“I have five younger brothers.” She stumbled for an explanation.
“Hal said something like that.”
“Yes, well, what Hal hasn’t mentioned is that I had a baby sister too. When I was eighteen, she was six.”
He realized the implication and his face filled with sorrow for her. With the look, all the raw grief that been building up the last few days seemed to expand to fill her. Feeling like her heart was about to explode with the anguish, she found herself talking.
“My dad died when I was twelve. My brothers were ten, eight, six, four and two.” Not that she had their ages memorized for that year alone; it had always been simple to figure out. “I’m not sure what the hell happened in June, but every other March, regular as clockwork, my parents had a baby.”
Taggart nodded while mixing sugar, cocoa and a splash of milk into a dark paste. The fact that he continued to make hot cocoa, albeit in a very odd manner, made it easier to spill out her grief.
“I’d always spent a lot of time watching my brothers, but after my father died, it was like I became the dad. Mom had just had Boo and needed to be the mommy, so I took care of everything Dad used to do. Cut the grass. Fix things that got broke. Teach my brothers how to run and climb and shoot and fight. I didn’t really mind it. It was just how things were. I didn’t know anything else.”
He stirred the paste in the hot milk. She realized that he’d made enough for two people. She got out two coffee mugs and set them down on the counter. As if she’d opened up floodgates, the words kept spilling out. There was something comforting about the dim kitchen, the quiet of the night. For once, not being alone was a blessing.
“My brothers. It was like they had a death wish, and every time I turned around, I had to fish them out of the river or cut them down from a strangle vine. Boo was smart. She was curious as a cat but she’d always get someone else to do stuff for her. She’d be there in the thick of things but she was never the one stuck and screaming.”
He poured out the steaming cocoa, dividing it neatly, and then turned to wash out the saucepot.
“The summer that I was eighteen, our freezer quit working. Here in Pittsburgh, you have to have a freezer, especially with eight people in the family. You shoot a deer. You catch a shark. You butcher a cow. You can smoke some of the meat, but the rest, you have to freeze it or it will go bad. The thing is, they’re harder than hell to get. There’s one little appliance store down in the Strip District, just a hole in the wall. Every Shutdown they get one truck full of things—washers, dryers, refrigerators, hot water heaters—and there are only one or two freezers per month. You can put money down and order one in advance and wait two months. Or you can be the first person in the store as they unload the truck. Mom didn’t want to be out the money and have to wait, so she decided that we’d go into the Strip District the night before Shutdown and just camp there until a truck came in and we’d get one. You know all the ‘could have’ and ‘should have.’ She still tears herself apart blaming herself. She could have ordered the freezer. She could have left us all at home. She should have left Boo with my aunt. It just eats at her. It eats at all of us.”
“What happened?”
Jane lifted her shoulders. “We don’t know. One minute Boo was there, with us, and then the next, she was gone. All the delivery trucks trying to get into the Strip District, unload and get out of the city before they get stranded on Elfhome. It’s a crazy time.”
“Been there. Done that.”
“The police thought at first that maybe she went to the river’s edge. We told them that she wouldn’t do that. She was too smart. Then they thought maybe she tried to get home. We’d come all piled in my mom’s pickup but there were other times we’d come in on the light-rail. We were all sick of being stuck in the Strip District, waiting for the big trailer to be unloaded down to the freezers. But she was about the only one of us kids that wasn’t whining about going home. It was the first time she’d been in town for Shutdown. All those different trucks all being unloaded, some of them right there in the street. Whole families carrying everything into their stores fast they could. She was fascinated.
“And then, the police suggested that maybe she’d gotten into one of the empty trucks. At least, that’s what they said in front of me and my brothers. And then they took my mom quietly aside and said what they really meant. That one of the truckers took her.
“That got the EIA involved and they stopped all the trucks that had deliveries in the Strip District that hadn’t crossed the border already and searched them.
“You know when they first disappear, you’re angry. You told them just to be good, stay close, and not get into trouble and now they’re nowhere in sight. You look and you look and you look—just so angry you could hurt someone—and you’re rehearsing what you’re going to say when you finally figure out where the hell they are. Then slowly this fear takes root, and starts to grow, and you try so hard to hold on to that anger, because it’s so much safer than the fear.
“But it leaks away and all there is left is fear. And then that goes away too, because you know, whatever horrible thing that was going to happen has happened. It’s over. It’s done. It can’t be undone. And you walk around feeling like a big hollow drum with no idea how you’re supposed to feel.”
The hot cocoa was the best she’d ever tasted, hinting that Taggart had spent many sleepless nights perfecting it. Her dreams for the rest of the night were unsettling in a totally different way and featured a wild man with chocolate-colored eyes.
The tip from Beef4U had specified the old Mount Lebanon golf course. Jane hadn’t been back into the area for years, so she had expected to find it overrun with possibly dangerous brush. She was surprised when they arrived in the early gray of dawn, to find the grass looking regulation height.
“What the hell?” She pulled to a stop to peer out over the lush rolling green. She was driving her SUV with Nigel following in the CBM production truck. “Don’t tell me someone actually still plays golf.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.” Hal surprised her by volunteering to ride with Nigel, but based on the chatter over the voice-activated headsets, they were bonding over a mutual love of flora and fauna.
Taggart was in her passenger seat, smelling good enough to eat. She never met anyone that could be so distracting without saying anything. He was wholly focused on filming.
Something moved in the fog. She tensed. They couldn’t be so lucky as to spot the saurus immediately—could they? The answer was no, as the forms resolved into cows grazing lazily.
She swore softly. “Shit. ‘Beef4U.’ A damn farmer sent in the tip.”
Taggart laughed, his voice dipping down almost to bass.
Jane snorted out in disgust. “Okay, the good news is spotting the saurus just got a hell of a lot easier. Plus we’ve a ton of free bait.”
“The bad news?” Taggart asked.
“Smart boy. Cookie for knowing that there’s bad news.” Jane eased her SUV across the worn divided line to drive along the berm. “Bad news, Pittsburgh beef cows are the meanest son-of-a-bitches.”
“So, we have to dodge several tons of pissed-off sirloin while filming one hungry dinosaur?”
“Welcome to Pittsburgh.” She drove slowly along the converted golf course. “Keep an eye out for oncoming traffic.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Tracks.”
The farmer had gone to town on fencing, putting up eight strands of barbwire to create a six-foot wall around the golf course. Jane suspected that Beef4U was trying to keep animals out as well as in. Considering that wargs were a growing problem in the area, she couldn’t blame him for trying.