“You know her?” The EMT and Kent spoke in stereo.
“She’s my dad’s wife. My fucking stepmom.” Disbelief permeated his words. Reality shifted underneath his feet, but he didn’t move, only watched Gale being wheeled into the ER. He now existed in a world where Isleen had been inside his head and she was Gale’s granddaughter. Where was Shayla then, Isleen’s mom?
An image of Shayla laughing while she babysat him burst into his mind. She’d been just eighteen when she and Gale left, not quite an adult. He tried to picture her as she would be now, a woman in her forties. Who had a daughter—Isleen. Total mind fuck.
“What is going on here?” No mistaking the anger in Kent’s tone.
“I need to make a call, then I’ll explain everything.” Xander held out his hand. “I need your phone.”
Kent slapped the phone into Xander’s palm with the force of a bitch slap to the face.
Xander hoped the number to the main house hadn’t changed since he was a kid.
“Stone residence,” Row answered on the first ring.
“Row, I need to talk to Dad. Now.” Silence on the other end of the line. “Row?”
“Sorry. My God, I never thought this day would come.” A hitched breath. She might be the housekeeper, but to the family and to him, she was a lot more.
He wasn’t able to tune in over a phone line, but with Row, he didn’t need to. “You’re not standing there crying, are you? I need to talk to Dad. Now.” Over the line, he heard the patter of her feet on the floor.
“No, no. I’m on the way down to the Institute right now. Just a second. Hold on. Don’t hang up. I’m in the hallway. Almost there.”
Jesus. She was running. Probably didn’t want to blow the one time father and son were actually going to communicate.
“Alex. It’s…a phone call for you. Important,” Row said.
Xander heard the shuffle of the phone being passed. “This is Dr. Stone.”
Decades of training in noncommunication captured Xander’s tongue. And right now, he didn’t have anger riding him as a motivator.
“Row, I don’t think anyone is there.” Dad’s voice went distant as if he had started to move the phone away from his face.
“Gale’s in the hospital.” The words shot out of Xander’s mouth at a volume louder than they should have. On the other end of the line, everything went quiet, except for the sound of Dad breathing into the mouthpiece.
“Where?”
“Prospectus, Ohio. There’s another woman with her. A young woman.”
“Shayla?”
“No. Her name is Isleen. Gale’s her grandmother. They’re both in bad shape. Not sure either is going to make it. I don’t know what happened, but they both appear to have been held hostage, beaten, tortured, and starved.”
“Oh God, Gale.” Anguish soaked each of his father’s words. “I knew she was in danger. I could’ve kept her safe. Everything would’ve been fine if she’d just listened. Listened to the legend. Listened to me.” Dad exhaled, blowing into the phone and Xander’s ear. “Why didn’t she listen?”
The sincerity in Dad’s voice shot a spike of panic through Xander’s sternum. Like Dad really expected Xander to have an answer. What the fuck was he supposed to say?
“I’m on my way. Leaving right now.”
Dad hung up, but Xander stood with the phone pressed to his ear. Their twenty-five years of silence had just ended, and Dad hadn’t even acknowledged it. Didn’t surprise Xander, but there was no denying the sting of it. He handed the phone back to Kent and then clutched the side of his head—a preemptive gesture.
“Keep in mind I’ve got this bizarre hearing thing that shouldn’t exist, and yet you know it’s real.” The pain bulldozed into his brain.
“Oookaaaay.” Kent stretched the word out into one long syllable.
“Well, that’s only the tip of the glacier.” He told Kent everything. Everything. About the woman’s voice inside his head since the lightning strike, about how he’d always drowned it with booze, about how last night the Bastard in His Brain made him drive to the trailer.
Kent crossed his arms and gave him that look. “If this is the story you’re going to stick with, you’re screwed.”
Chapter 5
Four days later…
She was dead.
Deceased.
Departed.
That was the only explanation for her surroundings.
Isleen stood in an intangible space of airy alabaster. Delicate fingers of fog swirled and swelled, coiling around her like a sweet caress. The air smelled of white lilacs, of carefree times. Here in this space, there were no walls to confine her, no doors to trap her, no one to hurt her—no pain, no hunger pangs, no muscle cramps, no soreness from the latest beating.
She had to be in heaven.