Fallen 2. Torment(49)

prospect of actually having to talk to the people she'd seen in the Announcer.

"What am I supposed to say to them? Surprise, I'm your daughter back from the

dead," Luce practiced aloud as they were sitting at a stoplight.

"Unless you want to totally freak out a sweet old couple, we're going to have to

work on that," Shelby said. "Why don't you pretend you're a solicitor, just to get in the

door and feel them out?"

Luce looked down at her jeans, beat-up tennis shoes, and purple backpack. She

didn't look like a very impressive salesperson. "What would I sell?"

Shelby started to drive again. "Hawk car washes or something cheesy like that.

You can say you've got vouchers in your bag. I did that one summer, door to door.

Almost got shot." She shuddered, then looked at Luce's white face. "Come on, your own

mom and dad are not going to shoot you. Oh, hey, look, here we are!"

"Shelby, can we just sit in silence for a little while? I think I need to breathe."

"Sorry." Shelby pulled into a large parking lot facing a compound of small,

83

single-story connected bungalow-style buildings. "Breathing I can do."

Through her nerves, Luce had to admit it was a pretty nice place. A series of the

bungalows stood in a semicircle around a pond. There was a main lobby building with a

row of wheelchairs lined up outside the doors. A big banner read WELCOME TO

SHASTA SHIRE RETIREMENT COMMUNITY.

Her throat felt so dry it hurt to swallow. She didn't know if she even had it in her

to say two words to these people. Maybe it was one of those things you just couldn't think

about too much. Maybe she needed to get up there and force her hand down on that

knocker and then figure out how to act.

"Apartment thirty-four." Shelby squinted at a square stucco building with a red

Spanish-tile roof. "That looks like it over there. If you want me to--"

"Wait in the car till I get back? That would be great, thanks so much. I won't be

long!"

Before Luce could lose her nerve, she was out the car door and jogging up the

winding sidewalk toward the building. The air was warm and filled with a heady scent of

roses. Cute old people were everywhere. Split into teams on the shuffleboard court near

the entrance, taking an evening stroll through a neatly pruned flower garden next to the

pool. In the early-evening light, Luce's eyes strained as she tried to locate the couple

somewhere in this crowd, but no one looked familiar. She would have to go straight to

their house.

From the footpath leading up to their bungalow, Luce could see a light on through

the window. She stepped closer until she had a clearer view.

It was uncanny: the same room she'd seen earlier in the Announcer. Even down to

the fat white dog asleep on the rug. She could hear dishes being washed in the kitchen.

She could see the thin, brown-socked ankles of the man who had been her father however

many years ago.

He didn't feel like her father. He didn't look like her father, and the woman hadn't

looked at all like her mother. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with them. They

seemed perfectly nice. Like perfectly nice ... strangers. If she knocked on the door and

made up some lie about car washes, would they become any less strange?

No, she decided. But that wasn't all. Even though she didn't recognize her parents,

if they really were her parents, of course they would recognize her.

She felt stupid for not thinking about that before. They'd take one look at her and

know she was their daughter. Her parents were much older than most of the other people

she'd seen outside. The shock of it might be too much for them. It was too much for Luce,

and this couple had about seventy years on her.

By then she was pressed against their living room window, crouching behind a

spiny sagebrush cactus bush. Her fingers were dirty from gripping the windowsill. If their

daughter had died when she was seventeen, they must have been mourning her for close

to fifty years. They'd be at peace with it by now. Wouldn't they? Luce popping up

uninvited from behind a cactus plant would be the very last thing they needed.

Shelby would be disappointed. Luce herself was disappointed. It hurt to realize

that this was as close as she was ever going to get to them. Hanging on the windowsill

outside her former parents' house, she felt the tears roll down her cheeks. She didn't even

know their names.

84





EIGHT

ELEVEN DAYS

To: thegaprices@aol.com

From: lucindap44@gmail.com

Sent: Monday, 11/15 at 9:49 am

Subject: Hanging in there

Dear Mom and Dad,

I'm sorry I've been out of touch. Things at school have been busy, but I'm having

a lot of good experiences. My favorite class these days is humanities. Right now I'm