Not that she had seemed inclined when she was alive. Butneverseemed like a sledgehammer of a word now. Malcolm wondered how many other words would be redefined by living, or by others dying.
In the back seat, Jennie said his name. He glanced in the rearview again. He didn’t really like to look in that mirror, because while he could not see his mother’s body or the way one of her arms jutted from inside the canvas, he could see the passenger who sat between his sister and their dead mother.
Benjy didn’t move. He shook along with the car, the same way cargo would have, but he hadn’t moved of his own accord since minutes after Jennie had sprinkled him with her pixie dust. He sat with his hands cuffed behind his back and stared, unblinking, at Malcolm in the rearview.
“Yeah,” Malcolm said, returning his focus to the snow falling in front of the headlights.
“What was that in the funeral home?” Jennie asked. Quietly, so as not to wake Violet.
He didn’t feel like talking. He especially didn’t feel like talking about this. But it would help him stay awake, and he had never been able to keep anything from her.
“I asked you if you heard music,” he reminded her. “Piano music. ‘I’ll Be Seeing You.’”
“Billie Holiday? That’s not piano music.”
“It can be played on the piano.” He knew that for sure.
“Go on.”
“I thought I was losing my mind. I’m hearing it. Been hearing it since not long after Maggie died. Sometimes—most of the time—it seems like it’s coming from her.”
He watched Jennie in the rearview, trying not to lock eyes with Benjy. Jennie glanced past the kid, looking over at their mother’s corpse in its fetal bundle.
“Elias could hear it a little,” he added.
Jennie shook her head. “Elias, too.”
“A little.”
“And back at the funeral home, the little guy.” Jennie spoke to him, but she kept her eyes on Maggie’s body. Her chin drooped, her expression a battle between love and disappointment.
“What’s it mean?” Malcolm asked.
She saw him watching her in the mirror. “It means watch the road, baby brother.”
He straightened again.
“You’re going to get us killed long before we reach Maine,” she said.
“What’s it mean, Jen?”
“You’re smart, soldier. I know you’ve worked it out by now.”
He did have a guess. A pretty good one, he thought. But she had traveled and studied and knew a hell of a lot more about any of this than he did.
“Witchcraft, obviously,” he said. “But the guy in the funeral home looked more like a math teacher than a witch.”
“I told you, the important part of this stuff is either in you or it isn’t,” Jennie said. “It’s in you, obviously. I guess a little bit in Elias. And the funeral home guy. He’s probably had weird things happen to him all his life and never put two and two together.”
“So, not a math teacher, then?” Malcolm smiled.
Jennie punched the back of his headrest. “The road!”
A cluster of pine trees loomed ahead, beautiful in the snow, caught in the headlights. Malcolm’s heart raced as he tapped the brake, turned the steering wheel just a little, tapped the brake again. The road had curved to the right. He couldn’t correct enough without losing control, so he let the Frazer bump over the low wall of snow on the roadside. The brake tempted him, but he knew if he slowed down or skidded, they would get stuck. Instead, he turned just a bit more and gently pressed the accelerator. His heart kept skidding out of control, but with a shudder and a thump, they were on the road again.
“Did you fall asleep?” Violet murmured, rubbing her eyes.
“I’m okay,” he said. “We’re okay.”
