he said, gesturing towards the cardboard boxes on the floor. He'd stacked his gardening books inside, along with his kettle and coffee cups. 'Now that Frank's off the scene, Al yson says she doesn't want us to visit Raven she'l hire a professional carer instead.'

'She's cutting you out?' When I'm shocked, I have a bad habit of stating the obvious.

Peter hunched his shoulders. 'Unless she changes her mind,' he muttered. 'But I know Al yson - she never goes back on her word. The fact is we're out of here for good.'

' Darina, you have to go back in and talk to Raven - help him to get through this!' When I met up with Arizona outside the gates to her house, she was a mess. She'd overheard every word of the conversation between me and her grandfather and she couldn't bear for me to walk away.

'Why? What good wil it do?'

'Talk about his sketches, try tel ing him about me - why I'm not

around any more, how I didn't leave him because I wanted to. No, forget

that. Just tel him I love him.'

The force of her plea nearly knocked me over, yet I remembered

Phoenix tel ing me Raven's autistic brain was wired differently, so he was impossible to reach. 'He won't understand,' I told her. 'You know that better than I do.'

Arizona looked at me in total despair. 'Try,' she begged. 'You know 119

it's the only thing I care about - that Raven realizes I would have done

anything for him. He's an amazing, special kid. Tel him that from me, Darina.'

'I don't think this is a good idea,' I muttered. I didn't even know if I could get back into the garden without being seen, but luckily Peter had vanished from the annexe and there was no sign of life in the big house either.

So I went back into the garden and crept up on the kid, catching him by surprise.

You'd think I was pointing a gun in his face, the way he reacted with a big jolt of shock running through his whole body.

'It's OK,' I murmured. 'Remember me, Raven? We met a couple of times before.'

He clutched his sketch book to his chest and started to rock back and forth, refusing to look at me. Poor kid - skinny and fragile as a bird, with that black, glossy hair and eyes that darted here and there.

'Show me what you just drew.'

But no he kept the sketches hidden and he rocked more rapidly.

'I won't hurt you - I'm your friend,' I tried to tel him, but I wasn't getting anywhere. Hadn't I lied to him and dumped him with the school principal?

'Raven, I knew your sister, Arizona.'

Her name was the one thing that broke down the barrier. I said

'Arizona' and before the word fel from my lips, the kid had stopped rocking and was looking hungrily at me, wanting more.

'Yeah, Arizona - she told me about you, Raven. "He draws the best pictures", is what she said. Do you want to show me your book?'

His eyes widened. He looked from me to the sketch pad then suddenly thrust it towards me.

I took it and started to turn the pages. 'Hey, this is your house, and this is the summer house - how neat is that. And Peter's annexe, and this is your school.' Pretty soon we were sitting side by side on the summer house bench, heads bent over the sketch book, tracing the images with our fingers. I turned another page and found myself staring at a portrait of Arizona. It was total y her - I was drawn to the almond-shaped eyes and 120

the arched eyebrows, the long, oval face framed by straight black hair. 'You drew this?' I asked.

Raven ran his forefinger around the shape of the face, touching it lightly and tenderly. Then he looked up at me with the ghost of a smile.

I was smiling back at hint, trying to hold back the tears when Al yson Taylor, alias Monster Mom, interrupted us. 'I don't know who you are or what you're doing here,' she said coldly. 'But you should leave before I cal the cops.'

'There's no need, I'm out of here,' I told her. I stood up, surprised to feel Raven catch hold of the bottom of my jacket and refuse to let go.

Another surprise was the way Al yson looked without her TV face - pale and drawn, with her fair hair pul ed back, her mouth sagging at the corners and bags under her eyes. 'I came to see Peter,' I explained. 'I was the one who found Jenna on the mountain after her accident.'

'So did you see him before he left?' Al yson's gaze had fixed on

Raven's hand clutching my jacket.

I nodded. 'And your son showed me his sketches. He has a real talent.'

'He likes to draw.' There was a break in the frosty tone. 'Let go of the jacket, Raven, be a good kid.'

He turned his head away but held on tight.

'It's OK, it's not a problem.'

'Let go - please!' Al yson reached out and tried to uncurl his fingers. There was something so sad and hopeless about the action that it brought on the tears. 'I'm sorry,' she sobbed, stepping back and covering her face with her hand.

'No problem - honestly. Arizona talked to me about her brother. I understand.'

'She did?' Al yson found this piece of information hard to swal ow. 'I

didn't think Arizona confided in people. I thought she suffered from the

family trait of bottling stuff up, big style.'

'Most of the time she did,' I agreed. I was staring at the weeping woman, wondering where Monster Mom and my Suspect Number Two had gone. 'But some things are just too hard to hide.'

Al yson came inside the summer house again and we al sat down,

Raven stil holding tight to me. 'So she explained his condition?' 121

Right then the sense of Arizona grew stronger. I heard her voice saying over and over, ' You won 't see me but I'l definitely be there.'

'Arizona said Raven was an amazing, special boy,' I told them both. 'She wouldn't have wanted to leave you, Raven, because she loved you more than anything in the world.'

'Don't - he doesn't understand.' Tears ran down Al yson's cheeks. 'He thinks his sister is going to come back. Every day he waits for her.'

'Maybe you do understand, Raven. You know that Arizona loves you.'

So why did she do what she did?' A bitter tone came through Al yson's tears. 'If she loved him, she wouldn't have drowned herself in the lake.'

I took a deep breath. 'Maybe that's not the way it happened?'

'Sure it was,' came the defensive reply. 'Suicide by drowning. That's

what they said at the inquest no question.'

'And how come everyone is so sure?'

Because there's no other way of looking at it.' Al yson raised her hand to stroke Raven's hair back from his face. 'Anyway, the family -

Frank's family has a history. His uncle blew his own brains out. He has a brother with bipolar disorder.'

'I'm sorry. I didn't know that.' Suddenly my own single-parent, no-

money family situation began to look kind of desirable.

And Frank was affected by that, natural y. With him you don't see much emotion. He keeps things locked up. Even when Raven was born and we first knew something was wrong, Frank never shared how he felt. And I had to do al the practical stuff - the clinics, the diagnoses, the treatments he never came along with me.'

'I'm sorry,' I said again. My view of the Taylor set-up was shifting again. Every time I thought I had a hold on it - hyper-ambitious mom unwil ing to give tip career to care for autistic son - the footsteps in the sand settled, the wind blew and blurred the lines so that everything looked different.

'Frank wanted reasons,' Al yson sighed. 'Is Raven the way he is due 122

to genetic factors? Abnormal levels of serotonin in the brain, a virus during pregnancy, Fragile X Syndrome he went through everything.'

'It didn't help?'

'No, though when she grew older, that's what Arizona did too. She

read al the theories, just like her dad.'

'She was smart,' I reminded her.

'But it led to fights between us. She always thought she knew the answers a special diet, cognitive behavioural therapy ...'

'I hear you.'

'So I was the bad guy, going down the conventional route and sending Raven away to the Lindsey Institute, and when he was home making sure he took his seizure medication. We fought over that a lot, while Frank -

he did his usual thing of withdrawing.'

'Leaving you to deal with the practicalities?'

Al yson nodded. 'You're young, so you can't know what it's like to be married, but not have someone you can rely on, someone who is offering you support. It makes a person bitter.'

I thought my way into her situation and agreed.

'You know something - soon after we lost Arizona, Frank took away al the pictures of her, plus her school books, her jewel ery, her clothes -

everything.'

'What did he do with them?'

'He stored them in boxes and locked them in the annexe, said he didn't want to be reminded. That's how he dealt with it.' Al yson breathed in deeply, then pul ed her shoulders back. 'Peter told you that

everything around here changed? Raven gets to take a break from the Institute while Frank and I take a break from each other.'

I nodded. Now she real y was flying solo for real, and it showed in her red-rimmed eyes, her drooping mouth. I did what I would have believed was impossible thirty minutes earlier - I felt truly, deeply sorry for