Eye of the Storm (Hudson 3)

I didn't think she was going to answer or that she had even heard me, but she suddenly shook her head and nearly smiled, her lips folding inward.

"Our sins." she whispered. "come back. You can try to bury them, to burn them, but they're out there, just waiting for an opportunity. Remember that. Remember."

I shook my head in opposition. She widened her eyes.

"You're the opportunity."' she declared. "You came back. It's in you. The darkness, the evil," she whispered. "It's in you."

Tears burned under my eyelids. I swallowed and shook my head.

"Yes, yes, you came out of the night. It's my fault, of course. It all started with Larry and my father. I heard you cry when you were born. Don't you think I've heard that cry again and again?

"I don't know where it will end," she said. "All I can do is wait. What did the minister know? If he knew the past, he would have shaken his finger at me and pointed to the coffin. I should be in that coffin. not Brody.

"The baby was crying," she said. "When they took the baby, she was crying. I knew it was wrong, but my daddy wouldn't listen."

"Mother, you're not making any sense. Listen to me..."

"All I can do is wait." she muttered and turned her head away. "Wait."

"Mother. you've got to get stronger." I told her. "Think about Grandmother Hudson. Think about Grant and Alison."

She closed her eyes. I stood there, looking at her for a few long moments and then decided it would be better if I spoke to her after some time had gone by. I reached out and touched her hair.

She smiled with her eyes closed.

"Mommy, is that you?" she asked. "I'm not afraid now. You can go back to sleep. It was just a bad dream. I boomed it just like Daddy said and it's gone."

"Good-bye," I whispered and left her room.

As I was descending the stairs. Alison appeared at the foot of them and gaped up at me with her hands on her hips, two of her girlfriends at side. One of them said. "I told you.'

"What were you doing up there?" she demanded.

"Talking to your mother," I said. "You should be up there holding her hand and not visiting with your friends." I added and started for the front door.

She reached out and seized my arm, spinning me around.

"Why did you come here? You don't belong here. If Brody hadn't gone to see you, he'd still be alive,"

"Think what you want." I pulled my arm free and walked out, but she followed me onto the portico, her girlfriends practically attached. Jake stepped forward from the Rolls in anticipation.

"You brain-washed my grandmother to give you so much," she spit at me. "but we'll get it all back. You'll see. We're getting it all back!"

I didn't respond, continuing toward the car.

"You're some kind of freak, you know that? Just some kind of freak! You don't belong anywhere near our family. My daddy will get rid of you, just wait.

"That's my grandmother's car," she shouted when Jake opened the door for me. "You don't belong in it. You belong in the back of a pickup truck. You belong in hell!"

I turned and looked back at her. Her braces glittered in the sunlight that slipped through the narrow opening in the increasingly overcast sky, and her eyes looked like two little marble balls with little black circles at the centers. She had her hands clenched into fists and she had stiffened her body in defiance.

The blood that we shared surely was in retreat in both our bodies. I thought. I couldn't imagine ever having a warm moment between us.

Whose fault was that? Mine? My mother's? My grandfather's? Ken's?

Maybe it was a combination of everyone tossing his or her self- interest into the fragile boat of love, sinking it in the sea of tragedy we were destined to cross together.

We might all drown.