Nice metaphor and all that but Grace stopped indulging herself, no time for fanciful bullshit.
For all she knew, the woman was one of those jellyfish who enjoyed having doors shut in their faces.
She raised her paper an inch higher, watched Azha remove a blanket from the back of the stroller and spread it on the grass. When satisfied with its smoothness, she removed the baby from the stroller, held it up to the sun and beamed.
Tiny little thing, well shy of a year, chubby legs kicking in glee. Dressed in a white onesie, thank God for no black. Lowering the baby and pressing it to her bosom, Azha folded herself carefully and settled on the blanket, crossing her legs in some sort of yoga pose.
Hugging the baby for a moment, she plopped it down next to her. The tyke bobbled and swayed and fought to remain upright, finally succumbed to gravity and began falling backward only to be saved by the flat of Azha’s hand on its back.
That level of balance suggested five, maybe six months old.
Smiling, Azha kept her hand in place, allowing the child to pretend it was sitting of its own accord. That lesson in false confidence worked: The baby laughed. Azha laughed back, said something and kissed the baby’s nose.
All this was happening too far out of earshot to make out content but the melodious quality of Azha’s voice floated across Monkey Island Park.
The baby reached for her and she allowed it to grip her finger, began rocking it gently in a new game of balance.
All the while, the shorter woman had stood by in silence.
As if realizing it, Azha turned and looked up at her and pointed to the grass.
Moving woodenly, the shorter woman sat.
She was about the same age as Azha, thicker-built and plain-faced. Her hair was tied in dual pigtails far too childish for her and her black dress appeared to be of the same light cotton as Azha’s but cut fuller, almost haphazardly, as if the tailor’s attention span had wandered by the time he’d gotten around to her.
At this distance, her features came across small and flat in a doughy face, her eyes squinty. She was positioned on the other side of the baby but paid no attention to it. Instead, she stared off into the distance. Vacantly, it seemed to Grace. Mike Leiber’s soulmate?
Second by second, her body sagged lower until she was hunched, limbs settling flaccidly. Grace continued spying as the woman’s mouth dropped open and remained that way. Azha played with the baby but her companion seemed cut off from the fun. Indeed, from all of her surroundings. Grace began to wonder if she was subnormal intellectually.
Or perhaps, like so many others attracted to cults, she was damaged goods — brain damage due to dope, some other psychoneurological insult.
Whatever the reason, she continued sitting like a lump and it went on that way for a while, neither Azha Larue nor the baby paying her any mind. Then Azha turned and took hold of the other woman’s chin delicately and guided her face so that they faced each other.
Manipulating her, the way you would a toy. The shorter woman complied as if made of soft plastic, maintaining eye contact but not responding after Azha said something to her. But when Azha handed her the baby, she accepted it and Azha lay down flat on her back and placed her left arm over her eyes.
Naptime for Mommy.
Whatever the other woman’s deficits, Azha trusted her with her child. And she did know how to hold it properly, nestling it close to her, supporting the supple neck.
The baby was at ease with her, as well. Relaxed, smiling, laughing again when the short woman chucked it under its chin.
A gesture not unlike Azha’s toward her.
Azha was dozing now, chest rising and falling rhythmically as her companion did a fine job of babysitting. The infant never wavered from good cheer; lucky kid, blessed with a good temperament.
How long would that last?
Suddenly, the shorter woman placed the baby belly-up on the grass. Again, no fuss from Model Tot, as it gazed upward. Now the woman had altered her own position and was hovering above the baby. Looking directly down at it.
Azha Larue’s chest rose and fell at a slower pace. Her companion watched her for a few seconds then returned her attention to the baby.
Waving her hands at the infant — some sort of pantomime show, or just weird movement by a weird woman — no, there was purpose to this, the baby knew it, was rapt as fingers flew.
Rapid movements taking shape. Communicating.
The baby continued to pay attention as the hands above it shaped air, pointed, circled.
Comprehending. As pre-verbal babies often did when trained in American Sign Language.
Chapter 49
Could it be?
Of course it could.
Lilith had been eight or nine when Grace first saw her, putting her at nearly thirty now — the age of the shorter woman.
Nothing at odds with the smaller woman’s appearance either: a fair-haired deaf-mute girl grown to a fair-haired deaf-mute woman.
Not mentally dull, just cut off from Azha Larue because Azha didn’t know — or didn’t care to know — sign language. Manipulating Lily’s face and speaking directly at her.
Read my lips.
Azha had also ignored Lily completely until the moment she needed her — Watch the baby so I can catch some Z’s. Not the approach you took with a friend, this was more master — servant.
Like any cult, Dion Larue’s family embraced a strict line of command: Guru at the top, followed by the guru-ess, then the worker bees.
Lily with her deafness and her passivity was the perfect serf. What must be crippling passivity in light of Larue’s murder of her parents.
Had Larue found another woman of approximately the same age and size to substitute as a sacrifice? A hitchhiker or a street girl he’d picked up during the drive from California to Oklahoma? Burning the house down because how better to obliterate physical evidence?
Maybe one day, she’d look into it...
First guesses are often right on, maybe because they spring from a deep, intelligent place in the unconscious, and Grace realized hers had been freakishly acute.
Venom Boy, wanting to relive the glory days of his father’s insanity, moving steadily toward that goal for a decade. Slaughtering the McCoys as they slept silently in their little Oklahoma house but taking Sister Lilith with him first.
Confident she’d offer no resistance. And if she did, he had ways of handling it, witness Brother Typhon.
Amy Chan perceived the meeting in the restaurant as a chance encounter but perhaps it had been anything but. Big Brother watching his brother for a while. Learning he was in town and stalking him from behind the wheel of his Prius.
Watching as Amy and Andrew entered the vegan joint — maybe a place he frequented himself, if he continued to eschew animal products. Announcing to Azha, still and silent in the passenger seat, that he was treating her to dinner out.
No argument from her. About anything. Ever.
The “spontaneous” encounter had spelled the beginning of the end for Andrew.
Your basic spider-fly scenario.
Because Andrew hadn’t reacted well, none of that Lily-passivity.
On the contrary, he was repulsed.
Idiot Typhon had turned moral.
Thinking about it, Grace was surprised to feel herself shuddering. Flipping a page of the Californian, she scanned a paragraph of self-righteous student journalism. Something about micro-triggers of pre-post-traumatic “discomfort” due to a long list of isms...
Cries from the lawn snapped her out of that.
There he was.
Gilded and straight-backed, handsome face uglied by rage.
Grace watched, unable to act, as Dion Larue raised his foot and kicked the sandaled sole of a now-awake and wide-eyed Azha. Azha sat up looking panicked and Larue turned his wrath on Lily, now holding the baby. Stabbing an accusing finger at her. Snarling something.