“That isn’t the same.”
“True. You made me tie my shoelaces together and sit on icy metal steps first.”
I scowl. A pointed reminder, but a fair one. Deflating, I return to my seat, but not without crossing my arms and setting my chin. If this is a prank, I won’t saunter into it willingly.
Once he confirms I intend to stick around, Jesse’s attention moves to the window behind me. Shades of silver curtain the sky as dense clouds swirl over our street. Unlike my window, Jesse’s faces west, giving him a clear view of both of our driveways and the rest of the neighborhood. Wind slams the storm shutters on the aging houses. Down the street, Mrs. Khan’s clothesline comes loose, whipping her nightgowns into a flower bed. Yusuf Ahmed runs out to his front yard in a bike helmet, securing the tangerine tree’s branches together with strips of torn tarp. Our neighborhood is one of the oldest in Ward, and from here, I can see all its wrinkles and gnarled bones.
When Jesse steels his shoulders, I steel myself, too.
“My mother was the third child in a family of five and a registered nurse from Sarasota, Florida. In her entire life, she left Sarasota only once. She flew to New York on her twenty-sixth birthday to visit a friend from college. During her trip, she met my dad.” Jesse picks at the fabric over his knee. “They hit it off, somehow. I guess a jaded New York mortician and a perky RN have more in common than you’d think. My mom went back home, but they kept in touch. Eventually, my dad followed her to Sarasota. They tied the knot, moved into a house with a white picket fence, got a Costco membership—the whole nine yards.”
My throat tightens with trepidation. I hate the feeling of following a story I know doesn’t have a happy ending.
“Fast-forward to three years later. My mom has spent two of those years trying to get pregnant, but nothing seems to work. When they eventually get tested, the results break my parents’ hearts. They have pretty much zero chance of naturally conceiving a child, mostly due to something wrong on my dad’s side of things. My mom was just … crushed. Dad says she didn’t get out of bed for weeks. For some reason I’ll never understand, she desperately wanted a litter of kids with her and my dad’s DNA. To pass along her gallstones and my dad’s bad back, maybe. I don’t know.”
Jesse chances a glance at me. I wipe my features clean. It wouldn’t help to tell him I understand where his mother was coming from. I’d spent too many nights dreaming of what I’d name Alex’s and my babies. How I hoped they’d have my hair and his eyes.
“Nothing works. They try IVF for two more years, but the cards are stacked against them. My dad wants to call it quits, but my mom … she has this idea. She’d worked in the maternity ward for most of her career, and she had heard stories. Outlandish superstitions, she thought. Patients who swore some spell or hidden force helped them conceive when nothing else worked. One night, my mom comes home and she doesn’t speak to mydad. She walks right into the yard, sits in the dirt, and starts singing. Dad says he didn’t have a clue what she was saying—it could’ve been English or ancient Greek for all he could tell, since she was muttering so fast and rocking back and forth. If my dad tried to touch her, she’d scream. She didn’t move for twelve hours.”
A frenzied energy grips the dark-haired boy, and he paces the limited length of his room as he speaks. His shadow follows him on the wall, rippling across his dresser and disappearing when he passes the mirror.
“My dad was about to call an ambulance when she finally snapped out of it. He swears she just stood up, dusted herself off, and asked if he wanted waffles or oatmeal for breakfast.”
Jesse pauses and shoots me a doubtful glance. “Still with me, Mansour?”
I hesitate. “Still with you, Talbot.”
One of Jesse’s hands parses through his hair. The black locks fall like spun silk through his fingers, framing his agitated face.
“Nine months after my mom’s episode in the yard, I was born, and my mother died.”
My breath catches. I figured this would conclude with the truth of Mrs. Talbot’s fate, but it still hits me harder than expected. “I don’t understand. Did the treatments work?”
A caustic laugh. “Nope. The doctors called me a medical marvel.”
The pieces won’t come together no matter which way I fit them. Jesse must notice my struggle, because he heaves a sigh. “A couple of years after my mother died, my dad managed to translate a few sentences of what she’d been mumbling that night in the yard. It took him a long time; apparently, she’d been weaving together languages and dialects from all over the world. According to him, she’d convinced herself that she made a deal with some entity.”
Jesse’s shadow moves over his bookcase as he resumes pacing, flitting across the torn spines of well-read mystery paperbacks.
“To invite new life, she would need to usher out her own.”
I try to swallow around the rock in my throat. “What does that even mean?”
“Apparently, not all of the stories in the Sarasota maternity ward are a crock of shit.”
I pull my legs up onto the rocking chair, squeezing them into my chest. As much as the part of me that subscribes to a logical, ordered world wants to argue with Jesse, the truth is I believe him. I believe that eighteen years ago, a woman across the country had a desperate wish, and so she made a desperate decision. I believe something dark preyed on that desperation.
Where pain exists, predators thrive. Whether in El Agamy or in Sarasota.
“I’m sorry, Jesse.”
Jesse props his shoulder against the window, pressing his forehead to the misting pane. “Yeah.”
The light pours through the glass, fracturing around Jesse. The broken rays scatter his shadow across the wall. When Jesse pushes away from the window, his shadow re-forms once more.
And stays perfectly still as Jesse walks across the room.
Jesse is talking, but I don’t hear a word. Every drop of blood in my veins turns to ice. The shadow moves, creeping over his water-stained ceiling. I watch, unable to blink, until it settles on the wall to my left.
