“And you would be...?” Her mother had forgotten her already and Mackenzie slipped through the door.
On the shelf beside Mrs. Shaw’s chair, stacks of notebooks appeared to be organized by color and date. Dom ran a finger over the spines, selected one from the middle, and sat down in the chair across from her. Mrs. Shaw looked at him expectantly. Mackenzie must do this a lot, he imagined. He settled back in the chair, opened the journal and began to read aloud.
March 7
The weather is beginning to turn warmer. I can’t help but think we should load up the trailer and be on the move north again. Old habits die hard, Foster tells me. Says I worry too much. I suppose he’s right. Don’t know if I’ll ever feel at ease staying in one place as summer approaches. Mackenzie Marie threw a tantrum in the grocery store today, right in front of the huge wall of candy at the checkout counter. I tried to look stern and turn my back on her like all the books say to do, but she was just so cute. She’s always so cute. Hopefully, she’ll grow out of this stage soon. I think the employees cringe whenever they see us come through the door.
Boneless chicken breasts were on sale, so I bought two packages and will try a recipe from the newspaper yesterday for chicken satay. Made with peanut butter, of all things. Susan came over?—
“That’s more of a real journal, Dominic. Boring and uneventful. I think we were living in a small town in Idaho at that time. We did most of our traveling before Mackenzie was born. She was two and a half in the one you’re reading from. The red ones—” she pointed to the far left of the shelf “—are Foster’s. You can read them if you’d like. If you pull out one of the green ones, May 1980, you can read our account of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Foster and I were living in a small town in southwest Washington at the time, right in the shadow of the mountain.”
Mrs. Shaw met his gaze with strong clear eyes, her shoulders now erect, and with her chin lifted, she appeared to be a completely different person. With her surprisingly smooth skin and the change in how she carried herself, she seemed much younger now. An older version of Mackenzie. Just as striking. Just as beautiful.
“That must have been quite an experience,” he said. “Did you hear the explosion when the mountain blew?” Even though Dom was working out of the Perdido Bay Region at the time, it had been all over the news.
“Didn’t hear a goddamn thing. We were in what they called the quiet zone. The sound waves passed right over us, I guess.”
He tried to hide his smile again. It was humorous hearing an old woman swear. She was tougher than she looked. He asked question after question about the eruption, and she answered each one with such detail he had a hard time believing she had Alzheimer’s disease.
“Mrs. Shaw, if you don’t mind my asking, why did you worry if you didn’t travel north in the summer?”
“Because of the Shaw Curse, of course. Hasn’t Mackenzie Marie told you anything? As her husband, you need to know these things. How long have you two been married?”
“Ah, well...” She was slipping back into the same place where she’d been when they arrived.
“I didn’t get an invitation, and I’d think my own daughter would’ve invited me to her wedding.”
“She wouldn’t dream of not including you, Mrs. Shaw.”
“As I was saying, Foster’s relatives disappeared during the warm months, mostly. It’s been documented, you know. I cataloged and charted every detail I learned about every disappearance. Dates, locations, weather conditions, things like that. They went missing mostly from the big cities, but not always. You can never be too careful. We lived in small towns,up here, mostly on the coast, where the temperature doesn’t get much above 70 degrees in the summer. But it’s best to not stay put for long, no matter where you are. Better to move around a lot. I fear we’ve become too complacent lately.”
Sweet Jesus, she knew. She’d figured it out on her own. “Why is that, ma’am?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know why. We just did. It’s somehow safer. Foster said I worried too much, but when I finally let my guard down and we moved to San Diego, look what happened.”
“That’s when your husband went missing?”
“Of course,” she said. “Do you not know anything?”
Mrs. Shaw leaned forward, reaching for his hands, and he set them in her upturned palms. He willed himself not to take in any of her energy, but it was difficult with the palm to palm contact. She gripped with the strength of a much younger woman and stared at him with eyes that reminded him of an eagle. Sharp, observant and extremely intelligent.
“You are her protector, are you not? A guardian? Someone who will look after her?”
“Yes, I am.” He couldn’t believe how perceptive this woman was.
“Well, then, there are some things you need to know.”
When she loosened her hold, he quickly pulled his hands away, and she recounted many of the same details Mackenzie had told him the other night.
“And when her cousin, Stacy, disappeared last year, well, that’s when things really changed for Mackenzie. I’m not sure she took it seriously until then. And Corey still doesn’t.”
“What do you think is going on?” Dom didn’t want to ask a question to which he knew the horrible answer, but he had to.
“We don’t know. It’s hard to convince doctors that something’s going on when you don’t have a body to test. They just think the family has a higher than normal count of crazies.And that doesn’t even include me.” She tapped her temple with a forefinger. “My niece who disappeared last year was convinced it had something to do with alien abductions. Maybe she’s right. Who knows?” She played with her bangle bracelets, four or five on each wrist, clanking them up and down her forearms.
“But how can they say it’s a mental illness?” he asked. “Have they done any sort of testing—genetic, DNA—to pinpoint any odd commonalities?” The strangeness of discussing genetics with a woman who only minutes ago couldn’t remember her name hadn’t quite escaped him.
“Can’t find a thing. So, it’s easiest for them to say the Shaws have a tendency to walk away from their lives when things get rough. Can you imagine? Desertion as a character trait?”
