Something Beautiful

“Why doesn’t he want to go outside?” Elise asked, with a degree of probing Jillian didn’t care for—not because Elise was too curious, but because, as Jillian had come to realize lately, she wasn’t any too sure she wanted to hear the answers.

Allie cocked her head again, as if listening, her eyes taking on that intent focus on absolutely nothing. Jillian knew some actors would have paid a fortune for the secret of that particular trick.

As was usual while watching Allie listen to “Lyle,” Jillian fought the feeling that Allie really was seeing something, something that wasn’t her imagination, something all too real.

Allie turned her gaze to Elise, and said, “Lyle says Steven’s out there. He says he doesn’t want to run into Steven yet.”

Elise shot Jillian a sharp look, her round face filled with What-did-I-tell-you?

“What do you mean, yet?” Jillian asked.

Allie shrugged. “I dunno. That’s just what Lyle says. Can we watch TV now? I don’t have any homework.”

Jillian absently consented and carefully avoided Elise’s gaze as Allie left the room. Allie elaborately stepped aside, allowing her invisible friend to precede her through the archway leading to the den. Her slender young body arched against the doorjamb, precisely the way a person would do to allow someone—or something—with considerable girth to pass through.

Elise cleared her throat, then slowly said, “I’d say an extra little chat with Gloria Sanchez is in order here.”

“Based on Allie’s comments about Steven?”

“Based on everything, Jill. I’m not kidding when I say there’s something scary about this whole picture—”

“Mommy?”

Jillian felt a jolt of adrenaline course through her, and couldn’t hold back the slight start her daughter’s sudden reappearance had caused.

Elise also seemed startled. She muttered a curse beneath her breath and dramatically held one hand over her full breasts. “Sweetie, if you don’t want Aunt Elise to become invisible, too, don’t, for the love of heaven, sneak up on us like that again!”

Allie smiled, but Jillian could see the abstraction on her daughter’s face. “Lyle says not to ask Steven to come in the house, okay?”

Jillian felt a chill work down her arms. She couldn’t help it, she looked over Allie’s shoulder, as if expecting to see the invisible friend standing there, gauging her reaction. Allie had often referred to him as something beautiful. What was beautiful about this sort of control, these implications of danger?

She forced herself to speak. “Why would Lyle say something like that?” she asked. She hoped her voice didn’t sound either accusatory or as nervous as she felt.

Allie shifted, as though allowing something to pass back through the archway, again politely offering room.

Jillian deliberately focused her gaze on Allie, refusing to let her eyes slide to the nothing beside her daughter.

Thinking of Elise standing there watching, warning undoubtedly lining her face, she asked, “Doesn’t Lyle like Steven?”

Allie turned to stare into space again, and she nodded a second time.

“I’ll tell her,” she said before turning back to her mother. “Lyle just doesn’t want Steven in the house. He says it’s too soon.”

There’s no such thing as Lyle, Jillian told herself firmly.

But, much as she might want to do so, she couldn’t say this to Allie. Because for Allie, Lyle was very, very real. Too real, maybe.

When Gloria had suggested that the imaginary Lyle might be a means of breaking through Allie’s grief, Allie’s way of attempting contact with the outside world, Jillian had agreed to go along with the myth that Lyle was a real being, that his presence in their home was a welcome one. But, if she was to be honest, she had to agree with Elise. The whole concept was vaguely disturbing, and made her feel deliberately distanced by her little girl.

Through Lyle, Allie had, in the past month, said the most unusual things, comments that seemed remarkably adult, phrases that sounded strange upon the lips of an eight-year-old child. The grief therapist claimed this was consistent with trauma survival.

Jillian wondered.

And now Lyle didn’t want her asking Steven into the house. It wasn’t as if she had, or had really even considered doing so. So why had Allie brought it up? Was this an important key to Allie’s thoughts? She hadn’t said she didn’t like him, she’d said it was “too soon.” What exactly did that mean to Allie?

Jillian wondered how Dave would have handled something like an invisible creature living within their safe walls, and knew with a sharp pang that the situation would never have arisen. It was due to Dave’s death that the imaginary creature was there. And it was due to his loss that Allie clung to Lyle’s company.

Jillian fought the rise of anger against Dave, that overwhelming sense that by dying, he’d abandoned her, left her to grapple with things he should have been there to share with her. Forever, he’d said, but he’d lied. Right from the start.

For Allie’s sake, she now strove to find a light note. “Why would Lyle be worried about Steven coming into the house? Is he afraid he’ll have to give up some space, that we’ll ask him to move back to the lilac hedge?”

Apparently she’d hit the right tone, because for a split second Allie’s face lightened, and she actually seemed on the verge of a giggle. But then she sobered and her eyes turned to that empty—but all-too-real—spot where she could perceive that which no one else could.

It was more than simply disconcerting to see her daughter’s eyes unerringly return to the same exact height every time she turned to look at the ever-present Lyle. And it was even more unsettling at times to watch Allie’s gaze follow an imaginary being’s apparent progress around the room.

Jillian found herself tensing, waiting for Lyle’s next pronouncement, not even able to correct herself, to remember that it was Allie doing the thinking, the translating, the speaking. Because it didn’t seem like Allie at all.

Allie’s eyes turned back to Jillian’s, looking up, and she frowned a little, as if puzzling out Lyle’s unheard comment. “Lyle says Steven isn’t real.”

“What?” Elise and Jillian said in unison.

Jillian couldn’t begin to understand this latest twist of her daughter’s mind.

“Whoa…” Elise murmured. “This, I don’t like.”

Allie cocked her head, listening, not to Elise, but to that invisible, inaudible voice, then said, inexplicably, “Lyle says, just whatever happens, don’t let Steven inside.”

Allie turned to leave the room. For some reason, this chilled her mother more than her words had done; Allie was unconcerned by her comments. She didn’t appear to even know what she was talking about. This was wholly and utterly consistent with someone truly listening to another voice.

But that was patently impossible.

“Honey…” Jillian called after her, only to let her words trail off. Could Elise be right, and Allie did know or sense something about Steven that she herself refused to see? Or was there something else going on here, something related to Dave’s death, perhaps a general distrust of everyone?

Jillian wanted to call her daughter back, but didn’t. She didn’t because she knew that merely summoning Allie back to the entry hall wasn’t what she truly needed from her little girl. What she wanted in her heart of hearts was Allie back…period. The way she used to be, filled with giggles and sunshine, light, airy steps dancing through life, the way she’d been for a moment when coming into the house, the way she’d been a year ago.

She turned and met Elise’s concerned gaze. She was certain her own was equally troubled.

Elise raised her hands as if in surrender and said, “I’m out of here. But I don’t feel good about it. There’s more going on around here than doesn’t meet the eye. And I gotta tell you, I don’t like it. Any of it.” She looked over Jillian’s shoulder, out to the darkening courtyard.

Jillian turned to follow her friend’s scrutiny. Steven had apparently paused in the act of loading the piled leaves into a large black plastic bag. His profile was to the house, but something about his stilled hands, his tensed body, conveyed the impression he’d heard every word spoken by those inside. His face seemed even grimmer than usual, and his jaw like chiseled granite, his lips pulled into a tight grimace that could have been either pain or anger.

Jillian couldn’t help it; she turned her eyes to that spot in the archway, a place some four feet above the ground, an empty pocket of air, a space where no one stood, but where something had spoken.

CHAPTER TWO

In the glow of the small mock-kerosene lantern on the adobe guesthouse wall, Steven rocked in the old-fashioned chair, his shoulders pressed against the carved oak. His head was bent slightly forward, a furrow on his brow, as he read the book in his lap.

“…that good comes out of evil; that the impartiality of the Nature Providence is best; that we are made strong by what we overcome; that man is good because he is as free to do evil as to do good…”