Envy

chapter 17

TAYLOR RYAN COULDN’T SLEEP. It might have been the jitters that came with being back at school after a long break. Kids were bragging or complaining about their Christmas gifts or where they went on vacation. Some complaints were deserved. Outside of Port Gamble were a number of mobile homes tucked in trailer parks or by themselves behind Douglas firs and big leaf maples. Some were hidden from view for a very good reason. The poor of Kitsap County, sometimes referred to as Kitsappalachia, were one group: people with drug or alcohol problems, mental illness, or something that forced them to live in circumstances that were far from ideal. Then there were the others, the criminals—the “rough crowd” as Valerie Ryan called them—who chose to hide out in the country so they could cook meth, grow pot, or do other things that led only to trouble.

“Trouble always begets more of the same,” she had told the girls on more than one occasion. “When you see trouble, don’t run to it like a moth to a flame. The moth gets burned, remember.”

And yet, that’s exactly what Hayley and Taylor did. Their mother knew it, of course, and her admonition was a warning with little teeth; it was nothing more than a reminder to be very, very careful.

“You poke at evil with a stick,” Valerie had said, offering chilling advice they’d never forget. “Never use your fingers.”

Taylor went downstairs quietly that night, although she didn’t need to be so light on her feet. She could hear her father snoring, and she knew that her mother probably had earplugs in and her head under a pillow.

Maybe under two.

She made her way to the kitchen and rifled through the refrigerator, but she wasn’t really hungry. She filled a glass with tap water and walked to the windows with the rippled glass that were original to the 1859 house.

The bay was a black void, with only the faint shimmer of waves at its rocky edges. A bird called out abruptly somewhere in the darkness. The finality of its cry chilled the teenager. The scream of an animal in the dark almost certainly meant its gruesome demise.

Taylor wondered about Katelyn and if her soul had crossed over, if Katelyn’s soul had been lifted to the place where there is an absence of all pain. She and her sister were blessed in many ways, but there was never a time when either could understand fully why it was that their empathy for the dead was so deep, so profound.

“Katelyn,” she whispered, leaving a misty fog on the windowpane, “what happened to you?”

Her fingertips touched the cold glass for a second, not long enough to leave more than a few dots on the fogged, uneven surface. She resisted the impulse to draw a heart. It was a strange feeling just then, strong and confusing.

“Tell me when you are ready. Tell me, if you can,” she said haltingly.

Taylor and her sister knew people would think their gifts were faked, like bad sideshow psychics, carnival mediums, and the pack of middleaged men that paraded around cable TV talking with the dead like some nitwit’s idea of an otherworldly cocktail party.

“Wow, he guessed that someone in the audience has a family member with the first letter J in their name,” an unimpressed Beth Lee had said one time when she was over watching TV at the Ryans’.

“Yeah,” Taylor said. “Pretty stupid.”

“I love how they always say that dead people have unfinished business to attend to,” Beth said. “Like whatever you’re doing when you croak needs to be put in order.”

Hayley caught her sister’s eye. Beth was a lot of things—vegan, Goth girl, fashionista—but she didn’t really understand that there was truth to some of what those TV shows were playing up.

“Do you really think that once we die, you know, there isn’t anything more?” asked Hayley.

Beth rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t go all religious on me.”

“It isn’t about religion,” Hayley said. “It’s about our spirit. I think there is something here, something more.”

“I’m not saying there isn’t,” Beth replied flatly. “I just haven’t seen any evidence.”

Taylor spoke up. “Have a little faith.”

Beth looked over at the TV. “Dr. Phil is coming on. I have faith that he’ll still be a chub despite his exercise and health books.”

The show intro cued up and the TV host with the bald head and mustache appeared.

“Look,” Beth said. “I was right. He is. I must be psychic.”

Hayley and Taylor laughed, but inside they knew that no matter how hard they might try, no matter how much those closest to them might want to believe them, some things could not be explained.

Maybe it was more than that. Maybe some things shouldn’t be explained.

The twins locked eyes. They both knew that that was the truth, absolute and unqualified.